The 8 Biggest Craigslist Crime Stories

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http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/features/the-8-biggest-craigslist-crime-stories.html

Most people come to Craigslist to find apartments, job openings, and cheap furniture, while others use the popular classified advertising website to do their dirty work. In recent years, Craigslist has become a hotbed for predators and scam artists looking to take advantage of unsuspecting victims. What’s worse is no Craigslist section is safe from criminals. Whether you’re browsing the personals, for sale, or jobs section, you never really know who’s on the other end and what kind of danger you might be in. So before you agree to meet at a seller’s house or send money to a complete stranger, read these eight biggest Craigslist crime stories first.

1. Med student kills masseuse from Craigslist

   Boston University medical student, Philip Markoff, also known as the “Craigslist Killer,” was charged with murdering a New York City masseuse on April 14, 2009. Markoff found 26-year-old Julissa Brisman on Craigslist and contacted her for her erotic massage services. The two met in a luxury hotel in Boston, where Markoff lured her into a room and shot her to death. Police found Brisman’s underwear and a semiautomatic weapon inside of Markoff’s apartment, as well as ammunition and other materials that matched those used in another kidnapping-armed robbery on a Boston masseuse. Markoff was charged with the armed robbery and murder of Brisman, as well as two other armed robberies. While awaiting trial, Markoff committed suicide in prison.

2. Ohio Craigslist murders

   A bogus Craigslist ad led to the death of one man and the attempted murder of a second man who were seeking work as a caretaker for a ranch in Ohio. Richard Beasley, 52, and Brogan Rafferty, 17, have been charged with murdering and attempting to murder the victims. Rafferty was 16 at the time of the crime, but is being charged as an adult. The date of the trial has yet to be determined, but prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Beasley.

3. Teen slays Craigslist nanny

   Michael John Anderson, 19, said he wanted to know what it felt like to kill when he brutally murdered 24-year-old Katherine Ann Olson, who responded to a phony ad the teenage boy had posted on Craigslist. In the ad, Anderson pretended to be a married woman named “Amy,” who was looking for a nanny. After exchanging e-mails back and forth, Olson agreed to meet for an interview at Anderson’s house, where he shot her in the back and put her body in the trunk of her car. He left the car abandoned in a park five blocks away from his parent’s house. Police found her blood and the gun he used to shoot Olson inside the home. Anderson was arrested and found guilty of first degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

4. Woman killed friend, cut baby from womb

   Korena Roberts and Heather Snively had a lot in common; both were young, soon-to-be mothers, or at least that’s what Roberts had told people for months. The 27-year-old met Snively after placing an ad on Craigslist looking for baby clothes. The two women became quick friends, but Roberts never disclosed her secret — she was not actually pregnant. About a week later, Roberts beat Snively with a police baton and used a straight razor to cut open her abdomen and take out the unborn baby to pass it off as her own child. Snively and her infant died. Roberts pleaded guilty to the murders and has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

5. Craigslist minister steals couple’s wedding presents

   In 2007, a Portland couple hired a minister they found on Craigslist to officiate their marriage and discovered he wasn’t the trustworthy person they thought he was. The couple had been asking for Home Depot gift cards in lieu of gifts or cash to help them fund their kitchen renovation, but was surprised to see that all they had were three gift cards at the end of the wedding. As it turns out, the minister stole the gift cards and surveillance cameras at Home Depot caught him buying tools and detergent with them.

6. Man rapes maid found on Craigslist

   In 2011, a California man was arrested and taken into custody for allegedly raping a housekeeper he found on Craigslist under the “maid” section. When the woman arrived at Michael Delgado’s apartment, he locked the doors and allegedly raped and sexually assaulted her with a foreign object for over an hour. Delgado walked the victim out and she asked a passerby to call police. He was arrested on suspicion of rape, rape with a foreign object, false imprisonment, and assault.

7. Teen killed, found in burned car

   Sarah Weyrick was new to Houston and was in need of some cash to pay her bills. The 19-year-old posted a Craigslist ad in the “personals and casual encounters” section, saying “Need help with a couple of bills — just two bills. Tough times call for drastic measures.” Sometime after posting the ad, her body was discovered in a burning car in an apartment complex on June 2, 2010. An autopsy showed that Weyrick had been stabbed multiple times around her neck and was put in the backseat of her car before someone set it ablaze to cover the evidence. One month after the incident, police arrested and charged Phillip E. Boldon, 31, with murdering Weyrick.

8. Florida Craigslist car scam

   Tina Morris fell victim to an unfortunate Craigslist scam when she was shopping online for a car for her daughter. Morris came across a seemingly promising Craigslist ad for a 2007 Honda Accord listed for $2,900. The woman selling the car as part of a divorce claimed to live in Lake City, Fla., but said the vehicle was located in a New Jersey shipping yard. Morris was told that the sale was being handled by an agent from eBay motors, but when the seller asked for an additional $1,000 for insurance, Morris got suspicious and called eBay motors. She found out that it was all a scam and her money was long gone.

Living Light: How and Why Organisms Glow

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Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer

Single-celled organisms ocean-dwelling, called dinoflagellates, light up when disturbed. This species, Pyrocystis fusiformis, is a spindle-shaped cell about 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) long—just large enough to be seen without a microscope. CREDIT: ©AMNH\D. Finnin

NEW YORK — Some living things can light up dark places without help from the sun.While fireflies are the best-known bioluminescent creatures, other species of insect, fungi, bacteria, jellyfish and bony fish can also glow. They employ a chemical reaction to glow at night, caves or most frequently, the black depths of the ocean.

Bioluminescence is scattered within the tree of life — although no flowering plants and few animals with backbones possess this ability — and researchers believe the ability evolved independently many times. [A Glow in the Dark Gallery]

A new exhibit on bioluminescence at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City officially estimates bioluminescence has evolved at least 50 times, “probably many more,” curators there say.

Among bony fishes alone, the ability to produce light, sometimes with help from glowing bacteria, has evolved probably 20 to 30 times among different groups, according to John Sparks, curator in charge of the ichthyology department at the museum.

“Even with fishes, we know that these were all independent events, because there’s different chemistries used by different groups. Some just [use] bacteria, some self-luminescent ones do it differently,” Sparks told LiveScience.

Glow-in-the-dark organisms use variations on a chemical reaction that involves at least three ingredients: an enzyme called luciferase, which helps oxygen bind to an organic molecule (the third ingredient), called luciferin. The high-energy molecule created by the reaction releases energy in the form of light.

For organisms that do it, bioluminescence has many uses, according to the exhibit materials. Fireflies use flash to attract mates and to warn predators of the toxins they contain. Deep-sea anglerfish use a lighted lure to attract prey. The stomach lights on ponyfish evolved as a sort of camouflage to help them blend in with light filtering down from above. Dinoflagellates — the single-celled protists behind red tides — light up when disturbed, perhaps to startle predators or to attract creatures that eat their predators. Click beetles appear to use light to make themselves seem larger. Fungus gnat larvae glow to attract prey to sticky fishing lines that resemble bead necklaces. Vampire squid squirt out clouds of light to confuse predators.

Most bioluminescent organisms, about 80 percent of species, live in the most vast habitat on the planet — the deep sea. In fact, it is estimated that most species below 2,297 feet (700 meters) can produce their own light.

There’s no consensus on why the ability to produce light has evolved so many times, but one theory has gained traction for life in the deep sea, according to Sparks.

“Luciferins, these light-producing molecules, are all good antioxidants, so it is thought that they may have been around as antioxidants, then, over time, they were co-opted for signaling,” Sparks said.

As the oxygen content of the oceans increased, animals moved into deeper waters, out of the reach of harmful ultraviolet radiation. In the deep water, where the antioxidants were no longer needed to repair genetic damage caused by UV radiation, luciferins became the basis for a light-producing system, he said.

Not everything that glows is bioluminescent. Some organisms, such as corals, fluoresce, meaning they absorb light at one wavelength, such as UV radiation, and emit it at another wavelength. Since UV light isn’t visible to the human eye, these creatures can appear to produce their own light.

The exhibit “Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence” opens at the American Museum of Natural History on Saturday (March 31) and is scheduled to run until Jan. 6, 2013

Most Religious States Revealed in New Survey

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Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor

How often do you pray? Or do you think it’s a waste of time? CREDIT: Alexey Fursov | Shutterstock

If you like to attend church and have a strong connection with religion, Mississippi may be your best bet, according to a new survey finding the Magnolia State is the most religious, followed by Utah and Alabama.At the other end of the pew, Vermont and New Hampshire came in as the least religious U.S. states.

Individuals who indicated that religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week were classified as “very religious” by Gallup officials. That definition would mean 40 percent of Americans nationwide are very religious, the survey found. Another 32 percent of Americans are nonreligious, meaning they reported religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services.

The results are based on telephone interviews conducted between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2011, with a random sample of 353,492 adults, ages 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. [See full list of U.S. states and religiosity]

At the state level, there were some extremes. Fifty-nine percent of Mississippians are very religiousand 11 percent nonreligious, while 23 percent of Vermonters are very religious and 58 percent are nonreligious. New Hampshire tied Vermont with 23 percent of its residents grouped as very religious, though slightly fewer (52 percent) residents in the Granite State would be considered nonreligious.

The Southern states bustled with religiosity; eight of the 10 most religious states in 2011 are located there and include: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia. Rounding out the top 10 are Oklahoma at No. 10 and Utah at No. 2.

Top 10 most religious states

• Mississippi: 59 percent are very religious
• Utah: 57 percent
• Alabama: 56 percent
• Louisiana: 54 percent
• Arkansas: 54 percent
• South Carolina: 54 percent
• Tennessee: 52 percent
• North Carolina: 50 percent
• Georgia: 48 percent
• Oklahoma: 48 percent

Bottom 10 (least religious states)

• Vermont: 23 percent are very religious
• New Hampshire: 23 percent
• Maine: 25 percent
• Massachusetts: 28 percent
• Alaska: 28 percent
• Oregon: 30 percent
• Nevada: 30 percent
• Washington: 30 percent
• Connecticut: 31 percent
• District of Columbia (tie): 32 percent
• New York (tie): 32 percent
• Rhode Island (tie): 32 percent

These patterns of religiousness have held steady in recent years, according to Gallup, with Southern states rising to the top as the most religious, and states in New England and the West falling to the bottom as the least religious.

Rather than the result of differences in underlying demographics or religious identities in states, Gallup research suggests the state religiosity differences may be a part of a state-level cultural phenomenon.

For instance, though Mississippi has the highest percentage of blacks of any U.S. state — and blacks are the most religious of any major race or ethnicity in the country — white residents of the Magnolia State are highly religious, more so than whites in other states. Same oddity can be seen in Vermont, where residents who identified as Catholic or Protestant being less religious than residents identifying with those same religions but who live in the South.

Something about the state’s culture, based partly on that state’s history, may be behind residents’ religiosity, Gallup suggests.

The results may have implications for politics. When looking over the U.S. state-by-state map of religiosity, Gallup found “the most religious states in the union generally are the most Republican, while the least religious states skew more toward the Democratic Party,” they said in a statement. “This means that the most divided states — and thus, those where most of the heavy-duty campaigning in this year’s presidential election will be taking place — are the ones where residents tend to be neither at the very religious nor at the nonreligious end of the spectrum.”

The religious scale may also help to explain well-being, since research suggests, at least for some and in some cases, that church can chase away the blues. For instance, a study published in January 2012 in the journal Psychological Science found that people who are religious have higher self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than the nonreligious only in countries where belief in religion is common. People who attend a church, mosque or synagogue get a sharp boost in happiness on Sundays, while less-frequent attendees see a decline in good feelings that day.

10 Ways to Keep Siblings Hugging not Hating

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April 1st, 2012 by admin

http://www.babysitters.net/blog/10-ways-to-keep-siblings-hugging-not-hating/

Sibling rivalry has been going on since the dawn of time; everyone knows the story of Cain and Able. That story didn’t end well, so parents do their best to discourage animosity among their children. Although it’s perfectly natural for siblings to have disagreements, you want to keep them to a minimum. This is important not only for their development, but for the parents own peace of mind. Here are ten ways to keep siblings hugging more and hating less.

1. Start early – Sibling rivalry usually starts as soon as a new brother or sister is born. The older sibling is no longer the sole recipient of their parent’s affection and feels neglected. It’s important at this crucial time to give as much time and attention to your first born as possible and help the children establish a affectionate relationship with each other.
2. Be fair – Be careful not to play favorites. This can be more difficult than you think, especially if one child is usually the instigator of conflict. Problems will only escalate if the kids don’t think you’re being fair.
3. Set rules – It’s important to establish the ground rules and communicate them to you children. They need to know that you expect them to get along and to love each other no matter what. Set the rules and be sure to enforce them consistently.
4. Common activities – Find common activities that both siblings can do together. By getting them to work with each other to accomplish the same goal, you’ll encourage sibling camaraderie instead of rivalry.
5. Work it out – Sometime you need to step back and let the kids work it out themselves. This is a good idea for minor conflicts and gives them a chance to develop their negotiating skills.
6. Discourage competition – Try to avoid situations where siblings are competing against each other. Don’t compare their report cards or athletic abilities to each other, but praise each of them for their individual accomplishments. Also encourage them to root for each other.
7. Encourage affection – Lead by example and let your children know it’s great to show each other affection. Encourage them to give each other hugs and praise them when they’re getting along.
8. Time apart – Sometimes siblings need a little time apart to enhance their appreciation of each other. Maybe some time alone in separate rooms will be all it takes or perhaps going away to separate summer camps. They might be happy enough to see each other again that they hug spontaneously.
9. Appreciate their differences – No two children are alike; even identical twins each have their own separate personalities. Be sure to teach your kids to appreciate each others differences. By supporting the other’s strengths and helping to overcome their weaknesses, siblings can learn to be a team instead of rivals.
10. Patience – Sibling rivalry tends to come and go in stages. Depending on their age difference and other factors, kids will fight like cats and dogs for awhile and then be best buddies as they grow older. Sometimes it just takes some patience.

No matter what you do, some conflict is inevitable, but you don’t want it to get out of hand. Siblings don’t really hate each other. They’re just struggling to establish their own identity and place in the family. Hopefully your kids will eventually learn that they can count on each other for support and friendship. There are nothing like brothers and sisters to be in each others corner when times are tough. With a little refereeing from their parents, siblings will keep doing more hugging than hating as they grow to be adults.

 

10 Historic Times That Saw a Rise in Adultery and Why

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http://www.bestdatingsites.org/blog/2012/10-historic-times-that-saw-a-rise-in-adultery-and-why/

Finding accurate statistics on adultery rates is very difficult. The most accurate way to get data is through face to face interviews and most people are unwilling to disclose extramarital affairs when they know their identity will be known. However, throughout history, there have been markers that indicate probable increases in infidelity. We’ve listed a few of those times below.

1. Ancient Greece – Ancient Greeks did not view human sexuality the same as we do now. There seems to have been a lot more freedom. As women became land owners and their position in society increased, sexual freedoms became more acceptable as it was considered a gift from the Gods.
2. The dawning of Christianity – There are scholars who have interpreted certain parts of the Scripture to indicate that some of the earliest Christians felt that because their sins were forgiven they had the freedom to commit all kinds of sexual immorality that had previously been denied them. The Apostle Paul addressed this issue several times in the Epistles admonishing early believers that they were to emulate Christ and abstain from sexual immorality and all other acts that were not in alignment with the teachings of Christ.
3. Middle Ages – During the Middle Ages adultery was seen as a diversion for the upper classes. Men were expected to marry a virgin and marry well. However, before doing so, there was the expectation that they would have proven their virility on several occasions.
4. Early U.S. History – At this time there were no divorces because there was no legal way for a couple to end their marriage. However in 1701, if you lived in Maryland, you were able to get a divorce. Divorces were only granted for adultery.
5. Early 1900’s – Divorce rates were still relatively low, but higher for women than men, which would indicate a rise in adultery since that was the only reason one could get divorced.
6. 1930’s – During the great depression divorce rates more than quadrupled for both men and women. Most likely the stress of the times caused an increase in adultery and the fact that during the 1920’s there was a much looser lifestyle on the rise than had been seen before.
7. World War II – This period of time saw another spike in the divorce rate, presumably due to the many wartime marriages that took place where people did not really know each other that well. Many marriages were the result of young people feeling that they had to get married since the males were going off to war.
8. 1950’s – This period of time saw the steady increase of divorce rates, over twice the rates of the Great Depression era. At this time divorce was still only granted on grounds of adultery.
9. 1960’s and 70’s – During this time of history, society was going through some major changes. This was the era of “free love,” the Vietnam War was in full swing, Civil Rights and Women’s rights were also being fought for.  Once again the divorce rate spiked, this time, it is thought that the advent of no fault divorce played a part in the spike. Even so, history tells us that sexual exploitation was rampant.
10. 21^st Century – Once again, society has gone through some serious changes. People are viewing marriage and relationships differently. Statistically it looks like adultery is still on the rise and the disillusionment of marriage and our disposable mentality seems to be at the root of it.

Adultery still tears people and families apart and causes damage to the psyche and the emotional wellbeing of those involved. Children are the biggest losers when families disintegrate due to infidelity.

9 Oft-Overlooked E-mail Etiquette Tips Every Young Worker Should Know

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by Staff Writer

Ding! You’ve got mail. Welcome to the working world, youngsters. Chances are you’ve been e-mailing since the early years of AOL, but what do you know about work e-mails? If you’re wondering where all the smiley faces are at or why your co-workers don’t forward funny YouTube videos to each other, then you clearly have a thing or two to learn about e-mail etiquette in the workplace. Keep reading for the 9 oft-overlooked e-mail etiquette tips every young worker should know.

1. Use a courteous greeting and closing

   All business e-mails should begin with a courteous greeting and end with an appropriate closing. Greetings and closings make e-mails seem more personal and less demanding. Remember, if you’re going to take the time to write a greeting, make sure you address the right person and you spell their name correctly.

2. Keep it short and sweet

   This one is pretty self-explanatory. Keep your e-mails as concise and clean as possible. Nobody wants to read an essay or have to skim through an e-mail to find the answer. Keep it short and sweet and you’ll have no problems.

3. Think before you send

   Remember, there’s no shredder for e-mails. Even if you’re able to retrieve an incorrectly sent or embarrassing e-mail, forwarded notes may still exist and those may never get deleted. With that being said, you should always take caution before sending a sensitive or emotionally-charged e-mail out to co-workers or anyone else for that matter. Just like you’ve been told to think before you speak, you should think before you send.

4. Revise

   You wouldn’t turn in an important essay without revising it first, right? The same care should be taken when writing any business e-mail. It’s easy to make mistakes when writing e-mails, and sometimes these errors are overlooked, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take three minutes to revise what you’ve written before you send it. Use spell check and other tools to help you get it right the first time, and if that still isn’t enough, ask a co-worker to give it a look if they have a couple minutes to spare.

5. Get to the point

   Don’t make your reader sort through an essay of an e-mail to find what they’re looking for. When writing an important e-mail – get straight to the point. Just like the aforementioned tip to keep e-mails short and sweet, you should address the purpose of the e-mail up front, whether it’s to ask a question or give an answer. No one wants to read through an in-depth description of your stomach problems that are preventing you from coming into work; a simple “I’m ill” will do.

1. Limit your abbreviations and emoticons

   Use of abbreviations and emoticons depends greatly on the context of the e-mail and the person you’re communicating with, but it’s generally a good idea to use them sparingly. If you’re new to a job, observe how your co-workers converse in group e-mails before putting smileys and LOLs in your next message.

2. Use sentence case

   Work e-mails don’t have to be formal and stuffy, but they should include proper sentence case. That means the first word in a sentence should be capitalized and all other words should be lowercase, unless of course it’s a proper noun, acronym, or initial. This is a simple, elementary lesson that should always be applied. And for goodness sakes, DO NOT USE ALL CAPS. See? They’re too abrasive and it looks like you’re shouting.

3. Refrain from using “Reply to All”

   Young workers should refrain from using “reply to all,” unless they’re certain others need and want to see their response. Flooding your co-worker’s and manager’s inbox with your opinion on a previous message is rude and downright annoying. It’s generally best to reply to the sender alone and keep your paper trail as small as possible.

4. Keep it informal, but clean

   E-mails, including work ones, don’t have to be super formal and scripted. Formal e-mails have a tendency to be awkward and hard to read, but there’s also a fine line between informal and sloppy. In other words, your tone can be informal, but your copy should be clean.

The 9 Coolest Historic Bars Around the World

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http://www.zencollegelife.com/the-9-coolest-historic-bars-around-the-world/

Going back to before the War of Independence, how many conversations in bars, over a beer, ale, or cider, have possibly inspired revolutions in art or in politics? When you take into account the pubs and cafes across the planet, trying to account for the number of historical dramas that unfolded after a few drinks can be overwhelming. Maybe this is why historical bars are so much fun. You can feel history, or at least imagine that you do, as you enjoy what may be the same bar stool Lord Byron, Ernest Hemmingway, or Jean Lafitte once sat on. Here is a list, by no means comprehensive, of some of the coolest historical bars to be found in the U.S., as well as London and Paris.

1. The Green Dragon Tavern (Boston, MA)

   Established in 1654, The Green Dragon Tavern’s website insists the watering hole played a decisive role in the War of Independence, as it was there that plans for the invasion of Lexington and Concorde were overheard, prompting the famous ride of Green Dragon patron Paul Revere. This isn’t completely accurate, although in those days, Revere certainly did enjoy a drink or two at the tavern. John Hancock was another famous patron, his brother lived next door. Full bands play onstage now in what is one of the oldest and most popular bars in Boston.

2. The Spaniards Inn (Hampstead, London)

   In London, there are no shortages of pubs and folks who love a good pint. The historic 16th century Spaniards Inn is mentioned in both Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and served both poets Lord Byron and John Keats, who wrote “Ode to a Nightingale” while sipping a claret. Today, the pub boasts a backyard “dog-friendly beer garden” complete with a dog-wash. It’s the perfect spot to read, wash your dog, and enjoy a variety of ales and ciders.

3. Napoleon House (New Orleans, LA)

   Napoleon House, a building that includes a bar, opened up in 1797. The building’s first occupant, Nicholas Girod, was mayor of New Orleans from 1812 to 1815. Being a proud French Quarter resident, Girod offered Napoleon himself refuge at the residence in 1821, a gesture that would give the establishment its name. Peeling paint, arched doorways, wood worn surfaces, and a clientele that includes artists, writers, and professional alcoholics, all give Napoleon House its justified charm and historical vibe.

4. McSorley’s Old Ale House (New York, NY)

   Many of our county’s oldest bars are located in New York City. Established in 1854, located at 15 East 7th street, McSorely’s Old Ale House is the city’s oldest, continuously operated saloon. It also enjoys the dubious distinction of denying women entrance through its swinging doors until 1970. Abraham Lincoln visited McSorely’s, as did Woody Guthrie, and John Lennon (We’re not sure if Yoko Ono was allowed in or not.). Visit McSorely’s, and you can try to sort out its contradictory history over a draft or two (or three).

5. Harry’s New York Bar (Paris)

   Harry’s New York Bar is actually located in Paris, France. Originally located in New York City, the bar was dismantled in 1911, and brought over to Rue Daunou Paris in pieces to be rebuilt. Its famous patrons include Coco Chanel, Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Some sources say that George Gershwin composed his popular, programmatic orchestral piece “An American in Paris” on the bar’s piano. The bar’s interior is decorated with American memorabilia, which may or may not be of much interest to the French, but certainly helps 21st century expats feel right at home.

6. The Green Mill (Chicago, IL)

   Located on North Broadway Avenue in Chicago, The Green Mill Jazz Club is a hotspot for hearing jazz in all of it forms, played by musicians both young and old alike. Jam sessions until dawn are not uncommon. The Green Mill was established in 1907, and was a favorite hang of gangster Al Capone, silent comedian Charlie Chaplin, and singer Frank Sinatra. During Prohibition, The Green Mill was a speakeasy, and still has a trapdoor behind the bar leading to tunnels that were used to illegally deliver alcohol.

7. The Jury Room (Columbus, OH)

   There is a lot of history to explore throughout the city of Columbus, a major American test market that is currently enjoying a rep as a foodie’s paradise. The Jury Room, located at 22 East Mound Street, was built in 1831, to serve those visiting the Courthouse across the street. It has operated continuously, even through the years of Prohibition, ever since. The building, like most of the historic bars we are listing, is haunted. Indoor lights that are turned off mysteriously come back on, and a back gate that’s always locked sometimes squeaks ominously, as if someone is passing through.

8. The Rail Pub (Savannah, GA)

   Everywhere you look in downtown Savannah, you’re confronted with history. Since it opened in 1890, The Rail Pub, located at 405 West Congress Street, has operated as a boarding house and a brothel, as its location used to be Savannah’s own “Red Light” district. Day laborers used to gather in Franklin Square, across the street from the pub, and wait for work on the railroad. At the end of a day, they would come to The Rail for a drink, thus inspiring its name.

9. Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar (New Orleans, LA)

   This establishment, built between 1722-1732, is named after the privateer (i.e. “pirate”), entrepreneur (i.e. “gangster”), and sailor (i.e. again, “pirate”) of the Battle of New Orleans, Jean Lafitte. Located in the French Quarter, and lit mostly by candlelight, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop features well-priced drinks and plenty free-of-charge “old-world charm.” The bar’s website indicates it is “the only known watering hole that pre-dates our nation’s independence.” But what about the aforementioned Green Dragon Tavern which was established in 1654? The answer may be a matter of historical interpretation, best discussed and debated over a drink or two. Cheers!

Too Much Homework Is Bad for Kids

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By: Natalie Wolchover, Life’s Little Mysteries Staff Writer

Date: 30 March 2012 Time: 09:12 AM ET

Young boy doing homework. CREDIT: Child image via Shutterstock

Piling on the homework doesn’t help kids do better in school. In fact, it can lower their test scores.That’s the conclusion of a group of Australian researchers, who have taken the aggregate results of several recent studies investigating the relationship between time spent on homework and students’ academic performance.According to Richard Walker, an educational psychologist at Sydney University, data shows that in countries where more time is spent on homework, students score lower on a standardized test called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The same correlation is also seen when comparing homework time and test performance at schools within countries. Past studies have also demonstrated this basic trend.

Inundating children with hours of homework each night is detrimental, the research suggests, while an hour or two per week usually doesn’t impact test scores one way or the other. However, homework only bolsters students’ academic performance during their last three years of grade school. “There is little benefit for most students until senior high school (grades 10-12),” Walker told Life’s Little Mysteries.

Amazing Nebula Photo Looks Like a Giant Human Head

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Tariq Malik, SPACE.com Managing Editor

Date: 29 March 2012 Time: 04:27 PM ET

A spectacular photo from a NASA telescope has revealed a wispy blue nebula with an odd twist: It looks like a giant human head in deep space.The head-in-space nebula photo was snapped by NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite and shows an ultraviolet view of the so-called Cygnus Loop nebula, which is located 1,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. It was released March 22 and featured this week on NASA’s website.What makes the new Cygnus Loop image striking is its odd shape. The nebula looks like a giant human head and neck, which appear in profile facing the left of the image. A bright star serves as an eye while wispy nebula gas traces the outline of jaw, and close-cropped hair.

To be clear, the Cygnus Loop nebula head is an optical illusion, one of many caused when observers see familiar patterns in images. Recent examples of space illusions include images of the so-called Fried Egg nebula and Running Chicken nebula.

The Cygnus Loop nebula is all that remains from a colossal star explosion that occurred between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago.

“The filaments of gas and dust visible here in ultraviolet light were heated by the shockwave from the supernova, which is still spreading outward from the original explosion,” NASA explained in a photo description. “The original supernova would have been bright enough to be seen clearly from Earth with the naked eye.”

The nebula covers an area of the night sky that is more than three times the size of the full moon and is tucked beneath one of the wings of the imaginary swan that makes up the Cygnus constellation.

NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, which took the Cygnus Loop nebula photo, was launched in April 2003 on a mission to map vast areas of the sky in the ultraviolet range of the light spectrum. The spacecraft completed its primary mission in 2007 and was placed in standby mode as engineers prepare to shut it down for good later this year.

Spectacular Brain Images Reveal Surprisingly Simple Structure

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Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Grid structure of major pathways of the human left cerebral hemisphere. Seen here are a major bundle of  front-to-back paths (the “superior longitudinal fasciculus”, or SLF) rendered in purples. These cross  nearly orthogonally to paths projecting from the cerebral cortex radially inward (belonging to the  “internal capsule”), shown in orange and yellow. These data were obtained in the new MGH-UCLA 3T  Connectom Scanner as part of the NIH Blueprint Human Connectome Project. CREDIT: [Image courtesy of MGH-UCLA Human Connectome Project

Stunning new visuals of the brain reveal a deceptively simple pattern of organization in the wiring of this complex organ.Instead of nerve fibers travelling willy-nilly through the brain like spaghetti, as some imaging has suggested, the new portraits reveal two-dimensional sheets of parallel fibers crisscrossing other sheets at right angles in a gridlike structure that folds and contorts with the convolutions of the brain.This same pattern appeared in the brains of humans, rhesus monkeys, owl monkeys, marmosets and galagos, researchers report today (March 29) in the journal Science.

“The upshot is the fibers of the brain form a 3D grid and are organized in this exceptionally simple way,” study leader Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, told LiveScience. “This motif of crossing in three axes is the basic motif of brain tissue.” [Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time]

The organized brain

The surface of the brain contains about 40 billion nerve cells, each making about 1,000 connections in a pattern that brain researchers have yet to decipher, said Marsel Mesulam, the director of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Northwestern University. Mesulam, who was not involved in the study, called Wedeen’s work “very exciting.”

“There can be no more fundamental question in philosophy, in psychology,” Mesulam told LiveScience. “The human brain is the single most complex device in the known universe, and it works by nerve cells talking to each other. If we can’t figure out how they decide who to talk to and what they tell each other, we just don’t understand how the brain functions.”

Using a technique he developed called diffusion spectrum magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Wedeen traced the movement of water molecules along the intersections of brain fibers (the cellular projections that form the brain’s communication network), tracking the orientation of each fiber at each crossing.

This is a detail of a diffusion spectrum MR image of rhesus monkey brain showing the sheet-like, three-dimensional structure of neural pathways that cross each other at right angles. CREDIT: Van Wedeen, M.D., Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital

“What emerged was astonishing,” Wedeen said. “What emerged was that the set of fibers that crossed a given fiber, invariably — and that’s a really strong invariably — look like mutually parallel fibers all coming in like the teeth of a comb and crossing it in one direction.” [See video of the brain structure]

Animal studies had suggested this pattern might exist, and researchers already knew that the nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain stem were organized in very structured parallels and perpendiculars even in humans (consider the long nerve fibers that run down the backbone and then branch out perpendicularly from the vertebrae). But it’s difficult to get high-resolution scans of fiber connectivity in the human cortex, given that humans tend to become uncomfortable if left in an MRI scanner for more than 45 minutes or so, Wedeen said. For that reason, images of human brain connections have tended to look like tangled spaghetti, he said.

Wedeen and his colleagues scanned four types of primate brains from deceased animals, enabling them to image the brains for up to 48 hours, as well as brains from living human subjects using a new scanner that can achieve 10 times the resolution of conventional MRI machines. Using special software, the researchers then reconstructed three-dimensional images of the brain-fiber pathways.

“Looking across multiple species, it emerged that the pattern was substantially similar,” Wedeen said. “When you went from primates with small brains to primates with big brains … the rules were the same, but they were being applied more diversely and with more layers in the larger, more complex brains.”

Adaptable brain

The finding of clear up-down, front-back and side-to-side organization in the brain makes sense, Wedeen said, given that the brain has had to rewire both evolutionarily (to form the specialized brains humans boast today) and during its lifetime (as it grows and learns, for example). If the organization of communication were chaotic, that wouldn’t work.

“It’s like rewiring your basement at random,” Wedeen said. “First thing that happens, house burns down, you die.”

In other words, adapting a complexly wired brain that will still allow the next generation to survive would be next to impossible.

“If you try to picture what would happen if you tried to turn one spaghetti brain into a different spaghetti brain, you realize you would need an impossibly knowledgably intelligent designer standing above the brain and rewiring it,” Wedeen said.

With an organized grid structure, however, evolution can easily build on what came before — adding in a more complex forebrain in humans versus our monkey relatives, for example.

More work should be done to link the imaging methods of Wedeen with traditional neuroanatomy methods to confirm the findings, Mesulam said. Wedeen plans to expand the map of the human brain into more detail. It’s also important to understand the relationship between a brain’s structure and its function, he said. Understanding the structure of a typical brain would ultimately help scientists comprehend what happens when brain development goes wrong, as in Alzheimer’s or mental illness.

“Say somebody comes to you with their 2-year-old and they say, ‘My 2-year-old is just not looking me in the eyes’. Is this the first sign of Asperger’s or just an individual difference?” Wedeen said. “You’d know how to begin. You’d know what you were doing.”