Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music is brought to you by guest VJ NCTim who presents a fine compendium of gospel music that features steel guitar goodness: Sacred Steel. Enjoy!
Robert Randolph, Calvin Cooke, Levi Bennett, Aubrey Ghent
A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.
Crazy Horse, Oglala Lakota Sioux
News and Opinion
As Death Toll and Chaos Mount in Yemen, Red Cross Calls for Ceasefire
'The streets of Aden are strewn with dead bodies, and people are afraid to leave their homes,' says Red Cross
Amid ongoing Saudi-led airstrikes—including a bombing Friday that killed at least nine people from the same Yemeni family—the United Nations is considering calls for a ceasefire in Yemen to allow urgent humanitarian aid deliveries and evacuation of civilians.
And on Sunday, Reuters cited a senior Houthi member who said the Houthis "are ready to sit down for peace talks as long as a Saudi-led air campaign is halted and the negotiations are overseen by 'non-aggressive' parties."
Warplanes and ships from a Saudi-led coalition have been bombing the Iran-allied Houthi forces for 11 days.
However, as Juan Cole notes, the airstrikes "have repeatedly hit civilian neighborhoods in cities like Sanaa and have, intentionally or no, struck soft targets of no obvious military value, including a refugee camp."
Civilian casualties mount amid raging battles in Yemen
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
SANAA, Yemen -- As a Saudi-led air coalition continued to strike rebel targets across Yemen, reports emerged Saturday of more civilian casualties and of al Qaeda-linked militants executing dozens of soldiers as they consolidated their grip on a southeastern provincial capital of Mukalla.
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia is spearheading efforts to crush the Shiite Muslim insurgents known as Houthis and restore to power the country’s internationally recognized president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Fighting has raged for days in and near the southern port of Aden, Yemen’s second city and its main commercial hub.
Hadi took shelter in Aden after the capital, Sanaa, fell to the Houthis last year, and the rebels’ offensive against the port city triggered the Saudi-led intervention.
International agencies have expressed growing alarm over rising civilian casualties. The United Nations says the fighting over the past two weeks has killed more than 500 people, including civilians and nearly 100 children.
Ukraine crisis: Six government soldiers killed in east
Six Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in two separate incidents in the east of the country, government officials say.
Four died after their vehicle was reportedly fired on by pro-Russian separatists in Schastye, close to the separatist stronghold of Lugansk.
Two others were killed when their vehicle hit an anti-tank mine near the government-held port city of Mariupol.
A fragile ceasefire has been in force in eastern Ukraine since February.
Pepe Escobar in eastern Ukraine: Howling in Donetsk
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Asia Times’ roving correspondent Pepe Escobar just returned from a reporting trip to the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the pro-Russian enclave in the Donetsk Oblast province of eastern Ukraine. The area’s been the scene of heavy fighting between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian military. Escobar traveled to Donetsk at the invitation of Europa Objektiv, a German-based non-governmental media project. He traveled at his own expense.
I’ve just been to the struggling Donetsk People’s Republic. Now I’m back in the splendid arrogance and insolence of NATOstan.
Quite a few people – in Donbass, in Moscow, and now in Europe – have asked me what struck me most about this visit.
I could start by paraphrasing Allen Ginsberg in Howl – “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”
Netanyahu continues attack on Iran nuclear agreement: it's 'a very bad deal'
*Israel PM: deal did not do enough to dismantle nuclear infrastructure
*Energy secretary Moniz: ‘We have a very, very different view of the facts’
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday stepped up his attack on a nascent deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, calling the framework agreement announced in Switzerland last week “a very bad deal”.
The framework did not do enough to dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, Netanyahu said, and world powers were making a mistake by offering Iran a path to sanctions relief without demanding more in return.
“A better deal would roll back Iran’s vast nuclear infrastructure, and require Iran to stop its aggression in the region, its terror worldwide and its calls and actions to annihilate the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said on CNN. “That’s a better deal. It’s achievable.”
Netanyahu has been a critic of the negotiations with Iran from the outset, but the announcement of a framework agreement has set off a new round of lobbying against the negotiations by the Israeli leader, who was scheduled to appear on three Sunday morning news shows in the US. Netanyahu was apparently working from a new set of talking points drafted by advisers over the weekend to attack the deal, the Associated Press reported.
U.S.-Iran nuke deal creates new political dimension for Mideast and Central Asia: Sisci
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
America’s nuclear deal with Iran creates a new political dimension in the Middle East and Central Asia. It’s important for the moment to focus on the general security picture for the region, leaving aside the existential concerns raised by Israel about the disruptive potential of lifting sanctions against a nation which is ultimately ruled by a clerical aristocracy whose reliability in following such an accord is uncertain.
Without a nuclear deal, Iran would likely to lean on Russia for its security and nuclear know-how. The U.S., on a collision course with Russia over Ukraine, was hardly in a position to let this happen . That would again massively involve Russia in Middle Eastern and Central Asian affairs after being pushed out in the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union.
In a vaguer, less immediately dangerous fashion, was the danger of having China’s continued involvement in Tehran, juggling Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. All this would have been part of a very cautious power play by Beijing where the trump card is the promise of a grand Silk Road bonding all Eurasia.
In both these dealings, Russia and China dealt with all the countries in the region. The U.S. didn’t. Though the U.S. is the most powerful, this put Washington at a great disadvantage with respect to these other powers. The reason why Israel complains so much about the American rapprochement and is muted about Russia and China may also be complicated.
$10 bln down the drain? US spends billions on 'ineffective' missile defense systems
The US wasted $10 billion on missile defense projects which were doomed for failure from the beginning, due to a lack of analysis, a report by the Los Angeles Times says. Aside from the astronomical costs, the failures appear to also threaten US security.
America’s maritime based X-Band Radar (SBX) was hailed by the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) as having the potential to become the most powerful radar of its kind in the world.
Henry A. Obering III, a retired director of the Missile Defense Agency, said at a Senate hearing in April 2007 that “if we place it in Chesapeake Bay, we could actually discriminate and track a baseball-sized object over San Francisco.”
However, despite all the hype, the SBX proved to be a flop and an expensive one at that. A report by the Los Angeles Times revealed the project eventually cost $2.2 billion and was doomed to fail from the very beginning, due to insufficient early testing. The system, which was supposed to have been operational in 2005, is now lying idle in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
You probably know David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer prize winning tax journalist.
This article is really important in the way that corporations have gained power - Chris Hedges calls what has happened a Corporate Coup d'etat.
In the celebration of Indiana getting bashed, another step forward for corporate power.
Toxic Law: How Corporate Power And ‘Religious Freedom’ Threaten Democracy
Submitted by: Don midwest
Corporations from Apple and Angie’s List to Walmart and Wells Fargo exercised their power last week against laws that give aid and comfort to bigots. But don’t be too quick to praise their actions.
Commendable as these corporate gestures were, they also illustrate how America is morphing from a democratic republic into a state where corporations set the political agenda, thanks to a major mistake by Democrats in Congress. What they did has resulted in Supreme Court decisions that would infuriate the framers of our Constitution.
The framers distrusted the corporate form. And they made plain their concerns about concentrations of economic power and resulting inequality, worrying that this would doom our experiment with self-governance. Surely they would be appalled at the exercise of corporate influence last week. For the companies opposing “religious freedom” laws in Arkansas and Indiana were concerned with human rights only in the context of profit maximization, which is what economic theory says corporations are about.
Where are the corporate actions against police violence? Or unequal enforcement of the tax laws, under which workers get fully taxed and corporations literally profit off the tax laws? Or gender pay discrimination? And when have you heard of corporations objecting to secret settlements in cases adjudicated in the taxpayer-financed courts, especially when those settlements unknowingly put others at risk?
Wall Street and the wingnuts win again: Radical right and radical wealth have captured both parties
Say what you will of Congress but it’s been busy lately. In the Senate, Bob Menendez is busy being indicted. Harry Reid is busy retiring. Chuck Schumer is busy being promoted, and also beheading his old pal Dick Durbin. Some Republicans are busy running for president; all are busy not confirming Loretta Lynch, not passing a sex trafficking bill, and pretending to pass a budget (but not really doing that, either).
The House is always busy investigating Benghazi, repealing Obamacare and not reforming immigration. Not writing a real budget frees up members to write letters urging senators not to vote on executive nominations. If there’s a lull in the action they can invite a foreign leader in to help the president manage our foreign policy. The point is to stay busy, an idle mind being the devil’s workshop.
How does a do-nothing Congress manage to do so many things people hate? The Washington crowd blames the system and they’re partly right. When politics is all fundraising and performance art, Congress fills up with people who don’t want it to work. Because Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton don’t want to pass any bills, Mitch McConnell has nothing to hold over them. McConnell vowed to make the Senate work again, but his grip on the GOP caucus seems no tighter than John Boehner’s.
A far worse problem for Republicans is their agenda. You’d think a party that just pretends to do stuff would pretend to do stuff people like. Not so. The Bibi stunt and the Iran letter were meant to blow up a nuclear weapons deal two-thirds of Americans already favor. As Indiana and Arkansas Republicans made fools of themselves in the name of ‘religious freedom,’ CBS News asked voters about same-sex marriage. Sixty-two percent of the unaffiliated are for it; as are 70 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans. Last month McConnell urged governors to block EPA rules on carbon emissions that voters also back by two-to-one margins. See a pattern?
US Police Killed More People In Just One Month Than The UK’s Did In Over A Century
Submitted by: NCTim
On April Fool’s Day Think Progress reported an astounding 111 police killings for the month of March. Unfortunately, that was no joke. Shaun King from Daily Kos then checked to see whether police across the pond in the U.K. log in comparable numbers and was amazed: An entry from Wikipedia lists only 69 police killings in the U.K. since 1900.
That’s right. Just 69 police killings in the U.K. since 1900, including Bloody Sunday (1920), and the 1969 Northern Ireland riots. Meanwhile, America’s finest managed to rack up 111 police killings in just one month.
So, of course someone’s going to chime in on how we’ve got way more people here in the U.S. ( 320.5 million) than in the U.K. (64.1 million), so of course we have more police shootings. Plus, nobody kept real records of police shootings until the 1970’s blah blah blah. Still, as King points out, these numbers are scary as hell:
"Don’t bother adjusting for population differences, or poverty, or mental illness, or anything else. The sheer fact that American police kill TWICE as many people per month as police have killed in the modern history of the United Kingdom is sick, preposterous, and alarming."
Why 70 percent of white Americans approve of police hitting suspects
Many white Americans can imagine a situation in which they would approve of a police officer striking an adult male citizen. But a new poll shows that only 42 percent of blacks and 38 percent of Hispanics said they could.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Washington — Whites in the United States approve of police officers hitting people in far greater numbers than blacks and Hispanics do, at a time when the country is struggling to deal with police use of deadly force against men of color, according to a major American trend survey.
Seven of 10 whites polled, or 70 percent, said they can imagine a situation in which they would approve of a police officer striking an adult male citizen, according to the 2014 General Social Survey, a long-running measurement of trends in American opinions. When asked the same question — Are there any situations you can imagine in which you would approve of a policeman striking an adult male citizen? — 42 percent of blacks and 38 percent of Hispanics said they could.
These results come as Americans grapple with trust between law enforcement and minority communities after a series of incidents, including the deaths Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York, both black men. Thousands of people protested in the streets last year after the deaths of 18-year-old Brown and 43-year-old Garner, who gasped "I can't breathe" as police arrested him for allegedly selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. But the survey shows the gap between whites, blacks and Hispanics long predates the recent incidents.
The poll results don't surprise experts on American attitudes toward police, who say experiences and history with law enforcement shape opinions about the use of violence by officers.
“They treated us as if we were murderers”: The trauma of an ICE raid
When ICE agents raided a New Bedford factory, 362 Latinos' lives were upended and the results were devastating
Nothing illustrates the “raid mentality” of immigration enforcement like an actual raid.
Just at the head of Clark’s Cove, along the waterfront where old textile mills and fish factories dot the small peninsula of New Bedford that juts into Buzzards Bay, is an unremarkable four-story red brick factory building that has housed enterprises long forgotten. It is unremarkable because so many buildings of that kind still stand in this legendary whaling town, many of them abandoned once textiles—for years the economic engine of the city—followed whaling’s earlier decline and nearly vanished. In this building, though, textiles were still being sown into vests and backpacks for the US Army, a nice bit of business in struggling New Bedford, coming as it did with a $132 million contract. Owner Francesco Insolia won the contract with help from city and state officials, took an enormous grant from Massachusetts’ Department of Workforce Development when Mitt Romney was governor, and grew to more than 500 employees to produce his army goods in what was widely known to be a sweat shop. A sweat shop with all the trappings—filthy bathrooms, draconian rules for lateness or talking or breaks, earned overtime pay never paid—an altogether substandard workplace. Insolia could do so for several years because his employees were for the most part undocumented workers, immigrants, mainly from Guatemala and El Salvador. They would work hard for Insolia and the US Army and keep their heads down. It was an open secret, of course, because New Bedford is small and jobs were scarce. But for five years Insolia and his company, Michael Bianco Inc., thrived under the nose of the military officials there and the state and city officials who poured job training funds and tax breaks into his coffers
Then one day it all came crashing down. On a cold morning late in the winter of 2007, more than 300 agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, raided the factory and rousted 362 Guatemalans, Salvadorans and a sprinkling of other south-of-the-border workers. They were handcuffed and manacled, and over the course of the day were taken from where they sat on the factory floor into buses and driven 94 miles to Fort Devens, an Army Reserve base. Many spent several immobilized hours on that floor, feeling brutalized by the federal police, while others attempted to escape, some even jumping into Clark Cove to get away. Among those taken were parents of small children, about a hundred children in all, who were suddenly without parental care. The new governor, Deval Patrick, spurred by the state’s child welfare agency being denied a role in the “processing” after weeks of pleading, called the whole shabby affair “a humanitarian crisis.”
And indeed it was. Within hours, before lawyers could be dispatched to Fort Devens, about half of the arrested workers were flown to Texas (either to Harlingen or to El Paso) to be incarcerated in detention centers run by private contractors for the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s home department. There the possibility of being released, even with an ankle bracelet to monitor movements, was undercut by the lack of “community ties” of the detainees. Months of detention for many of the Michael Bianco workers lay ahead. About 160 would be deported outright.
City Council election gives Ferguson a chance to change
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
FERGUSON, Mo. — After months of racially charged unrest over the police killing of a black teenager, activists are making a final push to attract a new generation of voters to the polls on Tuesday in the hopes of changing the face of the predominantly white political leadership in this mostly black city.
The effort has transformed the normally sleepy races for City Council in Ferguson, a community of 21,000 people just outside St. Louis.
“It’s special to me because if this goes ... this can be the start of a new tomorrow,” said Latrez Davis, 24, a black man who moved to Ferguson about a month ago and said he plans to vote.
Much is at stake in the election. The Aug. 9 killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, unleashed sometimes violent demonstrations that left parts of Ferguson tattered and charred. Beyond revitalizing these areas, the next council must select key officials — a city manager, a police chief and a municipal judge — who will be directly responsible for ushering in a new era of law enforcement.
Californians Point to Big-Ag, Unrestrained Development as Drought Culprits
As residents adapt to recently imposed water restrictions and California's historic drought continues, experts are closely examining the dry spell's exacerbating factors—from thirsty agribusiness operations to unrestrained development—and saying a fundamental shift is in store for the Golden State.
In an analysis published Sunday, the New York Times suggests that the drought will "force a change in the way the state does business."
"Much like the Gold Rush more than 150 years ago or the rise of Silicon Valley, the assumption of cheap and abundant water has been a crucial part of California’s identity, history and economy," write Times journalists Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy, and Nelson D. Schwartz.
They continue:
And until recently, it seemed that the California dream was sustainable: booming cities, wide lawns in the suburbs, green golf courses in an otherwise parched landscape and, above all, a vibrant agricultural sector in places not much wetter than a desert.
California drought: governor tells climate-change deniers to wake up
*Brown:‘With the weather that’s happening, climate change is not a hoax’
*Feinstein plans emergency legislation to address ‘very serious problem’
As his state faces the worst drought in its history, with mandatory water rationing for residents and fears of destruction to the agricultural sector, California governor Jerry Brown had a message Sunday for climate-change deniers: wake up.
“With the weather that’s happening in California, climate change is not a hoax,” Brown said, on ABC news. “We’re dealing with it, and it’s damn serious.”
Snow pack in California this year, which historically has renewed the state’s water reservoirs each spring, has been measured at just 8% of usual levels. Reservoirs sit mostly dry, with 38 million residents downstream wondering where water for showers, dishes and drinking will come from.
Earlier this week, Brown announced new rules for the amount of water California residents and municipalities can use, with the aim of cutting statewide water usage by 25%. Residents faced restrictions on watering lawns and flushing toilets. Cities were prohibited from watering ornamental grass on street medians and told to revisit how much water utilities charge.
Tommy Chong Speaks At 44th Annual Michigan Hash Bash
Submitted by: NCTim
On Saturday April 4th at “high noon,” crowds of marijuana legalization supporters flooded the University of Michigan campus, as they’ve done on the first Saturday in April for the past 44 years. This year’s “Hash Bash” featured Tommy Chong, of Cheech and Chong fame. During his roughly eight-minute speech, Chong spoke to rally participants about the on-going push to end the United States failed war on drugs.
The speech was uploaded to youtube by dobbins390.
In addition to Tommy Chong, this year’s Hash Bash featured several political representatives, including Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero and Michigan state representative Jeff Irwin. Bernero said he wants sane, sustainable and enforceable marijuana policies, and talked about how he hopes that his city, Lansing, will help lead the way toward that goal.
“I hear the term ‘Free the weed,'” Bernero said during an interview with the Lansing State Journal. “For me, what that really means is free the people, free the talent, free the entrepreneurship, free up job opportunities, clean up our neighborhoods, free up prison space.”
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature coverage of the first day of testimony before the Commission on Industrial Relations regarding wages and working conditions of Pullman employees.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Venezuela looks to Hugo Chavez oil belt to fix sick economy
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
HUGO CHAVEZ OIL BELT, Venezuela (AP) — You can't miss it, rising off the main highway, a mountain of toxic soot towering over the flat, sunbaked scrubland of eastern Venezuela.
The buildup of petroleum byproduct known as coke isn't just an environmental hazard polluting the air of neighboring communities. It's a potent symbol of the waste and unfulfilled promise of an oil industry more vital than ever to Venezuela's economic health.
For years, state-run oil monopoly PDVSA exported coke to great profit. But a 2009 fire knocked out a conveyer belt used to transport it to waiting ships. Exports have all but stalled ever since, and the residue has been piling up, representing millions of dollars a day in lost revenue at a time of a deep economic crisis marked by widespread shortages and galloping 68 percent inflation.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Factset shows earnings estimates track oil (and that shows why earnings are vulnerable to big disappointments)
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The financial information firm Factset came up with an eye-opening chart showing that bottom-up estimates of S&P earnings track the price of oil:
There are two kinds of information in this chart. The first is the extent to which overall S&P earnings depend on the energy sector. The second, which Asia Unhedged thinks is more important, is how lazy equity analysts are. The energy analysts simply made a straight-line projection of energy sector earnings on the basis of the oil price, and the bottom-up estimates simply factored energy sector estimates into the overall estimates.
And for this, equity analysts make a living? To be fair, the correlation noted by Factset is in some respects spurious. Oil is highly correlated to the dollar, and the rising dollar also reduces corporate earnings (and equity analysts know how to make this calculation). So what we observe in the Factset chart is not just the impact of oil prices, but the combined effect of oil and the dollar.
Very little thought (and even less intelligent thought) has gone into the knock-on effects of a lower oil price: what does it it mean for capital goods industries, for example? Most macro forecasters assumed that cheaper oil would spur consumer spending, and were beguiled by outsized employment growth numbers in January and February that just were revised downward by 69,000 jobs.
Mozilla to also reject Chinese Internet body's certificates
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
(Reuters) - Mozilla Corp, creator of the popular Firefox web browser, said on Thursday it would follow Google Inc and no longer recognize new certificates of trust issued by a Chinese Internet agency.
Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox are some of the world's most widely used browsers, and the moves could disrupt users accessing a broad range of Chinese web sites.
As a result of Mozilla's step, users of Firefox may get a warning when attempting to visit sites certified after April 1 by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the body that administers China's Internet by allocating and certifying IP addresses and web domain names.
CNNIC issued a statement on Thursday calling Google's move "unacceptable and unintelligible" and asked the web giant to consider its users' interests.
California quake risk: Newly discovered link between Calaveras, Hayward faults means potentially larger earthquakes
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
University of California, Berkeley seismologists have proven that the Hayward Fault is essentially a branch of the Calaveras Fault that runs east of San Jose, which means that both could rupture together, resulting in a significantly more destructive earthquake than previously thought.
"The maximum earthquake on a fault is proportional to its length, so by having the two directly connected, we can have a rupture propagating across from one to the other, making a larger quake," said lead researcher Estelle Chaussard, a postdoctoral fellow in the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. "People have been looking for evidence of this for a long time, but only now do we have the data to prove it."
The 70-kilometer-long Hayward Fault is already known as one of the most dangerous in the country because it runs through large population areas from its northern limit on San Pablo Bay at Richmond to its southern end south of Fremont.
In an update of seismic hazards last month, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a 14.3 percent likelihood of a magnitude 6.7 or greater earthquake on the Hayward Fault in the next 30 years, and a 7.4 percent chance on the Calaveras Fault.
“Facebook’s power is to sort what people see and to screen information. That’s basically what Google does, too”
Savvy tech critic talks outrage culture, surveillance and the power we give Google & Facebook to moderate our lives
“Terms of Service,” the first book from the young cultural critic Jacob Silverman, is less an argument than a tour. Its subject is the Internet—or, more accurately, what Silverman calls “the social web,” which could be loosely defined as either a) an Internet experienced tailored to YOU!, or b) a surveillance system that comes equipped with some nice photo-saving and message-sharing tools.
Silverman leans toward interpretation b. “Communication,” he writes, “has become synonymous with surveillance.” “Terms of Service” offers a tour of a digital world that, under Silverman’s guiding skepticism, comes to look like a cross between the reality show “Big Brother” and a shopping mall. Or, to adapt one of Silverman’s better analogies, it’s a digital sphere in which we are all, essentially, the world’s saddest tourists: isolated and gullible; self-conscious and secretly watched; sampling everything but lingering nowhere; and taking many, many photos.
Over a phone connection that may or may not have been monitored by the NSA (it certainly wouldn’t have been hard), Silverman spoke with Salon about privacy, Tumblr’s hypocrisy, and whether the Internet is sometimes too nice.
Your book makes two arguments that often appear together in social media critiques. One is that social media companies are invading our privacy. The other is that social media is making us shallow—even narcissistic. How are these two arguments connected?
Is the world getting crazier or is it just me? Maybe too much carbon dioxide and too little oxygen in the atmosphere?
Kremlin-Funded Study Says Obama Is a Space Lizard
The Kremlin has responded to a shocking Pentagon analysis of Putin's neurological health with a "scientific" study of its own
The Internet nearly exploded yesterday after it was revealed that a Pentagon "movement patterns analysis expert" concluded—after carefully studying video footage—that Vladimir Putin has an "autistic disorder."
But the study's spectacular findings pale in comparison to similar research funded by the Kremlin, which has clearly demonstrated that Barack Obama is a lizard from outer space.
Top researchers at Russia's Ministry of Defense discovered Obama's shocking lizard secret after analyzing several videos uploaded by YouTube user "LizardWorldGovernment666".
"We watched this one video where Obama was giving this fancy state dinner," recalls Sergei, a behavioral psychologist who could not provide his full name due to the sensitive nature of his work. "And [Obama] sort of licked his raspberry sorbet instead of using a spoon like a normal human would. And then I was just like, 'Oh my god, this dude is a f---ing lizard.'"
CERN restarts Large Hadron Collider, seeks dark universe
(Reuters) - Scientists at Europe's physics research center CERN on Sunday restarted their "Big Bang" Large Hadron Collider (LHC), embarking on a bid to probe into the "dark universe" they believe lies beyond the visible one.
CERN reported that particle beams were successfully pushed around the LHC in both directions after a two-year shutdown for a major refit described as a Herculean task that doubled its power -- and its reach into the unknown.
"It's fantastic to see it going so well after such a major overhaul," CERN Director General Rolf Heuer told delighted scientists and engineers as the beams moved round the tubes of the 27-km (17-mile) underground complex.
But it will be two months before particle collisions -- mini-versions of the Big Bang primordial blast that brought the universe into being 13.8 billion years ago -- begin and at least a year more before any results can be expected.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Good News: Our Planet Might Actually Be Getting Greener
The threat of deforestation is understood as one of the major problems in the world today, but a new study suggests that the total amount of vegetation in the world appears to have increased in the past decade, suggesting a rare ray of light in conservation and climate change news.
The study, which was published late last month in the journal Nature Climate Change, saw researchers from Australia assess the amount of carbon stored in living plant mass, also known as biomass, stored above ground. This is one established way that we can measure not just how much carbon is stored but also the density of biomass in any given area and so provides us with an interesting way of assessing regional and global forest densities.
To assess this, the researchers developed a new technique. The researchers explain:
We developed a new technique to map changes in vegetation biomass using satellite measurements of changes in the radio-frequency radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface, a technique called passive microwave remote sensing. The radiation varies with temperature, soil moisture and the shielding of water in vegetation biomass above the ground.
We extracted this vegetation information from several satellites and merged them into one time series covering the last two decades. This allowed us to track global changes in biomass from month to month, something that was not possible before.
Plowing prairies for grains
Clearing grasslands to make way for biofuels may seem counterproductive, but University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show in a study today (April 2, 2015) that crops, including the corn and soy commonly used for biofuels, expanded onto 7 million acres of new land in the U.S. over a recent four-year period, replacing millions of acres of grasslands.
The study -- from UW-Madison graduate student Tyler Lark, geography Professor Holly Gibbs, and postdoctoral researcher Meghan Salmon -- is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters and addresses the debate over whether the recent boom in demand for common biofuel crops has led to the carbon-emitting conversion of natural areas. It also reveals loopholes in U.S. policies that may contribute to these unintended consequences.
"We realized there was remarkably limited information about how croplands have expanded across the United States in recent years," says Lark, the lead author of the study. "Our results are surprising because they show large-scale conversion of new landscapes, which most people didn't expect."
The conversion to corn and soy alone, the researchers say, could have emitted as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as 34 coal-fired power plants operating for one year -- the equivalent of 28 million more cars on the road.
Feds likely to shut down sardine fishing on West Coast
West Coast fisheries managers will likely shut down sardine fishing this year as numbers decline, echoing a previous collapse that decimated a thriving industry and increasing worries that other species might be withheld from the commercial market.
Fishermen are resigned to not being able to get sardines, but they hope the Pacific Fishery Management Council will not be so concerned that it sets the level for incidental catch of sardines at zero, shutting down other fisheries, such as mackerel, anchovies and market squid, which often swim with sardines.
Sardines were a thriving fishery on the West Coast from World War I through World War II, and the cannery-lined waterfront in Monterey, California, became the backdrop for John Steinbeck's 1945 novel, "Cannery Row." The fishery industry crashed in the 1940s, and riding the book's popularity, Cannery Row became a tourist destination, with restaurants and hotels replacing the canneries.
The industry revived in the 1990s, when fisheries developed in Oregon and Washington waters. Today, there are about 100 boats with permits to fish for sardines on the West Coast, about half the number during the heyday. Much of the catch, landed from Mexico to British Columbia, is exported to Asia and Europe, where some is canned, and the rest goes for bait. West Coast landings have risen from a value of $1.4 million in 1991 to a peak of $21 million in 2012, but are again declining.
97% of Northwest Alaska bird, mammal species could experience habitat change from warming climate
Of the 201 bird and mammal species that call northwest Alaska's arctic and subarctic region their home, 195 of them -- or, roughly, 97 percent -- could experience some form of habitat loss or gain stemming from climate change, a new U.S. Forest Service-led study has found.
The study, which projected the effects of climate-related changes on habitats of 162 species of birds and 39 species of mammals within 403,000 acres of the arctic, is among the first to explore what a warming climate might mean for a wide array of bird and mammal species across a vast geographic area. The findings are published in the journal Climatic Change.
"Climate is changing in the arctic far faster -- by some estimates, twice as fast -- than in lower-latitude temperate regions," said Bruce Marcot, a research wildlife biologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station who led the analysis. "This makes the arctic, in a way, an 'early warning system' for the rest of the continent, making projections of changes in the region a very important scientific tool."
In their study, Marcot and his colleagues used three approaches to project changes in vegetation and land cover through the 21st century along with wildlife-habitat relationship models that, together, summarize what scientists know about how ecosystems and wildlife habitats can be affected by rising temperature and associated drivers such as the expansion of tall shrubs and trees, increase in fire, and melting of permafrost. The researchers then projected the availability of wildlife habitat by relating recent and projected vegetation changes to the habitats of the region's birds and mammals.
Indian minister promises to tackle country's acute air pollution problem
WHO survey finds Delhi is the most polluted city in the world, with dangerous PM2.5 levels 10 times the upper recommended limit
The Indian environment minister has promised to tackle his nation’s acute problem with air pollution “better than the rest of the world has ever done” amid growing domestic concern at the health impact on hundreds of millions of people living in the developing nation’s overcrowded cities.
In an interview with the Guardian, Prakash Javadekar said the government would announce India’s first nationwide “composite, comprehensive” air index this week. So far, India’s collection of pollution data has been haphazard and compares poorly with regional rival China.
The move was welcomed by experts. Sarath Guttikunda, an expert with Urban Emissions, an independent research group, said: “We have been saying that pollution is very bad and now we’ll be able to see that. It’s a first step but it’s not going to solve the problem by itself.” .
A survey released last year by the World Health Organisation(WHO) found that Delhi, the Indian capital, was the most polluted city in the world, with an annual average of 153 micrograms of the most dangerous small particulates, known as PM2.5, per cubic metre.
Being born in lean times is bad news for baboons
The saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" may not hold up to scientific scrutiny. Baboons born in times of famine are more vulnerable to food shortages later in life, finds a new study.
The findings are important because they help explain why people who are malnourished in early childhood often experience poor health as adults.
After the plains of southern Kenya experienced a severe drought in 2009 that took a terrible toll on wildlife, researchers at Duke and Princeton Universities looked at how 50 wild baboons coped with the drought, and whether the conditions they faced in infancy played a role.
The semi-arid savanna of southern Kenya usually receives an average of 14 inches of rain a year -- akin to much of Nebraska or Kansas. But in 2009 it fell to five inches, less than the Mojave Desert receives.
Reef fish can adjust sex ratios as oceans warm
Using a multigenerational experiment UTS research has shown for the first time that when reef fish parents develop from early life at elevated temperatures they can adjust their offspring's sex through non-genetic and non-behavioural means.
The study, published in Global Change Biology, demonstrates that the mechanisms involved in restoring offspring sex ratios across generations are switched on during early development of the parents and do not simply occur as a result of adults being exposed to higher temperatures.
"Understanding the ability of species to respond and cope with rising environmental temperature is key to predicting the biological consequences of global warming," said lead author and UTS Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Jennifer Donelson.
The ability to compensate for the sex bias caused by rising temperatures is an important trait that could help constrain the impacts of ocean warming on reef fish populations and other species. However the research also suggests that when developmental temperature is too hot there is a limit to this "transgenerational plasticity."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Ukrainians Protest U.S. Police-State the Only Available Way
'Anti-Sanctions' National Payment Card System Introduced in Russia
Army of God? 6 Modern-Day Christian Terrorist Groups You Never Hear About
Feds Admit Medical Pot Works on Brain Tumors — but They’re Going After Users Anyway
How the Media and Gov't Terrorize Americans About ISIS -- and Why We Shouldn't Be Scared
How "Hate" Lets Us Off the Hook
Hellraisers Journal: Wages of Pullman Conductors and Porters to Be Probed by Walsh Commission
The End of Western Civilization
Check It
praenomen: The TPP: Endangering Our Food Supply
gjohnsit: Identity Politics and Lifestyle Branding
joe shikspack: A Big Tent Divided...
A Little Night Music
The Campbell Brothers - The Judgment
Willie Eason - Near The Cross
Dante Harmon - Something's Got A Hold Of Me
The Blind Boys Of Alabama - Higher Ground
Ted Beard
Sonny Treadway - Jesus Will Fix It For You
Aubrey Ghent - Just A Closer Walk With Thee
Calvin Cooke
Lamar Nelson - If I Couldn't Say A Word
Sonny Treadway - Jesus Will Fix It For You
The Lee Boys - Always By My Side
The Slide Brothers - Catch That Train
The Word - Untitled
Robert Randolph - Ted's Jam
The Best of Sacred Steel TV