Happy New Year!

Drink in moderation



Behave yourself



Make sure you get home safely

Best and worst and things in between...

What the second amendment is actually all about.

How to treat PTSD.

And I thought fuzzy caterpillars were cute!

Imagine if you were stuck in a room with a blank computer and a floppy....

Making the 'War on Terror' forever unwinnable..

The best photos of 2012.

Finding buried treasure in the U.K.

Deliberately destroying the post office

In 2005 the then Republican controlled Congress passed bill HR22 requiring the Post Office pay $5 billion dollars a year, over a ten year period, for healthcare cost 75 years in the future. No other part of government or any other corporation in the world has to do this. The post office is the only part of government that funds itself. It funds itself my selling stamps, express mail, money orders and many other services. It does not take American taxpayer money. This bill was passed to bankrupt the postal service so it could be privatized broken into pieces and sold to the highest bidder. 

These $5 billion dollar a year payments started in 2006. In 2006 then President George W. Bush appointed four members to the five member Postal Board of Governors who selects the Postmaster General to runs the postal service. Those four members appointed by President George W. Bush were (Thurgood Marshall Jr., Mickey Barnett, James Bilbray and Louis Giuliano). Only one member Dennis Toner was appointed to the board by President Obama (usa.gov).The Postal Board of Governors selected Patrick Donahoe (usps.gov) as Postmaster General. 

Today the 2012 Republican controlled Congress, the Postal Board of Governors and Postmaster General Donahoe are at it again. They want to take all California Postal Service driving jobs from San Francisco to San Diego and give them to outside private contractors by the end of 2012. Postmaster General Donahoe claims this is being done because California postal diesel vehicles don't meet air pollution requirements. The APWU (American Postal Workers Union) offered to modify these vehicles at no cost to the Postal Service. So far, Postmaster General Donahoe has not responded to the APWU offer. This proves money is not the issue. This is another attempt to take government jobs and give them to outside private contracting companies whose main goal is making money not serving the needs of the American people.

Survivalist gear to ecosystems in upheaval....

Survivalist gear on the cheap: clever use of pill bottles.  And straws.

King Richard III’s medieval inn recreated by archaeologists

Sir Gwaine and the Green Knight.

Looking for someone ... anyone to blame for the Sandy Hook school shooting.. anything but guns... Must be because of women.

Scientists: Mealworms could replace beef, chicken as Earth’s source of protein

Report: Ecosystems in Upheaval, Biodiversity in Collapse

New study documenting climate change shows sweeping changes happening faster than previously recorded and bringing 'cascading effects'

So good to hear in this era of bad news..

Richard Engle is safe.  Thank goodness.

The list of names

Of the school shooting.

Update:  What the teachers did.

Shut down the damned pump

Digby.

School Shooting in Connecticut ..

Dear god, those poor little punkins.

From West Point to Frankenfoods....

West Point cadet left because of religious oppression.

Pesticide Action Network.

Right-wing extremism:  armed and dangerous.

Sunportal makes pipes that bring sunlight inside buildings.  And a nanomesh triples solar cell efficiency.

The drought will be worse than Hurricane Sandy...

A good doggie and his charge:



How to be clear about what the 'Right to Work' means:



Exxon hates your children:



Ed Asner explains our failing economy:



Bill Maher and Frankenfoods:

From books to breasts

Or the lack thereof... Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum

Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of 'informational texts'. American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014. A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace. Books such as JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by "informational texts" approved by the Common Core State Standards. Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council. The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors' Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Monsanto in India.


A pale blue dot:



Detroit, then and now.

Early onset breast cancer survivors.  (NSFW) Showing the faces and bodies of those who have dealt with the disease.

Update:  Solar Electric Light Fund.

SELF's mission is to design and implement solar energy solutions to assist the 1.5 billion people living in energy poverty with their economic, educational, health care and agricultural development. Since 1990, SELF has completed projects in more than 20 countries and pioneered unique applications of solar power such as for drip irrigation in Benin, health care in Haiti, telemedicine in the Amazon rainforest, online learning in South Africa and microenterprise development in Nigeria.

The Landfillharmonic

Saving kids one landfill instrument at a time...

 
Landfill Harmonic | Juliana Penaranda-Loftus & Alejandra Nash from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

From here to there...

The Republican War on Women continues... apparently this last election didn't mean anything.

Fix the debt?  Uh huh.

Do politicians really worry about the deficit?....



Tom Tomorrow and Cliff Notes.  More on the 'fiscal cliff'.

Garden Path Sentences

Fracking chemical used in US linked to organ damage

Organic compounds on Mars.

FDR's speech:

Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: "Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society." One sure way to determine the social conscience of a Government is to examine the way taxes are collected and how they are spent. And one sure way to determine the social conscience of an individual is to get his tax-reaction. Taxes, after all, are the dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society. As society becomes more civilized, Government—national, State and local government—is called on to assume more obligations to its citizens. The privileges of membership in a civilized society have vastly increased in modern times. But I am afraid we have many who still do not recognize their advantages and want to avoid paying their dues. It is only in the past two generations that most local communities have paved and lighted their streets, put in town sewers, provided town water supplies, organized fire departments, established high schools and public libraries, created parks and playgrounds—undertaken, in short, all kinds of necessary new activities which, perforce, had to be paid for out of local taxes.