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Emory & Henry College in Virginia has announced to students the school will re-examine its wasp mascot. Why? The bug may appear “exclusive” to students who are not White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or “WASPs.” While a public outcry over racism continues around the nation, the college is already concerned that its two historical namesakes — Methodist Episcopal Church bishop John Emory and founding father Patrick Henry — were slave holders. The school mascot has also come under scrutiny. “Conversations must examine how Emory & Henry’s past has contributed to current and ongoing systemic oppression,” said Dr. John Wells, president of Emory...

Summer is approaching in the northern hemisphere, heralding the return of that great scourge of al fresco diners everywhere: the wasp. Now, a new study out of the University of Michigan reveals that the striped critters aren't just pesky -- they're smart. The research found that wasps can use a form of logical reasoning to infer unknown relationships from known relationships, according to a press release. Essentially this means they can work out that if is X is greater than Y, and Y is greater than Z, X is greater than Z -- an ability that was thought to be...

Deep sea explorers found the USS Hornet in the South Pacific earlier this year, but the Hornet was not the only ship located on that expedition. In the latest update for the American Naval history books, the research vessel Petrel revealed it also found the World War II aircraft carrier USS Wasp. We're 2.5 miles down, peering inside the cockpit of an avenger torpedo bomber from the sunken World War II aircraft carrier, USS Wasp. The plane is not just a relic, it's a clue, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips. Can the Wasp itself be far away? The Wasp...

If you want fresh evidence that Donald Trump has turned American politics upside down, here it is: Former Gov. Christie Whitman, a lifelong Republican, is so appalled by him that she wants Democrats to take over the House. "I'm hoping we lose the House, that would be a good thing," she said Friday. "Congress could stand up to him and could be dialing back a lot of this. They have ceded too much to this president." But be careful, she says. Don't kill the moderate Republicans, they are the ones who can help steer the country back to safe ground....

Scientists discovered a new wasp species with a terrifyingly large stinger. Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland recently discovered the Clistopyga crassicaudata, which lives between the Andes mountains and the Amazon rainforests. "I have studied tropical parasitoid wasps for a long time, but I have never seen anything like it," said Ilari E. Sääksjärvi, a professor at the University of Turku. "The stinger looks like a fierce weapon."

NASHVILLE, TN (WKRN) – A Lawrence County man was arrested after terrorizing a family and causing tremendous harm to himself while being under the influence of a dangerous drug. Deputies said Danny Hollis Jr. was smoking something called wasp, a mixture of meth and bug spray. On Monday night around 7 p.m. on Gimlet Road, deputies responded to a call about a naked man inside a house. Investigators said Hollis broke into the home, sat at the family dinner table and cut his own throat in front of four children and a mother. “This man walks in. The family is...

Congress has approved a burial plot in Arlington National Cemetery for women who served as pilots during WWII. The women served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. They flew noncombat and training missions, but their jobs weren't entirely without danger--38 women died in service. Despite this, they weren't considered to be veterans until 1977, when federal law changed to acknowledge their service. Even still, the Army revoked the right of WASP to be buried at Arlington in 2015. Pending President Obama's signature, that will change shortly.The legislation to reinstate their eligibility was introduced by Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ). [...]the...

The U.S. once had an unofficial but nonetheless genuine ruling class, drawn from what came to be known as the WASP establishment. Members of this establishment dominated politics, economics and education, but they do so no longer. The WASPocracy, as I think of it, lost its confidence and, with it, the power and interest to lead. We are now without a ruling class, unless one includes the entity that has come to be known as the meritocracy—presumably an aristocracy of sheer intelligence, men and women trained in the nation's most prestigious schools. The acronym WASP derives, of course, from White...

The old U.S. ruling class had plenty of problems. But are we really better off with a country run by the self-involved, over-schooled products of modern meritocracy?

NEW YORK –  For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The number of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise. The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported with certainty that the number has fallen below 50 percent. The drop has long been anticipated and comes at a time when no Protestants are on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republicans have...

A Fossilized Scene of a Spider Attacking a Wasp, Preserved for 110 Million Years Paleontologists have discovered beautifully preserved species trapped in amber before — but this one is extraordinary. It features a parasitic wasp that has become ensnared in a spider's web, with the owner bearing down on it for an attack. But just before the spider was about to have its meal, a drop of resin flowed down from above, freezing the moment in time. Researchers date the scene to the Early Cretaceous between 97 to 110 million years ago in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar — a...

Attention white Anglo-Saxon Protestants: Your days of running things are over. You have jumped the shark. But there's no need to feel bad for WASPs. They've had an amazing run. Every single president in our nation's history, except for John F. Kennedy -- a Catholic -- and Barack Obama, has been a white Protestant. Except for a handful of exceptions, for over 200 years the presidential nominees of both major political parties have been WASPs. WASPs had almost as many victories in a row as The Harlem Globetrotters. But it's over. Look at this year's presidential tickets: A Mormon, an...

A new species of giant, venomous wasp has been found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi (map), scientists say. The two-inch-long (five-centimeter-long) black insects are shrouded in mystery—all of the wasp specimens caught so far have been dead. "I'm not certain any researcher has ever seen one alive, but they are very bizarre-looking," said study co-author Lynn Kimsey, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis, who co-discovered the insect. "It's the extreme version of the [larrine wasp] subfamily they belong to." Larrine wasps typically dig nests for their eggs and larvae in open, sandy areas. The adults grow no...

Good morning gardeners. I can’t believe it is already December, Brrrrrrrrr! It is 27 this morning in East Central Mississippi and is forecast to be in the mid 60s this afternoon. There are no plans to do any outside work for this gardener today. What needs to be done can wait until Saturday and Sunday when it is supposed to be in the high 60s and into the 70s. Just waiting for Spring now. If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in...

Wireless drone sniffs Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, phone signals By: Declan McCullagh August 4, 2011 11:19 AM PDT LAS VEGAS--Forget Wi-Fi war driving. Now it's war flying. A pair of security engineers showed up at the Black Hat security conference here to show off a prototype that can eavesdrop on Wi-Fi, phone, and Bluetooth signals: a retrofitted U.S. Army target drone, bristling with electronic gear and an array of antennas. "Nobody's really looking at this from a threat perspective," said Mike Tassey, a security consultant who works for the U.S. government intelligence community. "There's some pretty evil stuff you can do from...

In the mid-1890s, a French entomologist published a paper describing a bizarre, oversized wasp with two spoon-like structures protruding from its abdomen. A pinned specimen of the insect — the only one of its kind known to have been collected — had found its way into the Paris Natural History Museum. Since then, it seems no other samples of the mysterious Synagris elephas have been discovered. More than a century later, a University of Calgary instructor has launched a search for the unusual wasp, beginning a journey that has led him to West Africa. “Nobody else has found it. But...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.- More than 60 years after she flew military planes during World War II, a 93-year-old Florida woman got a chance to fly an AT-6 Texan again. Tex Meacham had a large cheering section Friday as she got into the cockpit of the training plane at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, The Miami Herald reported Saturday. She was serenaded by the men's choir of John Knox Village in Pompano Beach while about two dozen members of the village chapter of the Red Hat Society applauded the woman they call their "queen bee." Meacham spent two years in the Women...

The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of World War II will finally be given the recognition and honor they deserve on March 10. That's when they will receive the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony to be held at the United States Capitol. These pilots were trailbrazers, a group of 1,102 female civilians that flew military aircraft under the direction of the United States Army Air Forces. They flew more than 60 million miles in 78 different types of aircraft, from the smallest trainers to the fastest fighters and the largest bombers. They undertook every type of mission except combat....

W.A.S.P. mainman Blackie Lawless gained notoriety in the 1980s for throwing raw meat at his suitably rabid fans, and for stage shows featuring semi-naked women on torture racks. His best-known songs include F**k Like A Beast, Wild Child and L.O.V.E. Machine. But overtly sexist topics have been on the back-burner for a number of years now, as Blackie increasingly explores a socio-political agenda. W.A.S.P.’s upcoming new album, Babylon, is themed around biblical visions of the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse – because Blackie reckons “our so-called world leaders are on a mission to march people straight into hell”. Highlights from...

Politically Correctness is intended to politicize not civilize a society. It is said to be racially motivated to question a morally twisted Middle-Eastern Army Officer shouting “Allah Akbar” before his shooting rampage toward his fellow countrymen, and yet it is not so to omit the WASP from the racial compositions of American society in a Social Study. “No one said anything about the WASP race, why is that?” asked my mixed-races 9 year old daughter. It was the WASP Americans who framed and founded this Republic, and Politically Correctness views other races as inferior to this supreme achievement. If the...