A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Two US scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for their pioneering work in genetics. The work of Dr Andrew Fire and Dr Craig Mello could lead to new treatments for a range of illnesses, including viral infections and cancer. They discovered a phenomenon called RNA interference, which regulates the expression of genes.
Parasitic plants do not haphazardly flail about looking for a host but sense volatile chemicals produced by other plants and identify potential hosts by their emissions.
Ivory Coast chemical waste disaster update: So far eight people have died, dozens have been hospitalized and 85,000 have sought medical attention in the Ivory Coast, due to illegally dumped petrochemical wastes and caustic soda.
“Dark Matter” may be invisible, but it still leaves footprints: By studying the distribution of stars in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy that orbits our Milky Way, astronomers have found that dark matter obeys the same gravitational laws as regular matter, to within an error of 10 percent. If dark matter experienced different forces from normal matter, it would change the relative amounts of stars kicked out ahead and behind the dwarf galaxy as a result of its interaction with our own galaxy.
In the spring of 1972, the dumping of a million or so tires off the Florida coast to form an artificial reef looked like ecological enlightenment. Today, not so much…
From the link about dumping tires to form a reef:
I’m having a hard time imagining why they were able to convince people it was ever a good idea.
Oh, it was a big fat hairy deal back then. Even here in Pa the State jumped on the tire bandwagon and had a local program where they lashed tires together in a sort of pyramid and then dragged them out on the ice of state fishing lakes. The following spring the tires sank and became ‘structure’ for fish populations. Actually, I don’t know if these structures are causing problems or if they are indeed functioning structure. Old tires are now used for everything from paving to ground up surfacing for horse arenas.
But tires strewn on the ocean floor willy nilly? I also wonder how in hell they thought that one through.
tires strewn on the ocean floor willy nilly
They were lashed together at the time, but broke loose and scattered.
Artificial reefs had been made (intentionally or accidentally) for years on everything from shipwrecks to old oil drilling platforms to blocks of concrete, and I seem to vaguely remember old cars being sunk as well. So it wasn’t a way-out idea to try, as Nag said. Tire disposal and fires at tire dumps were BIG problems at the time, as the various ways of recycling tires had not yet been developed.
The ’70’s were when Jacques Cousteau was actively filming reefs, and the world was getting a good look at them for the first time. Creating artificial reefs was seen as a very progressive recycling kinda idea.
A case can be made for keeping – or demolishing in place – abandoned oil platforms in the Gulf for this reason, although there is debate as to whether it does more harm or good overall.
Link
WASHINGTON – Congress has eased the worries of CIA interrogators and senior administration officials by granting them immunity from U.S. criminal prosecutions for all but “grave” abuses of terrorism detainees.
But legislation passed Friday may not leave them entirely in the clear.
International legal experts said the measure is meaningless overseas, where international courts theoretically could still prosecute alleged violations of anti-torture treaties.
The same experts concede such prosecutions are highly unlikely – but not because there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. Instead, they predict American economic, military and political power will deter any country from allowing the cases to proceed.
“The obstacles to these prosecutions are not legal, they’re political,” said William Schabas, director of the Irish Center for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland in Galway. “There’s certainly an arguable case that international crimes have been committed by American officials, and probably with the blessing of civilian political leaders going right to the top.”
So, immune only if one stays within the borders of the US, and (ahem) only if the law stays on the books. The way things are going, instead of being hesitant to arrest, countries will line up to be the first to prosecute the Bush crime family. This one made me smile.
Indeed, there’s a Pinochet moment of fame in their future.
But read this Latimes Op-Ed:The White House Warden
Headed stright to the Supremes.
in Arizona: via Kaiser Foundation
Left to their own devices, the Republicans would deal with this by cutting all funding for medical services and pumping it into programs and faith based quackery about abstinence.
and sending them to Jesus Camp.
I was actually restraining myself from being snarky about the supposed need for parental notification laws, making it a crime to assist a minor in getting an abortion, and of course, the need to keep Plan B away from teens, because, you know, they obviously make the best parents.
Did you notice how their figures don’t even include the 82 billion for the actual cost of teen labor/delivery, because the state usually absorbs that?
I haven’t noticed if anyone has written about this.
Anybody noticed this?
A holiday tan leads to arrest of top British architect aboard American Airlines. No kidding.
US rice kept out of Britain because of GM contamination. American industry collapses in wake of crisis as countries have imposed bans and US rice farmers file lawsuits against Bayer
Time was it was just meat that was routinely poisoned and contaminated.
But agribusiness is thoughtful, and has had vegetarians in mind for a while. Finally the breakthrough–GE rice!
Add that to spinach with rogue e. coli, and we see that vegetarians are now getting the same respect as their meat-eating cousins!
Meanwhile, it looks like I am switching to potatos. (Forget corn–maize–ancient history!) And soon giving up on supermarkets altogether. Comunity Supported Agriculture, my friend. It’s not like there is any more a choice.
A lot of folks in this country don’t realize that we’ve been growing herbicide resistant soybeans for some time now in the U.S. Probably because few soybeans are consumed directly – unlike rice – the engineering of soybeans to be resistant to the herbicide atrazine, has happened “below the radar”.
We lived on a farm one year in the early 1990’s. The surrounding fields mostly grew lush-looking soybeans, but hardly a speck of any other vegetation. The fields were treated with atrazine, which killed everything but not those special soybeans. Scary. Made me much less happy about eating any meat substitutes from the USA.
Good point about the soybeans–(gave up tofu a while back) and of course we know how atrazine causes deformations in frogs (NOT women’s birth cotrol pills, despite what the media hints).
But duck and dodge how we like, they are approaching, or have already reached, the point where absolutely everything in the supermarket is contaminated or poisoned. You cannot substitute out.
Which means you have to get out–no more supermarkets! Not so easy in fact; we have let our food sitution go totally to hell. But not impossible–not yet–merely difficult.
Step by step one must become local and organic. Nothing else will work.
We lived on a farm one year in the early 1990’s.
Thank you for this. Who says people can’t keep secrets? An entire industry–tens of thousands of people–have been keeping these secrets!
Hmmmm, something seems different this week. I think the train is finally starting to derail. They may make an optimist of me yet!
As Hastert scrambles, Where is Bill Frist? He is visiting giving his blessings to Omar.
Frist: Taliban Should Be in Afghan Gov’t
H/T: Huffpost
Worse than we thought: The paradoxes of the War on Terror underlies why NATO cannot win. A huge crisis is shaping up in Afghanistan, so Rummy went a calling
This bizarre diplomatic exchange between the most awesome military power on Earth and the newest member of the “international community” brings home the paradoxes of the “war on terror”
We’re in deep doo at home, in the ME. All Bush has to offer us is “fear”
Two thoughts: