Scientists have identified the earliest known pieces of jewelry – shells that were part of bracelets or necklaces – made by modern humans. The three shell beads are between 90,000 and 100,000 years old.
Extra amounts of key nutrients in tropical rain forest soils cause them to release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When phosphorus or nitrogen — which occur naturally in rain forest soils — were added to forest plots in Costa Rica, they caused an increase in carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by about 20 percent annually. Phosphorus and many other nutrients are regularly transported around the Earth by global wind patterns, sometimes riding on huge transcontinental dust clouds; humans are increasing the size of these dust clouds as changes occur in both land-use patterns and climate, which in turn can alter the availability of nutrients to forests. Nitrogen pollution also is increasing around the world, including in tropical forests, a result of fossil-fuel combustion and crop fertilization.
International scientists will recreate the immediate aftermath of the “Big Bang” in a bid to uncover the mysteries of the universe, a world physics summit announced Thursday. The experiment will take place in Europe next year with the collaboration of US, Japanese and Russian scientists to increase knowledge of dark energy and matter.
The letter begins: “We’re writing to you with what we know is unfortunate news about your Allstate Insurance.”
Startled, Marie Collins reached for her glasses, then a magnifying glass and pored over the letter, realizing with a sinking feeling this isn’t a standard mailing from the company that insures her home.
It was a cancellation. Her home was being dropped, the letter said, because it’s in the path of future hurricanes.
But Collins doesn’t live in New Orleans or even Florida. She lives in New York City.
Hurricane Katrina may have made landfall on the Gulf Coast last year, but its impact is being felt hundreds of miles away, as insurers scramble to reduce their exposure to future catastrophes.
“It’s outrageous,” said Collins, who’s lived 81 of her 83 years in the same house in the New York borough of Brooklyn, where a devastating hurricane hasn’t hit since 1938.
Yet hers is one of 30,000 homes the nation’s No. 2 insurer, Allstate Corp., is canceling in coastal counties of New York, citing the need to protect itself from future storms. Other major players are following suit: Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. is no longer writing new policies on the eastern half of Long Island, N.Y., while MetLife Inc. is requiring extra inspections and expensive storm shutters for new customers living within 5 miles of salt water.
The only thing insurance policies insure these days is the insurance company’s profits.
Not that I’m defending the insurance companies, but you have to keep in mind that they’re just responding to the scientific information regarding future risk – the same information in Gore’s movie. This action should be taken as a symptom of the problem of global warming. If folks are upset about this, the appropriate place to aim their rage is at Washington D.C.
The fact that New York hasn’t had a direct hit from a hurricane since 1938 is no longer meaningful information. We’re into a new world here, with a lot more substance and less hype than the one we supposedly entered on 9-11. Global warming changes everything. In a few decades, New York will have the climate that used to be on the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. In the light of that, if I was an insurance company I’d be doing the same thing.
At least this woman doesn’t live in Bangladesh, where most of her country is going to end up under water.
Our current immigration situation in 50 years will seem laughable. Can we even imagine millions of environmental refugees headed north? America south of, say, Philadelphia being malaria country (except for the deserts where the great plains used to be, of course).
Being dropped from insurance coverage is nothing, nothing compared to what we’re going to see if we don’t get our shit together soon.
THE Iraqi Government will announce a sweeping peace plan as early as Sunday in a last-ditch effort to end the Sunni insurgency that has taken the country to the brink of civil war.
The 28-point package for national reconciliation will offer Iraqi resistance groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for their prisoners if they renounce violence and lay down their arms, The Times can reveal.
The Government will promise a finite, UN-approved timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq; a halt to US operations against insurgent strongholds; an end to human rights violations, including those by coalition troops; and compensation for victims of attacks by terrorists or Iraqi and coalition forces.
I wonder how BushCo is going to feel about being asked to take their toys and go home. Oh wait, that’s what we have Bolton at the UN for.
It will be interesting to see how the corporate media handles this. When the Iraqi VP asked Bush for a timeline of withdrawl during Bush’s Greenzone visit, the very next day Bush denied ever being asked and the media never even blinked. You know, the Repugs think that having those votes on withdrawl in the Senate highlight the Dem’s differences on Iraq. I don’t think so… it came across that Republicans are against any talk of ending the Iraq war, no matter what. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Dems are “cut and runners” when they demand a time line for withdrawal of U.S. troops one day, and then the Iraqi government calls for the same thing the next! I wonder what Lewis Black would have to say about this situation?? As for me, my head hurts!
James Gandolfini, star of HBO’s mob drama “The Sopranos,” is muscling into a salary dispute between two of his castmates and the cable network before production begins on the show’s last batch of episodes…
…it has been Sirico and Van Zandt, who play iconic characters Paulie Walnuts and Silvio Dante, respectively, who have had the toughest and most publicized renegotiations.
With each of the two actors and HBO still more than $500,000 apart on the money, and Sirico and Van Zandt not budging on their $200,000-an-episode asking price — more than double their most recent fee — a conclusion of the groundbreaking series without Paulie and Silvio looms as a real possibility.
Talks between the actors and HBO are still ongoing.
First they cheap out on the fourth season of Deadwood (the greatest show ever made, IMO). Now this. Pfft.
Court Expands Right to Sue Over Retaliation on the Job
The Supreme Court made it easier yesterday for workers in most parts of the country to sue employers for retaliating against them when they complain about sexual harassment or other discrimination. The court ruled that employees may collect damages, even in some cases where the punishment did not involve getting fired or losing wages.
The decision, which had the full support of eight justices, expands the legal rights of millions of workers who are covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the main federal law against job discrimination, and their employers. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed with the result but differed from the majority reasoning.
By setting a single national rule to define what constitutes retaliation, the court brought a measure of clarity to an area of law that generates thousands of cases per year, but had produced conflicting interpretations of Title VII in the lower courts.
Now, many retaliation cases that had previously been dismissed because the facts were not in dispute are likely to go to trial. That will encourage lawyers for alleged victims to take on more cases, and, accordingly, raise companies’ costs for lawyers and defensive management practices.
In the case decided yesterday, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White , No. 05-259, forklift operator Sheila White had won $43,500 in damages and medical expenses from a federal jury, which found that her boss responded to her complaints about co-workers’ sexual harassment by transferring her to a more arduous job and suspending her for 37 days without pay.
I’m glad for this ruling, but doesn’t it stand in stark contrast to earlier rulings?
You can’t be retaliated against if you blow the whistle on sexual harrassment in the workplace, but you CAN be retaliated against for blowing the whistle on illegal activities in the NSA or the DoD or the CIA.
Funny, I also immediately thought of the recent whistleblower case. Seems that there’s some incinsistency there, but then, that’s what keeps lawyers in business, I guess.
increasing at epidemic proportion: Reuters Health via MD Consult (subscription required)
The incidence of type 2 diabetes has doubled over the past three decades, according to a report in the June 27th online issue of Circulation.
“This corresponds to an absolute increase in the incidence of diabetes of about 2.5% during the ’90s compared to the ’70s,” lead author Dr. Caroline S. Fox, from the National Lung, Heart, and Blood Institute, Framingham, Massachusetts, said in a statement. “Most, but not all, of the increase in diabetes occurred in people who were obese — those with a BMI of 30 or more.”…
…Compared with the 1970s, the risk of developing diabetes in the 1980s and 1990s increased by 40% and 105%, respectively. Men experienced the greatest increase risk over the full study period — 121%.
As noted, obese individuals accounted for the bulk of the increase in the absolute incidence of diabetes, the report indicates.
I hope katiebird talks about this at her website, eat4today…if you haven’t been there yet, check it out.
</shameless plug>
Two tiny shells have been confirmed as the world’s oldest known items of jewellery, probably used on a necklace about 100,000 years ago. [snip]
“This research shows that a long lasting and widespread bead-working tradition associated with early modern humans extended through Africa to the Middle East well before comparable evidence appears in Europe,” said Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum, who led the work.
“The research also supports the idea that modern human anatomy and behaviour have deep roots in Africa and were widespread by 75,000 years ago, even though they may not have appeared in Europe for another 35,000 years. [snip]
Genetic and fossil evidence suggests that humans who were anatomically similar to modern people existed in Africa around 200,000 years ago.
But evidence for modern cultural behaviour – art, symbolic language, musical instruments and complex burials – only appears in Europe around 40,000 years ago. [snip]
The two shells push back the beginnings of modern human culture to at least 100,000 years ago.
“There is the implication that there was probably complex language there. If people are sending messages through shells or complex burials then the likelihood is they’ve got language,” said Dr Stringer. link
[A] play based on the writings of the late peace activist Rachel Corrie has finally found a theatre in New York. “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” will open at the Minetta Lane Theater in October. Based on Corrie’s diaries, e-mails and letters, the play was originally supposed to open at the New York Theatre Workshop in March – just days after the three-year anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death under an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. But the workshop’s directors indefinitely postponed the production following concerns over its political content. link
Human activity has made Earth hotter now than at any point in 400 and possibly more than 1000 years, a US Congress commissioned report said Thursday. The report generally confirmed the controversial “hockey stick graph,” but said that before 1600 the data become imprecise so our confidence in the data drops. And a separate study confirmed that global warming accounted for around half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic in 2005, while natural cycles were only a minor factor.
The International Astronomical Union announced Thursday it has approved the names Nix and Hydra for the two small satellites of Pluto discovered in May 2005.
Oil and electricity consumption across the world could easily be cut by half, with major benefits for the environment, if clean energy technologies that are currently available were applied, an international watchdog said in Paris on Thursday.
Scientists have identified the earliest known pieces of jewelry – shells that were part of bracelets or necklaces – made by modern humans. The three shell beads are between 90,000 and 100,000 years old.
Extra amounts of key nutrients in tropical rain forest soils cause them to release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When phosphorus or nitrogen — which occur naturally in rain forest soils — were added to forest plots in Costa Rica, they caused an increase in carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by about 20 percent annually. Phosphorus and many other nutrients are regularly transported around the Earth by global wind patterns, sometimes riding on huge transcontinental dust clouds; humans are increasing the size of these dust clouds as changes occur in both land-use patterns and climate, which in turn can alter the availability of nutrients to forests. Nitrogen pollution also is increasing around the world, including in tropical forests, a result of fossil-fuel combustion and crop fertilization.
International scientists will recreate the immediate aftermath of the “Big Bang” in a bid to uncover the mysteries of the universe, a world physics summit announced Thursday. The experiment will take place in Europe next year with the collaboration of US, Japanese and Russian scientists to increase knowledge of dark energy and matter.
The British Medical Journal reports the case of a 15-year-old girl who was struck by lightning in a park while using a mobile phone during a storm, warning of the risk of such activity.
Link
The letter begins: “We’re writing to you with what we know is unfortunate news about your Allstate Insurance.”
Startled, Marie Collins reached for her glasses, then a magnifying glass and pored over the letter, realizing with a sinking feeling this isn’t a standard mailing from the company that insures her home.
It was a cancellation. Her home was being dropped, the letter said, because it’s in the path of future hurricanes.
But Collins doesn’t live in New Orleans or even Florida. She lives in New York City.
Hurricane Katrina may have made landfall on the Gulf Coast last year, but its impact is being felt hundreds of miles away, as insurers scramble to reduce their exposure to future catastrophes.
“It’s outrageous,” said Collins, who’s lived 81 of her 83 years in the same house in the New York borough of Brooklyn, where a devastating hurricane hasn’t hit since 1938.
Yet hers is one of 30,000 homes the nation’s No. 2 insurer, Allstate Corp., is canceling in coastal counties of New York, citing the need to protect itself from future storms. Other major players are following suit: Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. is no longer writing new policies on the eastern half of Long Island, N.Y., while MetLife Inc. is requiring extra inspections and expensive storm shutters for new customers living within 5 miles of salt water.
The only thing insurance policies insure these days is the insurance company’s profits.
Not that I’m defending the insurance companies, but you have to keep in mind that they’re just responding to the scientific information regarding future risk – the same information in Gore’s movie. This action should be taken as a symptom of the problem of global warming. If folks are upset about this, the appropriate place to aim their rage is at Washington D.C.
The fact that New York hasn’t had a direct hit from a hurricane since 1938 is no longer meaningful information. We’re into a new world here, with a lot more substance and less hype than the one we supposedly entered on 9-11. Global warming changes everything. In a few decades, New York will have the climate that used to be on the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. In the light of that, if I was an insurance company I’d be doing the same thing.
At least this woman doesn’t live in Bangladesh, where most of her country is going to end up under water.
Our current immigration situation in 50 years will seem laughable. Can we even imagine millions of environmental refugees headed north? America south of, say, Philadelphia being malaria country (except for the deserts where the great plains used to be, of course).
Being dropped from insurance coverage is nothing, nothing compared to what we’re going to see if we don’t get our shit together soon.
Hell, is it vodka:30 yet?
seems to be getting a spine: Times Online
I wonder how BushCo is going to feel about being asked to take their toys and go home. Oh wait, that’s what we have Bolton at the UN for.
It will be interesting to see how the corporate media handles this. When the Iraqi VP asked Bush for a timeline of withdrawl during Bush’s Greenzone visit, the very next day Bush denied ever being asked and the media never even blinked. You know, the Repugs think that having those votes on withdrawl in the Senate highlight the Dem’s differences on Iraq. I don’t think so… it came across that Republicans are against any talk of ending the Iraq war, no matter what. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Well, you’ll notice I didn’t find that in a US publication…
Shall we start a pool on how long it takes that story to turn up in the US corporate media?
Dems are “cut and runners” when they demand a time line for withdrawal of U.S. troops one day, and then the Iraqi government calls for the same thing the next! I wonder what Lewis Black would have to say about this situation?? As for me, my head hurts!
HBO better cough up the cash: Reuters Myway
First they cheap out on the fourth season of Deadwood (the greatest show ever made, IMO). Now this. Pfft.
Link
The Supreme Court made it easier yesterday for workers in most parts of the country to sue employers for retaliating against them when they complain about sexual harassment or other discrimination. The court ruled that employees may collect damages, even in some cases where the punishment did not involve getting fired or losing wages.
The decision, which had the full support of eight justices, expands the legal rights of millions of workers who are covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the main federal law against job discrimination, and their employers. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed with the result but differed from the majority reasoning.
By setting a single national rule to define what constitutes retaliation, the court brought a measure of clarity to an area of law that generates thousands of cases per year, but had produced conflicting interpretations of Title VII in the lower courts.
Now, many retaliation cases that had previously been dismissed because the facts were not in dispute are likely to go to trial. That will encourage lawyers for alleged victims to take on more cases, and, accordingly, raise companies’ costs for lawyers and defensive management practices.
In the case decided yesterday, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White , No. 05-259, forklift operator Sheila White had won $43,500 in damages and medical expenses from a federal jury, which found that her boss responded to her complaints about co-workers’ sexual harassment by transferring her to a more arduous job and suspending her for 37 days without pay.
I’m glad for this ruling, but doesn’t it stand in stark contrast to earlier rulings?
You can’t be retaliated against if you blow the whistle on sexual harrassment in the workplace, but you CAN be retaliated against for blowing the whistle on illegal activities in the NSA or the DoD or the CIA.
Funny, I also immediately thought of the recent whistleblower case. Seems that there’s some incinsistency there, but then, that’s what keeps lawyers in business, I guess.
increasing at epidemic proportion: Reuters Health via MD Consult (subscription required)
I hope katiebird talks about this at her website, eat4today…if you haven’t been there yet, check it out.
</shameless plug>