Looking back at 2009

Failblogs top ten fails:



2009 in pictures Some are horrific, some breathtakingly beautiful, some sad. All in all, a good representation of 2009.

List of failed banks to date.

The ever growing list of endangered species.

List of banned books for '08 to '09... which includes the teen vampire Twilight series by Meyers. Not for being crap, but for being too sexual. You gotta be kidding me....

Ranking the most dangerous US cities of 2009.

Washington Post's: The List: What's In and Out for 2009

And just for these economic times: The 2009 list of billionaires.

It came from underground!

Searchers shovel Northwest dirt seeking giant worm:

MOSCOW, Idaho – The giant Palouse earthworm has taken on mythic qualities in this vast agricultural region that stretches from eastern Washington into the Idaho panhandle — its very name evoking the fictional sandworms from "Dune" or those vicious creatures from the movie "Tremors."

The worm is said to secrete a lily-like smell when handled, spit at predators, and live in burrows 15 feet deep. There have been only a handful of sightings.

But scientists hope to change that this summer with researchers scouring the Palouse region in hopes of finding more of the giant earthworms. Conservationists also want the Obama administration to protect the worm as an endangered species, even though little research has been done on it.

Update 4/27/10 The worms have been found!

SPOKANE, Wash. — Two living specimens of the fabled giant Palouse earthworm have been captured for the first time in two decades in what represents a significant discovery of a creature that has achieved a mythic status in the area.

The giant Palouse earthworm has fascinated scientists for decades after long being written off as an extinct creature. Reports suggested that the worms had a penchant for spitting and smelled like lilies, further enhancing the myth of the earthworm in the agricultural Palouse region on the Washington-Idaho border.

"It's a good day for the worm," said University of Idaho soil scientist Jodi Johnson-Maynard in Moscow, Idaho, who has been leading the search

The recent discovery of the worms appeared to dispel the myth about the creature's appearance. They don't spit, or smell like lilies, and aren't even that giant.

Even puppies?

My bold:

—Her administration disputes conclusions by the federal National Marine Fisheries Service and its science advisers that the beluga whale population is in critical danger. The state argues that 2007 data shows the whale rebounding.

—Palin opposed a state ballot initiative to increase protection of salmon streams from mining operations. It was defeated.

—She also opposed a ballot initiative barring the shooting of wolves and bears from aircraft except in biological emergencies. It was also defeated.

Under Palin, the state Board of Game authorized for the first time in 20 years the shooting of wolves by state wildlife officials from helicopters. The order resulted in the controversial shooting this summer of 14 one-month-old wolf pups taken from dens on a remote peninsula 800 miles southwest of Anchorage — an act that environmentalists claim was illegal.

State officials characterized the killings as humanitarian, saying the pups would have suffered and eventually died without the care of their parents. Environmentalists argued they were killed to boost caribou populations to the benefit of hunters.

Like many other Alaska officials, Palin argues her critics don't understand the North Country.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who has complained Alaska is killing more wolves than necessary and has pushed a bill that would put additional restrictions on the aerial killing of predators, has been among Palin's targets.

Miller "doesn't understand rural Alaska, doesn't comprehend wildlife management in the North, and doesn't appreciate the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that gives states the right to manage their own affairs," Palin said in a press release a year ago.

At least Cheney only shot caged quail and lawyers...

First the trees, then the water,

Now the animals. Bush hates everything that's not making loads of money.

Rorschach of No Capital:

Tired of losing lawsuits brought by conservation groups, the Bush administration issued a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that would allow it to protect plants and animals only in areas where they are struggling to survive, while ignoring places they are healthy or have already died out.

And we are to believe this is good because?

If upheld by the courts, Suckling estimated the new policy would remove 80 percent of the roughly 1,300 species from threatened and endangered lists — because most species have at least one stronghold where they are doing well.

"It's just so clearly illogical and anti-wildlife that I can't wait to get this before a federal judge," Suckling said. "They are rewarding industry for driving populations extinct. Because as soon as you drive a population extinct (in a certain area) it is no longer on the table. It no longer counts toward whether a species is endangered."