No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
– Judge Gideon J. Tucker
– Judge Gideon J. Tucker
I guess that means it’s a good thing the 109th Congress is only planning to work 4 more days this year…
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You can check out the ‘Christmas Story House’: AP/Yahoo
Bad news.
Sudan president rejects UN troops
That is bad news, but I was sort of expecting it. And how about that 9000 dead instead of 200,000? Is he taking cues from the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraqi death toll?
Is he taking cues from the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraqi death toll?
Nah, Bush takes his cues from every despot and authoritarian government ever to lie to the public.
The rise in humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide has accelerated sharply, according to a new analysis. The Global Carbon Project says that emissions were rising by less than 1% annually up to the year 2000, but are now rising at 2.5% per year. It says the acceleration comes mainly from a rise in charcoal consumption in poor countries and a lack of new energy efficiency gains in industrial nations.
We may owe our green Earth to a big freeze that covered the entire planet in thick sheets of ice 2.3 billion years ago, researchers say. As this “snowball” Earth thawed, the new theory goes, it released strong oxidants into the oceans and atmosphere for the first time, setting off the chain of events that led to oxygen-tolerant marine organisms and photosynthesis as we know it today.
China has kicked off construction of a giant dam on the upper parts of the Yangtze as part of a plan that will eventually rival the Three Gorges project in size, state media reported Monday. The 28.9-billion-yuan (3.7-billion-dollars) Xiangjiaba project, in southwest China’s Sichuan province, will have six million kilowatt of installed capacity when completed in nine years, the China Daily said. When combined with the 12.6 million kilowatt Xiluodu project, started further downstream 11 months ago, it will be the equivalent of the 18.2 million kilowatt Three Gorges Project, the largest hydro project in China.
With global temperatures generally on the rise, crocodiles may have a harder time finding mates. For crocodiles, gender is not determined genetically, but rather by embryo temperature during incubation.
Drought-stricken Australia should heed a warning from a new study that shows a series of massive droughts killed giant kangaroos and other “megafauna” in south-east Queensland 40,000 years ago, according to researchers. Scientists believe understanding how the prehistoric big dry caused extinctions could help predict how and if animals battling current climate change will survive.
Logging in tropical rainforests creates more insidious and longer-lasting environmental devastation than previously thought, researchers say. When loggers and ranchers clear-cut parts of the jungle, the forest fragments that remain change far more quickly than ecologists expected, according to a famous, long-running study of forest fragmentation in central Brazil. These changes cause the forest to become more unstable and less mature than undisturbed forest, even though the total number of tree species present on each plot remains roughly the same. Moreover, the new trees tend to be smaller and have less dense wood than the trees they replace, so that the change represents a net loss of carbon storage – an ominous trend for the forest’s ability to buffer against global warming.
The US share of scientific papers published worldwide in peer-reviewed science and engineering journals is declining. The number of published US scientific papers has been eroding since the 1990s, despite big increases in research and development funding and in the number of researchers. Above-average growth in publications in China and selected Asian and Western European nations was reported, with the top 6 producers of scientific papers being Sweden, Switzerland, Israel, Finland, Denmark and Netherlands. Although the US remains the largest single national source of research papers by a large margin, a NSF ranking of 157 nations puts the US 12th in terms of scientific papers published per million population.
Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins, US researchers reported on Monday. This might mean such whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once, or has gone unused by most species of animals, the researchers said. The finding may help explain some of the behaviors seen in whales, such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage, the researchers report in The Anatomical Record.
Nissan Motor Co. plans to develop and start selling subcompact electric cars powered by self-developed lithium-ion batteries in about three years, the Nihon Keizai (Nikkei) business daily reported on Sunday.
“Although the US remains the largest single national source of research papers by a large margin, a NSF ranking of 157 nations puts the US 12th in terms of scientific papers published per million population.“
Boy, that just sickens me. I wonder if the US will ever recover from our ‘faith based voodoo science’ that has crept into every corner of our government.
I’d like to see the quality index. As a scientist, I can tell you that some of those countries just turn out junk papers left and right.
On the other hand, I was just reading today that Nordic nations put more into R&D (especially Sweden) than any other countries in the world.
I certainly don’t doubt your assessment of quality at all. My knowledge of the quality of scientific papers produced here or elsewhere is just about nil. It just deeply saddens me to see the republican attitude towards science. If republicans want to loudly wallow in their own ignorance that’s fine, but that attitude has seeped into all corners of government. When science comes in direct conflict with policy, especially pro-corporate policy, science always looses. I hope that is one attitude that we can turn around.
I agree.
A teensy bit of good newsfrom John at Americablog:
Big loss today for theocrats and politicians like George and Jeb Bush who are trying to undermine public education in America. The Supreme Court refused to hear their case against a Maine law that prevents public funding for religious schools:
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up the issue of school choice in Maine, where a state law bars the use of public funds to send students to private religious schools.
The case could have provided a platform for a court battle over school choice and the separation of church and state.
Private non-public schools are notorious for not accepting students with behavioral issues, learning problems or any kinds of disabilities. Many if not most offer little or no help for disabilities of any kind. Public schools are required to accept and educate all students, and should get all the money. Education is underfunded as it is.
Link
The Bush administration pleased farmers and frustrated environmentalists Monday by declaring that pesticides can be sprayed into and over waters without first obtaining special permits.
The heavily lobbied decision is supposed to settle a dispute that’s roiled federal courts and divided state regulators. It’s popular among those who spray pesticides for a living, but it worries those who fear poisoned waters will result.
I guess the Bushies, excited at the prospect of loosing all fish in the oceans in a few short decades, are anxious to kill all freshwater species as well. Except, of course, the special bass pond Bush will have built with a multimillion dollar plastic bubble over it. OK, I made up that part about the bass pond.
No one can look up the results of pesticides in the water because BUSH CLOSED ALL THE EPA RESEARCH LIBRARIES. Yes, I was yelling. sorry.
Honeybees are enlisted in the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project.
Move over doggie: Bees trained to sniff bombs
PHOENIX (Reuters) – Scientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war.
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said they trained honeybees to stick out their proboscis — the tube they use to feed on nectar — when they smell explosives in anything from cars and roadside bombs to belts similar to those used by suicide bombers.[.]
These guys should stick to rocket science…since, according to the National Honey Board, the average life span of a worker bee is 28 – 35 days.
Assuming it takes some time to train them, that doesn’t leave much of a productive life span from a cost/benefit perspective. Built-in job security I guess.
Great way to spend those HSA funds, eh.
Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has made up her mind – passes over Hastings for Intel Chair.
Gave Hastings the disappointing news but has not announced her choice.
So, how did Hastings take it? In his statement, Hastings closed by saying: “Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet.”
Good decision Madam Speaker.