Life goes on...

Undelivered letters shed light on 17th-century society: Thousands of pieces of correspondence, many still unopened, were stored away by Dutch postmaster and are now being examined by academics

Dispersants didn't disperse the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  The chemicals just hid the mess from people and poisoned all the sea creatures.....

Global climate change is a hoax... or the hoax is a hoax.

What teachers do.

Edible water containers?

Richard Scarry's books for children are keeping up with the times!

Energy for free?!  Oh the humanity!!... I mean, O the corporations!!

Friday Follies

Mistreatment of our disabled soldiers.

Peter O'Toole.

Bankruptcy:

(Reuters) - Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday in a report they said demonstrates that healthcare reform is on the wrong track. 

More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.

Nice to finally prove the obvious: Study links BP oil spill to dolphin deaths.

Anti-bacterial soaps don't work?

It is still dangerous to be a journalist.

Asteroid Vesta close up.

Cool! Everybody can grow algae to drive their cars now!

Wonderful rant about the fake controversy dealing with those guys with beards and ducks.

Friday frolics... and an elephant.

baby elephant in tub

‘Frack Gag’ Bans Children From Talking About Fracking, Forever

The Hallowich case shows how drilling companies can use victims’ silence to rewrite their story. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that before their settlement, the Hallowichs complained that drilling caused “burning eyes, sore throats, headaches and earaches, and contaminated their water supply.” But after the family was gagged, gas exploration company Range Resources’ spokesman Matt Pitzarella insisted “they never produced evidence of any health impacts,” and that the family wanted to move because “they had an unusual amount of activity around them.” Public records will show, once again, that fracking did not cause health problems.

When fracking and oil production creates a sink hole, who loses?  BP blames oil spill victims.

The NSA comes clean... or something.

Iran's new leader speaks of moderation and respect.

Marine life moving towards the poles.

Privatization has failed in these places.

Farmers suspicious of new Monsanto crops... I wonder why?

Speaking up against racism.

NASA finds the source of the Magellanic Stream

The Conservative March Toward a Society of Sociopaths

Celebrating sexual choice.

Tramping through Tuesday

This week in FAIL.

How to have an argument on Facebook.

How To Spot And Out A Pro-’Lifer’ That Really Just Hates Women And Sex

More about CISPA

The loosey-goosey retirement of Georgie Bush.

BP Gulf disaster... worse than we thought.

From belly buttons to Jesus.

I never thought I'd be able to write that sentence....

The science of belly button bacteria.

Beijing rejects North’s envoy request

BEIJING - Pyongyang has allegedly asked Beijing to send them an envoy in order to improve their soured relations, but Beijing turned it down, seen as a warning regarding the regime’s recent warmongering rhetoric.

Because small government means being able to insert it into your private parts.  Republican Attorney General: Oral And Anal Sex Should Be ‘Crimes Against Nature’ In Virginia

Remembering Roger Ebert.

Reaping What You Sow: Are White Supremacists Preparing to Fight a new Civil War?

The Very Smell of Olive Oil is Good for You

Demotivational cat

Breakthrough in hydrogen fuel production could revolutionize alternative energy market

Gulf Of Mexico Dolphin Deaths Point To Continued Effects Of BP Oil Spill, Group Alleges

How much does going solar actually cost you and how long does it take to pay for itself.

Tennessee GOP’s Plan To Shove Jesus Down Our Throat Goes Hilariously Wrong

Pre-oiled? Or glow in the dark?

Tuna contaminated with Fukushima radiation found in California:

Bluefin tuna contaminated with radiation believed to be from Fukushima Daiichi turned up off the coast of California just five months after the Japanese nuclear plant suffered meltdown last March, US scientists said. Tiny amounts of caesium-137 and caesium-134 were detected in 15 bluefin caught near San Diego in August last year, according to a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. The levels were 10 times higher than those found in tuna in the same area in previous years, but still well below those that the Japanese and US governments consider a risk to health. Japan recently introduced a new safety limit of 100 becquerels per kilogram in food. The timing of the discovery suggests that the fish, a prized but dangerously overfished delicacy in Japan, had carried the radioactive materials across the Pacific ocean faster than those conveyed by wind or water.

If you don't want that tuna, have some fish without eyes.

 Going vegan makes more and more sense....

Yum yum

Eyeless shrimp, fish with oozing sores... enjoy your ocean and your seafood courtesy of BP.

BP poisoned the Gulf. Life there is still suffering.

A study of 32 dolphins were

underweight, anaemic and suffering from lung and liver disease, while nearly half had low levels of a hormone that helps the mammals deal with stress as well as regulating their metabolism and immune systems.

One year after the BP oil disaster

The Gulf fishermen can see what the dispersants and oil did to the seafood industry.

It adds a certain piquant flavor...

One reason I have cut back on seafood... the choices are pre-cooked radioactive fish from the Pacific or pre-oiled polluted and toxic seafood from the Gulf

New Study Says FDA Underestimated Seafood Contamination Risk After BP Oil Spill

BP oil spill one year later

People are ill.

But we knew this already...

Scientists find Corexit made BP Gulf catastrophe worse is not news

BP funded scientists now admit what scientists in other countries have found and EPA adviser warned last July, that toxic Corexit, of which the government and BP applied 2 million gallons throughout the Gulf of Mexico region, made the catastrophe worse, an ongoing catastrophe according to residents, independent researchers, and now, even BP paid scientists.

The scientists, supported by a 10 million dollar BP grant, presenting their reports last week, said they were struck by the studies so far according to the New York Times. Throughout the past year, however, since the oil rig exploded, experts in the fields of public health and toxicology have said that the combined BP oil and Corexit was 11 times more lethal than oil alone.

Have no idea if this is true or not. It almost sounds like The Onion wrote the headline:

Top ex-oilfield executive says Gulf op a depopulation event. 100,000 now sick.

Ex-oilfield executive of 25 years, now human rights defender Ian Crane stated Friday during Voice America “In Discussion” radio program that the Gulf of Mexico operation was a planned population reduction event. During the program, key Gulf advocates disclosed that over 100,000 Gulf people are already plague victims, hundreds of millions more will be impacted, and BP has paid enormous sums of money to keep Gulf activists from having a voice nationally.

“BP has made sure that activists are not campaigning on a national level. They are keeping them local so the corporate world is not threatened,” Crane told show host, David Gibbons.

Gee... I wonder why?

Scientists are alarmed by the discovery of unusual numbers of fish in the Gulf of Mexico and inland waterways with skin lesions, fin rot, spots, liver blood clots and other health problems.

"It's a huge red flag," said Richard Snyder, director of the University of West Florida Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation. "It seems abnormal, and anything we see out of the ordinary we'll try to investigate."

Are the illnesses related to the BP oil spill, the cold winter or something else?

That's the big question Snyder's colleague, UWF biologist William Patterson III, and other scientists along the Gulf Coast are trying to answer. If the illnesses are related to the oil spill, it could be a warning sign of worse things to come.

Yes, get the scientists out in force to look at the Gulf. But this means when the scientists come back with the data, YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE FACTS.

Blog sprinkles

It's the end of the world!!! Sell everything and meet me on the mountain top in your best bed sheets!

Dear Human...

Trying to escape Chernobyl and failing...

Uh oh... Mongolia is the new frontier for mining...

Making passports almost impossible to get?

Only 4 shrimp a week? Who the hell eats only 4 shrimp at a sitting? Seafood from the Gulf has oil. And dispersants. And chemicals. Which are not going away any time soon.

Sneaking about the closed Post Office Railway in London.

Do not piss this woman off:

Mysterious Vesta.

Help Greenpeace sort through the BP documents.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann starts June 20th:

Pictures of alternate energy.

Does this surprise anyone?

Foreign oil firms reject Iraq terms

Iraq's long-awaited licensing round to develop some of its massive oil reserves has run into trouble as international oil and gas companies rejected all but one deal, demanding more money for their efforts than the government was willing to pay.

Following Tuesday's initial bids, of the six oil and two gas fields on offer, Iraq had only struck a deal with a BP-led consortium for Rumaila, the largest oil field available.

Bids on the others came in far above the maximum fee the government was willing to pay for every extra barrel of oil produced.

But as the auction closed, Iraq's oil ministry said it had received seven revised bids from oil companies, not made public, which have been sent to the cabinet for consideration.

The process, which had been televised earlier, coincided with Iraq assuming formal control over its cities, a step towards ending the United States' combat role in the country.

A total of 32 firms, including US and European giants ExxonMobil and Shell and companies from China, India and other Asian states, have been chasing the opportunity to get 20-year service contracts to develop Iraq's resources.

The government was hoping the high-profile licensing round would help bring in foreign expertise to the country's energy industry, which is looking to boost output of a resource that provides 90 per cent of the government's revenues.

Some analysts have said the companies may have been unwilling to commit to major ventures, opting to wait and see how the security situation develops after the US pullout from urban areas.