Posts filed under ‘Science’
Imagine, 20 Million-Year-Old Virgin Water
Big news this morning:
Image: Wikipedia
After decades of drilling, Russian scientists have finally managed to pierce through Antarctica’s ice sheet to reveal the secrets of a unique sub-glacial lake, Vostok, that has been sealed there for the past 20 million years, a scientific source said on Monday.
“Yesterday, our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the sub-glacial lake,” the source said.
Explorers hope Lake Vostok, which is the largest of Antarctica’s buried network of icebound lakes and also one of the largest lakes in the world, could reveal new forms of life and show how life evolved before the ice age.
The discovery of the hidden lakes of Antarctica in the 1990s sparked much enthusiasm among scientists all over the world. Some think the ice cap above and at the edges have created a hydrostatic seal with the surface that has prevented lake water from escaping or anything else from getting inside.
Wow. My imagination runs wild over this. I can’t wait to hear what that lake water tells us.
Global Warming — The Video
No wonder Republicans want to do away with government. It produces hippie, socialist videos like this that rely on hocus pocus, commonly referred to by pot smoking liberal tree huggers as “science:”
The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880.The finding sustains a trend that has seen the 21st century experience nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York released an analysis of how temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience higher temperatures than several decades ago. The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 C) higher than the mid-20th century baseline.
A Solar Flare — Up Close and Personal
Wow. This is the most amazing video I’ve ever seen of a solar flair. I recommend watching it in full-screen.
What you’re seeing is Active Region 1402, a sunspot cluster. This is a tangled collection of magnetic field lines piercing the surface of the Sun. Like a bar magnet, there are two poles to each loop, a north and a south pole. The gas on the surface of the Sun is so hot it has electrons stripped off, so it’s strongly affected by the intense magnetic field, and flows along these towering loops, which can reach heights of 300,000 km (180,000 miles) in this region.
The loops are tied to the plasma, too, and this material is twisting and roiling as it rises and sinks. The lines get tangled, and like a short circuit they can snap and reconnect. When they do, they release vast amounts of energy as a solar flare. In the video you can see the messy, disorganized loops getting more and more tangled up.
Love this editorial comment:
The Sun is fiendishly complex, and astonishingly beautiful. Clearly, to our brains, these things are connected. Remember, too: this beauty, this magnificence, is brought to you by science. Without our curiosity and our need to understand the Universe better, you would never have been able to watch in awe as superheated plasma arcs dwarfing the Earth itself grew and collapsed on the surface of a star one hundred fifty million kilometers away.
Think of that the next time someone says science takes away the beauty and mystery of life.
(Via.)
Grover Norquist (R) Hopes to Crush the Renewable Energy Movement
Here’s a heads up regarding Grover Norquist’s new project. (Was I asleep when he was elected president of everything?)
Rethink Renewable Energy Mandates
Sorry for the lack of a snipet. I’ve had it up to here with dictators today.
Read his craziness at the link above. He thinks building wind turbines and installing solar energy panels on homes across the country will kill jobs.
Ugh. There are no words…
Neti Pots Kill People: That Per “Officials” in Charge of Water in Louisiana
“Officials” responsible for tap water in Louisiana blame deaths from contaminated water there on a ceramic pot. No, I’m not kidding:
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals has issued a warning about improper Neti pot use, which has been linked to two deadly infections.
A 51-year-old woman from DeSoto Parish and a 20-year-old man from St. Bernard Parish, a suburb of New Orleans, died after using Neti pots containing tap water to flush their sinuses. Both became infected with Naegleria fowleri, a parasite known as the brain-eating amoeba.
“If you are irrigating, flushing or rinsing your sinuses, for example, by using a Neti pot, use distilled, sterile or previously boiled water to make up the irrigation solution,” Louisiana State epidemiologist Dr. Raoult Ratard said in a statement. “Tap water is safe for drinking but not for irrigating your nose.”
Tap water is safe for drinking but not for irrigating one’s nose? A ceramic pot is the lynch pin in all this?
That makes no sense.
Keystone XL Pipeline Lobbyists Buy Congress
This is our Tweet of the Day and yes, it’s gross alright:
Slap Your Face Quotes from the Durban Climate Change Conference
I haven’t put up any posts about the climate change conference that took place over the last two weeks in Durban, South Africa because because, well, because of a general sense of outrage overload and a feeling that nothing would get done there.
I’ve been peeking in on it and now though and now that the conference has ended, I’m reading some summaries that pretty much confirm what I feared. Like this one from CommonDreams. (This is the second half of an article you can read in its entirety at the link above.)
Chris Huhne hailed the conclusion of the talks as “a triumph of European co-operation”.
I’m thinking we need worldwide cooperation, not just European cooperation.
“We have taken a significant step forward. This will give business confidence and stop us locking in a whole generation of high-carbon technology,” he said.
I’m sick beyond belief of thinking about giving “business confidence.” How about we give the planet and We the People confidence once and for all already?
But Martin Khor, director of the intergovernmental South Center in Geneva, said poor countries would be obliged to cut emissions proportionally more than the rich. “It’s like the starving will be made to give up half their small amount of food but the rich just a bit,” he said.
The powerful countries shit on the little ones.
Green groups said the ambition shown by countries to reduce emissions was paltry. “Negotiators have sent a clear message to the world’s hungry: let them eat carbon,” said Celine Charveriat, director of campaigns and advocacy for Oxfam.
When will the rich and powerful countries come to grips with the fact that we’re all in this together?
“Governments must immediately turn their attention to raising the ambition of their emissions cuts targets and filling the Green Climate Fund. Unless countries ratchet up their emissions cuts urgently we could still be in store for a 10-year timeout on the action we need to stay under two degrees [of temperature increase].”
Greenpeace International director Kumi Naidoo said: “The chance of averting catastrophic climate change is slipping through our hands with every passing year that nations fail to agree on a rescue plan for the planet.”
“This will force governments to admit their current pledges to cut emissions are not enough to achieve 2C rise and will have to be strengthened,” said Michael Jacobs, of the Grantham climate research institute of climate change.
Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, said: “Delaying real action till 2020 is a crime of global proportions.
“This means the world is on track to a 4C temperature rise, a death sentence for Africa, small island states and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. The richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%.“
I have friends and neighbors who have babies. Babies as in cherubic 7-week-olds and enthusiastic 2-year-olds. When I look at them I wonder what kind of world they will live in when they’re 30 or 40 or 60. I think it will be awful.
Love Advent Calendars
One of the traditions my husband and I enjoy this time of year is opening an Advent calendar. We’ve had one every year for years and years. Some of the calendars out there are silly, but some — particularly those made in Germany — are magical.
That said, Alan Taylor over at the Atlantic is posting an online Advent calendar featuring a new photo from the Hubble space telescope every day until December 25 (can’t wait to see that one!). Follow it here.
This is the (gorgeous!) picture he posted yesterday:
Photo: NASA
A “Rose” of a Galaxy. In celebration of the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute pointed Hubble’s eye to an especially photogenic group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. Pictured here is the larger of the two galaxies, known as UGC 1810. It has a disk that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewels across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light. A possible mini-spiral may be visible in the spiral arms of UGC 1810 to the upper right. It is noticeable how the outermost spiral arm changes character as it passes this third galaxy, from smooth with lots of old stars (reddish in color) on one side to clumpy and extremely blue on the other. UGC 1810 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth.
I’m Very Suspicious Of Today’s Keystone XL Pipeline News
President Obama just issued this statement regarding his impending decision as to whether to allow the Keystone XL Pipeline to go through:
I support the State Department’s announcement today regarding the need to seek additional information about the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal. Because this permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment, and because a number of concerns have been raised through a public process, we should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood. The final decision should be guided by an open, transparent process that is informed by the best available science and the voices of the American people. At the same time, my administration will build on the unprecedented progress we’ve made towards strengthening our nation’s energy security, from responsibly expanding domestic oil and gas production to nearly doubling the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks, to continued progress in the development of a clean energy economy.
Obama implies that this was the State Department’s idea, as if he had nothing to do with it, which I don’t believe.
Additionally, the global warming and environmental community is overjoyed, claiming victory as a result of their very impressive work opposing the pipeline. The thinking is that this effectively delays Obama’s decision until after the 2012 election. If that is true, I say this is purely a sly political move. Obama doesn’t want to alienate environmentalists prior to the election (i.e., they won the battle but not the war) and I predict, sorry to say, if he is re-elected, Obama will approve the pipeline in his second term.
“A Strange Universe”
This is NASA’s Picture of the Day — taken by members of the team that won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics:
Thirteen years ago results were first presented indicating that most of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space itself. In the language of cosmologists, a large cosmological constant is directly implied by new distant supernova observations. Suggestions of a cosmological constant (lambda) were not new — they have existed since the advent of modern relativistic cosmology. Such claims were not usually popular with astronomers, though, because lambda is so unlike known universe components, because lambda’s value appeared limited by other observations, and because less-strange cosmologies without lambda had previously done well in explaining the data. [...] This year, the team leaders were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. The above picture of a supernova that occurred in 1994 on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy was taken by one of these collaborations.
The Most Important Thing in the World
If you read nothing else today (or this week or this month), read this from Naomi Klein regarding OccupyWallStreet.
I’m serious. Take eight minutes and read it because, what’s happening with OccupyWallStreet is “the most important thing in the world,” as Klein says, and I agree. This is make it or break it time for all of us — we humans, the animals, the planet.
I’m copying Klein’s thoughts in their entirety from The Nation’s website. I hope they don’t mind. Chances are they agree that this has got to get out:
I love you.
And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.
Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: “We found each other.” That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.
If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.
And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”
That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.
“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.”
Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called “the movement of movements.”
But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. That made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.
Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die off. It’s because they don’t have roots. And they don’t have long term plans for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get washed away.
Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. But these principles are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that this will happen.
Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street fights it craves so desperately. And that tremendous discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom.
But the biggest difference a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low, stock portfolios were bulging. The media was drunk on easy money. Back then it was all about start-ups, not shut downs.
We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.
Ten years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.
The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.
These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.
We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite — fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful — the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.
The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society – while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.
What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I’m not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that’s important.
I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.
That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says “I care about you.” In a culture that trains people to avoid each other’s gaze, to say, “Let them die,” that is a deeply radical statement.
A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don’t matter.
- What we wear.
- Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.
- Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.
And here are a few things that do matter.
- Our courage.
- Our moral compass.
- How we treat each other.
We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets – like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.
Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.
Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.
Plants in the UK Think It’s Spring Again
Hey, thank God Global Warming’s a myth huh?
UK plants are flowering for a second time this year because of the unseasonably warm weather.
With temperatures soaring, plants such as foxglove and cowslip, which usually flower in the spring, are in full bloom six to eight months early.
Cold nights experienced across the UK in August are thought to have led to the early onset of autumn colours.
This warmer spell now has plants acting like it is spring.
Gardeners at the Kew’s Wakehurst Place gardens in Sussex said they are working from a “new rule book” to keep up.
“It is a very unsual year…I’ve been gardening for 30 years and have never seen anything like this,” said Wakehurst Place’s head Andy Jackson.
“We are increasingly seeing that plants are not synchronised with what the weather is doing,” he added.
I have a Master Gardener degree from Colorado State University. If I saw oh, say, a lilac blooming right now I would be downright scared. That would be a sign that the planet’s rhythm, its natural order, is totally fucked up.
Wow!
Check out this NASA image of a sunspot taken on September 22, 2011. The Earth is inserted into the picture in the upper right hand corner “for a size comparison.”
Image: NASA via jp-Brahic
Wow. Just wow.
You Gotta Love Science Magazine
I subscribe to Science magazine
on Twitter because every once in a while they send out a tweet about an article that sounds interesting. But most of the time, I’m directed to articles with abstracts that read like this:
Midbrain dopamine neurons regulate many important behavioral processes, and their dysfunctions are associated with several human neuropsychiatric disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia. Here, we report that these neurons in mice selectively express guanylyl cyclase-C (GC-C), a membrane receptor previously thought to be expressed mainly in the intestine. GC-C activation potentiates the excitatory responses mediated by glutamate and acetylcholine receptors via the activity of guanosine 3′,5′-monophosphate–dependent protein kinase (PKG). Mice in which GC-C has been knocked out exhibit hyperactivity and attention deficits. Moreover, their behavioral phenotypes are reversed by ADHD therapeutics and a PKG activator. These results indicate important behavioral and physiological functions for the GC-C/PKG signaling pathway within the brain and suggest new therapeutic targets for neuropsychiatric disorders related to the malfunctions of midbrain dopamine neurons.
Oy.
Obama is Out-Bushing the Bushes
Yes we can! turns into the-corporatocracy-and-the-GOP-have-me-by-the-balls-so-no-we-can’t-because-I’m-scared-of-them:
Not only that, he pushed air quality standards back more than 20 years.
I just created a new category: Obama: Don’t Count on my Vote
Where’s Liz Taylor When You Need Her?
Wow. Cool:
Astronomers Discover Planet Made of Diamond
Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.
The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.
“The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon — i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun,” said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.
4,000 light years away? Bleh.
Yo Republicans — Please Ignore All Government Warnings This Weekend
This would be our Tweet of the Day:
Irene is a government plot to drive you out of your house and into a concentration camp so Obama can take all your money and give to women in Kenya who want abortions. Yeeeeeeeee.
Not “Quite As Hot” This Weekend in Phoenix — Only 108º
So, the corporate media is all over this, right?
Record-Breaking Extreme Heat Wave Is Just Starting For Arizona
We broke a record yesterday at Phoenix Sky Harbor topping out at 113 degrees, two degrees above the old record of 111 set in 1999.
The record breaking heat will continue all week long!
[...]
So, we are going to be adding to our tally of 110+ degree days which is already at 23 this year. On average, we see 18 110+ degree days a year. The record is 32 days at 110+ set back in 2007.
[...]
Our forecast is looking dry again as we finish out the weekend and head into next week and temperatures won’t be quite as hot. By this weekend, we will drop off to 108 in Phoenix, still putting us several degrees above normal.
Vote Republican. We need leadership that thinks climate change is a bunch of crap (not!).
Next to Evolution, Teaching Climate Change is the Thing That Upsets Parents the Most
This is just sad and it bodes so poorly for our country that science teachers are being made to tell their students that the existence of climate change is “controversial.”
I tell you, the money the energy companies have spent propagandizing about the alleged doubts about climate change has really paid off (for them, not for us):
An informal survey this spring of 800 members of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) found that climate change was second only to evolution in triggering protests from parents and school administrators. Online message boards for science teachers tell similar tales. Unlike biology teachers defending the teaching of evolution, however, earth science teachers don’t have the protection of the First Amendment’s language about religion. But the teachers feel their arguments are equally compelling: Science courses should reflect the best scientific knowledge of the day, and offering opposing views amounts to teaching poor science. Most science teachers don’t relish having to engage this latest threat to their profession and resent devoting precious classroom time to a discussion of an alleged “controversy.” And they believe that politics has no place in a science classroom. Even so, some are being dragged against their will into a conflict they fear could turn ugly.
Geezus. Sometimes I feel like the United States has reverted back to the Dark Ages.
(Image via.)
Hillary Clinton’s Pants Are on Fire
They think we’re total idiots. I.e., I don’t believe this for a second (i.e., filed under Dumbed Down and They Think We’re Idiots):
Clinton says TransCanada working to upgrade safety of oil pipeline from Canada to Texas
A Canadian company that hopes to pipe oil from western Canada to Texas is working with U.S. officials to develop safety standards beyond those required by law, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.
The new standards should ensure that if a permit for the 1,900-mile pipeline is issued, “the project will be as safe as it could possibly be,” Clinton said.
“We’ve been clear from the beginning that the safety of the pipeline is one of our highest priorities,” said Clinton, who is expected to decide on the project by the end of the year.
The State Department has authority over the pipeline because it crosses an international boundary.
[...]
Among other changes, the company has agreed to build the pipeline 4 feet below ground, instead of 3 feet…
Email this to your grandkids and ask them to bookmark it and read it again in 10 years. By then, advanced countries (those who are, today, weaning themselves of oil) will be living off of renewable energy and the U.S. will be creaking along, tearing up its national parks and wildlands for any shred of oil it can find. And, sadly, it will be dealing with oil spills because, as is true today, the people who are in charge of monitoring this shit are in bed with the oil companies.
So, hey Hillary, sounds good but I know better.
You Can’t Make This Up
Fox is turning into a cartoon network:
This would be Fox’s John Scott interviewing Bill Nye (The Science Guy) on Fox’s “Happening Now” yesterday about two new volcanoes found on the Moon:
Scott: Does it go, you know, anywhere close to the climate change debate that’s underway here on Earth? I mean, you know, of the Moon had erupting volcanoes a few years ago, well, a few million years ago, however you want to put it, you know, it’s not like we’ve been up there burning fossil fuels.
Nye: Ah, no. Volcanoes are not connected to the burning of fossil fuels.
Scott: No, but…
Nye: They’re connected to mining.
Watch the full video here.
We should be embarrassed as a nation that this kind of mumbo-jumbo passes for “news.”
German Farmers Making Millions on Wind Power
Wouldn’t it be great if we had a 24/7 cable “news” media that dropped the repeat-the-same-4-stories-all-day-long format and branched out and brought us actual news? From around the world? Like this?
Farmers in Hans-Detlef Feddersen’s neighbourhood in northern Germany make $2.5 million in a good year growing wheat. They make $15 million harvesting the wind.
The first wind turbines came to his area 20 years ago. Local residents watched them go up, did the math, and founded their own co-op to build more.
Feddersen, who farms grain, canola and sugar beets, is the co-op’s manager.
This week he is touring rural Ontario with two Canadian groups promoting green energy, the Pembina Institute and Climate Action Network Canada.
[...]
In his district, there are 600 turbines spread over 1,800 square kilometres [694 square miles], “and 95 per cent of them are owned by rural area co-operatives in our community. Most of the people living in our area own, or partly own, these turbines.”
[...]t says Germany draws about 17 per cent of its power from renewable sources, especially wind — far more than Ontario (where wind has a 1.9-per-cent share).
Republicans Reaching Their Goal in “Education Reform”
It’s long been a Republican goal to dumb down our education system such that our kids emerge into the real world after completing high school or college as a droan who is (1) willing to vote for them, and (2) willing to work for a less-than-living wage. Looks like they’re making good progress:
Only Two of 51 Miss USA Contestants Believe in Evolution
California’s 21-year-old Alyssa Campanella took the coveted crown in the 60th Miss USA competition last night. Campanella marks a redeeming win for the state after the now-disgraced Californian Carrie Prejean dismissed marriage equality — or as she put it “opposite marriage” — in 2009. Miss USA seemed to take a breather from political controversy until this year, when the pageant decided to ask the contestants whether they believe evolution should be taught in schools in the preliminary round. A self-proclaimed “science geek.” Campanella affirmed that evolution should indeed be taught in schools because she believes in evolution of humans throughout time. This answer, apparently, won her another title last night. She and Massachusetts’ Alida D’Angona were the only two out of 51 contestants to “unequivocally support” evolution.
Sad. Frightening.
ExxonMobil Execs Willing to Destroy the Planet for Profit
Not only did ExxonMobil
make the highest profit in the history of the planet last quarter — a quarter is three months ($11 billion) — and get a tax rebate via our tax dollars last year — they’re funding the people who support their spin, that climate change is a hoax.
What we have here is a company that is willing to literally destroy the planet in order to maintain its profit margin:
Nine of Out Ten Climate Denying Scientists Have Ties to Exxon Mobil Money
If you spend any time at all browsing comments on articles about climate change (and bless you if you’ve manage to avoid it), you’ve likely read the same handful of long-debunked arguments against the reality of anthropogenic global warming (or “man-made” global warming). Recently, you’ve also almost definitely seen links to this website —”900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming (AGW) Alarm”—created by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
The problem is, of the top ten contributors of articles to that list, nine are financially linked to Exxon Mobil.
(My emphasis.)
What are the execs at ExxonMobil thinking the future will be like for their grandkids?
Don’t know. Money blinds them.
Trippy
It’s a good morning because we’re starting the day off with a look at this dazzlingl photo from MSNBC’s PhotoBlog:
Most folks think of outer space as a vast emptiness, but if you look at the right place in the right light, you’ll find beautiful clouds of glory. The Lagoon Nebula in the constellation Sagittarius, also known as M8, is such a place. This region of the nebula, 5,000 light-years from Earth, is known as the “Southern Cliff” because of the sharp dropoff that can be seen in the clouds of glowing gas and dust.
The view captured by the Gemini South telescope in Chile does not reflect what the human eye would see. If you looked at the Lagoon through a good-sized amateur telescope, you’d see a pale ghostly glow with a touch of pink. But this picture was created using filters that are sensitive to emissions from hydrogen (red) and ionized sulfur (green), plus far-infrared light (shown here in blue). That explains the psychedelic color scheme.
Wow. Just wow.
(Go to the link above for a larger version.)
Mother Earth
Again, Happy Earth Day.
Too tired to do much more than put up this gorgeous, gorgeous photo.
I’d love to be lazily swimming in that warm Bahamian water right now:
Bahamas, sand and seaweed patterns. NASA image acquired January 17, 2001. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Landsat. Image courtesy Serge Andrefouet, University of South Florida.
Happy weekend everyone.
Minami-soma City’s (Japan) Mayor Posts YouTube Video Begging the World for Help
Oh my God. The mayor of the Japanese city of Minami-soma has posted a YouTube video asking the world for help:
The banks are closed and people are “literally drying up.” Basic materials are running short. We don’t have enough gasoline to reach people who are stranded. All residents of the area are totally devastated. 1,260 are missing and now we are facing the nuclear power plant accident. People can’t get supplies delivered to their homes. “Before the contamination extends further, please give us your hand to help these people. … Please help us through.”
“I would like to ask medias [sic] of all over the world for support, as well as reporting the earthquake and disaster, that we are fighting against the invisible threat of radiation and contamination.”
“Here is my sincere request to you, from all over the world, I beg you as the Mayor of Minami-soma city, to help us. Helping each other is what makes us human being. I would like to ask for your continuous support. Thank you.”
(Via.)
Amazing, isn’t it, how the US media latches onto YouTube videos of cute babies but gosh, golly, gee, despite their staffs of hundreds if not thousands, they have thus far missed this. (I heard someone on the radio today say the reporting on this nuclear disaster is going to be one of the biggest cover ups in human history.)
“Special Interests”
Tweet of the day from drgrist:
That, and referring to Workmen’s Compensation and Social Security — which workers pay for via deductions from their paychecks — as “entitlements.”
