1)Adult Luna Moths never eat, in fact, they don't even have a mouth.
2) Italy’s parliament is set to decide whether to join the rest of Europe in recognizing same-sex unions or stay on the side of the Catholic Church.
3) Blizzard 2016 update:
29 Confirmed Deaths. 11,000 Flight Cancellations. The Long Island Railroad is still inoperable. Congress took off for the coming week. They worked a total of 7 days this month (your tax dollars hard at work)! The Senate will be off 'til Wed. NYC Mayor, Bill DiBlasio offered able-bodied workers $13.50/hr to shovel snow.
4)"There is a huge blizzard on the eastern half of the country. Those poor people! It's a sea of WHITE! It's like the whole place is covered in Oscar nominees." - Bill Maher
"It's getting so dramatic, that they're thinking of turning it into a movie...but with a white guy...so that it gets nominated."– Bill Maher
5) via CNN’s This is Life with Lisa Ling
Every year the Los Angeles coroner handles over 11,000 bodies. They do not deal with hospital deaths, but cover accidental deaths, murders, suicides and the like.
Any death that needs to be examined or explained ends up at the Coroner's Office. The crypt is kept at 40°F, and can accommodate 500 bodies at a time. Every two weeks, the LA Coroner cremates around 20 bodies that they were never able to identify, or find their families. The LA County holds funerals for these John and Jane Does, of their own volition. There is no law requiring that they do so.
6)"Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs." is an example of a Pangram, which is a sentence containing all 26 letters of the alphabet.
7) More than a third of the people in the city of Flint, Michigan are living in poverty. Life expectancy is 10 to 20 years shorter than in the rest of the state. There's not a full scale grocery store anywhere in sight. Now they have lead in their water.
8) Memorial Day was originally called “Decoration Day”.
9) Until 1868 North Carolina's Constitution clearly said "No person shall deny the being of God, or the Truth of the Protestant religion or the Divine Authority either of the Old or New Testament… shall be capable of holding any Office or Place of Trust or Profit in the Civil Department within this State."
10) The Sundance Film Festival will take place in Park City, Utah this coming week.
11) via care2
"Kansas State Senator, Mitch Holmes, has instituted a ‘code of conduct’ dictating what women can wear in his presence.
Holmes’ rules, which forbid miniskirts and low-cut tops, apply specifically to women who testify before the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, the committee that he chairs. He says the rules are necessary because he’s noticed some women dress “provocatively” at the Statehouse, adding that these types of outfits “distract” his Senate committee.
Holmes’ rules don’t specify measurements. “It’s one of those things that’s hard to define,” Holmes said. Apparently, Holmes in his infinite wisdom would prefer to assess the amount of skin a woman is bearing on a case-by-case basis rather than provide useful guidelines for her to follow. If it’s really too difficult to define, perhaps it’s not a policy worth pursuing.
Holmes did consider requiring testifying men to wear suits and ties, but ultimately decided that men don’t need guidelines for looking professional.
According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, the Kansas Statehouse went through a similar dress code kerfuffle just two years ago when Representative Peggy Mast, a Republican, wanted to establish a dress code for the House and Senate college interns. Although her suggestions included similar demands of women (no miniskirts, low tops or tight pants), it also had rules for men about their dress, facial hair and hair color.
No interns would have been permitted to have body piercings, visible tattoos or wear perfume/cologne. Finding Mast’s rules restrictive and unnecessary, her colleagues got her to ditch most of her proposals."
12) via The Daily Beast
The Supreme Court will be hearing a case that challenges the notion of "Separation of Church and State".
"This month a Sacramento-based emergency-room doctor filed a federal lawsuit seeking to remove all references to God from U.S. currency.
In his lawsuit, Michael Newdow argues that the motto 'In God We Trust' places a 'substantial burden' on atheists. Newdow argues that it is burdensome for atheists 'to personally bear a religious message that is the antithesis of what they consider to be religious truth.'
This isn’t Newdow’s first foray into religious freedom legislation. In 2004 he gained notoriety for his attempt to remove the phrase 'under God'from the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s not even his first attempt to alter U.S. currency: 10 years ago he unsuccessfully argued in front of a federal judge that its use amounts to a religious affirmation.
The use of the phrase 'In God We Trust' in U.S. currency first appeared in 1864. Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury in the middle of the Civil War, received a letter from a Pennsylvanian minister requesting some recognition of God in a national motto. The phrase found its way onto all U.S. currency in the thick of the Cold War (around the same time, and for the same reasons, that 'under God' was added to the Pledge of Allegiance).
As part of the cultural war on godless communism, a 1955 congressional vote elected to place the motto on all U.S. money. Certainly in some respects Newdow is correct to see the motto as a modern innovation.
If removing religious affiliations from U.S. currency is the goal, you have to wonder if Newdow has missed the 100-pound truncated pyramid in the room. The fairly innocuous phrase 'In God We Trust' is far less specific than the occult imagery that currently adorns the common one dollar bill.
The most prominent iconography on the $1 are the eagle and the pyramid, which together constitute the Great Seal of the United States. The pyramid is a throwback to ancient Egypt, but is in many ways a much tamer version of the seal that Franklin and Jefferson envisioned.
Noted Egyptophiles, the version that they initially supported included an Egyptian pharaoh, seated on a chariot and passing through the parted waters of the Red Sea. The motto they preferred was 'rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.' Anyone familiar with the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea can hear the thinly veiled threat. Pharaoh doesn’t stay atop that chariot for long.Franklin loved his version of the seal so much that he adopted it as his personal motto. And today the conservative right is fond of invoking Franklin’s motto in political debates.”
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*NOTE* - Please understand that I do not claim to be a “journalist”. I am only passing on bits of information, which others have researched, that drift through my awareness, on any given day. I watch, read and listen to any number of different news and entertainment sources, and it’s more than anyone could possibly intake and retain in a day, so I created this little daily “cheat sheet” for myself, so that I could remember all these oddball facts. Then I decided to share these tidbits, and thus was born the Daily TILT. I do this for fun. I hope you enjoy it.
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***My Daily Sources are usually one of the following: Democracy Now, The Daily Kos, Thom Hartmann, care2, Mother Jones, David Pakman, Ring of Fire, Jim Hightower, Alternet, Bill Press, Wired UK, John Fugelsang, Lee Camp, The Huffington Post, The Daily Show, TYT Network, Truthout, DIGG, Think Progress, Politico, Salon, Friends of the Earth, Talk Media News, NRDC, Pirate Television, The Upworthiest, The Chase, Soul Pancake, The Petition Site, Bioneers, TechKnow, The Daily Beast, PPP, YouTube and occasionally, MSNBC.
As Thom Hartmann says, "Democracy is NOT a spectator sport. TAG, you're it!"
Plea for HELP! I apologize for the “unusual” formatting of my posts. I can’t figure out how to create paragraphs with a return between them. I have tried to find some guidance in the HELP documents, but I guess I haven’t used the right keywords. I’ve tried “Line Spacing”; “Leading”; “Paragraph Spacing”; “Hard Return”. I’ve also tried holding down different function keys while hitting Return (Opt + Return; Control + Return, etc); and I also tried the same combos with the Enter Key. Obviously, none of these worked. What am I missing? HELP!!