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!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bad Lip Reading:  the NFL.

Hilarious take down of mis-information about flying.

Legal attempts to try and control pregnant women.

The era of stupid.

Just HOW many pipeline spills have there in been in Alberta in the last FOUR months?

Update, via Bryan, As God as my witness,I thought turkeys fly.

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.

Saturday Night Special

The Mayflower oil spill is making people ill.

When Americans finally had enough.

How hard is it to get somewhere when so many people are slamming on the brakes?

Monsanto hires infamous mercenary firm Blackwater to track activists around the world

"Kids for Cash" judge gets 28 years.  This is what you get when you privatize prisons.

The IRS 'scandal'.  (via Bryan of Why Now?)

Krugman:  The Obamacare Shock

"...here’s what it seems is about to happen: millions of Americans will suddenly gain health coverage, and millions more will feel much more secure knowing that such coverage is available if they lose their jobs or suffer other misfortunes. Only a relative handful of people will be hurt at all. And as contrasts emerge between the experience of states like California that are making the most of the new policy and that of states like Texas whose politicians are doing their best to undermine it, the sheer meanspiritedness of the Obamacare opponents will become ever more obvious.
So yes, it does look as if there’s an Obamacare shock coming: the shock of learning that a public program designed to help a lot of people can, strange to say, end up helping a lot of people — especially when government officials actually try to make it work.

And .... they're off!

Louisiana Parents Fear Elementary School Cafeteria Scanner Will Implant the Antichrist’s ‘Mark of the Beast’ on Kids’ Hands

Congress: They don't work for you.

Bedbugs in hospitals.

We can blame Chile for deforming the earth.

This PROVES we should let the oil companies build pipelines all over the place and drill and ... oops...

Roundup ... is really really toxic.

Have telemarketing people been calling you more on the phone?

What single gif or picture would you show someone?

Georgie Bush's Great Mulligan.

Teaching Game Theory.

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

Tell us again how this won't happen with the Keystone pipeline

Arkansas residents evacuate as Exxon-Mobil tar sands pipeline ruptures

An Exxon-Mobil oil pipeline ruptured Friday afternoon in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, forcing the evacuation of 20 homes and shutting down sections of interstate highway. According to Little Rock’s KATV, a hazardous materials team from the Office of Emergency Management has contained the spill and is currently attempting a cleanup. 

The burst pipe is part of the Pegasus pipeline network, which connects tar sands along the Gulf coast to refineries in Houston. Thousands of gallons of crude oil erupted from the breach around 3:00 p.m. on Friday, spilling through a housing subdivision and into the town’s storm drainage system, fouling drainage ditches and shutting down Highway 365 and Interstate 40. 

Residents were evacuated to avoid health hazards from crude oil fumes and to keep stray sparks from igniting the standing oil. Emergency workers contained the spill by hastily constructing earthen dams.

Around the world

How astonishing and unexpected!! Pipeline spill sends 22,000 barrels of oil mix into Alberta muskeg

Whether she will see any of this money is another thing... Woman Who Couldn’t Be Intimidated By Citigroup Wins $31 Million

Oklahoma Rape Victim Denied Emergency Contraceptives. Doctor Cites Religious Objection As Reason. I think suing the doctor (and the nurse who also refused to help) for 18 years of child support might get her attention.

Building tiny houses.. or should I say minimalist housing.

Big corporate fat cat thinks big corporations shouldn't pay taxes like real people.

A WWII Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk is found preserved in the Sahara.

Know your rights if you photograph police.

Because the poor women need to be told what they think? In media reports on women’s issues—abortion, birth control, Planned Parenthood—men are quoted around five times more than women, a new study shows.

Oh NOES!! We're gonna crash! NASA's Hubble Shows Milky Way is Destined for Head-on Collision with Andromeda Galaxy

Compare and contrast: Republican spokesman: ‘Let’s hurl some acid’ at female Democratic senators to these articles about real acid attacks.  Really?  You want to carefully think about what you said, sir?  Are you aware of what you have actually suggested?

What getting rid of Obamacare would really mean to the Republicans:

All of which exposes how problematic the GOP’s two-year-long posture of total repeal always was. As a short-term political posture, it has served them well. But now that the Supreme Court might give them what they want, they’re forced to deal with the reality of what it would mean. And that’s a huge wake-up call for the party, especially one without a clear leader to herd the cats as they figure out their next move. As one Republican health care aide put it to TPM, “I do think some Republicans are finally starting to realize they could be the dog that caught the car.”

Be careful what you wish for... you may get it.

Can we stop ourselves from poisoning the earth?

We use our oceans both as a pantry and as a toilet. We drill without knowing how to plug the holes. We genetically modify without testing.  Will we die before we learn we are poisoning ourselves and future generations? ... don't answer that.

 Following Garbage's Long Journey Around The Earth

 Study: Plastic in 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' increases 100-fold

The lesson of the Gulf of Mexico is forgotten...

Rules relaxed for reporting offshore oil and gas accidents: 

The North Sea safety regulator has lightened up the rules for reporting accidents offshore even as one operator in the field, Total, struggles to halt a gas leak that has been going on for over a month. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has introduced a new regulation that says injuries need only be reported if workers are out of action for over seven days. The former level was three days.

Exclusive: Shale causes rise in waste gas pollution

(Reuters) - The shale energy boom is fuelling a rise in the burning of waste gas after years of decline, a World Bank source told Reuters ahead of the release of new data, giving environmentalists more ammunition against the industry.

Monsanto's attempts to stifle reporters:

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.

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.

These people have oil in their bodies

Cruising these here internetal tubes

You never know what you will find....

Exclusive: Gulf oil dispersant contained extremely toxic carcinogen

New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified

Dalek mysteriously appeared at elementary school

How it felt to shelter from the Blitz

Solved: mystery of the meteor-shedding asteroid

Downhill With the G.O.P.

Aurora saturnalis: halos at the poles of the ringed planet

Blog sprinkles

A reminder why the Gulf of Mexico will not be the same for decades and decades. And BP's happy story about oil eating bacteria? Gulf bacteria digests gas, not oil.

Monkeyfister notes that a Florida man's blood was tested and was off the charts with the chemicals that BP uses: Florida man gets tested: Six of nine VOCs in blood — Hexane “off the charts”

The tree of crazy and why we need a chainsaw.

Californians better watch who's doing what to our water supply.

And speaking of water.... it can be turned into a blade and defuse bombs!

A watery blade is saving the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan. Known as the Stingray, the device uses conventional military explosives to craft a blade of water sharp enough to slice through a metal bomb and scramble its innards.

Developed by the Sandia National Laboratories, thousands of units of this technology have already been shipped to Afghanistan to help diffuse the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that are so deadly to U.S. soldiers.

High fructose corn syrup producers want to change its name but not its potency.... basically hiding the ingredient in the product. Be careful what you eat.

The Art of Drew Struzan

Digby quoting Michael O'Hare about those super rich whining about the ending of the Bush tax cuts:

"A truly amazing pasticcio of mendacity, ignorance, and small-minded cupidity"

Why riding a motorcycle can be effing dangerous.

The glory of an egret in flight.

Phila of Bouphonia is back with another Friday Hope blog!

Blog sprinkles

The Chinese just have to do everything better:

The jam on the main north-south motorway into Beijing has been blamed on a set of roadworks that is intended to alleviate congestion caused by thousands of trucks bring coal and perishable goods into the city.

At its farthest extent trucks joining the back of queue in Inner Mongolia were taking several days to reach their destination, crawling along at about 2mp/d – or miles per day, the measure of speed on the clogged section.

Fantastic ancient art work:

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

Just looking for a scapegoat to beat to death and hang in the village square:

This is teabaggery crowd in America today.

Oh happy news!! New microbe discovered eating oil spill in Gulf!!.... Wait a minute.... If you read down to the last paragraph, who is funding these marvelous scientists who have discovered this microbe? (my bold):

Scientists also had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water, creating a "dead zone" dangerous to other life. But the new study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67 percent, while within the plume it was 59 percent.

The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.

Ah. Prostituted scientists. So why on earth should I believe you guys, then? And ignore the crude dumped in the local landfills.... and ignore the guy who was telling the truth months ago:

What Steiner said to me during that first interview was blunt, depressing -- and struck me as having the ring of truth. Little did I know how true.

"Government and industry will habitually understate the volume of the spill and the impact, and they will overstate the effectiveness of the cleanup and their response," he told me at the time. "There's no such thing as an effective response. There's never been an effective response -- ever -- where more than 10 or 20 percent of the oil is ever recovered from the water.

"Most of the oil that goes into the water in a major spill stays there," he said. "And once the oil is in the water, the damage is done."

Steiner was also one of the first scientists to warn that much if not most of BP's oil was remaining underwater, forming giant and potentially deadly toxic plumes.

Credo Action: We need to cut military spending, not Social Security:

Sign our petition to the members of the deficit commission telling them to make recommendations that significantly lower military spending, allow the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% to expire, and modify health care reform to include a robust public option to lower costs.

Putting Glenn Beck into perspective using MLK.

Omg.... Sean Connery is 80.

Marcellina of The Practice Room has a link showing how far it is from Ground Zero to the 'mosque'.

You do that. I'm sure you'll learn something: Conservatives Across The U.S. Plan Parties To Read The Constitution Out Loud

Obviously because it's fun! Sloth and Gluttony Hard to Shake Even For the Healthy

If we were listening to Ray Bradbury we'd be packing our bags right now!

New solar system looks much like home

The newly discovered solar system may contain the largest number of planets ever found orbiting another star.

Although... if you look at the space junk we've left in our wake just around Earth, I'm sure the other star systems hope we won't figure out how to space travel....

Anyway... we're all gonna diiiiiieeeeeee! Or lose all our invested money which comes down to the same thing....

This is what we've been telling you all along

But did you listen? NoooOOOOooOOOOooo.

While officials claim most of the oil from America's worst-ever spill has disappeared, fishermen hired by BP are still finding tar balls—and being instructed to hide their discoveries.

Two weeks ago, as federal officials prepared to declare that some three-quarters of the estimated 5 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf over three months had disappeared, Mark Williams, a fishing boat captain hired by BP to help with the spill cleanup, encountered tar balls as large as three inches wide floating off the Florida coast

Reporting his findings to his supervisor, a private consulting company hired by BP, the reply, according to his logbook came back: "Told—no reporting of oil or tar balls anymore. Don't put on report. We're here for boom removal only," referring to the miles of yellow and orange containment barriers placed throughout the Gulf.

[snip]

The miraculous disappearance of the oil and the pending transfer of $20 billion to Ken Feinberg, who is independently overseeing the claims fund, have resulted in the oil giant cutting back its response operations. With a recent halving of the Vessels of Opportunity program, which hired fallow charter and commercial fishing boats, captains and deckhands are now less reticent to describe their experiences.

Link via Bryan of Why Now?