Thursday, April 28th, 2011
PAT GAROFALO, - Think Progress
Stephan: Another example of the U.S.' failing infrastructure trend. Climate change is making extreme weather more likely -- there have been 300 tornadoes in April alone -- just as we are allowing our existing infrastructure to seriously degrade. We are left less able to withstand the climate extremes. For want of a nail...
For several days, the midwest and southern U.S. have been pounded by deadly storms, which have brought tornadoes and widespread flooding. Today, a levee in Poplar Bluffs, Missouri, failed in at least four locations, which is ‘expected to send flood waters from the Black River racing into a populated but rural area of Butler County.
No Comments
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
SUZY KHIMM, - Mother Jones
Stephan: What you are seeing here is the creation of the New American Slavery.
Last August, two prisoners escaped from an Arizona penitentiary and fled to New Mexico, where they ambushed a couple, shot them to death, and lit their bodies on fire inside a trailer.
These fugitives didn’t escape from just any facility: They were housed in a privately run prison managed by the Utah-based Management Training Corporation. After the incident, a review by the Arizona Department of Corrections concluded that the prison had poorly trained staff and deficient equipment-including a faulty security system that emitted so many false alarms, the prison staff simply ignored it.
Episodes like this have raised concerns about the privatization of prisons, with critics long arguing that such facilities pose a threat to public safety and don’t save states much-if any-money in the long run. They also argue that such facilities pose a perverse incentive to keep people locked up. Still, the nation could soon see a major private-prison boom, as Republican governors and legislators across the country push privatization proposals to address budget shortfalls.
In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich has proposed selling five prisons to private companies-a move that would bring in an estimated $200 million up front-while Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal plans to sell three state prisons to private […]
No Comments
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
SONYA LUNDER, Senior Scientist - care2
Stephan: We are literally sacrificing our health to corporate profit. Putting our children on the altar. And there is this: If the peasants are a little duller and more tractable certain interests might see that as a plus. Or am I becoming a conspiracy theorist?
In a 2010 meeting between the pesticide industry and the Obama Administration, the pesticide industry revealed its objective that government food testing data (like the USDA pesticide residue data EWG uses to create our Shopper’s Guide to Produce) be spun to emphasize the safety of pesticide residues on conventional produce.
Why?
They’re worried you know too much. See, if people know about the health (and environmental) downsides of pesticides, they might, well, not want to eat them. In their own (self-interested, your-health-is-not-their-first-priority) words in this high-level meeting:
‘[W]e want to see if we can figure out that whatever data is out there be less likely to be misconstrued and misinterpreted. We’re trying to make sure that anyone who reads [USDA’s pesticide residue report] sees — as do all the people in the room — that there is no risk associated with the consumption of fresh produce due to pesticide residues.’
But are pesticides really safe? Should fruits and veggie eaters everywhere breath a sigh of relief because there’s ‘no risk,’ as the pesticide guys want you to believe? Not so fast.
The science does not say ‘no risk’
Industry’s task spinning pesticides got a bit more difficult today, when a group […]
No Comments
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
ERIC W. DOLAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: If I were writing a novel I would hesitate to write this kind of stuff. Yet it is business as usual to the Far Right, which I know sounds partisan but is, in fact, just a factual observation. I have met Robertson several times. His father -- who was the junior senator from Virginia, under the towering presence of Harry Byrd -- and my father were acquainted, and we met several times years ago. I met him a couple of times later living in Virginia Beach. He is a powerful presence, and lives like a prince in a kind of evangelical conservative fantasy. That he said these things is not surprising. He routinely says things your crazy uncle at the wedding would scruple to pronouce. That people listen to him and accept what he says is what I find concerning. No one wants to talk about it, but we need to have a public conversation about how craziness became normal.
Television evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday on ABC Family’s The 700 Club that progressives support legal access to abortion because they want to make straight women equal with lesbians.
While discussing why President Barack Obama supported the funding of Planned Parenthood, Robertson said the far left supported a ‘culture of death’ that was ‘livid about killing babies.’
‘If a woman is a lesbian, what advantage does she have over a married woman? Or what deficiency does she have?’ he asked his co-host, Terry Meeuwsen.
‘Well, she can’t have children,’ Meeuwsen answered.
‘That’s exactly right,’ he said. ‘And so if these married women don’t have children, if they abort their babies, then that kind of puts them on a level playing field. And you say, nobody’s there to express that? Isn’t that shocking? Well, think about it a little bit ladies and gentlemen.’
Robertson is a cornerstone figure in America’s Christian right movement. He is the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Christian Coalition, International Family Entertainment Inc., Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, and Regent University.
In recent years Robertson has come under fire for calling for the assassinations of foreign leaders, blaming gay people for Hurricane Katrina and claiming a ‘pact with the […]
No Comments
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
DAVID L. CHANDLER, - MIT News
Stephan: Imagine what would be happening if we were putting the money we are pouring into four wars into alternative energy imagine what could be happening. This is what is happening on the crumbs allotted.
Please notice the report's observation that, 'The work was funded by the Italian company Eni, through the MIT Energy Initiative's Solar Futures Program.'
Thanks for Damien Broderick, PhD.
Researchers at MIT have found a way to make significant improvements to the power-conversion efficiency of solar cells by enlisting the services of tiny viruses to perform detailed assembly work at the microscopic level.
In a solar cell, sunlight hits a light-harvesting material, causing it to release electrons that can be harnessed to produce an electric current. The new MIT research, published online this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, is based on findings that carbon nanotubes - microscopic, hollow cylinders of pure carbon - can enhance the efficiency of electron collection from a solar cell’s surface.
Previous attempts to use the nanotubes, however, had been thwarted by two problems. First, the making of carbon nanotubes generally produces a mix of two types, some of which act as semiconductors (sometimes allowing an electric current to flow, sometimes not) or metals (which act like wires, allowing current to flow easily). The new research, for the first time, showed that the effects of these two types tend to be different, because the semiconducting nanotubes can enhance the performance of solar cells, but the metallic ones have the opposite effect. Second, nanotubes tend to clump together, which reduces their effectiveness.
And that’s where viruses come to […]
No Comments
