Gems of space

In all their Hubble glory.

What an incestuously inbred asshole sounds like.

Elizabeth Warren for president

I'm going to chance it

And post this fantastic hour and a half long interview between Steven Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson.  YouTube may do its thing and remove it, but it is wonderful and worth your time.

Maybe because we're heating the oceans to boiling point?

Marine scientists are trying to find out why previously unknown blooms of toxic algae are suddenly proliferating along the California coast, killing wildlife and increasing the risk of human sickness. The mysterious blooms have recently been bigger and have occurred more frequently than ever before, an alarming trend that a team of scientists led by UC Santa Cruz is attempting to figure out.

[snip]

Scientists will also try to determine whether climate change is having an effect on the size, frequency and location of deadly algae blooms. "We can't say for sure that it is tied to something like climate change," Kudela said, "but it does seem to be spreading globally, so something is changing, and we are trying to find out what that is." Algal blooms are already known to be relatively common in the coastal waters of Oregon, Washington state and Canada. Recently, though, unusual toxic algal blooms have also been detected in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, in Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Maine, according to researchers. Future outbreaks may be unstoppable, Kudela and others admit, but they hope the study will eventually help them develop a computer model that will predict blooms before they have a chance to cause havoc in the marine environment.

The tide comes in, the tide goes out....

We all came from primordial ooze.... Which might explain the Republicans' desire to return to simpler times...

"In the race to take on Obama, playing dumb about foreign affairs is the politically clever thing to do"

How Newt is channeling “The Producers”

One who takes issue with Naomi Wolf's article about the DHS and the mayors involved with a nation-wide crackdown of the OWS.

I think I like this new generation... teen tweeter won't apologize to Brownback.  Update:  Brownback backs down.

The NYTimes and LATimes both came out against SOPA and PIPA.

I tend to resent it when people tell me I'll need a tissue

But this time they were right.

They removed it from YouTube, but it still plays on MoveOn.org. Click the link.

Where there is money or power...

There will be people figuring out ways to take it...

Going after public education.  Because that's where there's money to be had.

Vouchers sound like such a nice plan.  Because that's where there's money to be had.

The 99.9% can easily be squeezed for more.  Because that's how the .1% make their money.

Reoccupying your foreclosed house.  Because that's where the banks played fast and loose with your home.

Beating the tar out of the camping Occupy protesters instead of the teabaggers or overnight shoppers.  Because they are the biggest threat to the people who hold power.

You have health care? You are still not safe.

Reminding us what we should really be thinking about

Rather than quibbling about how many bodies of the poor we need to step over...


‎"Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a
short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine
purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one
thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others...for the
countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of
sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life
is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how
earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I
have received."
~ Albert Einstein

Martin Sheen for president

What pepper spray does to your body

Fun for the whole family!

Via Bryan of Why Now?, a good overview of the events at the UC Davis campus protests.

Update:  Via Rachel Maddow, more specific info on pepper spray.

I wish I was an Oscar Mayer weiner....

Thank you, sir.

It was so simple back then....

The rich were rich because they deserved it, the poor LIKED being poor.  Obviously!

Attacking schools

Across the country, education entrepreneurs are seeking to replace public school teachers with computer programs, despite the research that shows that virtual education is inferior to traditional teaching. They are getting lots of help from Tea Party politicians on a mission to privatize schools and bust unions.

Occupy Mars!

A good overview of the police brutality with the Occupy movement.  The cop group coordinating the Occupy crackdowns.  Controlling the media.

Paul Krugman: Newt Gingrich Is ‘A Stupid Man’s Idea Of What A Smart Person Sounds Like’.  Newt also thinks secular governments are scary.

In Cain and Perry's gaffes, the Republicans' degradation is laid bare.

Air bubbles confirm permafrost CO2 release:

Bubbles of air trapped in ice long ago are helping paint a clearer picture of what may happen to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the future if climate change melts the northern hemisphere's permafrost, scientists say.

The Mars rover Spirit’s entire five-year mission, in less than three minutes:

And yet another one adds to the list.

China poisons more pets:

November 18, 2011 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an important bulletin warning consumers that chicken jerky products (also marketed as chicken tenders, strips or treats) may be associated with serious illness in dogs.
Over the past 12 months, the FDA has observed an increase in the number of complaints regarding canine illnesses associated with consumption of chicken jerky products imported from China.
These complaints have been reported to the government by both dog owners and veterinarians.

And here is the ever-expanding list:

But according to FSN, the biggest reason to avoid ultra-filtered honey is that pollen is the only sure-fire way to trace the source of honey to a geographic location. As a result ultra-filtered honey is often used to mask the shady origins of certain kinds of honey -- especially Chinese honey, which is subject to heavy import tariffs on account of its frequent contamination by heavy metals and illegal antibiotics. Chinese honeymakers ultra-filter their honey, and then ship it through byzantine paths, to sneak their sham product onto American grocery shelves without being hit with a tariff.

Vinegar from China kills 11 people.

"From steroid-spiked pork to glow-in-the-dark meat to recycled cooking oil collected from sewers, a series of illnesses and scandals linked to tainted food has put officials on guard. But tougher measures have had little effect amid an official culture of secrecy."

Watermelons spiked with growth chemicals explode in the fields... so the farmers feed the forchlorfenuron saturated melons to fish and pigs.

Waste water forced into pigs going to market.

Fresh milk tainted with melamine and toxic substances extracted from leather scraps... killed 6 children in China and sickened 300,000.

Rice is contaminated with heavy metals like cadmium.

Fake rice made from plastic, potatoes and resin.

Pulverized lime added to bleaching agents widely used in flour production. Pulverized lime damages the lungs and the entire respiratory system.

Cadmium in children's toys and little girl jewelry. Lead in toys: Thomas the Tank Engine, baby bibs, cub scout badges, wooden blocks. Formaldehyde in candy, in baby clothing. Coma-inducing date rape drug in toys.

Asbestos in toys.

"The rampant use of chemical additives in animal feed can be traced to 1999. According to Gao Yinxiang, the research and development of high-protein feed additives was a hot field among scientists about 10 years ago due to shortage of animal fodder in the country at the time.

From that time, it's hard to define the exact role that scientists played in the evolution of the melamine scandal. Yet scientists certainly contributed to it by developing unsafe protein alternatives. Many Chinese are now calling on scientists to examine their conscience before making profits at the expense of public safety."

Melamine in pet food kills house pets in the US. Melamine is found in wheat, corn and rice gluten.

China says no to inspections and destroys evidence.

Rat poison in breakfast porridge.

Pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella. Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

Toothpaste with diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical used in engine coolants.

Highly toxic puffer fish sold as monk fish.

Fake blood protein.

Wild mice used for meat.

Defective tires.

Use of illegal drift nets.

Fake kosher food.

Insecticide-tainted dumplings.

More than 40 percent of drinking water in rural China is unfit for drinking.

Poisoned chocolate.

Toxic drywall which caused houses to be uninhabitable.

Fake Cisco routers

Misuse and overuse of antibiotics. "Studies in China show a "frightening" increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA."

The list will inevitably be added to. When are we going to learn this is what happens to corporations when there is no regulation?

Here we go round the mulberry bush....

Teaching good sex. Will no one think of the children?!1!??

Speaking of children. Taking them to Occupy Los Angeles. But in Portland, watch out for the police.

The next financial crisis. Or signs of hope.

San Francisco

Canada's money has gone plastic.

Might as well declare game over. Goldman Sachs has won the Capitalism Game. Can we start a different game now?

Making money by making more prisoners fills the coffers of private prisons, our very own concentration camps.

Flossing might help...

Sterilizers to skeletons to burglary...

Ionized Plasmas as Cheap Sterilizers for Developing World
University of California, Berkeley, scientists have shown that ionized plasmas like those in neon lights and plasma TVs not only can sterilize water, but make it antimicrobial -- able to kill bacteria -- for as long as a week after treatment.

Interesting discussion about burglary and fortifying one's house against it.

Skeleton of ancient human relative may yield skin.

Death with dignity.

For those gamers who have run out of ideas for names:

Oh well done, Seattle police department!

SEATTLE - A downtown march and rally in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement turned briefly chaotic as police scattered a crowd of rowdy protesters — including a pregnant 19-year-old and an 84-year-old activist — with blasts of pepper spray.

Protest organizers denounced the use of force, saying that police indiscriminately sprayed the chemical irritant at peaceful protesters.

The Occupy Seattle movement released a written statement late Tuesday expressing support for "a 4-foot 10-inch, 84-year-old woman, a priest and a pregnant woman who as of this writing is still in the hospital."

Update: Dorli Rainey talks to Keith Olbermann:

I don't think they'll understand the sarcasm...

*Fixed link. Thanks, Steve.

Good Morning!

A new dawn?

The new progressive movement has begun.

Making the rounds on Facebook

I'm passing this on because it worked for me today. A Dr. on TV said to have inner peace we should always finish things we start & we all could use more calm in our lives. I looked around my house to find things I'd started & hadn't finished, so i finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiuminun scriptins, an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how fablus I feel rite now. Sned this to all who need inner piss. An telum u luvum

Life goes on...

Veterans Day.

Remnants of the Big Bang.

Under attack from Rove, Elizabeth Warren doubles down. More of her kind, please.

I hadn't thought of it, but the Personhood Amendment would have changed everybody's birthdays and horoscopes! This explains why they never get it right!

Nightsticks are useful when there are no cameras.

James Murdoch's serfs forgot to pretend to not inform the boss what they were doing that he told them to do... or something.

Pictures of the Great War, as the landscape is today.

A discovered Leonardo.

Tracking Japan's Fukishima radiation:

It's the story of how a group of hackers and internet folks are working with Japanese volunteers to harness DIY technology to record and share data about radiation hotspots.

Women come forward with their on the job sexual harassment stories.

Wells Fargo involved with our 'illegal immigration' concentration camps.

Landmines.

Man paraglides with his hawk: Edit: his YouTube has been removed. Anyway. Man paragliding around with treats in his gloved hand and hawk flies in and lands on his arm.

Banks are nervous.

Good.

How to video at an Occupy event

An artist/photographer friend, who is frustrated at the video efforts of occupiers who fail to catch the significant action because they don't know how to do basic camera handling, wrote a post about techniques:

Note To Videograph Occupiers

Kudos to you all for your courage and your convictions. You are participating in a historic event that will be talked about and remembered for decades.

The tape that you are shooting is an important part of the documentation of this historic event. It is truly important that your tape show, with accuracy, the events as they occur. Your job as a videographer is to reveal.

If your tape is too dark, has camera shake, or has a blocked view of the event because of crowding, your tape will not show what happened. It will not reveal, but conceal.

A few tips:

1) Camera shake renders tape unwatchable. Whatever you are taping should move, but the camera itself should stay still. Make a tripod of your legs and brace the camera against your torso. When you follow action by panning with the camera, use a smooth , sweeping motion of your upper body to move the camera lens along a smooth path.

If you must have a steadicam, you can make one yourself. There are many references here on diy steadicams

...but you need to learn to walk with it, so

please read this tutorial, and practice!!!!

2) Situational awareness is also a top concern. Try to keep the main action in your viewfinder at all times. This can be a challenge. Remember, you are there to record these events for history; it requires some emotional detachment to remember this when things begin to happen quickly. Look up from the viewfinder once in a while to be sure that you aren't missing the main action. If a person steps in front of you to film, MOVE. Be aware that people WILL step in front of you. Expect it, and be prepared for it. If a crowd forms, hold the camera up over their heads and point it at the action.

3) If you are using a standard video camera and not a phone, it might be worth it to purchase a camera mounted light, sometimes called a sun gun. It fits directly into the hot shoe on top of your camera. This can make all the difference at night. Some of these police actions are taking place under cover of darkness.

Good tape is almost never the result of a happy accident. It is the result of mastering a few easy, basic techniques.. and of remaining situationally aware when the going gets tough.

Take these few points to heart when you tape, and history (and the internet) will thank you.

One more for the list..

But according to FSN, the biggest reason to avoid ultra-filtered honey is that pollen is the only sure-fire way to trace the source of honey to a geographic location. As a result ultra-filtered honey is often used to mask the shady origins of certain kinds of honey -- especially Chinese honey, which is subject to heavy import tariffs on account of its frequent contamination by heavy metals and illegal antibiotics. Chinese honeymakers ultra-filter their honey, and then ship it through byzantine paths, to sneak their sham product onto American grocery shelves without being hit with a tariff.

And here is the ever expanding list:

Vinegar from China kills 11 people.

The list:

"From steroid-spiked pork to glow-in-the-dark meat to recycled cooking oil collected from sewers, a series of illnesses and scandals linked to tainted food has put officials on guard. But tougher measures have had little effect amid an official culture of secrecy."

Watermelons spiked with growth chemicals explode in the fields... so the farmers feed the forchlorfenuron saturated melons to fish and pigs.

Waste water forced into pigs going to market.

Fresh milk tainted with melamine and toxic substances extracted from leather scraps... killed 6 children in China and sickened 300,000.

Rice is contaminated with heavy metals like cadmium.

Fake rice made from plastic, potatoes and resin.

Pulverized lime added to bleaching agents widely used in flour production. Pulverized lime damages the lungs and the entire respiratory system.

Cadmium in children's toys and little girl jewelry. Lead in toys: Thomas the Tank Engine, baby bibs, cub scout badges, wooden blocks. Formaldehyde in candy, in baby clothing. Coma-inducing date rape drug in toys.

Asbestos in toys.

"The rampant use of chemical additives in animal feed can be traced to 1999. According to Gao Yinxiang, the research and development of high-protein feed additives was a hot field among scientists about 10 years ago due to shortage of animal fodder in the country at the time.

From that time, it's hard to define the exact role that scientists played in the evolution of the melamine scandal. Yet scientists certainly contributed to it by developing unsafe protein alternatives. Many Chinese are now calling on scientists to examine their conscience before making profits at the expense of public safety."

Melamine in pet food kills house pets in the US. Melamine is found in wheat, corn and rice gluten.

China says no to inspections and destroys evidence.

Rat poison in breakfast porridge.

Pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella. Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

Toothpaste with diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical used in engine coolants.

Highly toxic puffer fish sold as monk fish.

Fake blood protein.

Wild mice used for meat.

Defective tires.

Use of illegal drift nets.

Fake kosher food.

Insecticide-tainted dumplings.

More than 40 percent of drinking water in rural China is unfit for drinking.

Poisoned chocolate.

Toxic drywall which caused houses to be uninhabitable.

Fake Cisco routers

Misuse and overuse of antibiotics. "Studies in China show a "frightening" increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA."

The list will inevitably be added to. When are we going to learn this is what happens to corporations when there is no regulation?

The fungus among us...

Why does the far right seem to ooze out from under the rocks when the economy is shaky and politics are polarized? Easier to blame others and reach for guns rather than work together to fix things?:

The far right is on the rise across Europe as a new generation of young, web-based supporters embrace hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups, a study has revealed ahead of a meeting of politicians and academics in Brussels to examine the phenomenon.

Research by the British thinktank Demos for the first time examines attitudes among supporters of the far right online. Using advertisements on Facebook group pages, they persuaded more than 10,000 followers of 14 parties and street organisations in 11 countries to fill in detailed questionnaires.

The study reveals a continent-wide spread of hardline nationalist sentiment among the young, mainly men. Deeply cynical about their own governments and the EU, their generalised fear about the future is focused on cultural identity, with immigration – particularly a perceived spread of Islamic influence – a concern.

"We're at a crossroads in European history," said Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch MEP who heads the anti-racism lobby at the European parliament. "In five years' time we will either see an increase in the forces of hatred and division in society, including ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, or we will be able to fight this horrific tendency."

I have to admit I was shocked at the rabid savagery aimed at protesters of the Iraq invasion during Bush's reign of terror. The delight at going to war.. any war... after 9/11. The belittling of the humanity of the citizens of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, etc etc. The bizarre embrace of torture with assurances it wasn't really torture and besides the detainees were islamofascists and Jesus would have approved. The suggestion that using nukes really wouldn't be so horrible. We have our own American Taliban and Nazis right here, despite our best efforts in education and exposure to other cultures.

They must hatch like toadstools, surrounded by bullshit and darkness. Sunlight is the only cure.

This and that...

Goldwater knew back then not to open Pandora's box. But did anyone listen? NooOOooooo...

Judges for sale.

Harvard students walk out on econ prof. Veterans march for Occupy Wall Street.

Asteroid decides to miss Earth... this time.

Diana Whitten, her film is called Vessel. A vessel that sails in international waters, briefly entering ports in Brazil. They display a phone number on the side of the ship for women to call who want an abortion. They mail the women the over the counter medicine Misoprostol to use in the privacy in their own home. Taken under the tongue, the result is identical to a regular miscarriage with fewer complications than the prevalent illegal abortions.

In space, the Eye of Sauron! Tolkein was right!

Murmuration:

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

An effective one person protest movement

Done with courtesy and a sense of humor.

More of her kind, please.

Michigan State Senator Gretchen Whitmer yesterday ripped Senate GOP a new one over passage of a "bullying" bill that was gutted so heavily that it actually creates, as Whitmer notes in her speech, "a blueprint for bullying."

Occupy it all

And so, at bottom, we have a spiritual crisis. How long can people of goodwill support billy-clubbed police officers knocking about citizens who are peaceably assembling, as is their right? If they assemble for longer than you want them to, then it's inconvenience versus the First Amendment. It is not OK to shout "fire" in a crowded theater just because you don't like the movie.

Really, the police and the city officials should be guarding the rights of those with legitimate grievances. They should protect those who have been laid waste by the rest of society. That's what government is for, to ensure that constitutional liberties are maintained. Anything else is just oligarchy.

There is a constituency here, people who have lost their homes or their jobs or life savings because of a system designed to make them suckers. They have experienced a profound loss of faith, and that is what will still be true come spring. I don't think this thing is going away anytime soon.

What would Jesus do? Chase the moneychangers from the temple, is my guess. There's precedent.

Things that go bump in the night...

And it's NOT Halloween...

Unexplained radiation coming from a shipping container.

Snakes in Florida that can eat deer.

Bank of America forecloses on house lost in hurricane.

Living in an oligarchy.

Greeks and Germans and the world economy.

The House of Representatives proving they are completely unable to think of how to create jobs.

Learning what living on 30 dollars a week for food is like.

Getting excommunicated by the Mormon church.

Reaching 7 billion people on earth and realizing that number doesn't affect an attitude change in those demanding that every sperm/egg union is sacred.