Because I’ve gotta dump this news somewhere!
About The Author
Knoxville Progressive
47, an environmental scientist, Italian-American, married, 2 sons, originally a Catholic from Philly, now a Taoist ecophilosopher in the South due to job transfer. Enjoy jazz, hockey, good food and hikes in the woods.
Editorial comment: After yesterday’s rant edition, I made double-sure I took my blood pressure medicine today, so today we have the “Go placidly amid the noise and haste” edition, LOL:
Don’t you just love it!: Bush Man Resigns NASA Post in Scandal– A 24-year-old controversial presidential appointee at NASA has resigned his post amid accusations he lied on his resume about graduating from college. George Deutsch, who told NASA public affairs workers to limit reporters’ access to a top climate scientist and ordered the word “theory” be inserted on every mention of the Big Bang, resigned Tuesday, The New York Times reported Wednesday. A reprint of the delightful NYT editorial, not behind a wall, is here This is almost tooo rich! 😀
No surprise here, move along, move along: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives are increasingly unhappy with the plan to shut down by 2021 all 17 nuclear plants still active in Germany. The previous coalition government of Social Democrats, or SPD, and Greens struck a deal with the German energy industry in 1999 to gradually phase out the production of nuclear energy.
BBC Radio 4 reports to surprised Europeans that at least some Americans “get it”: In the boardrooms of great corporations, among city mayors and state governors, even among evangelical Christians – the most loyal supporters of President George W Bush – climate change and energy conservation are on the agenda. The influential journal Business Week, recently stated: “Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is no longer just ‘a green thing’. It makes business and foreign policy sense as well.” Meanwhile, the House of Commons science and technology committee says in a report that all new coal power stations should be suitable for carbon capture. The costs are likely to be similar to using renewable energy, it says.
East Africa’s Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest freshwater lake, is being “secretly drained” to keep the lights on in Uganda, in violation of a treaty, according to the UN. The lake is at an 80-year low, and has lost 3% of its volume since 2003.
A recent decrease in Rocky Mountain snow pack has slowed the release of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gases from forest soils into the atmosphere during the dead of winter. The lack of snow has decreased the winter insulation of the soils, cooling them and slowing the metabolism of microbes that release large amounts of CO2. While winter CO2 emissions from forest soils have slowed, the lack of winter moisture is stressing the trees during the spring and summer and inhibiting the much larger amount of CO2 they absorb during their growing season.
The revolving door is blue as well as red: In yet another example of officials passing through a revolving door between government and special interests, Renee Cipriano, former director of the Illinois EPA, is one of two former top aides to Gov. Blagojevich (D) hired as utility lobbyists. How is this a science story? It involves the regulation (or not) of mercury-emitting coal-fired power plants… [But Just 4 Today, I’m not going to go and get all spun up again…]
The Perchlorate Surprise: It’s been assumed that when perchlorate is found, it’s a result of human contamination; that this anion is not naturally occurring. Surprise! It’s not that simple. Of course, arsenic is natural too, and it’s not that good for you either…
News from the “Apparently I’m not the first person to think of this idea” department: Use the Endangered Species Act to force US action on climate change: No wonder the Republicans especially want to gut it now…
Pushing back! Part 1: Questioning whether the Bush administration is manipulating science for political ends [Ya think?], Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., called Tuesday for an inspector general’s investigation into why federal funding was suspended for a study that goes against White House-supported legislation to speed up logging after wildfires in national forests.
Pushing back! Part 2: Ignoring recent comments by Dr. Dobson and other religious leaders tied to the administration that global warming is not a problem Christians should combat, a group of 86 evangelical Christian leaders Wednesday backed legislation opposed by the White House to cut carbon dioxide emissions, kicking off a campaign to mobilize religious conservatives to combat global warming. The group which included mega-church pastors, Christian college presidents, religious broadcasters and writers, also unveiled a full-page advertisement to run in Thursday’s New York Times and a television ad it hopes to screen nationally.
Yes, I’m feeling quite a bit better today! 😀
Thank you!!! 🙂
There’s some analysis today on this weeks’ BIG Democratic win in Southwest Missouri from the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Check yesterday’s news bucket for the main story. Basically, this was a special election to fill the unexpired portion of the term of a state legislator. A democratic candidate named Charles Dake managed to pull off a completely unexpected win in the reddest part of Red State Missouri.
Folks this is the heart of the red part of the state. John Kerry got only 28% of the vote here. Democrat is a BAD word.
How did he do it? Well, he certainly didn’t run as a liberal. In fact the losing (I love writing that) GOP has said he won because he ran as a conservative republican in democratic clothes who was actually endorsed by the Republican sheriff of the county. And let’s face it — we are not going to elect liberal democrats in John Ashcroft’s homeland. We have to take what we can get.
But this is a win — because this guy won by talking about values and programs that are traditionally associated with Democrats and he didn’t scare anybody away — he attracted them.
And he clearly didn’t do this because the state Democratic party told him to, or helped him formulate his message. Because they had written off this district and directed their resources elsewhere (which was actually pretty logical).
There’s a lesson in this somewhere. Don’t be afraid to talk about the things that matter even if they are traditional Democratic talking points.
This was a special election for an unexpired term — so the Republicans have already trained their guns on getting this seat back. So I hope this guy does a good job.
. . . although he did avoid attacking Blunt by name.
Therein lies an important lesson: promoting positive solutions over negative slams. Far too many candidates and pundits begin with “the Republicans. . . “.
That’s true. And then the people in the audience who are Republican tune them out. It’s a natural reaction when you think that the speaker is going to attack a group you belong to — because the speaker is thereby attacking you.
The people in this state know who is to blame for the horrendous budget that has been passed and who is making the choices. They don’t need a candidate to tell them something they already know. They don’t need to feel attacked because they may have voted for those people. They want to hear that a candidate is focusing on the problem. I’m not sure its even that necessary to have a solution to the problem if the candidate creates a bond with the audience by acknowledging that the problem exists and its going to be hard to solve.
Left out first rule: Ask, don’t tell. Listen to constitutents, and as you note be truthful. Not rocket science.
Pam over at Pandagon blogs about the disturbing fact that the American Family Association put an Action Alert up at its website recently saying that the Senate is getting ready to take another vote on the federal anti-gay constitutional amendment in early March, but that no one else had heard about that date yet. Maybe it’s just AFA bullshit, but as Pam so wittily opines:
If you want to take immediate action, HRC quickly got a form email up in response. Like Pam says, as the vote gets nearer, calling your Senators to tell them that bigotry is anti-American is also always good, I know half of you have them on speed-dial, lol.
Poor Arlen Specter. “Bush faces a revolt of Republicans over NSA spying” (FT). Specter cleverly thought he’d ask the administration to seek a ruling from the FSIA secret court on whether what he did was legal. Posted in my comments last night as reported by (FT) Financial Times article. Talk about abdicating. Ya think?
Imho, Specter’s action was a diversion to shutdown the hearings and avoid the I word. This AM Specter got his answer via WAPO. No need Arlen. Here it is.
go read the whole piece
“Secret Court’s Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020802511.html
the money quote:
I see a constitutional crisis and impeachment hearings coming to our Republican congressional theater. Can we get some advance tickets?
The 18th Dynasty tomb included five mummies in intact sarcophagi with colored funerary masks along with more than 20 large storage jars, sealed with pharaonic seals, Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement.
[snip]
A University of Memphis team of archaeologists led by Otto Schaden found the tomb some 13 feet below the ground, buried under rubble and stones 16 feet away from Tut’s tomb.
Inside the rectangular tomb, the five wooden sarcophagi were surrounded by the jars, which appeared placed haphazardly, suggesting the burial was completed quickly, according to Hawass.
I adore Zahi Hawass, and admire his efforts to return ill gotten antiquities to Egypt. Yeah, he’s a little dramatic, but I love how his eyes shine when he talks about the people who are his ancestors.
Did I miss the link?
New Tomb Found in Valley of Kings
oops.
Thanks. This is great.
For those geeks like myself who are fascinated by the Valley of the Kings, here’s a great website that maps all the tombs. It will clearly need to be updated.
The last paragraph of this article mentions Kent Weeks:
Kent Weeks is involved with the Theban Mapping Project and he wrote a fascinating book about his work “KV 5: A Preliminary Report on the Excavation of the Tomb of the Sons of Rameses II in the Valley of the Kings”.
A few years ago I found a website where you could “walk through” KV-5 in 3-D. It was great, even though my dial up connection is sucky. I no longer have the address, but it’w worth searching for.
Fascinating stuff. My heart aches for the ancient sites of Iraq.
I remember that website and it was great.
At the end of last year the Saint Louis Art Museum had a special exhibition called the Treasures of the Royal Tombs of Ur. I had no idea until I went that “Ur” was in Iraq. It was an amazing exhibition.
I bet it was a site that was sacked. Although I’m not really in favor of everthing ancient ending up in the British Museum, I am happy that these treasures were safe and that I was able to see them.
Thanks! If I can locate the other link I mentioned, I’ll post it.