Author's posts
Oct 28 2007
Nano Science: Something “goofy” happens
‘ya hang around some of the less savory places I do on occasion and you’re bound to bump into this sweet-smelling bad actor named, Trichloroethylene, or TCE. You might recall that this bad actor had a lead in the book and movie “A Civil Action”, about contaminated wells in Woburn, MA. Well, if you do bump into this character in a dark alley, grab your kidneys and liver and get outa town. Or maybe not…
TCE lingers like a bad houseguest, especially if handled carelessly. It accumulates in soil and can persist for years in groundwater. In a report last year, the National Research Council found that TCE was a potential cause of kidney cancer; it’s also associated with liver problems, autoimmune disease and impaired neurological function.
Enter King Midas–usually known as Michael Wong–with his miracle gold nanoparticles dusted with palladium. According to The Smithsonian Magazine in a piece by William Booth of the Washington Post, Mr. Wong has discovered somewhat of a cure that even he doesn’t fully understand.
And just what is it? “We don’t know!” says Wong. “We don’t understand the chemistry. But we don’t understand it in a good way,” meaning he believes that his team will figure it out soon. “Our catalyst is doing something really goofy.”
No expensive endless inefficient pump and treat? That’s just positively goofy.
Oct 15 2007
Cooler than Greenland! Lynxgirl and Blanket the Globe on CNN!
(Updated with permalink)Many of you here at Docudharma really helped to get the early word out about this project when Lynxgirl posted this diary, so you might enjoy this little follow-up. You may even agree that this is cooler than Greenland, although that’s not saying much these days.
Click on the link below and first there’s a great Myles O’Brien piece about Gore and climate change. But stay tuned because right after, you’ll see a lovely piece about Blanket the Globe. First Gore. Then my daughter, Casey. Then a bit about the Solar Decathlon and the battle over water with Bill Richardson. Great company!
Click here for the CNN Student News newscast.
The newscast and accompanying photo album are terrific.
Have you, your kids, your students, your grandkids, your neighbors, your friends, made squares? If so, be sure to find their art work in the BTG slide show. If not, Why? Everything you need is right on the website.
Oct 11 2007
REM: “Until the Day is Done” debuts. I cry.
This song, Until the Day is Done, and video left us with tears in our oatmeal this morning. REM fans will understand that the emotions brought to the surface by this amazing group are sincerely felt themselves. Michael Stipe is interviewed right after the video and it’s worth listening especially for his media savvy commentary. I hope CNN breaks viewership records with what looks like a ground-breaking series.
Watch. Listen. Feel. Act.
(Salty Oatmeal being served at Truth & Progress)
Oct 09 2007
Breaking: AEP to pay $4.6 Billion environmental settlement!
With a symbolic one dollar for every year the earth has been around, the Associated Press is reporting that AEP has agreed to pay $4.6 Billion in that lawsuit initiated by 8 eastern states, directed at the midwestern coal plants contaminating the air and making the clouds rain acid:
The settlement requires American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, to reduce chemical emissions that cause acid rain by at least 69 percent over the next decade.
It also fines AEP an additional $15 million in civil penalties and another $60 million in cleanup and mitigation costs to help heal parkland and waterways that have been hurt by the pollution.
Just for some perspective, this marketbasket type settlement marks a new milestone in environmental settlement history.
Exxon Mobil Corp. estimates it has paid $3.5 billion in cleanup costs, government settlements, fines and compensation for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The company is fighting an additional $2.5 billion in punitive fines.
Wonderful news! There’s not much detail about the contents of the basket on the internet yet but I’ll update as more appears. This is a bfd, and a major legal victory, so let’s see if it makes the morning news. Congratulations to all people, statues, streams and national landmarks involved.
Sep 17 2007
Breaking: KO’s internal organ outed as GOP operative
(A multi-tasking quickie from T&P while I frantically jump from the Pats to the Red Sox)
According to Democratic Underground and MediaBistro, Keith Olbermann was KO’d by his appendix Friday night. It isn’t often that our internal organs go all partisan on us, but we know for certain that his heart is true blue.
Are these sources reliable? If so, feel better KO.
Sep 15 2007
Satchmo in the Shadows
(Promoted at 12:11 AM PDT on Sunday, September 16, 2007)
(Originally posted at Truth & Progress)
If you’ve come by for politics today, I hope you’re not disappointed. Perhaps it’s the weather. In fact, it probably is the weather, but not in the way you might think. The never-ending war built on a pile of lies combined with the F’d-up-state of our government and poltiical discourse are also under my skin a so if these are things you’re looking to fix today, perhaps you should go elsewhere. It’s just my mood. Today, if you’d like to stay, lets enjoy a song together instead.
Growing up in a very musical household with mom a pianist and dad a clarinet/saxophone playing band leader, music is tightly woven though my DNA. Louis Armstrong would have been a household name there anyhow but before I even came along, “Satchmo” was the name of our resident stray cat; a scat-cat, if you will. ‘spose I should count my blessings that I wasn’t named Dolly.
Sep 13 2007
Cultural Whiplash: ANTM & Led Zep
(Low culture fun from T&P without even a mention of a certain beleaguered pop princess)
Hat tip to Sarah van Schagen at Grist for this one. Hopelessly hooked I am! ‘specially after several of MTV’s season per day America’s Next Top Model marathons this summer. Well, according to Entertainment Weekly, it looks like Tyra, J., and Jay of ANTM are morphing into ANGM this season! Strut this:
“The transportation was a ‘green’ car with biodiesel fuel. The house went green not only aesthetically but in terms of the way energy was used and in tips that we gave all of the girls in the house in terms of using water and electricity.” Drink it and turn it off, respectively, gals
Good on them. Here’s the teaser for the 9th season:
Sep 07 2007
Elkhorn, Staghorn, and Foghorn Leghorn
Not sure if there’s really a “Foghorn Leghorn” coral, but the other two appear to have just paved a path for the few remaining penguins and the polar bears. The Christian Science Monitor reports: New tool to fight global warming: Endangered Species Act? A recent deal to protect the habitat of endangered coral may offer US environmentalists new leverage.
The elkhorn and staghorn coral won protected status under the ESA in May 2006. But it took a second legal battle to win a preservation of the corals’ “critical habitat,” part of last week’s settlement between environmentalists and the US fisheries service.
The act’s leverage will grow, environmentalists say, as climate change becomes recognized as a factor in species’ decline. The number of species-recovery plans that cite global warming as a damaging factor has gone from zero as recently as 1990 to 141 today – with most of the growth since 2000.
While that’s still just 9 percent of the 1,494 species listed at one time or another, the increase suggests that a large group of species still awaiting listing will have global warming cited as a major cause in their decline. The polar bear, 12 species of penguins, and the Kittlitz’s Murrelet, an Alaskan bird that nests on the edges of glaciers, are all candidates, Mr. Suckling says.
Note: You may recall Mr. Suckling’s work from melvin’s writing recently about a mother of a lawsuit v. Interior ahead. Rest up Mr. Suckling!