To bee or not to bee

37 Million Bees Found Dead After Planting Large GMO Corn Field 

Millions of bees dropped dead after GMO corn was planted few weeks ago in Ontario, Canada. The local bee keeper, Dave Schuit who produces honey in Elmwood lost about 37 million bees which are about 600 hives.  

 “Once the corn started to get planted our bees died by the millions,” Schuit said. While many bee keepers blame neonicotinoids, or “neonics.” for colony collapse of bees and many countries in EU have banned neonicotinoid class of pesticides, the US Department of Agriculture fails to ban insecticides known as neonicotinoids, manufactured by Bayer CropScience Inc.  

Two of Bayer’s best-selling pesticides, Imidacloprid and Clothianidin, are known to get into pollen and nectar, and can damage beneficial insects such as bees. The marketing of these drugs also coincided with the occurrence of large-scale bee deaths in many European countries and the United States.

Bullets, brain cells, and breasts

A mother wants you to see what bullets did to her child.

Plastic eating mealworms may save our planet from ourselves. And we need to build many of these 'trash wheels' and let them go all over the planet's oceans.  Kinda like really large roombas...

How to build new brain cells.

GMO Arctic apples.  Bacon is not fatal, just not particularly good for you.  Lettuce by LED lights.

Here's what Marijuana does to breast cancer.

The Griffin Warrior found in Pylos, Greece.

We vote not for what we like but against what we're afraid of.  Fear works.

House design after living in a dumpster.

Uh oh... Scientology has its own candidate for Senate.

Because malnutrition was so fun...

Plastic radioactive oceans, no snowpack, and another end of the world is coming

Monsanto and scientists collude to push GMO on the public.

Water from Fukushima dumped into Pacific.  And fracking is poisoning us all.  And (youtube) our oceans are turning into plastic soup.

History of the Pledge of Allegiance.

President Obama makes the case that Republicans are un-American.

Snowpack in California is at a 500 year low.

Being a Neolithic farmer sucked.  Although living right now can suck too.

Yet another end of the world is coming in late September.

George Takei explains why Kim Davis is wrong.  Let this be the final statement of this idiocy.  (Please!)

Response by University of Missouri Student Body President Payton Head to hateful name-calling directed at him.

836,290 deaths since 1989.  If this was a disease, we'd be frantically trying to find a cure.  But this number is deaths by guns.  We have an answer, we just are too afraid to say it.  Gun control, gun safety.

End robocalls!

Friday to Friday creeps in its petty pace ....

Ways to avoid being eaten by mosquitoes.

What climate change means to polar bears.  And to bring back to life ancient pathogens which may or may not be virulent.

Building a sailboat and the love of woodcraft.

The opposite of hoarding... being too clean?

A necessary and informative timeline from the New York Times (takes us only to April 2015) to show how long it took to get the Iran nuclear agreement and why it is a big effing deal.  And why Cheney wants Iran to be all Obama's fault.

How to catch liars.

A designer for Silicon Valley.  She's over 90.

A scientist's doubts over GMOs.  French court finds Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning.

Harvard linguist points out the 58 most commonly misused words and phrases

Dealing with depression.

9/11 conspiracies list.

Friday Follies

Russian has actually had two nuclear disasters.

Love no matter what.

Apparently we need to start recording everything we do.

Republicans hate government so much that they are startled to learn they might want to show voters they can govern.

Paul Krugman takes apart libertarian economics and Ayn Rand fantasies.

The over-militarization of our police. Steve Bates discusses. Officer Friendly.

Singing opera may save your life.

Why funny people kill themselves.

Jeffrey Smith Challenge to Neil deGrasse Tyson on GMO food.

Women, grammar, and exercise!

What women were wearing when they were sexually attacked... debunking one myth about rape.  And myths about birth control.

English, the language of oopses.  And grammarphobia.

We're drinking the wrong kind of milk?  And look!  We've made a superbug to eat the supercorn!

What do you still do now that you did when you were poor?

Scars (nsfw)

No wonder I feel like California didn't have a winter!  We didn't!  And:

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution. 

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

Fukushima fallout.

Elizabeth Warren and what she has done for you.

US Government to Deregulate Meat Industry

Scary scientist is scary.

Underwater archaeology.

Why this runner runs.

From Cats to Jellyfish to Chickens

Friday cat blogging on Sunday.

A wonderful perspective on religion and God from a religious man.

Sexy avatars in games affect players in the real world.

I may not want to eat anything ever again.... besides... we're all gonna die anyway.

Invasion by jellyfish the world over... could it possibly be because the oceans are warming?  If not death by jellyfish, how about being choked to death by weeds?

Can you spell hypocrite?

A sensible horror film.

Elizabeth Smart is just that.  Googling women and a verb.

Republicans went crazy in stages.  Tea party logic.  Lies told in Texan charter schools.

Changing oceans.

How historically correct is 12 Years a Slave?

One way to deal with the homeless.

Infected chickens sold by Foster Farms were not recalled.

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.

Wednesday whiffles

Hunting the mysterious hum.

Planting false memories in mice.  Where could this possibly lead?

What teachers make.

Flying Spaghetti Monster statue in front of Tennessee courthouse.

Genetically altering oranges in order to save them.  Not all GMO food is bad.  Chipotle restaurants first ones to try and not serve any GMO food.

Fascism on the rise around the world.

9th Grade Science Project Finds Plants Don’t Grow Near Wi-Fi

Saturday Stupidity...

Banks gone wild. Or at least completely bonkers. What's theirs is theirs, what's yours is theirs....

Methane, the new oxygen!

How safe are BPA-free plastics? Who knows?

Does our solar system have a giant gas planet four times bigger than Jupiter hiding out in the Oort Cloud?

Snape and Lily Potter.

Concern over our GMO foods.  And pesticides travel.

Well if the Pacific Ocean is already radioactive, why not let them frack it too?

But I repeat myself.

Whistleblowers, Hobbits and Women

Schneier on Snowden

Prosecuting Snowden 

Edward Snowden broke the law by releasing classified information. This isn't under debate; it's something everyone with a security clearance knows. It's written in plain English on the documents you have to sign when you get a security clearance, and it's part of the culture. The law is there for a good reason, and secrecy has an important role in military defense. 

But before the Justice Department prosecutes Snowden, there are some other investigations that ought to happen. 

We need to determine whether these National Security Agency programs are themselves legal. The administration has successfully barred anyone from bringing a lawsuit challenging these laws, on the grounds of national secrecy. Now that we know those arguments are without merit, it's time for those court challenges. 

It's clear that some of the NSA programs exposed by Snowden violate the Constitution and others violate existing laws. Other people have an opposite view. The courts need to decide. 

Grayson Passes Corporate Accountability Amendments

“These amendments say that government contractors who lie, cheat, and steal will now get the death penalty,” Democrat Grayson wrote in an email to his supporters. “If you cheat the taxpayer, you’re toast. If you evade Federal taxes, it’s all over. If you rig bids or forge documents, goodbye to you. No more government contracts. And for government contractors, cutting off government money is a death sentence.”

Scientists say new study shows pig health hurt by GMO feed

(Reuters) - Pigs fed a diet of only genetically modified grain showed markedly higher stomach inflammation than pigs who dined on conventional feed, according to a new study by a team of Australian scientists and U.S. researchers.
The study adds to an intensifying public debate over the impact of genetically modified crops, which are widely used by U.S. and Latin American farmers and in many other countries around the world.
The study was published in the June issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Organic Systems by researchers from Australia who worked with two veterinarians and a farmer in Iowa to study the U.S. pigs.

The original underground

Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of Stone Age underground tunnels, stretching across Europe from Scotland to Turkey, perplexing researchers as to their original purpose. 

German archaeologist Dr Heinrich Kusch, in his latest book ‘Secrets of the Underground Door to an Ancient World’ has revealed that tunnels were dug under literally hundreds of Neolithic settlements all over Europe and the fact that so many tunnels have survived 12,000 years indicates that the original network must have been huge.

Useful websites

The Hobbit, the Desolation of Smaug.

Reproductive Coercion, Domestic Violence and Anti-Choice Laws

A lot of men, it turns out, get off on having power over women’s bodies, and are willing to bully, coerce and even trick women into pregnancy to get that feeling of power over them. It’s called “reproductive coercion,” and it’s way more common that was previously thought, as Kat Stoeffel reports for The Cut.

Friday froth

6 Baffling Discoveries That Science Can’t Explain

Healthy tips for surviving our chemicalized world

Fixing the climate.

Learning a new language is good for your brain.

Monsanto's unapproved wheat found in Oregon is affecting the export of wheat to those countries who have said no to GMOs.  Too late.... so the farmers are suing Monsanto.

One girl in a village.

Everything you ever wanted to know about ticks.

19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From Oceans

Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions

High Fructose Corn Syrup is addictive....

Starting the week with a bang... Or maybe a whimper...

Louisiana's coast is feeling the sea-level rise.

While state officials continue to argue over restoration projects to save the state’s sinking, crumbling coast, top researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have concluded that Louisiana is in line for the highest rate of sea-level rise “on the planet.” * Indeed, the water is rising so fast that some coastal restoration projects could be obsolete before they are completed, the officials said.
NOAA’s Tim Osborne, an 18-year veteran of Louisiana coastal surveys, and Steve Gill, senior scientist at the agency’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, spelled out the grim reality in interviews with The Lens. When new data on the rate of coastal subsidence is married with updated projections of sea-level rise, the southeast corner of Louisiana looks likely to be under at least 4.3 feet of gulf water by the end of the century.

The Republicans are getting upset that the Democrats are standing back and letting them fall on their faces. Josh Marshall says it best:

Official Washington is accustomed to having a Democratic safety net — not cash transfers for those who fall through the cracks of the market economy — but that Democrats will come in and solve crises created by GOP government by crisis.

Cheney is afraid of being tried as a war criminal.

No chemicals, no GMO grain, India has record crop:

What if the agricultural revolution has already happened and we didn’t realize it? Essentially, that’s the idea in this report from the Guardian about a group of poverty-stricken Indian rice and potato farmers who harvested confirmed world-record yields of rice and potatoes. Best of all: They did it completely sans-GMOs or even chemicals of any kind

And farmers are demanding control over the seeds:

Vandana Shiva: 'Seeds must be in the hands of farmers',Biodiversity campaigner accuses corporate giants of trying to take over the world's seed supply through genetic engineering,

I have here in my hand... McCarthyism style innuendo doesn't quite work the way it did before YouTube and the internets....

Romney and Monsanto

This explains everything.

Another one bites the dust...

Whole Foods Market Caves to Monsanto

After 12 years of battling to stop Monsanto's genetically-engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's organic farmland, the biggest retailers of "natural" and "organic" foods in the U.S., including Whole Foods Market (WFM), Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farm, have agreed to stop opposing mass commercialization of GE crops, like Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa. In exchange for dropping their opposition, WFM has asked for "compensation" to be paid to organic farmers for "any losses related to the contamination of his crop." Under current laws, Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMOs) are not subject to any pre-market safety testing or labeling. WFM is abandoning its fight with biotech companies in part because two thirds of the products they sell are not certified organic anyway, but are really conventional, chemical-intensive and foods that may contain GMOs and that they market as "natural" despite this. Most consumers don't know the difference between "natural" and "certified organic" products. "Natural" products can come from crops and animals fed nutrients containing GMOs. "Certified Organic" products are GMO-free. WFM and their main distributor, United Natural Foods, maximize profits by selling products labeled "natural" at premium organic prices.

Slowly strangling the farmers

Massive seed corporation Monsanto -- through acquisitions and cut-throat business practices -- has cornered 90% of the soy, 65% of the corn, and 70% of the cotton market, and has a rapidly growing presence in the fruit and vegetable market, all without government anti-trust officials raising an eyebrow.

Not only that, but in order to be productive, the entire line of Monsanto's seeds all but require the use of Roundup herbicide, trapping all of their customers into buying it. And who owns Roundup? You guessed it, Monsanto.

Monsanto has, it seems, cornered the market on abusive monopolistic practices as well. In the middle of a recession, while farmers' incomes are dropping, Monsanto recently announced a 42% price hike on its most popular genetically modified seeds. When in many areas of the country distributors carry nothing but these seeds, this sure looks like evidence of a monopolist abusing its market position.

President Obama's antitrust chief Christine Varney has promised rigorous enforcement of antitrust law with a special focus on the agricultural sector. She should start with the worst of the worst, Monsanto. Sign the petition to demand that Varney immediately open an investigation into Monsanto and its abusive business practices.

And:

Last year's food riots in Haiti, India, Indonesia and elsewhere sounded the alarm bell for a painful level of global hunger that is only going to increase with a growing population and a changing climate. In a promising move, the G8 -- a group of the world's eight wealthiest nations -- has just announced a shift away from providing direct food aid to developing countries and towards helping farmers abroad produce and distribute their own food.

That's a laudable goal. But the Obama administration along with members of the U.S. Congress are using this singular moment to move their own agenda: propping up U.S. biotechnology companies like Monsanto. They hope to accomplish this by promoting genetically modified seeds and chemical inputs as tools to fight hunger through an exclusive focus on increasing crop yields. One powerful Senate committee has already passed a bill, sponsored by Senators Casey (D-PA) and Lugar (R-IN), that requires GMO technology to be part of the U.S. agricultural research agenda abroad. We need to tell them not to use our tax dollars to market Monsanto's products abroad!

Despite all the hype, GMOs have simply failed to deliver: there is no evidence that exporting this technology to the developing world will actually boost productivity. A recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that GMOs have had almost no impact on crop yields in the United States. Further, GMOs have little to offer drought-prone regions like Africa. Simply put: there are no drought-tolerant GMOs currently on the market. The only two GMO seed traits available -- sold by the biotechnology giants Monsanto and Bayer CropScience -- are herbicide tolerance and pest resistance for a handful of commodity crops like corn, soy and cotton. And not only are the existing seeds expensive but the use of these seeds would also tether poor farmers to the synthetic pesticides and fertilizers GMOs require.

Dedicating millions of dollars in aid money to biotechnology companies also reduces the funding available for proven agro-ecological systems and infrastructure improvements that are more appropriate for small and limited-resource producers.

Sign this petition today to tell your Senators that the path out of poverty isn't through Monsanto's doors. Ask them to oppose Casey-Lugar and any development aid bill that promotes GMO technology.

Once the genie is out of the bottle

There is no way to put him back in...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. food supply is at risk of being invaded by unapproved imports of genetically modified crops and livestock, a USDA internal audit report released Wednesday said.

[snip]

The audit found that the USDA needs to develop screening measures to weed out undeclared GMO crops and livestock. The department currently has no measures in place to identify a shipment of unapproved GMO imports unknown to the U.S. regulatory system, the report said.

The United States has been a forerunner in developing GMO plants and animals since the 1990s, but other countries are beginning to invest more in biotechnology.

[snip]

Although the implications associated with Americans consuming unapproved GMO food are unknown, the health and environmental concerns that it poses could threaten commerce.

The USDA's lack of policies and monitoring capability on the matter reflect the United States' dominance over the global market concerning genetic modification.

"Department officials stated that they have not needed such a strategy because most transgenic plants were first developed within the U.S. regulatory system, and it was unlikely that anything unfamiliar would be imported," the report said.

[snip]

In a letter to the Office of Inspector General, the USDA said it would create a plan for monitoring GMO plant and animal developments worldwide by November 30. But further action on policy would require approval from the incoming administration.

So we're only supposed to eat Monsanto grown frankenfoods? They don't like it when we get foreign genetically modified food products? Why? Horning in on their efforts to wedge their way in between the plant and the farmer, the pig and the plate? Aren't they always telling us chemicals in our food is good for us and wonderful for the farmer?

What could go wrong?