Zurich is the city with the highest quality of life in 2006, while Baghdad, for the third year running, has the lowest, a survey published Monday shows.
Geneva and Vancouver made the top three in the list compiled by human resource company Mercer while Bangui in the Central African Republic and Brazzaville, the capital of Congo Republic, joined Baghdad in the bottom three.
The top three cities in the list are all unchanged from last year.
That “spreading democracy” thing has really been a smashing success, hasn’t it?
The bodies of storm victims are still being discovered in New Orleans — in March alone there were nine, along with one skull. Skeletonized or half-eaten by animals, with leathery, hardened skin or missing limbs, the bodies are lodged in piles of rubble, dangling from rafters or lying face down, arms outstretched on parlor floors. Many of them, like Ms. Blanchard, were overlooked in initial searches.
A landlord in the Lakeview section put a “for sale” sign outside a house, unaware that his tenant’s body was in the attic. Two weeks ago, searchers in the Lower Ninth Ward found a girl, believed to be about 6, wearing a blue backpack. Nearby, they found part of a man who the authorities believe might have been trying to save her.
[On Friday, contractors found a body in the attic of a home in the Gentilly neighborhood that had been searched twice before, officials said.]
In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, there were grotesque images of bodies left in plain sight. Officials in Louisiana recovered more than 1,200 bodies, but the process, hamstrung by money shortages and red tape, never really ended.
ONLY one in every fifty British women is happy with the shape of her body, a survey has found…
…The survey of 5,000 women, conducted on behalf of Grazia, the magazine, found the average woman worries about her body every 15 minutes — more frequently than men think about sex — while 29 per cent worry about their size and shape every waking minute.
It’s very sad, but not surprising. How come women worry about every wrinkle, every extra pound, and fat old men strut around naked like they’re Mufasa from Lion King? Oh to be like that.
They’d take care of the children. According to Sr. Joan Chittester the rest would take care of itself.
At the first Iraqi-American dialogue convened by the Women’s Global Peace Initiative in New York on March 29, the differences were plain. The women’s first agenda did not concentrate on who did what or who profited or lost by the doing of it. “Take the oil. We don’t care about the oil,” one woman called across the room. “We never got any value from it anyway,” she went on. “Never mind yesterday,” another woman said in answer to the Sunni- Shi’ite tensions. “Forget who did what to whom. We must turn the page now. We must rebuild the country.”
“And what is the first thing that must be done to rebuild the country?” we asked them. I sat with my hands over the keyboard, sure that the list would be long and varied. I was wrong. To a woman, the call was clear: “Take care of our children.”
It was a sobering moment. Take care of our children. “Oh, them,” I thought. “The tiny, the forgotten, targets of this war.”
Take care of the ones who now carry within themselves the sour taste of fear that came as bombs dropped through the dark sky shaking their houses, destroying their streets. Take care of the children, the ones who went cold as stone at the loss of brothers and fathers and dead playmates.
Take care of the ones who felt the sweat of terror when the doors of the homes in which they were sure they were safe broke down in the middle of the night or the lights went out or their mothers wrapped their shawls around their heads and cried. Take care of the ones who went into psychic paralysis at the sight of blood and bodies. Take care of the ones who woke up one morning to find their lives completely disrupted for no apparent reason.
Take care of the ones to whom then Secretary of State Colin Powell was apparently referring when a reporter asked him how many Iraqis had been killed or injured at that point in the war and his answer was, “That is a number in which I have absolutely no interest whatsoever.”
But maybe he and we should all rethink that answer. Because these children do not feel “liberated” by this war; in these children the seeds of the next war have already been planted.
This reminds me of the time my older brother told me that a woman could never be president because when the going got tough, she’d have to go out and buy a new hat. Bella Abzug, known for her hats, had just been elected to Congress. Bella’s pictured here, with her hat, on a 1972 Life cover. He had me going for months with that proclamation!
Maggie Thatcher? Condoleeza Rice? Ann Coulter? And don’t give me any crap about them not being “real” women, unless I can claim Bush et al aren’t “real” men.
When I was growing up, a woman by the name of Anita Bryant was oh-so-nobly motivated by wanting to take care of the children, too.
If you waved a magic wand and simply reversed roles, women — being just as human as men — would no doubt be just as often systematically screwed up by the pursuit and use of power as men.
Sorry, men have been ruling the world except for your one example of Margaret Thatcher (the only one with any real autonomy) for centuries and look where we are.
Women are not driven by the single-minded pursuit of power and dominance the way men are.
When 52% of the world’s leaders are women, if things are still fucked up come back to me and we’ll have a discussion. I may even eat my shorts.
Women are not driven by the single-minded pursuit of power and dominance the way men are.
Well, I don’t tend to argue with people on matters of faith, because there’s little point to it. If it makes you feel better to believe in something in the absence of facts … [shrug].
Just don’t expect me to support public policy based on your faith, any more than I support public policy that make/keep patriarchal structures based on some folks’ faith that God wants men in charge.
When 52% of the world’s leaders are women, if things are still fucked up come back to me and we’ll have a discussion.
Shall we limit public office in the US to young, poor, non-Christian lesbians of color while we’re at it? Because, after all, the vast majority of people fucking things up are older, richer, white, Christian straight males. Oh wait, maybe we should say they all have to be left-handed as well.
I mean, we wouldn’t actually want to vote for or against somebody based on what they’ll actually do in office, would we?
Dick Cheney visited Missouri yesterday and, like a broken record, delivered the same old message:
Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday the United States remains under threat of terrorist attack and warned against complacency about enemies who he said were weakened but still lethal.
* * *
“Yet as we get farther away from Sept. 11, some in Washington are yielding to the temptation to downplay the threat, to back away from the business at hand. That mind-set is dangerous,” Cheney said.
Laura was here last week, Dick was here yesterday and George himself is here today.
Think they might be worried about the Missouri senate race?
This big fund raising sweep for Talent shows that they are concerned. But Talent has the ability to outraise McCaskill even without their help, so the amounts raised on this sweep will widen the gap to a concerning level for Democrats too.
McCaskill’s has the same fund raising that all Democrats have. But she also has a problem within the party itself that everyone is waiting to see how it plays out.
Many, many people who were Holden supporters in 2004 made it clear that if McCaskill won the primary they would NOT vote for her in the general and they didn’t. They thought that they’d rather have a Republican win than tarnish their principles and vote for a Democratic nominee that they didn’t support. And of course the Republican (Blunt) won by a not very big margin.
Hopefully they’ve seen how WELL that has worked out <snark> and they will start to see reason this time around — give her money AND vote for her.
Venture capitalist John Doerr made his name and fortune with early investments in Netscape Communications Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc. and other pioneering tech firms that went from scrappy startups to household names.
Now Doerr and his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, are placing big bets on an emerging sector he calls “green technology,” one he believes could become as lucrative as information technology and biotechnology.
Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins plans to set aside $100 million of its latest $600 million fund for technologies that help provide cleaner energy, transportation, air and water. That’s on top of more than $50 million Kleiner Perkins had already invested in seven greentech ventures.
“This field of greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century,” Doerr said. “There’s never been a better time than now to start or accelerate a greentech venture.”
As one of Silicon Valley’s most respected investors, Doerr’s decision to champion green technology as the next big thing is generating buzz in the venture capital community.
You know, Andi, I’ve wondered about this very thing. Why wouldn’t venture capitalists invest heavily in no less than the next source of energy for our economy, for our way of life? This is a bright spot on an otherwise emissions-choked horizon. Thanks for finding it!
I guess they finally are convinced that they can’t get rich on the internet and so have to look elsewhere. But if they can bring us truly useful technology that helps the environment, I’m happy for them to make money.
Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.
Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.
Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she’s demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.
With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.
The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. “Christians,” he said, “are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.”
… a group of Indian housewives get together once or twice a month to learn how to invest their hard-earned income.
Geojit Financial Services provides these lessons to their female clients, especially those who are keen to find out more about investing in the stock market.
A lot of these women have husbands who are drunkards and don’t provide them with any financial assistance.
Investing in India’s booming stock market has become part and parcel of many Indian women’s lives.
Housewives, who have traditionally run the finances of Indian homes, now learn how to invest their income to get the best returns.
[snip]
“Our branch trains and educates women from all walks of life about the Indian equity markets. We see great opportunities in this sector in the future.”
For many women in modern India, learning how to invest their savings and their income is increasingly becoming a way to safeguard their financial future.
Historically, Indian women have not had much control over their individual financial existences.
Having money of their own to spend and invest as they wish was not common.
But as the economy has grown, there has been a parallel increase in the rights of women as well.
The European space probe Venus Express went into orbit around the planet on Tuesday after a 400-million-kilometer (250-million-mile) trip from Earth, mission controllers said. The payload includes sensors to track the planet’s multi-layered, roiling clouds in visible, infra-red and ultraviolet light. They will also measure the atmosphere’s temperature and chemical composition and analyze its intriguing magnetic field, caused by interaction with the “solar wind” of particles blasted out by the Sun.
OK, so here’s some good environmental news, just to show it’s not all-bad, all-the-time with that K.P. guy: Highly endangered Amur tigers are making a tentative comeback in an inland part of the Russian far-east where they had not been sighted for over 50 years, conservation officials said Monday.
From the Department of Duh – This is why we used to not let companies advertise drugs to consumers in the first place: Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have warned. Disease-mongering promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild problems to boost profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported. Researchers at Newcastle University in Australia said firms were putting healthy people at risk by medicalizing conditions such as menopause. But the pharmaceutical industry denied it invented diseases.
But on the other hand, good news today about the drugs that daily keep my head from exploding at the actions of the Bush administration – and some days I really need it:French scientists say angiotension-converting enzyme, or ACE, inhibitors may reduce the risk of death in coronary artery disease. When the results of multiple trials were analyzed together, treatment with ACE inhibitors was found to significantly reduce the risk of death from any cause, cardiovascular death, heart attack, and stroke. The researchers also found that in studies measuring additional outcomes, ACE inhibitors appeared to reduce risk of diabetes onset, hospitalization for congestive heart failure and cardiac arrest.
A new mission, announced by NASA on Monday, aims to smash an SUV-sized impactor straight into a crater at the lunar south pole in late 2008. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was selected as a high-risk, high-pay-off, “piggyback” mission, to share a heavy launch vehicle with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. LCROSS has a $80 million budget cap. It is designed to help determine the form in which the hydrogen detected by previous orbiters at the South Pole is held, and whether it could used by future human explorers. Previous observations found evidence of hydrogen in cold craters, but whether that is held as water ice or hydrogen-bearing minerals it not known. The question is important, NASA’s Scott Horowitz, told reporters, because to fulfill President George W Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration, “we’re going to have to learn how to live off the land”.
Hybrid comet-asteroid mysteriously breaking up Something substantial has broken off an icy 50-kilometre object beyond the orbit of Saturn, leaving puzzled astronomers trying to figure out why. Comets have been seen breaking up before, but only after heating when passing close to the Sun or a gravitational disturbance following a close encounter with a planet. However, at 1.9 billion kilometers, this object is very far from the Sun. Another mysterious feature is that much more gas and dust is escaping from the breakaway fragment than from the parent body. The disintegration has created a dust cloud more than 100,000 km across and which is several times brighter than the original object was before the event. The object, called 60558 Echeclus, was discovered in 2000 and is a “centaur” – part rocky asteroid and part icy comet.
Blind mice recover visual response using green algae protein Nerve cells that normally are not light sensitive in the retinas of blind mice can respond to light when a green algae protein called channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) is inserted into the cell membranes, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported study published in the April 6, 2006 issue of the journal Neuron. The study was conducted with mice that had been genetically bred to lose rods and cones, the light-sensitive cells in the retina. This condition is similar to the blinding disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP) in humans. The new research raises the possibility that visual function might be restored by conveying light-sensitive properties to other surviving cells in the retina after the rods and cones have died.
Are red blood cells defenseless against smaller nanoparticles? A new study finds that size is the main determinant of whether nanoparticles can penetrate human red blood cells. Many different types of particles with diameters below 100 nanometers (nm) can penetrate human red blood cells. The research adds to the growing body of evidence that nanoparticles o not behave like other fine particles – they penetrate deeper into the body and react with cells not evolved to handle their presence.
An in-depth review article discussing the connection between asthma and the environment has been published and is available here.
And finally, this was really interesting: People who have had near death experiences (NDE) often have different controls on their sleep-wake states than people who have not had a near death experience, according to a new study, which found that people with near death experiences are more likely to have the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness not as clearly regulated as for others, where the REM (rapid eye movement) state of sleep (related to dreams) can intrude into normal wakeful consciousness. Examples of this REM intrusion include waking up and feeling that you cannot move, having sudden muscle weakness in your legs, and hearing sounds just before falling asleep or just after waking up that other people can’t hear. Of the people with near death experiences, 60 percent reported having times of this REM intrusion, compared to 24 percent of people who had not had near death experiences. (Full disclosure: my late grandfather had a NDE in which he saw “Jesus and the angels” coming for him; after being revived he was furious at first, then depressed for a year, and finally starved himself so he could “go home.”)
Reduced air pollution ADDS to global warming?? Talk about damned if we do, and damned if we don’t! But I think I’m missing a cognitive “link” here. I mean, I get it that it decreases the “cloud” cover that keeps sunshine out, but why wasn’t that a problem before now?
Just tagging this on to your most recent comment since I’m only passing though this morning. Thanks for the info and the quick research run on the Ellery Queen stuff.
The business with pollution and clouds is that we’re getting a clearer understanding of what was “sorta kinda known” before: The sulfate emissions that help form more clouds (and reflect sunlight back into space) by acting as nuclei for droplets to form around have a down side in the form of acid rain, particulate pollution that makes asthma worse, etc. So we can’t say “remove the scrubbers from the smokestacks so we can have the planetary sunscreen benefits of sulfur pollution” without paying a different price.
The part about water vapor contributing to global warming more than thought is scary because you might get into a positive feedback loop more easily than previously realized – the hotter it gets, the more water evaporates and the more water vapor the air can hold, allowing it to get hotter yet. The spin-off effects of this include both more frequent and/or stronger tornadoes and/or hurricanes, and in other places, desertification. The throttle on this engine is the formation of clouds that reflect sunlight back into space – but bring more storms.
My gut instinct tells me that even if we cut back on sulfur pollution, nature has its own mechanisms that will increase the sulfur levels in the atmosphere through increased decay at higher temperatures, which would include outgassing of hydrogen sulfide from newly-thawed near-polar swamps (former tundra), increased dimethyl sulfide from sea algae, etc. This source of sulfur will have the same atmospheric effects that our pollution previously did, but unfortunately it will also add more carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere, and they are greenhouse gases.
There probably is a higher temperature equilibrium point (call it “dinosaur jungle world”) that we’ll settle into, otherwise the planet would have turned into the hell of Venus at some point over the last 4.3 billion years of changing climates. And some forms of life will survive there. Odds are not necessarily good that humans would be among them, however.
I consider the report you referred to as another brick in the edifice of our understanding of how the climate can switch more easily than we thought possible between our present climate and “dinosaur jungle world.” The “planetary experiment” that folks have warned about for a generation seems to be taking off, whether we’re ready for it or not. At this point the best we can likely do is try to find the “control rods” of this reactor and drop them in place as soon as possible, to minimize the damage that will happen.
There very probably are switches in the other direction, too, that we don’t fully understand, such as when climate change dampens the Gulf Stream and starts an ice age in Europe while the rest of the planet bakes, that extra snow will also have globally beneficial reflective (cooling) effects (although the more extreme temperature differences may likely result in more stormy weather). The climate record seems to indicate these changes – in both directions – can happen abruptly.
It’s all incredibly complicated and I’m no more than a somewhat educated layperson on the matter. But I try to have a good “instinct” for what’s going to happen by reading science voraciously. I may not be able to quote the exact papers without a lot of digging, but each bit I read contributes on a “gut level” to my expectations on the subject, just as all of us here do on matters political.
The bombers who carried out the July 7 attacks on London were not aided by al-Qaida but acquired the expertise they needed from the internet, according to a leaked report by the British government.
The report’s conclusions paint a disturbing picture of the ease with which individuals can plan and execute relatively simple yet deadly attacks, and highlights the difficulties faced by the security services in preventing such acts.
So, all those angry Muslims who may find themselves pushed towards extremism, but don’t have handy access to terrorist training, can learn what they need to know on the internet. I wonder… would it have come to this if not for Bush’s Iraq Crusade? How much worse can it get if Bush extends his Crusade into Iran?
Powell Joins List Of Those Who Doubt Rumsfeld President Bush’s first secretary of state, Colin Powell, has lent his voice to a growing chorus of former military leaders and prominent neoconservatives questioning the decisions of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in Iraq.
Against a backdrop of rumors of a pending resignation, more deadly terror attacks in Iraq, and sinking popularity for the war, Mr. Powell over the weekend said bluntly that missteps were made during the war that led to the current level of the insurgency.
Speaking Saturday to the annual conference of the National School Board Association, Mr. Powell said,“We made some serious mistakes in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported. “We didn’t have enough troops on the ground. We didn’t impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started, and … it got out of control.”
Nice of him to open his mouth after all this time. I have nothing but disdain for Powell. Now that the chorus against Rumsfeld is getting quite loud… NOW Powell speaks up? Wow, what a patriot.
More from my MP, the Defence Minister. Another round of “sound familiar?”
Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor defended the Canadian mission in Kandahar during a “take-note” debate in the House of Commons Monday night, saying Canada’s security depends on battling terrorists in Afghanistan.
“Our Canadian Forces are in Afghanistan because it is in our national interest, because we have a responsibility to take a leadership role in world affairs, and because Afghanis need us and want us to help them,” O’Connor said. [link]
#
Canadian troops are there to “protect the security of the nation and the prosperity of the nation,” he said. [link]
BASRA, 11 April (IRIN) – As a result of water-borne diseases and a lack of medical supplies, infants born in the southern city of Basra are subject to abnormally high mortality rates, say officials of an international NGO devoted to child health issues.
“For weeks, there were no I.V. fluids available in the hospitals of Basra,” said Marie Fernandez, spokeswoman for European aid agency Saving Children from War. “As a consequence, many children, mainly under five-years old, died after suffering from extreme cases of diarrhoea.”
Fernandez went on to cite a number of problems facing local hospitals in Basra, which is located some 550km south of the capital, Baghdad. “Hospitals have no ventilators to help prematurely-born babies breathe,” Fernandez said. “And there are very few nurses available, so hospitals often must allow family members to care for patients.”
Many doctors in the area say that the local health situation has deteriorated markedly since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. “The mortality of children in Basra has increased by nearly 30 percent compared to the Saddam Hussein era,” Dr Haydar Salah, a paediatrician at the Basra Children’s Hospital, pointed out. “Children are dying daily, and no one is doing anything to help them.”
Fernandez added that, for the last three years, the Maternity and Children’s’ hospital in Basra had not received any cancer drugs from the health ministry. “In all of Basra, a city with nearly two million inhabitants, there’s no radiotherapy department available,” Fernandez complained.
Khalid Ala’a, spokesman for local NGO Keeping Children Alive, said that Basra hospitals lacked many essential drugs and antibiotics used to treat infections common to the area. “We’ve asked for help from the Ministry of Health, but they only tell us they don’t have money to supply hospitals,” Ala’a said. “They tell us we must wait for investment, which could take months.”
“The mortality of children in Basra has increased by nearly 30 percent compared to the Saddam Hussein era,” Dr Haydar Salah, a paediatrician at the Basra Children’s Hospital, pointed out.
That’s scary, considering how negatively the UN sanctions against Iraq from Hussein’s time affected child morbidity/mortality.
From wikipedia:
UN organizations (such as UNICEF and the WHO) have estimated between 500,000 and 1.2 million deaths were caused by the sanctions, mostly in the under-5 age group.
cities to live in: Reuters
That “spreading democracy” thing has really been a smashing success, hasn’t it?
in New Orleans: NYT
Times Online
How sad is that?
It’s very sad, but not surprising. How come women worry about every wrinkle, every extra pound, and fat old men strut around naked like they’re Mufasa from Lion King? Oh to be like that.
They’d take care of the children. According to Sr. Joan Chittester the rest would take care of itself.
This reminds me of the time my older brother told me that a woman could never be president because when the going got tough, she’d have to go out and buy a new hat. Bella Abzug, known for her hats, had just been elected to Congress. Bella’s pictured here, with her hat, on a 1972 Life cover. He had me going for months with that proclamation!
I remember my dad calling Bella Abzug a “loud-mouthed broad.”
The world would be a lot better off if loud-mouthed broads ran things. Men have had their turn and fucked it up. It’s time for a regime change.
I think that it’s high time to give women a chance to prove that testosterone is not the main ingredient in a successful foreign policy.
Maggie Thatcher? Condoleeza Rice? Ann Coulter? And don’t give me any crap about them not being “real” women, unless I can claim Bush et al aren’t “real” men.
When I was growing up, a woman by the name of Anita Bryant was oh-so-nobly motivated by wanting to take care of the children, too.
If you waved a magic wand and simply reversed roles, women — being just as human as men — would no doubt be just as often systematically screwed up by the pursuit and use of power as men.
Sorry, men have been ruling the world except for your one example of Margaret Thatcher (the only one with any real autonomy) for centuries and look where we are.
Women are not driven by the single-minded pursuit of power and dominance the way men are.
When 52% of the world’s leaders are women, if things are still fucked up come back to me and we’ll have a discussion. I may even eat my shorts.
Well, I don’t tend to argue with people on matters of faith, because there’s little point to it. If it makes you feel better to believe in something in the absence of facts … [shrug].
Just don’t expect me to support public policy based on your faith, any more than I support public policy that make/keep patriarchal structures based on some folks’ faith that God wants men in charge.
Shall we limit public office in the US to young, poor, non-Christian lesbians of color while we’re at it? Because, after all, the vast majority of people fucking things up are older, richer, white, Christian straight males. Oh wait, maybe we should say they all have to be left-handed as well.
I mean, we wouldn’t actually want to vote for or against somebody based on what they’ll actually do in office, would we?
No, but we should definitely limit public office holders to those who don’t have a big chip on their shoulders.
Dick Cheney visited Missouri yesterday and, like a broken record, delivered the same old message:
Laura was here last week, Dick was here yesterday and George himself is here today.
Think they might be worried about the Missouri senate race?
Nah, they simply want to remind Missourians that they could die at any moment if they vote for a Democrat.
I think they’d have more to fear going quail hunting with Big Dick…
This just can’t be missed.
Big Deadeye Dick got booed today in his attempting the ceremonial first pitch. Thinkprogress provides the link.
Video and pic just too rich, go see and listen
He didn’t hit anyone but Faux news came to his aided tried muting out the crowd audio halfway thru the boos.
Thanks, I needed that! 🙂
If they’re not (and I doubt that), they should be. What with 55% of registered voters saying they’d vote for the Democratic candidate and all.
This big fund raising sweep for Talent shows that they are concerned. But Talent has the ability to outraise McCaskill even without their help, so the amounts raised on this sweep will widen the gap to a concerning level for Democrats too.
McCaskill’s has the same fund raising that all Democrats have. But she also has a problem within the party itself that everyone is waiting to see how it plays out.
Many, many people who were Holden supporters in 2004 made it clear that if McCaskill won the primary they would NOT vote for her in the general and they didn’t. They thought that they’d rather have a Republican win than tarnish their principles and vote for a Democratic nominee that they didn’t support. And of course the Republican (Blunt) won by a not very big margin.
Hopefully they’ve seen how WELL that has worked out <snark> and they will start to see reason this time around — give her money AND vote for her.
Full Article
You know, Andi, I’ve wondered about this very thing. Why wouldn’t venture capitalists invest heavily in no less than the next source of energy for our economy, for our way of life? This is a bright spot on an otherwise emissions-choked horizon. Thanks for finding it!
Morning Nag.
I guess they finally are convinced that they can’t get rich on the internet and so have to look elsewhere. But if they can bring us truly useful technology that helps the environment, I’m happy for them to make money.
Full story.
Sigh. Who would Jesus hate?
Full Article
A lot of science news today for some reason…
The European space probe Venus Express went into orbit around the planet on Tuesday after a 400-million-kilometer (250-million-mile) trip from Earth, mission controllers said. The payload includes sensors to track the planet’s multi-layered, roiling clouds in visible, infra-red and ultraviolet light. They will also measure the atmosphere’s temperature and chemical composition and analyze its intriguing magnetic field, caused by interaction with the “solar wind” of particles blasted out by the Sun.
Time for your daily climate change eco-rant (kinda like MSOC, but all-green): Reduced air pollution and increased water evaporation appear to be adding to man-made global warming. Research presented at a major European science meeting adds to other evidence that cleaner air is letting more solar energy through to the Earth’s surface. Other studies show that increased water vapor in the atmosphere is reinforcing the impact of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists suggest both trends may push temperatures higher than believed. And in a related gloomy note, tens of thousands of animals and plants could become extinct within the coming decades as a direct result of global warming. This is the main conclusion of a study into how climate change will affect the diversity of species in the most precious wildlife havens of the world. “It isn’t just polar bears and penguins that we must worry about anymore,” said Lee Hannah of Conservation International, based in Washington. Third strike and you’re out: New research indicates plants will be less effective in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than thought, due to lack of availability of nitrogen and other key nutrients.
OK, so here’s some good environmental news, just to show it’s not all-bad, all-the-time with that K.P. guy: Highly endangered Amur tigers are making a tentative comeback in an inland part of the Russian far-east where they had not been sighted for over 50 years, conservation officials said Monday.
From the Department of Duh – This is why we used to not let companies advertise drugs to consumers in the first place: Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have warned. Disease-mongering promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild problems to boost profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported. Researchers at Newcastle University in Australia said firms were putting healthy people at risk by medicalizing conditions such as menopause. But the pharmaceutical industry denied it invented diseases.
But on the other hand, good news today about the drugs that daily keep my head from exploding at the actions of the Bush administration – and some days I really need it: French scientists say angiotension-converting enzyme, or ACE, inhibitors may reduce the risk of death in coronary artery disease. When the results of multiple trials were analyzed together, treatment with ACE inhibitors was found to significantly reduce the risk of death from any cause, cardiovascular death, heart attack, and stroke. The researchers also found that in studies measuring additional outcomes, ACE inhibitors appeared to reduce risk of diabetes onset, hospitalization for congestive heart failure and cardiac arrest.
A new mission, announced by NASA on Monday, aims to smash an SUV-sized impactor straight into a crater at the lunar south pole in late 2008. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was selected as a high-risk, high-pay-off, “piggyback” mission, to share a heavy launch vehicle with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. LCROSS has a $80 million budget cap. It is designed to help determine the form in which the hydrogen detected by previous orbiters at the South Pole is held, and whether it could used by future human explorers. Previous observations found evidence of hydrogen in cold craters, but whether that is held as water ice or hydrogen-bearing minerals it not known. The question is important, NASA’s Scott Horowitz, told reporters, because to fulfill President George W Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration, “we’re going to have to learn how to live off the land”.
Hybrid comet-asteroid mysteriously breaking up Something substantial has broken off an icy 50-kilometre object beyond the orbit of Saturn, leaving puzzled astronomers trying to figure out why. Comets have been seen breaking up before, but only after heating when passing close to the Sun or a gravitational disturbance following a close encounter with a planet. However, at 1.9 billion kilometers, this object is very far from the Sun. Another mysterious feature is that much more gas and dust is escaping from the breakaway fragment than from the parent body. The disintegration has created a dust cloud more than 100,000 km across and which is several times brighter than the original object was before the event. The object, called 60558 Echeclus, was discovered in 2000 and is a “centaur” – part rocky asteroid and part icy comet.
Part of the beauty and fascination of science is that from simple questions sometimes come answers of both practical utility and yet amazing in themselves. Consider this: How can one explain that a spider suspended by a thread remains completely motionless, instead of rotating like a climber does at the end of a rope? The answer not only is fascinating, but points to potentially useful new polymers.
Blind mice recover visual response using green algae protein Nerve cells that normally are not light sensitive in the retinas of blind mice can respond to light when a green algae protein called channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) is inserted into the cell membranes, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported study published in the April 6, 2006 issue of the journal Neuron. The study was conducted with mice that had been genetically bred to lose rods and cones, the light-sensitive cells in the retina. This condition is similar to the blinding disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP) in humans. The new research raises the possibility that visual function might be restored by conveying light-sensitive properties to other surviving cells in the retina after the rods and cones have died.
Women with silicone breast implants are likely to have higher concentrations of harmful forms of platinum in their bodies than women who have never had implants, even long after the implants have been removed. The study’s authors note that exposure to some forms of platinum is believed to be harmful to human health. In particular, exposure to platinum salts has been associated with neurotoxicity, carcinogenicity, and other harmful effects.
Are red blood cells defenseless against smaller nanoparticles? A new study finds that size is the main determinant of whether nanoparticles can penetrate human red blood cells. Many different types of particles with diameters below 100 nanometers (nm) can penetrate human red blood cells. The research adds to the growing body of evidence that nanoparticles o not behave like other fine particles – they penetrate deeper into the body and react with cells not evolved to handle their presence.
New Jersey hopes to convert the Meadowlands, gritty wetlands near New York City that are emerging from decades of heavy industry and dumping, into one of the nation’s leading areas for generating solar power. Will they name the facility after Jimmy Hoffa? And here’s an explanation for the Hoffa mystery that I wish I had found for my April 1st Science Headlines…
An in-depth review article discussing the connection between asthma and the environment has been published and is available here.
And finally, this was really interesting: People who have had near death experiences (NDE) often have different controls on their sleep-wake states than people who have not had a near death experience, according to a new study, which found that people with near death experiences are more likely to have the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness not as clearly regulated as for others, where the REM (rapid eye movement) state of sleep (related to dreams) can intrude into normal wakeful consciousness. Examples of this REM intrusion include waking up and feeling that you cannot move, having sudden muscle weakness in your legs, and hearing sounds just before falling asleep or just after waking up that other people can’t hear. Of the people with near death experiences, 60 percent reported having times of this REM intrusion, compared to 24 percent of people who had not had near death experiences. (Full disclosure: my late grandfather had a NDE in which he saw “Jesus and the angels” coming for him; after being revived he was furious at first, then depressed for a year, and finally starved himself so he could “go home.”)
Reduced air pollution ADDS to global warming?? Talk about damned if we do, and damned if we don’t! But I think I’m missing a cognitive “link” here. I mean, I get it that it decreases the “cloud” cover that keeps sunshine out, but why wasn’t that a problem before now?
Maybe I just need more coffee. 🙂
Hey Kansas,
Just tagging this on to your most recent comment since I’m only passing though this morning. Thanks for the info and the quick research run on the Ellery Queen stuff.
My pleasure. Especially if you dip into mysteries and I get to read the results. 🙂
The business with pollution and clouds is that we’re getting a clearer understanding of what was “sorta kinda known” before: The sulfate emissions that help form more clouds (and reflect sunlight back into space) by acting as nuclei for droplets to form around have a down side in the form of acid rain, particulate pollution that makes asthma worse, etc. So we can’t say “remove the scrubbers from the smokestacks so we can have the planetary sunscreen benefits of sulfur pollution” without paying a different price.
The part about water vapor contributing to global warming more than thought is scary because you might get into a positive feedback loop more easily than previously realized – the hotter it gets, the more water evaporates and the more water vapor the air can hold, allowing it to get hotter yet. The spin-off effects of this include both more frequent and/or stronger tornadoes and/or hurricanes, and in other places, desertification. The throttle on this engine is the formation of clouds that reflect sunlight back into space – but bring more storms.
My gut instinct tells me that even if we cut back on sulfur pollution, nature has its own mechanisms that will increase the sulfur levels in the atmosphere through increased decay at higher temperatures, which would include outgassing of hydrogen sulfide from newly-thawed near-polar swamps (former tundra), increased dimethyl sulfide from sea algae, etc. This source of sulfur will have the same atmospheric effects that our pollution previously did, but unfortunately it will also add more carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere, and they are greenhouse gases.
There probably is a higher temperature equilibrium point (call it “dinosaur jungle world”) that we’ll settle into, otherwise the planet would have turned into the hell of Venus at some point over the last 4.3 billion years of changing climates. And some forms of life will survive there. Odds are not necessarily good that humans would be among them, however.
I consider the report you referred to as another brick in the edifice of our understanding of how the climate can switch more easily than we thought possible between our present climate and “dinosaur jungle world.” The “planetary experiment” that folks have warned about for a generation seems to be taking off, whether we’re ready for it or not. At this point the best we can likely do is try to find the “control rods” of this reactor and drop them in place as soon as possible, to minimize the damage that will happen.
There very probably are switches in the other direction, too, that we don’t fully understand, such as when climate change dampens the Gulf Stream and starts an ice age in Europe while the rest of the planet bakes, that extra snow will also have globally beneficial reflective (cooling) effects (although the more extreme temperature differences may likely result in more stormy weather). The climate record seems to indicate these changes – in both directions – can happen abruptly.
It’s all incredibly complicated and I’m no more than a somewhat educated layperson on the matter. But I try to have a good “instinct” for what’s going to happen by reading science voraciously. I may not be able to quote the exact papers without a lot of digging, but each bit I read contributes on a “gut level” to my expectations on the subject, just as all of us here do on matters political.
link
The bombers who carried out the July 7 attacks on London were not aided by al-Qaida but acquired the expertise they needed from the internet, according to a leaked report by the British government.
The report’s conclusions paint a disturbing picture of the ease with which individuals can plan and execute relatively simple yet deadly attacks, and highlights the difficulties faced by the security services in preventing such acts.
So, all those angry Muslims who may find themselves pushed towards extremism, but don’t have handy access to terrorist training, can learn what they need to know on the internet. I wonder… would it have come to this if not for Bush’s Iraq Crusade? How much worse can it get if Bush extends his Crusade into Iran?
link
President Bush’s first secretary of state, Colin Powell, has lent his voice to a growing chorus of former military leaders and prominent neoconservatives questioning the decisions of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in Iraq.
Against a backdrop of rumors of a pending resignation, more deadly terror attacks in Iraq, and sinking popularity for the war, Mr. Powell over the weekend said bluntly that missteps were made during the war that led to the current level of the insurgency.
Speaking Saturday to the annual conference of the National School Board Association, Mr. Powell said,“We made some serious mistakes in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported. “We didn’t have enough troops on the ground. We didn’t impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started, and … it got out of control.”
Nice of him to open his mouth after all this time. I have nothing but disdain for Powell. Now that the chorus against Rumsfeld is getting quite loud… NOW Powell speaks up? Wow, what a patriot.
I agree Nag, disdain.
Over at Huffpost there’s is this front page only, ‘We’re hearing’ tidbit: (link to that piece inoperable when I tries it)
That “Hardball” host Chris Mathews Is Considering a run for a US Senate run in Pennsylvania”
More from my MP, the Defence Minister. Another round of “sound familiar?”
Not so good:
That’s scary, considering how negatively the UN sanctions against Iraq from Hussein’s time affected child morbidity/mortality.
From wikipedia:
Disgusting.
just in case you might be wondering about our future….place your eyes on this one, will you!
just an opinion, ha
on Migrant demonstrations HERE
Peace
Albert has some photos from the Philly rally at his blog too.