Indigenous people that lived in southeastern Brazil in the late 1800s shared some genetic sequences with Polynesians, an analysis of their remains shows. The finding offers some support for the possibility that Pacific islanders traded with South America thousands of years ago, but researchers say that the distinctive DNA sequences, or haplogroups, may have entered the genomes of the native Brazilians through the slave trade during the nineteenth century.

Most scientists agree that humans arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago, probably via the Bering land bridge linking northeastern Asia with what is now Alaska. But the precise timing and the number of ‘migration waves’ is unclear, owing largely to variations in early Americans’ physical features, says Sérgio Pena, a molecular geneticist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

One broad group of these Palaeoamericans — the Botocudo people, who lived in inland regions of southeastern Brazil — stands out, having skull shapes that were intermediate between those of other Palaeoamericans and a presumed ancestral population in eastern Asia.


http://www.nature.com/news/dna-study-links-indigenous-brazilians-to-polynesians-1.12710

Google:

Google began April Fools’ Day early by unveiling some of its pranks on Sunday, which include launching a scent-based search engine and shutting down YouTube, among other fake announcements.

Users of Google Analytics reported seeing web traffic from the International Space Station Sunday afternoon. The number of astronauts allegedly visiting a user’s page totaled 41, which represents April 1, or April Fools’ Day.

Google also launched a beta product called Google Nose. Google Nose, if it were real, would allow users to search for various smells, including “wet dog,” “horse manure” and “locker room.”



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/01/googles-april-fools-day-jokes-revealed/#ixzz2PByfhA8J


Precursors of April Fools' Day include the Roman festival of Hilaria, held March 25,[2] and the Medieval Feast of Fools, held December 28,[3] still a day on which pranks are played in Spanish-speaking countries.
In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392), the "Nun's Priest's Tale" is set Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two.[4] Modern scholars believe that there is a copying error in the extant manuscripts and that Chaucer actually wrote, Syn March was gon.[5] Thus, the passage originally meant 32 days after April, i.e. May 2,[6] the anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, which took place in 1381. Readers apparently misunderstood this line to mean "March 32", i.e. April 1.[7] In Chaucer's tale, the vain cock Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day

Syrian 7 year old..... is that his school in the background?
I find this photo forbidding, distrubing and tragic.

An Exxon Mobil crude oil pipeline ruptured near the town of Mayflower in the US state of Arkansas, spilling thousands of barrels of oil, the company said.

Exxon shut the 50-centimetre Pegasus pipeline, which carries crude oil from Pakota, Illinois, to the Gulf Coast, after the leak was discovered on Friday afternoon.

Exxon, which was hit with a $1.7m fine by regulators this week over a 2011 spill in the Yellowstone River, said a few thousand barrels of oil had been observed.

Local media reported the spill occurred in a subdivision, and Mayflower police said the oil had not reached the nearby Lake Conway.

Federal, state and local officials were on site and the company said it was staging a response for a spill of more than 10,000 barrels "to be conservative."


http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/03/201333142826356825.html


At 6,700-acres, Lake Conway is the largest man-made game and fish commission lake in the United States. Construction of the lake began in 1948, with its waters coming from the runoff of Stone Dam Creek, Gold Creek, Palarm Creek, Little Cypress Creek and Panther Creek. Its average depth is six feet, with a maximum depth of 18 feet. The lake is approximately eight miles long with 52 miles of shoreline.

Fishing: Known as an excellent fishing lake, Conway is stocked with bass, catfish, bream and crappie. Several free public launch areas are maintained by the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission; boat rentals are available at several commercial docks on the lake. Adams', Brannon's, Bream's Nest, Gold Creek, Highway, Lawrence, Martin's Northshore, Palarm Creek, Paradise, Pierce Creek and Sevier's are the landings with boat ramps. Old creek channels that can be found on all sides of the lake are some of the best places to bass fish. Lake Conway is home to the Crappie Master’s State Tournament in the spring.

Chris HadfieldVerified account
‏@Cmdr_Hadfield


Don't tell my crew, but I brought them Easter Eggs

This report was originally presented at the East Asia Nuclear Security workshop held on November 11, 2011 in Tokyo


North Korea occasionally threatens to “turn Seoul into a Sea of Fire”. The South Korean, U.S. and other international media often relay this statement, amplifying its effect. But can North Korea really do this? Does it matter if they can? The short answer is they can’t; but they can kill many tens of thousands of people, start a larger war and cause a tremendous amount of damage before ultimately losing their regime.

Therefore, it doesn’t matter whether they can do it directly since they have the capability to ignite a sequence of events leading to widespread destruction and likely regime change in Pyongyang. Previous Nuclear Weapon Free Zones have usually required about three decades to implement after discussions started during periods of stasis.

Therefore, this is a period of stasis in which to explore confidence building measures and possibly something as radical as a Korea Japan Nuclear Weapon Free Zone.


If the North Korean Peoples Army (KPA) were to start a doctrinal, conventional artillery barrage focused on South Korean forces, we could expect to see around three thousand casualties in the first few minutes, but the casualty rate would quickly drop as the surprise wears off and counter-battery fires slow down the North Korean rates of fire.

If the KPA were to engage Seoul in a primarily counter-value fashion by firing into Seoul instead of primarily aiming at military targets, there would likely be around thirty-thousand casualties in a short amount of time. Statistically speaking, almost eight-hundred of those casualties would be foreigners given Seoul’s international demographic. Chinese make up almost seventy percent of foreigners in Seoul and its northern environs which means KPA might also kill six-hundred Chinese diplomats, multi-national corporation leaders, and ranking cadre children who are students in Seoul.


Horrible, but nothing approaching “millions”. Three primary factors and three secondary factors account for the huge discrepancy between rhetoric and reality:


Three Primary Factors

Range – Only about 1/3 of Seoul is presently in range from artillery along a DMZ trace. The northern reaches of Seoul within artillery range have much lower population densities than Seoul proper;
Numbers – Even though KPA has a tremendous number of artillery pieces, only a certain number are emplaced to range Seoul. KPA can’t emplace every weapon near Seoul or the rest of North Korea’s expansive border would be unguarded and even more vulnerable.

Moreover, an artillery tube immediately reveals its location as soon as it fires.

Therefore only about two-thirds of artillery will open fire at a time. The rest are trying to remain hidden;
Protection – Artillery shelters for twenty million people exist in the greater Seoul metropolitan area.

After the initial surprise has worn off, there simply won’t be large numbers of exposed people. Even during the initial attack the vast majority of people will either be at work, at home, or in transit. Few people will be standing in the middle of an open field with no protection whatsoever available anywhere nearby.


Three Secondary Factors


Read more: http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/mind-the-gap-between-rhetoric-and-reality/#ixzz2P6VwXM3D


BTW every newly elected Government in the south is tested by the north with angry rhetoric.

Go to the link for more analysis.

This is a history book. It’s a detailed account of the key events since the Depression that have shaped modern finance. I love history, and I’m familiar with those events. Stockman’s spin on financial history makes for a very good read. There’s something for everyone. For example, were you troubled by the bailout of AIG, and TARP? If so, you’ll love this chapter:

Paulson’s Folly – The needless Rescue of AIG and Wall Street

Do you worry that Bernanke has overplayed his hand with monetary policy? Stockman rips him apart:

The Bernanke Bubble: Last Gift to the 1 Percent
or

How the Fed Brought the Gambling Mania to America’s Neighborhoods
Do TV talking heads influence Fed policy? Stockman says “yes”.
The Rant That Shook the Eccles Building: How the Fed Got Cramer’d
Worried about US indebtedness to foreign central banks? That’s covered in:


Monetary Roach Motels
Stockman puts meat on the bones to some old stories. A few examples:


Read more: http://brucekrasting.com/david-stockman-is-mad/#ixzz2P6EEh4sx

The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.

Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later — within a few years, I predict — this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.

Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the “bottom” 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans.

So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.



More:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&ref=opinion&