How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it…
— Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it…
— Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Are we there yet? Initial images from the mars rover Opportunity’s first overlook after a 21-month journey to “Victoria Crater” show rugged walls with layers of exposed rock and a floor blanketed with dunes. The far wall is approximately one-half mile from the rover.
Malaysia will use satellite technology to fight illegal logging and forest fires nationwide in a bid to protect the country’s dwindling timber resources, a report said Wednesday. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said the satellite-based data gathering and monitoring system — previously used in northeastern Kelantan state — would provide authorities with a real-time picture of the country’s forests.
An experiment to reconstruct the deadly 1918 flu virus has given a new insight into how the infection took hold. Scientists discovered a severe immune system reaction was triggered when mice were infected with the recreated virus. The US team believes the extreme immune response could have provoked the body to begin killing its own cells, making the flu even deadlier. The study may aid the hunt for new treatments of pandemic flu. The 1918 pandemic took about 50 million lives. The devastating infection, which is thought to have originated in birds, left young adults worst hit. [Full disclosure: My great-grandfather, a recent immigrant to Philadelphia from Gaeta, Italy, died in the 1918 flu pandemic, along with a baby daughter. – K.P.]
The dead zone of oxygen-depleted water that has been killing crabs and fish along the central Oregon Coast is showing the first signs of breaking up, but will likely remain in place until fall storms move in next month.
“Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got `til it’s gone…” Forests in northern nations such as Russia and Canada are worth US$250 billion a year because of services they provide by purifying water or soaking up greenhouse gases, a researcher said on Tuesday. Mark Anielski, an ecological economist based in Edmonton, Canada, urged governments to follow suit and place value on natural services rather than go on treating them as free. “We only realize what nature is worth when it’s gone,” he told Reuters of a study he presented to a forestry congress in Canada about the value of forests in Alaska, Russia, the Nordic nations and Canada. [My apologies to Dr. Anielski for over-generalizing in my aspersions on economists the other day. He, obviously, “gets it.”]
A team of international scientists has discovered why levels of methane, the second most important greenhouse gas, have stabilized in recent years but they warned on Wednesday that the trend may not last. Reduced and more efficient use of natural gas in the Northern Hemisphere in the 1990s had helped methane levels in the atmosphere to stabilize. Rising emissions from fossil fuel use in north Asia since 1999 have threatened to push up atmospheric levels but this has been balanced by lower emissions from wetlands as they dry up. “Had it not been for this reduction in methane emissions from wetlands, atmospheric levels of methane would most likely have continued rising,” said Dr Paul Steele of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia and an author of the study published in the journal Nature. If the drying trend of wetlands is reversed and emissions from them return to normal levels, atmospheric methane will increase again and could worsen global warming, according to the authors.
On the lighter side, the world’s largest periodic table of the elements made its debut in Chicago on Sept. 22 at the kickoff event for a two-week citywide science education and awareness program. The giant chart, which stands eight stories tall and some 200 feet wide, consists of 111 posters, each displaying the symbol and atomic number of a chemical element and occupying most of the windows of one face of the Richard J. Daley Center, a prominent Chicago building.
And finally, since we haven’t had one of these stories in a few weeks… An Alaskan volcano believed by scientists to be dormant for the last 10,000 years has rumbled to life with a burst of ash, gas and steam, signs that an eruption could occur in the coming days or weeks, a joint state and federal agency said on Tuesday. The volcano is 80 miles northwest of Kodiak.
Judge Rejects Ashcroft’s Immunity Claim
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft could be called to testify in a lawsuit that claims a student was wrongly imprisoned in a computer terrorism case, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge rejected Ashcroft’s argument to toss out the lawsuit because he was entitled to absolute immunity….”
BBC Newsnight program reports: A bleak picture. Utterly useless. Military official says secret deal to withdraw troops from Iraq was overruled. The MoD report is not a good read for Pakistan’s ISI…it supports Al Qaeda!
What was on the menu at the Karzai – Musharraff – Bush dinner?
Plastic knives and forks for
The match of hate: The build-up for the trilateral meeting has been so tense that Madison Square Garden may have been a better venue for the match-up than the White House.
At week 6, a Zogby Poll: In red and blue. How does the guy continue at an over 40% rating. Says a lot about literacy in America.
Overall, voters favor Dems. BUT,Who will history judge most positively. Just a Comma. Go read the answer: Not.
Link
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum no longer claims a contentious property tax exemption on a home in suburban Pittsburgh, according to Allegheny County real estate records.
The change came before Allegheny County Council was scheduled to vote on legislation calling for strengthened oversight — and in some cases prosecution — of property owners who improperly claim a “homestead exemption.” [snip]
In a letter dated Sept. 18, Mr. Santorum requested that county officials remove his name from the tax-exemption list. Mr. Santorum wrote that his Penn Hills home is his primary residence and that he qualifies for the exemption, but that he was voluntarily giving it up.
Of course, Rick Santorum and his family live in Virginia. Pa voters are on to him, so he has no choice but to drop his claim to a tax exemption. He’s going down so hard this November!!!
Last night I found a link to an article that claimed that Condi Rice gave the OK to Christie Todd Whitman (head of EPA back then) to announce that air quality at ground zero and lower Manhattan after 9/11 was OK. This morning, when I went to post the link here, it has disappeared from NY Post’s archives. News searches on google and yahoo yield nothing.
Very Interesting, no? If I do find anything, I’ll be sure to update here.
Link
September 24, 2006 — Condoleezza Rice’s office gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was “safe to breathe,” internal documents show.
Now Secretary of State, Rice was then head of the National Security Council – “the final decision maker” on EPA statements about lower Manhattan air quality, the documents say.
Scientists and lawmakers have since deemed the air rife with toxins.
Early tests known to the EPA at the time had already found high asbestos levels, the notes say. But those results were omitted from the press releases because of “competing priorities” such as national security and “opening Wall Street,” according to a report by the EPA’s inspector general.
This is big. Condi Rice is directly responsible for sickness and disease of hundreds, if not thousands of ground zero workers and residents/workers in lower Manhattan. I wonder if her moron boss will rush to push legislation that exonerates her? I kind of doubt that. You know, they can’t cover all their tracks. We can only hope that in the years to come, one by one these criminals will be brought to justice.
Smells like a class action to me. But no, george will pardon her – if he gets time before his departure.
He better get working on that ‘Absolute Immunity’ declaration, the list is huge.