Morse code and Macbeth

Morse code

So now that we've poisoned enough people, we can finally admit that oil dispersants are bad for us?

What young people need to know about porn.

The 1% are becoming aware the peasants are getting restless.

Women's right to choose.

The water wars of the near future.

Ian McKellen does Macbeth's soliloquy .

Only 18 times higher...

Fukushima radiation levels '18 times higher' than thought

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour. 

However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts. 

The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour. 

The new reading will have direct implications for radiation doses received by workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak last week, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo. 

In addition, Tepco says it has discovered a leak on another pipe emitting radiation levels of 230 millisieverts an hour. 

The plant has seen a series of water leaks and power failures.

Thank you, Snopes.

The picture that is making the rounds about Fukushima's radiation is actually about the projected tsunami waves.

Corporations do not act in the public interest...

They act in their own interests.

Two Workers Were Assigned To Check 1,000 Tanks At Leaking Fukushima

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s nuclear regulator on Wednesday upgraded the rating of a leak of radiation-contaminated water from a tank at its tsunami-wrecked nuclear plant to a “serious incident” on an international scale, and it castigated the plant operator for failing to catch the problem earlier. 

The Nuclear Regulation Authority’s latest criticism of Tokyo Electric Power Co. came a day after the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant acknowledged that the 300-ton (300,000-liter, 80,000-gallon) leak probably began nearly a month and a half before it was discovered Aug. 19. 

In a meeting with agency officials and experts Tuesday night, TEPCO said radioactivity near the leaky tank and exposure levels among patrolling staff started to increase in early July. There is no sign that anyone tried to find the source of that radioactivity before the leak was discovered. 

On Wednesday, regulatory officials said TEPCO has repeatedly ignored their instructions to improve their patrolling procedures to reduce the risk of overlooking leakages. They said TEPCO lacked expertise and also underestimated potential impact of the leak because underground water is shallower around the tank than the company initially told regulators. 

“Their instructions, written or verbal, have never been observed,” Toyoshi Fuketa, a regulatory commissioner, said at the agency’s weekly meeting Wednesday.

About that Pacific tuna....

Don't eat it. (edit: changed the link)

Update 8/27:  Japanese fishermen checking for radiation in fish.

Update: More on the Japanese government taking over the clean up after the Tokyo Electric corporation made a complete hash of it.

Nothing could possibly go wrong, they said....

Genetically modified grass blamed for mass cattle deaths in Texas

Preliminary tests revealed that the grass, an altered form of Bermuda grass known as Tifton 85, had mysteriously begun producing cyanide gas. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are conducting further tests to determine if some sort of mutation caused the grass to suddenly begin giving off the deadly gas.

 [snip]

Abel told CBS that he’d been using the modified grass for about fifteen years with no problems, until now. And he’s not the only one with a suddenly toxic pasture. Other farmers in the area who use the same modified grass have also found cyanide on their properties, though as yet no other cattle have died. Genetically modified crops have long been used to feed both humans and farm-raised animals. In recent years, however, activists concerned about potentially detrimental health impacts from GMOs have begun pushing for increased regulation and labeling of food products that contain modified crops. In California, voters will decide in November on a ballot measure that would require companies to label all foods containing GMOs. Such a law would be the first of its kind in the nation.

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....

Study debunks myths on organic farms

The results are in from a 30-year side-by-side trial of conventional and organic farming methods at Pennsylvania's Rodale Institute. Contrary to conventional wisdom, organic farming outperformed conventional farming in every measure.
There are about 1,500 organic farmers in Saskatchewan, at last count. They eschew the synthetic fertilizers and toxic sprays that are the mainstay of conventional farms. Study after study indicates the conventional thinking on farming - that we have to tolerate toxic chemicals because organic farming can't feed the world - is wrong.
In fact, studies like the Rodale trials (www.rodaleinstitute.org/fst30years) show that after a three-year transition period, organic yields equalled conventional yields. What is more, the study showed organic crops were more resilient. Organic corn yields were 31 per cent higher than conventional in years of drought.
These drought yields are remarkable when compared to genetically modified (GM) "drought tolerant" varieties, which showed increases of only 6.7 per cent to 13.3 per cent over conventional (non-drought resistant) varieties.
More important than yield, from the farmer's perspective, is income, and here organic is clearly superior. The 30-year comparison showed organic systems were almost three times as profitable as the conventional systems. The average net return for the organic systems was $558/acre/ year versus just $190/acre/year for the conventional systems. The much higher income reflects the premium organic farmers receive and consumers pay for.
But even without a price premium, the Rodale study found organic systems are competitive with the conventional systems because of marginally lower input costs.

It puts to shame Monsanto and RoundUp and all the other Big Ag companies poisoning our food and our water.

Mercury is delicious

The Republicans would like you to have more.

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.

I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

China wrestles with food safety problems
From steroid-spiked pork to glow-in-the-dark meat to recycled cooking oil collected from sewers, a series of illnesses and scandals linked to tainted food has put officials on guard. But tougher measures have had little effect amid an official culture of secrecy.

I'll add these new ones to the list.

*edited to include the YouTube movie.

What we don't know

Will most certainly kill us. The 'non'-reporting about the total meltdown at Fukishima:

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.

"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."

According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.

The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.

"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

Update: Now they tell us! Chemicals Newly Disclosed As Risky Are In What We Eat...But What?

And the oceans are dying: Ocean life on the brink of mass extinctions

Blog sprinkles

Friggatriskaidekaphobia!

War on reproductive rights. What Health Reform means for women.

"Non-toxic" chemicals that can kill you

10 Worst States To Be a Woman

Defining Natural Born for the last time

Eight facts and three thoughts about Social Security by Ezra Klein

The Information Sage: Meet Edward Tufte, the graphics guru to the power elite who is revolutionizing how we see data.

Full meltdown

Perspective on Chomsky

Why Ayn Rand and Her Legion of Followers Are Hopelessly Wrong

The universe.

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.

War crimes anyone?

Research links rise in Falluja birth defects and cancers to US assault

But.... I LIKE bacon....

Darn...

Processed Meats Declared Too Dangerous for Human Consumption

These people have oil in their bodies

For those idiots who are now saying the oil is gone in the Gulf

Do you think we're stupid?

Incoming BP CEO: Time for 'scaleback' in cleanup

Just because we can't see it on the shores doesn't mean it isn't there.

You can't pour MILLIONS and MILLIONS of gallons of poisonous crude and MILLIONS and MILLIONS of horribly toxic dispersant into a sea and have it just 'disappear'. BP thinks if it can get the media to start talking about the amazing fact that the oil seems to be gone, we will forget about the disaster? Demand less money from them? Decide nature will clean it all up? Decide it wasn't that big of a mess?

Are you fucking kidding me?

The Gulf is ruined.

Not in anyone's lifetime today will the Gulf return to what it was before this 'spill'. Gulf sea creatures will have been made extinct. The water has been poisoned. The surviving fish and crustaceans are inedible. People are out of work. Health problems are obvious. Beach real estate prices are plummeting.

A seemingly feel-good story showed up this week on the nation's front pages and newscasts: The oil that befouled the Gulf of Mexico for 86 days is vanishing from the surface, leaving workers with little to clean.

But scientists warn the oil's ecological impacts are shifting, not ebbing, thanks to massive volumes of dispersants that have kept the crude beneath the waves.

"This is a management decision, to use dispersants," College of William and Mary marine science professor Robert Diaz said yesterday. "It doesn't make the oil go away, it just puts it from one part of the ecosystem to another."

That dispersed oil now hovers, diluted in the water column, posing a challenge for scientists to track and measure the subsea plumes. Mapping the long-term effects of the nearly 2 million gallons of dispersant used by BP PLC may well be equally difficult, given the array of unanswered questions that surround the products' rapid breakdown of oil droplets and their chronic toxicity.

In other words, while dispersants may have helped spare the Gulf's birds, the chemicals are likely shifting dangers to other species lower in the food chain. The National Research Council described dispersant use in 2005 as "a conscious decision" to direct hydrocarbons to one part of the marine ecosystem, "decreasing the risk to water surface and shoreline habitats while increasing the potential risk to organisms in the water column and on the seafloor."

Update: 7/31: McClatchy gets it right: When will oil spill be cleaned up? Maybe never

Update: Firedoglake.

Update: Nasa photo of Gulf on July 24th.

You journalism guys are just figuring this out now?

Thank god for scientists and oceanographers:

NEW ORLEANS – It is an overlooked danger in the oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem.

The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.

That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.

"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," Kessler said.

When anybody with a brain figured out LONG AGO that the whole gusher was filled with toxins and pollutants and poisonous byproducts. That's not even counting the dispersants poured in by plane and pump. As if they could disguise the horror by preventing anyone from photographing it or talking about it or figuring out this isn't just a minor spill. Jesus. What the hell do you guys think we have been shrieking about for a month and a fucking half?

Get this. Even if the water does not have tar balls and mats of crude floating in it, the Gulf of Mexico has been fatally poisoned. This is not a little thing. This is a massively horribly cruelly big thing. Marine life has died, will die, will not survive. People will die, will starve, will move. This is a big thing.

And we figured it out long before the journalists and the federal government and the states ever did. BP knew it the minute the rig went over.

Update: For those confused by the barrels/ gallons/ metric tonnage being thrown about.

Bryan of Why Now? has the running oil meter.