Bits and pieces

Tesla Model S... by Oatmeal.

Girl's skeleton found in cave sheds light on origins of first Americans DNA recovered from 12,000-year-old skeleton help to dispel claims that first Americans came from Australia, Asia or Europe.

What on earth is this prehistoric beast?!

Rachael Carson

Misconceptions about WWI.

Hard to be a supporter of Cliven Bundy ... they're running out of cash.

Solar wind energy tower.

One sentence news

It gets better.

Finding a lost church.

Making friends under the sea.

Rachel Carson didn't kill millions of Africans.

Does eating today's type of wheat poison you?

Dumping the 'junk DNA' theory.

The way governments begin to topple.

Republicans can't afford to give women equal pay.

Come back!!  You have my car keys!

Do Democrats really support the privatization of public schools?

Artist of the weird.

Ohio Secretary of State on the mat to explain obstruction to voting.

Sometimes being rude is good.

Besides nuking your house or spraying with DDT

This may work on bedbugs....(my bold)

How to Build Your Own Bedbug Detector.

Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey have created a homemade bedbug trap using a plastic cat-food dish, an insulated jug and some dry-ice pellets. According to Wan-Tien Tsai, who reported her findings in December at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America, the dry-ice-and-thermos combo captured the bloodsucking critters in an infested apartment just as effectively as, if not more so than, equipment used by professional exterminators.

The most important part of this MacGyverized contraption is an insulated one-third-gallon jug--like the kind sold in camping-supply stores--filled with 2½ lb. of frozen carbon dioxide, which costs about $1 per lb. (and should be handled only with gloves). As the dry-ice pellets slowly evaporate, the open thermos spout lets the CO[subscript 2]--which falsely signals bedbugs that a breathing, blood-filled meal is nearby--seep out overnight. That's usually enough time to entice the nocturnal insects into the other key component of the trap: the overturned food-and-water dish on which the thermos sits. The bugs climb the outer surface of the dish, which can be scuffed with sandpaper for better traction, and get stuck in its moat, made slippery-smooth with a dusting of talcum powder.

This trap was designed to give consumers a cheap way to determine if they have--or, in many cases, still have--a bedbug problem that requires a proper extermination. Bedbugs have made a serious comeback in North America over the past few years, especially in big cities like Toronto and San Francisco.

This would be wonderful if it works. I'm still getting hits and the occasional argument in favor of bringing back DDT. Which would really make Rachel Carson turn in her grave.

GM crops attacked and destroyed by Brazilians

Strange... sounds like they didn't like what Monsanto was doing. (Via Katrinacrat, Dizzy's Ten Post round-up:)

SAO PAULO (AFP) — Around 300 women rural residents in Brazil burst into a property owned by the US company Monsanto and destroyed a plant nursery and crops containing genetically modified corn, their organization said.

The women were protesting what they saw as environmental damage by the crops.

They trashed the plants within 30 minutes and left before police arrived at the site in the southern state of Sao Paulo, a member of the Landless Workers' Movement, Igor Foride, told AFP.

The Brazilian government had "caved in to pressure from agrobusinesses" by recently allowing tinkered crops to be grown in the country, he said.

In Brasilia, a protest by another 400 women from an umbrella group, Via Campesina (the Rural Way), was held in front of the Swiss embassy against Syngenta, a Swiss company that is selling genetically modified seeds in Brazil.

[snip]

Via Campesina said in a statement that "no scientific studies exist that guarantee that genetically modified crops won't have negative effects on human health and on nature."

It added that on Tuesday, another 900 of its members had entered a property owned by the Swedish-Finnish paper giant Stora Enso and ripped out non-modified eucalyptus saplings they claimed were illegally planted.

Goodness! Why on earth would they not trust such a nice company as Monsanto? Just because they've created the terminator gene? And sue farmers when their genetically modified crops pollinate the farmer's crops accidentally? Or ignore suicides by Indian farmers? And force people to drink rBGH (BST) without knowledge? Or support the return of DDT? Or smear the name of Rachel Carson?

Why are the Brazilians more aware than us of the dangers of corporations ignoring the needs and rights of people?

Why are they trying to bring back DDT?

Besides pissing on Rachel Carson's grave for being one of the first environmentalists, there has been a move to blame her for the return of malaria because of her stand against DDT. Who is behind this? What chemical company owns the rights to the poison? Why on earth (in every sense of the word) would we want to return to silent springs?

Tim Lambert of Deltoid:

Members of the "we hate Rachel Carson" club have been touting a new study on indoor residual spraying as showing that DDT remains effective against malaria even when the mosquitoes are resistant. For examples, see Angela Logomasini and Ron Bailey. The study found that DDT-resistant mosquitoes were still repelled from huts sprayed with DDT so that occupants would be protected from 73% of mosquitoes. But it also found that there was 92% protection with dieldrin, which mosquitoes were not resistant to. In other words, an insecticide that killed the mosquitoes worked better, as you might expect.

So while the study suggests that DDT might be more effective than tests on how effectively it kills mosquitoes suggests, it does not seem a good idea to continue to use it where the mosquitoes are resistant -- a switch to a more effective insecticide would seem wise. The experience in Sri Lanka where DDT resistance led to a malaria epidemic despite DDT spraying also points to the wisdom of switching.

Raw Story tracks the money and the Senator who blocked the Congress from honoring Carson's birthday:

A Republican Senator who successfully prevented the US Senate from honoring the centennial of the birth of environmentalist and Silent Spring author Rachel Carson received campaign donations from a member of the board of directors of a group that sponsors pro-DDT advocacy, RAW STORY has found.

William Dunn, President of Dunn Capital Management in Stuart, Florida, gave $4,000 to the campaign of Senator Tom Coburn in 2004, according to Federal Election Commission records. Dunn sits on the board of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group that promotes the use of DDT to fight malaria, and has sponsored a website called "Rachel Was Wrong," which condemns the environmental scientist and activist for her famous book.

[snip]

The CEI-sponsored campaign criticizes Carson in the strongest of terms.

"Today millions of people around the world suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria because one person sounded a false alarm. That person is Rachel Carson, author of the 1962 best selling book Silent Spring," reads a message on the front page of the website.

CEI has been accused of serving as a pro-industry advocacy group against various environmental causes. A 20th Anniversary Report on the CEI website showed that 31% of its 2003 income came from corporations.

Additionally, a CEI staff member told the Inter Press Service in 2004 that the group received funding from Monsanto, the agribusiness corporation that originally manufactured DDT, although it no longer produces the pesticide.

Monsanto also supports the work of the Congress of Racial Equality, another pro-DDT group that contributes content to the 'Rachel Was Wrong' website, according to the Pesticide Action Network of North America.

A spokeswoman from PANNA, Stephenie Hendricks, argued to RAW STORY that although Monsanto was no longer manufacturing DDT itself, it was sponsoring efforts to promote the pesticide's use in anti-malaria campaigns to "create a more broadly permissive environment for agricultural chemicals."

Monsanto did not respond to RAW STORY's inquiries on whether it had a hand in the anti-Carson activities of Senator Coburn or CEI.

Monsanto. Again.

Update: Bug Girl at Bug Girl's Blog asks why there is such a push to bring back DDT:

Why, if insects are already resistant to DDT, and you have other compounds that perform as well or better with less risk of resistance and toxic effects for both people and environment, is anyone so determined to justify keeping DDT in use??

It just doesn’t make sense. The cost/benefit analysis comes into play, but I really am not convinced that the difference is that prohibitive.

I’m going to repeat myself:

DDT is NOT a cure-all solution for malaria. It has to be used–if it is used–carefully, with planning, evaluation, and forethought. It’s easy to understand why some folks want DDT to be a panacea–Malaria is a horrible disease, and children suffer the most. But jumping in and spraying DDT can have the potential to make things worse, not better, in the long run.

Each situation has to be evaluated individually before insecticide choices are made. And insecticides are not the only piece of the malaria puzzle. A 2005 review found that simple environmental interventions–under the control of local people–could reduce malarial transmission up to 80%. I’ve already mentioned Bed nets as another strategy.

An integrated strategy will work much better than ideology.

Indeed.

More updatiness: Phila of Bouphonia also addressed this. And here.

Update 8/27: Continuing the conversation from the comments below, I posted on the Neem tree and its oil.

Happy Birthday Rachel Carson

Even though some people blame you for no longer being able to dance in the spray of DDT and would like to dig you up to kill you:

Now Melanie Morgan of Disney Radio station KSFO 560 AM wants to dig up the grave of a dead person and kill them again!

In a conversation with John Berlau (author of Eco-Freaks from the ExxonMobile funded front group, CEI) broadcast on the 6:00 hour on December 01, 2006

They were discussing how good DDT is and the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

Lee Rogers: Well I think the moral of this story is beware of do gooders they'll kill ya.

Melanie Morgan: "or dig up Rachel Green and kill her all over again. I mean that would an appropriate,

Rogers: Rachel Carson.

Morgan: I'm sorry, Rachel Carson of Silent Green.


- Lee Rogers and Melanie Morgan on ABC Disney Radio station KSFO 12/01/2006 06:15 AM (The Lee Rogers and Melanie Morgan program, KSFO 560 AM) (audio link)

And Morse of The Republic of Sestakastan catches a senator:

Tom Coburn has blocked an honor for Rachel Carson.

A plan to honor environmental pioneer and "Silent Spring" author Rachel Carson on her centennial on Sunday was blocked by a U.S. senator who believes Carson created a climate of "hysteria and misinformation."

Sen. Tom Coburn (news, bio, voting record) derailed approval of a Senate resolution honoring the life of Carson, whose 1962 book "Silent Spring" warned of the dangers posed to wildlife and humans by the pesticide DDT and who is credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement.

"Rachel Carson's work both directly and indirectly created a climate of hysteria and misinformation about the impact of DDT on the human populations," said John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, in explaining why the Oklahoma Republican withheld his support for the plan to honor her.

Why on earth is she so disliked by the rightwing?

Rachel Carson made environmentalism respectable. Before Silent Spring, nearly all Americans believed that science was a force for good. Carson's work exposed the dark side of science. It showed that DDT and other chemicals we were using to enhance agricultural productivity were poisoning our lakes, rivers, oceans, and ourselves. Thanks to her, progress can no longer be measured solely in tons of wheat produced and millions of insects killed. Thanks to her, the destruction of nature can no longer be called progress.

She stepped in the way of big corporations and showed people the consequences of pesticides. She taught a whole generation to question.

As early as 1945, Carson and her close colleague Clarence Cottam had become alarmed by government abuse of new chemical pesticides such as DDT, in particular the "predator" and "pest" control programs, which were broadcasting poisons with little regard for the welfare of other creatures.

[snip]

Meanwhile, the insecticide barrage had been augmented by dieldrin, parathion, heptachlor, malathion and other fearful compounds many times stronger than DDT, all of which the government planned to distribute through the Department of Agriculture for public use and commercial manufacture. "The more I learned about the use of pesticides, the more appalled I became," Carson recalled. "I realized that here was the material for a book. What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important."

[snip]

Silent Spring, serialized in the New Yorker in June 1962, gored corporate oxen all over the country. Even before publication, Carson was violently assailed by threats of lawsuits and derision, including suggestions that this meticulous scientist was a "hysterical woman" unqualified to write such a book. A huge counterattack was organized and led by Monsanto, Velsicol, American Cyanamid — indeed, the whole chemical industry — duly supported by the Agriculture Department as well as the more cautious in the media.

[snip]

By year's end, Audubon and National Parks Magazine had published additional excerpts from the book, and all but the most self-serving of Carson's attackers were backing rapidly toward safer ground. In their ugly campaign to reduce a brave scientist's protest to a matter of public relations, the chemical interests had only increased public awareness. Silent Spring became a runaway best seller, with international reverberations. Nearly 40 years later, it is still regarded as the cornerstone of the new environmentalism. v Carson was not a born crusader but an intelligent and dedicated woman who rose heroically to the occasion. She was rightly confident about her facts as well as her ability to present them. Secure in the approval of her peers, she remained remarkably serene in the face of her accusers. Perhaps the imminence of her own mortality had helped her find this precious balance and perspective. In most photographs, the pensive face appears a little sad, but this was true long before she knew that she had cancer. She was 56 when she died in April 1964.

Some of us wish you a Happy Birthday, Ms. Carson.



Thank you.

Spocko keeps track of the ugliness on Disney Radio station KSFO 560 AM

Where they now want to dig up Rachel Carson. Is that like when Snow White was in that glass coffin and was reanimated by the prince? Or when Sleeping Beauty was aroused from her catatonic state by the prince? What kind of issues does Disney have about resurrecting dead women?

Ooooohhhh. Wait a minute. They want to resurrect Rachel Carson so they can kill her again. Now it all makes sense.