OPEN THREAD
July 2010 archive
Jul 03 2010
Late Night Karaoke
Jul 03 2010
Random Japan
FUN & GAMES
A 34-year-old salaryman from Osaka and his 24-year-old OL bride became the 10,000th couple to get hitched at Tokyo Disneyland. Mickey and Minnie Mouse were on hand to witness the nuptials.A 41-year-old Sendai man won the annual cherry pit-spitting contest in Higashine, Yamagata Prefecture, with a 15.95-meter effort.
Hanshin Tigers outfielder Tomoaki Kanemoto was recognized by Guinness World Records for playing 1,492 consecutive games without missing an inning.
It was reported that a 41-year-old pet owner in Utsunomiya is applying to have his 25-year-old mixed-breed male dog certified as the world’s oldest living canine.
Festival-goers in Gifu set a new world record when they sent nagashi-somen (“flowing noodles”) down a 2,500m-long bamboo chute.
A Gallup poll revealed that China has replaced Japan as “the most important partner for the United States” for the first time in 25 years.
Jul 03 2010
BP Texas Refinery Had Huge Toxic Release Just Before Gulf Blowout
About 8:30PM PST…
TEXAS CITY, TEXAS — Two weeks before the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the huge, trouble-plagued BP refinery in this coastal town spewed tens of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the skies.
The release from the BP facility here began April 6 and lasted 40 days. It stemmed from the company’s decision to keep producing and selling gasoline while it attempted repairs on a key piece of equipment, according to BP officials and Texas regulators.
BP says it failed to detect the extent of the emissions for several weeks. It discovered the scope of the problem only after analyzing data from a monitor that measures emissions from a flare 300 feet above the ground that was supposed to incinerate the toxic chemicals.
The company now estimates that 538,000 pounds of chemicals escaped from the refinery while it was replacing the equipment. These included 17,000 pounds of benzene, a known carcinogen; 36,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides, which contribute to respiratory problems; and 189,000 pounds of carbon monoxide.
Jul 03 2010
About those New EPA Dispersant Tests
Perhaps you heard about the recent EPA Press Release, regarding latest Toxicity Testing results for Dispersants. Depending on which sound bite you heard, it almost sounded like Corexit got a clean bill of health.
Confused? I was too. And since I had previously written a well-received diary,
Corexit Toxicity Tests not so hot, When Mixed with Oil
by jamess — May 30, 2010
which dove into the Toxicity Data, that the EPA originally cited as credible only 2 months ago, I figured I should try to figure out what was up with the ‘New and Improved’ Dispersant Testing.
What follows is my assessment of what’s happening now, including some relevant links.
I’ll try to keep it brief. (I hate long diaries, lol)
Jul 03 2010
FRIDAY NIGHT DISTRACTIONS (GULF SUPPORT)
As I previously mentioned, I shall post only images pertaining to underwater life.
Helping me choose these images from my archives, I have my good friend Coconut, a parrot I rescued many years ago.
I therefore will include him in the opening.
Plus I promised Ekaterin I would.
I feel the situation in the gulf is being slowly moved back in the pages of the national newspapers & the gulf is not in the collective minds of the people of the country as a whole.
The pain & suffering to the whole nation will be felt for/in years to come, but the immediate stress is surely being felt among the people directly impacted by this man made catastrophe. Those who live there, breath there & wanted to die in peace there.
These people are our brothers & sisters, sons & daughters, & mothers & fathers.
They are us.
Although many of these specimens imaged are not endemic to the gulf, they are nonetheless part of our planet`s heartbeat, & will ultimately be affected as time goes on, no matter how far our planet`s blood, (the oceans) is pumped to.
I post these to impress upon you, the life forms that many will never have the opportunity to ever see in the wilderness of the unseen.
It bothers me that this was allowed to happen, especially when we can see the devastation we`ve caused on the visible surface of the earth, & which only is a 1/4 part of our pale blue dot.
Another thing that comes to my mind right now, is my anger at the responsible parties to this mess, was temporarily forgotten today, while I attended a funeral for a longtime dear friend.
A funeral!! Damn, I needed a funeral to distract my anger.
But my friend Coconut makes it better albeit only momentarily.
COCONUT for Ekaterin
Jul 03 2010
Original v. Cover — #32 of a Series
This week’s selection was the biggest hit by a popular 1960s group, reaching #5 on the US pop charts in October, 1968, remaining on the Billboard Top 40 charts for twelve consecutive weeks. This single would be their only hit to earn the coveted RIAA gold record certification. The song is also featured on the soundtrack for Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film, “Jackie Brown.”
Jul 03 2010
A Bold Notion
I read in the New York Times today about one of the strange twists of drama Tibetan Buddhism is going through since coming out of its millennial seclusion.
The way it goes is that you have a teacher who is a highly realized master, enlightened, and so forth, and because they have these attributes, they have the power to choose to come back for another lifetime, or many lifetimes, in order to help sentient beings.
That is not a notion confined to Tibetan Buddhism or any other flower of Buddhism. Since The Matrix came out, popular culture in the West has dug the reality trip, as well, yah oh yah.
But the way the Tibetans would find out where the realized teacher had been reborn was pretty unique and powerful in its own way.
Miraculously, these adepts would usually have the time to write a letter, to be opened at their death, and the letter would have clues as to where he could be found, reborn in an auspicious coincidence where these clues could provide a good result.
It was a spiritual treasure hunt. The search itself was a lesson with its own traditions of adventure and illumination, and was a very interesting test to be given from a revered teacher who had just left this world physically, or at least that is the phenomenon presented, the appearance.
If done right, this trip to find the teacher, using the teacher’s last written test, is a real teaching no different than the ones which led to the students now having to find their teacher again.
Jul 03 2010
Froomkin: Plight of the Sea Turtle
Go read: (warning, also has picture slideshow, sad, graphic)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Gulf Oil Spill: The Plight of the Sea Turtle by Dan Froomkin at HuffPo 7/2/2010
In the case of the most endangered species, the Kemp’s ridley turtle, hatchlings leaving their nests in Mexico this season are swimming right into the heart of the spill area, where their instinct to seek shelter and prey among floating vegetation is betraying them by leading them straight to thick clots of oil and oil-soaked seaweed.There, instead of finding security and food, they are getting poisoned, trapped and asphyxiated.
And if that weren’t tragic enough, it turns out that shrimp boats hired by BP to corral floating oil with booms and set it on fire have been burning hundreds if not thousands of the young turtles alive.
Help. photo NOAA , of oiled Ridley’s Sea Turtle
Jul 02 2010
We Energized Each Other: Finding Engaged Allies Where We Work
Whatever our situation, we need allies to work successfully for change. We need people to talk with, brainstorm ideas, lift us up when we’re down, and build power by acting together. Many of us involve ourselves in local and national political issues, but what about our workplaces? How do we shift these contexts to help create a more just and sustainable world? Unionization is one key approach. Had the Deepwater Horizon workers been unionized, they could have challenged the dangerous shortcuts that BP was taking without fear of being capriciously fired. Instead, many may well have held back from expressing their concerns for fear of losing their jobs. But whether or not our workplaces are unionized, we need to find engaged allies if we want to make a difference.
Jul 02 2010
News at Noon
| From Reuters |
Special Report: Should BP nuke its leaking well?
By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya, Ben Judah, Alina Selyukh
July 2, 2010
| (Reuters) – His face wracked by age and his voice rasping after decades of chain-smoking coarse tobacco, the former long-time Russian Minister of nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov knows just how to fix BP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
“A nuclear explosion over the leak,” he says nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. “I don’t know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved.” A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea and BP execs say they are not considering an explosion — nuclear or otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die. |
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Faithful spread hope amid oil spill
Jul 02 2010
BP Sued Over Incineration of Sea Turtles
The lawsuit accuses the British energy giant of violating the U.S. Endangered Species Act and terms of its lease with the federal government for the deep-sea drilling rig that exploded on April 20, unleashing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
The suit says rare turtles protected under the Endangered Species Act are being inadvertently burned to death when spill containment crews corral large patches of oil on the surface of the Gulf and set the petroleum ablaze to dispose of it.
Those deaths, the suit says, amount to illegal “takings” of endangered turtles. A check of federal records has found no indication that BP ever applied for special government permits that would allow for “incidental takes” of protected species under such circumstances, according to the lawsuit.
Among the creatures most at risk from the incineration of oil at sea are the endangered Kemp’s ridley turtle, the smallest known sea turtles in the world and among the rarest.
Private boat captains chartered for wildlife rescue missions in the Gulf said in affidavits filed with the lawsuits that many young sea turtles have tended to congregate among oil blobs floating in the water, apparently unable to distinguish between the oil and mats of seaweed that provide natural shelter on the surface of the Gulf.
The turtles are then presumably swept up and unable to escape when shrimp boats contracted for cleanup operations are used to drag fire-resistant booms to encircle the floating oil before it is set ablaze.
From http://af.reuters.com/article/…
The suit was brought by:
the Animal Legal Defense Fund http://www.aldf.org/
the Animal Welfare Institute, http://www.awionline.org/
the Center for Biological Diversity http://www.biologicaldiversity…
Turtle Island Restoration Network. http://www.seaturtles.org/
More info at the above websites.
