February 2012 archive

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

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Please join us tonight for the Monday Daytona 500 Open Thread and Oscar Round Up.  Write more and often.

This is an Open Thread

The Stars Hollow Gazette

On This Day In History February 28

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The Stars Hollow Gazette

Pennies on the Dollar

Supreme Court won’t order emergency measures to prevent Asian carp from reaching Great Lakes

By Associated Press

Updated: Monday, February 27, 3:58 PM

Michigan and four neighboring states wanted the Army Corps of Engineers to install nets in two Chicago-area rivers and to expedite a study of permanent steps to head off an invasion by bighead and silver carp, which have advanced up the Mississippi River and its tributaries to within 55 miles of Lake Michigan. Scientists say if the large, prolific carp spread widely in the lakes, they could starve out native species and devastate the $7 billion fishing industry.



They advocate placing barriers in Chicago-area waterways to cut a link between the watersheds created more than a century ago when engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River to flush the city’s sewage toward the Mississippi. A recent report by groups representing Great Lakes states and cities proposed three methods for doing so, with estimated costs as high as $9.5 billion.



The Obama administration has devoted more than $100 million to shielding the lakes from the carp and recently announced plans to spend $51.5 million this year. Plans include operating and monitoring an electric fish barrier near Chicago, stepped-up commercial fishing in the area, and field testing new strategies such as high-pressure underwater guns and pheromones that could lure carp into lethal traps.

Now about that Title Fraud “Settlement”.

The Free Speech Zone Is Back

In an age where it’s needed most…

http://www.thefsz.com/

Cartnoon

A Bear For Punishment

I forget.

Which is Pravda and which is Isvestia again?

Obama’s Deficit Dilemma

Obama’s unacknowledged debt to Bowles/Simpson plan

By JACKIE CALMES, The New York Times

Published: February 27, 2012

Mr. Obama has come to adopt most of the major tenets supported by a majority of the commission’s members, though his proposals do not go as far. He has called for cutting deficits more than $4 trillion over 10 years by shaving all spending, including for the military, Medicare and Social Security; overhauling the tax code to raise revenues and lower rates; and writing rules to lock in savings.



Three weeks ago Mr. Obama met with Erskine B. Bowles, a former chief of staff to Mr. Clinton who was a co-chairman of the commission along with former Senator Alan K. Simpson, a Republican. In speeches nationwide, the chairmen have expressed disappointment that the president – and Republicans – did not take up their plan.



“The president wanted to make sure that we understood that he had had a strategy to take the framework of what we’d negotiated” on the commission, Mr. Bowles said, “and to use that as a vehicle to negotiate a deal.”

Black Is Back

Back in Black – Whitney Houston’s Death

Lewis Black examines the media’s handling of Whitney Houston’s death, from Nancy Grace’s murder allegation to Eric Bolling’s cautionary tale.

Mars, Bitches

Researcher: Obama Budget ‘End Of The Mars Program’

CBS DC

February 27, 2012 7:57 AM

If Obama’s budget sails through as outlined, “in essence, it is the end of the Mars program,” said Phil Christensen, a Mars researcher at Arizona State University. It’s like “we’ve just flown Apollo 10 and now we’re going to cancel the Apollo program when we’re one step from landing,” he said.



(R)obotic Mars missions slated for 2016 and 2018 were cut from the president’s new budget proposal, even though NASA has spent $64 million on early designs with the European Space Agency for the two missions. The most ambitious Mars flight yet and one the National Academy of Sciences endorsed as the No. 1 solar system priority – a plan to grab Martian rocks and soil and bring them back to Earth – is on indefinite hold.



If NASA ignores Mars for a decade, it runs the risk of a brain drain, said Ed Weiler, who resigned last year as NASA’s sciences chief because of budget battles over Mars.

“Landing on Mars is a uniquely American talent and there aren’t too many things that are uniquely American,” Weiler said.

On This Day In History February 27

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

February 27 is the 58th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 307 days remaining until the end of the year (308 in leap years).

On this day in 1827, New Orleanians take to the streets for Mardi Gras with groups of masked and costumed students dance through the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana, marking the beginning of the city’s famous Mardi Gras celebrations.

The celebration of Carnival–or the weeks between Twelfth Night on January 6 and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian period of Lent–spread from Rome across Europe and later to the Americas. Nowhere in the United States is Carnival celebrated as grandly as in New Orleans, famous for its over-the-top parades and parties for Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday), the last day of the Carnival season.

History

The celebration of Mardi Gras was brought to Louisiana by early French settlers. The first record of the holiday being celebrated in Louisiana was at the mouth of the Mississippi River in what is now lower Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, on March 3, 1699. Iberville, Bienville, and their men celebrated it as part of an observance of Catholic practice.

The starting date of festivities in New Orleans is unknown. An account from 1743 notes that the custom of Carnival balls was already established. Processions and wearing of masks in the streets on Mardi Gras took place. They were sometimes prohibited by law, and were quickly renewed whenever such restrictions were lifted or enforcement waned. In 1833 Bernard Xavier de Marigny de Mandeville, a rich plantation owner of French descent, raised money to fund an official Mardi Gras celebration.

James R. Creecy in his book Scenes in the South, and Other Miscellaneous Pieces describes New Orleans Mardi Gras in 1835:

   Shrove Tuesday is a day to be remembered by strangers in New Orleans, for that is the day for fun, frolic, and comic masquerading. All of the mischief of the city is alive and wide awake in active operation. Men and boys, women and girls, bond and free, white and black, yellow and brown, exert themselves to invent and appear in grotesque, quizzical, diabolic, horrible, strange masks, and disguises. Human bodies are seen with heads of beasts and birds, beasts and birds with human heads; demi-beasts, demi-fishes, snakes’ heads and bodies with arms of apes; man-bats from the moon; mermaids; satyrs, beggars, monks, and robbers parade and march on foot, on horseback, in wagons, carts, coaches, cars, etc., in rich confusion, up and down the streets, wildly shouting, singing, laughing, drumming, fiddling, fifeing, and all throwing flour broadcast as they wend their reckless way.

On Mardi Gras of 1857, the Mystick Krewe of Comus held its first parade. Comus is the oldest continuously active Mardi Gras organization. It started a number of continuing traditions. It is considered the first Carnival krewe in the modern sense. According to one historian, “Comus was aggressively English in its celebration of what New Orleans had always considered a French festival. It is hard to think of a clearer assertion than this parade that the lead in the holiday had passed from French-speakers to Anglo-Americans. . . .To a certain extent, Americans ‘Americanized’ New Orleans and its Creoles. To a certain extent, New Orleans ‘creolized’ the Americans. Thus the wonder of Anglo-Americans boasting of how their business prowess helped them construct a more elaborate version of the old Creole Carnival. The lead in organized Carnival passed from Creole to American just as political and economic power did over the course of the nineteenth century. The spectacle of Creole-American Carnival, with Americans using Carnival forms to compete with Creoles in the ballrooms and on the streets, represents the creation of a New Orleans culture neither entirely Creole nor entirely American.”

In 1875 Louisiana declared Mardi Gras a legal state holiday. War, economic, political, and weather conditions sometimes led to cancellation of some or all major parades, especially during the American Civil War, World War I and World War II, but the city has always celebrated Carnival.

Feedforward Applause

When I lived and worked on Parnassus, and “no, I’m not making that up,” I once received an e-mail from Fred Toates, asking for a re-print.  It was one of the proudest days of my life.  I was weaned on Toates’s feedforward philosophical admonitions.  It was more-than touching.  I was elated and gobsmacked.  Few, or none will know what I’m talking about.  Then I got an e-mail from a colleague who basically said, “nice job on that commentary about Harlow.” I was almost shaken with gratitude.  I didn’t know anyone read this stuff.  I didn’t know anyone cared.  I read Toates, and more.  I cared.  Did I tell them?

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