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 features rock, country and folk singer-songwriter, record producer, author and actor Steve Earle. Enjoy!
Steve Earle and The Del McCoury Band - The Mountain
News and Opinion
FCC Sets Deadline for Vote on Net Neutrality
Officials say new regulations will be decided in February
The Federal Communications Commission will vote on new rules and restrictions on net neutrality in February, officials said Friday.
According to a Washington Post report, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler is planning to circulate a draft proposal to fellow commissioners "with an eye toward approving the measure weeks later."
At the heart of the debate is the issue of equality on the internet. Supporters of net neutrality are calling for strict rules that would prevent cable giants like Comcast and Verizon from using so-called "fast lanes" to speed up or slow down websites—and charge content providers higher rates for the privilege of faster loading times.
Opponents are pushing for looser regulations that they say would prevent overuse of bandwidth and support investments in better networks.
Although the specifics of Wheeler's proposal are still unpublished, the Post reports that "momentum has been building recently for far more aggressive regulations than Wheeler had initially proposed."
Bill Moyers' Retirement from Television "Lays Down a Challenge" for Next Generation of Journalists
After more than forty years as celebrated and progressive voice in broadcast news, veteran journalist says... "Over to you, welcome to the fight."
"Democracy is a public trust – a reciprocal agreement between generations to keep it in good repair and pass along... So to this new generation I say: over to you, welcome to the fight." —Bill Moyers
Now available online and airing on PBS stations across the country over the weekend, the final episode of the weekly commentary and news show Moyers & Company will mark the official television retirement (though not the career) of veteran journalist Bill Moyers.
In the fall of last year, Moyers announced with little fanfare that the show would be ending and he would retire from television (yes, this time he means it) after more than forty years working in print and broadcast media. Though Moyers will end his near- weekly appearance in the homes of millions of Americans, the website which he created in 2012, BillMoyers.com will continue to operate—creating both familiar and new kinds of content.
Celebrating his long career but lamenting the impact of his departure, historian Peter Dreier, in a piece posted to Common Dreams this week, argues that Moyers' retirement from the airwaves will "leave a huge hole" not easily filled by others. "No other program has journalistic breadth and depth, as well as the progressive viewpoint, that Moyers' show has provided views for over four decades," Dreier wrote.
John Nichols, who in addition to writing for The Nation magazine has written several books on the history and current state of U.S. journalism, told Common Dreams that though Moyers "cannot be replaced, his legacy must be maintained."
NYPD officers attend wake for Wenjian Liu as rift with mayor de Blasio remains
*Services for second officer killed last month begin in Brooklyn
*One officer says he ‘doesn’t know’ if backs will be turned on mayor again
*Bratton asks police not to turn backs on mayor again
*NYPD unofficial ‘slowdown’ is ‘understandable’, says union chief
Police officers began gathering for the wake of the fallen NYPD officer Wenjian Liu in New York on Saturday, with emotions ranging from sadness to defiance amid ongoing tensions with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Under chilly, grey skies, police officers stood guard across the entrance to the Aievoli Funeral Home in the Bensonhurst neighbourhood of Brooklyn, where the viewing of Liu, who was 32, was scheduled for Saturday afternoon and evening.
“I don’t know yet,” said officer Terrence Ainoo, when asked if he would turn his back on de Blasio at the wake or at Sunday’s funeral.
Police commissioner Bill Bratton has appealed to the city’s officers not to repeat such an action, which was seen at the funeral for officer Rafael Ramos last weekend. Many of the 20,000 police attending that funeral, in Queens, turned their backs on the mayor as he read his eulogy.
The NYPD’s mini-rebellion, and the true face of American fascism
The NYC cop crisis taps into a vein of authoritarian longing -- but the real risk of fascism may be harder to see
In 1935, with Hitler and Mussolini forging a historic alliance in Europe and the world sliding toward war, Sinclair Lewis published the satirical novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” which depicted the rise of an indigenous American fascist movement. Lewis is a fine prose stylist, but this particular book has an overly melodramatic plot, and is highly specific to its era. It has not aged nearly as well as “Brave New World” or “1984,” and not many people read it today. (At the time, it was understood as an attack on Sen. Huey Long of Louisiana, the populist firebrand who was planning to run against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, but was assassinated before he could do so.) But certain aspects of Lewis’ fascist America still resonate strongly. His clearest insight came in seeing that the authoritarian impulse runs strong and deep in American society, but that because of our unique political history and our confused national mythology, it must always be called by other names and discussed in other terms.
Oh, yeah — Happy New Year, everybody! Now let’s get back to fascism. When the “Corpo” regime installed by tyrannical President Buzz Windrip in “It Can’t Happen Here” strips Congress of its powers, tries dissidents in secret military courts and arms a repressive paramilitary force called the Minute Men, most citizens go along with it. (Yeah, some of that sounds familiar — we’ll get to that.) These draconian measures are understood as necessary to Windrip’s platform of restoring American greatness and prosperity, and even those who feel uncomfortable with Corpo policies reassure themselves that America is a special place with a special destiny, and that the terrible things that have happened in Germany and Italy and Spain are not possible here. No doubt the irony of Lewis’ title seems embarrassingly obvious now, but it was not meant to be subtle in 1935 either. His point stands: We still comfort ourselves with mystical nostrums about American specialness, even in an age when the secret powers of the United States government, and its insulation from democratic oversight, go far beyond anything Lewis ever imagined.
I’m not the first person to observe that the New York police unions’ current mini-rebellion against Mayor Bill de Blasio carries anti-democratic undertones, and even a faint odor of right-wing coup. Indeed, it feels like an early chapter in a contemporary rewrite of “It Can’t Happen Here”: Police in the nation’s largest city openly disrespect and defy an elected reformist mayor, inspiring a nationwide wave of support from “true patriots” eager to take their country back from the dubious alien forces who have degraded and desecrated it. However you read the proximate issues between the cops and de Blasio (some of which are New York-specific), the police protest rests on the same philosophical foundation as the fascist movement in Lewis’ novel. Indeed, it’s a constant undercurrent in American political life, one that surfaced most recently in the Tea Party rebellion of 2010, and is closely related to the disorder famously anatomized by Richard Hofstadter in his 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”
There’s no doubt that the NYPD crisis has disturbing implications on various levels. Amid a national discussion about police tactics and strategy, and the understandable grief following the murders of two NYPD officers, it amounts to a vigorous ideological counterattack. In effect, many cops (or at least their more intransigent leaders) want to assert that law enforcement is a quasi-sacred social institution, one that stands outside the law and is independent of democratic oversight. Sometimes this is taken to ludicrous and literal-minded extremes, as in a recent column by Michael Goodwin of the New York Post celebrating the NYPD and the United States military as “Our angels in a time of danger and cynicism.” (Without realizing it, Goodwin was buttressing the conclusions of James Fallows’ must-read Atlantic article about the way American society has become disconnected from the military and sanctified it at the same time.) As Salon columnist and veteran New York reporter Jim Sleeper has noted, this tendency also makes clear how little the tribal, insular culture of big-city policing has changed, even in an era of far greater diversity.
Ignoring Doubts, US Imposes Sanctions on North Korea Over Hacks
As experts question FBI's conclusion, White House says new restrictions are first step of response
The U.S. imposed new economic sanctions against North Korea on Friday after blaming the country for the recent hacks into Sony Pictures' systems.
Although the identity of the hackers is still unknown and there is little evidence to support the FBI's official consensus that North Korea orchestrated the attack, which released tens of thousands of Sony's emails and files, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to approve the sanctions as the "first aspect" of what the White House called a "proportional" response against the country.
The order placed sanctions on 10 North Korean officials and three government agencies. The officials will have their financial assets in the U.S. frozen and will be forbidden from using the American banking system.
Obama has also said the U.S. is considering putting North Korea back on its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
But all three groups, including the country's intelligence agency, an arms exporter, and a defense research agency, are already on the U.S. sanctions list. It remains unclear how these sanctions are meant to deter or weaken any potential cybersecurity moves.
Israel withholds funds, weighs lawsuits against Palestinians
(Reuters) - Israel has decided to withhold critical tax revenue from the Palestinians and is seeking ways to bring war crimes prosecutions in the United States and elsewhere against President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior figures, Israeli officials said on Saturday.
The moves are in retaliation for moves by the Palestinians to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, with the aim of prosecuting Israelis for what they consider war crimes committed on their territory.
On Friday they delivered documents to U.N. headquarters in New York on joining the Rome Statute of the ICC and other global treaties, saying they hoped to achieve "justice for all the victims that have been killed by Israel, the occupying power".
The ICC was set up to try war crimes and crimes against humanity such as genocide. Israel and the United States object to unilateral approaches by the Palestinians to world bodies, saying they undermine prospects for negotiating a peaceful settlement of the decades-old Middle East conflict.
Jewish settlers attack US officials visiting West Bank
In an incident likely to further chill US-Israeli relations, Jewish settlers threw rocks at American officials visiting the West Bank Friday to look into Palestinian claims that settlers had uprooted scores of their olive trees.
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Jerusalem — Jewish settlers attacked American consular officials Friday during a visit the officials made to the West Bank as part of an investigation into claims of damage to Palestinian agricultural property, Israeli police and Palestinian witnesses say.
The incident is likely to further chill relations between Israel and the United States, already tense over American criticisms of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and Israeli perceptions that President Barack Obama is only lukewarm in his support of Israeli diplomatic and security policies.
Settlers have often spoken against what they call foreign interference in their affairs, but this is the first known physical attack against diplomatic personnel.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that a small number of settlers threw rocks at officials who had come to an area near the Jewish settlement outpost of Adi Ad in two consular vehicles to look into Palestinian claims that settlers uprooted scores of Palestinian olive trees the day before.
Israeli settlers throw stones at US diplomatic convoy in West Bank
While inspecting damage to trees owned by Palestinians, US delegation is targeted by settlers, Israeli police say
Submitted by: NCTim
Jewish settlers threw stones at the cars of a delegation of American diplomats, who came to inspect suspected vandalism of nearby Palestinian-owned trees in the occupied West Bank, Israeli police said Friday.
The U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and U.S. consulate in Jerusalem had no immediate comment on the incident, which occurred outside the Adei Ad settlement and incurred no casualties. Washington has been vocal in its disapproval of Israeli settlement policy, though such attacks against the U.S. are rare in Israel.
An Israeli police spokeswoman said the delegation arrived at Adei Ad in U.S. diplomatic cars without first having coordinated the visit with Israeli authorities. She said the purpose of the trip was to inspect nearby trees that had been uprooted in what their Palestinian owners suspect was vandalism by Jewish settlers.
"Rocks were thrown at them by residents of Adei Ad," the spokeswoman said. "We are investigating. Arrests have yet to be made." She did not know of any damage to the vehicles and had no further information on the delegates' identities.
AirAsia QZ8501: 'Big objects' found in fuselage search
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: Search teams want divers to make visual identification
Continue reading the main story
Search teams scanning the Java Sea for the main wreckage from AirAsia flight QZ8501 have found "four large objects", the search chief says.
Bambang Soelistyo said the biggest of the objects was 18m (59ft) long and he believed they were parts of the plane.
The Airbus A320 vanished with 162 people on board en route from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore last Sunday.
So far 30 bodies have been recovered with most of the remaining bodies thought to be trapped in the fuselage.
UK Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey 'in critical condition'
UK Ebola nurse 'deteriorating'
The Royal Free Hospital said it was "sorry to announce that the condition of Pauline Cafferkey has gradually deteriorated over the past two days".
Ms Cafferkey, from South Lanarkshire, was given an experimental anti-viral drug and blood from disease survivors.
Meanwhile a patient in Swindon is currently being tested for Ebola.
Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust confirmed it was testing an individual with a history of travel to west Africa as a "precautionary measure" - but said those using the hospital should not be concerned.
Libyan on trial over US embassy attacks dies
Abu Anas al-Liby, charged over 1998 bombings in East Africa, was due to go on trial in New York in days.
A Libyan charged over the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of US embassies in East Africa has died, days before he was to stand trial in New York, his lawyer said.
Abu Anas al-Liby, 50, was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most-wanted list with a $5m bounty on his head when he was captured by US troops in the Libyan capital Tripoli in October 2013.
He and Saudi businessman Khalid al-Fawwaz were due to stand trial on January 12 over the attacks in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and wounded more than 5,000.
But al-Liby, a computer expert, died at a hospital in the New York area on Friday, his lawyer Bernard Kleinman told The Washington Post , saying the health of his client - who had advanced liver cancer - had deteriorated significantly in the last month.
Liby and Fawwaz both previously pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges.
‘Premier of war’: Czech president says Yatsenyuk not seeking peaceful solution for E. Ukraine
Czech President Milos Zeman has slammed Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, calling him “a prime minister of war” because he is unwilling to peacefully solve the civil conflict in the country.
"From the statements byPM Yatsenyuk, I think that he is a ‘prime minister of war’, because he does not want a peaceful solution to the crisis [in Ukraine] recommended by the European Commission,” Zeman told Pravo, a Czech daily newspaper.
Yatsenyuk wants to solve Ukrainian conflict “by the use of force," added the Czech leader.
Czech President Milos Zeman (AFP Photo / Patrick Kovarik)
According to Zeman, the current policy of Kiev authorities has two “faces.” The first is the “face” of the country’s president, Petro Poroshenko, who “may be a man of peace.”
The second “face” is that of PM Yatsenyuk, who has an uncompromising position toward self-defense forces in Eastern Ukraine.
Zeman said he doesn’t’ believe that the February coup, during which then-President Viktor Yanukovich was deposed from power, was a democratic revolution at all.
Russia Says Ukrainians Pay Blackwater for Training
The Russian Government’s Tass ‘news’ agency is alleging that “The US private military company Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) … has confirmed to the Kiev authorities its readiness to start training an experimental battalion of 550 men as of January at the request of Ukraine’s General Staff,” according to an unnamed source, which source is probably one of the few remaining anti-nazi bureaucrats still remaining in the Ukrainian Government. The reported price of this Blackwater (a.k.a. “Xe,” a.k.a. “Academi”) training contract is $3.5 million.
Furthermore, “‘Ukraine has said it is ready to pay the money on the condition of assistance from the Ukrainian association Patriot, providing technical and financial support for the project,’ the source said.”
That organization is Patriot of Ukraine. If this report in Tass is true, then the Ukrainian Government, which now is being funded almost entirely by U.S. taxpayers (inasmuch as it no longer meets the financial requirements of the IMF and EU, both of which receive funding from both U.S. and European taxpayers), and for which the U.S. Congress just passed and the U.S. President just signed into law in December authorization of a $450 million donation, is now co-funding this military training, along with — as wikipedia describes “Patriot of Ukraine” (but with wikipedia’s footnotes removed) —
a Ukrainian nationalist organization with racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs. It constitutes a paramilitary wing of the Social-National Assembly of Ukraine (S.N.A.), an assemblage of neo-Nazi organizations and groups founded in 2008 that share the social-national ideology and agree upon building a social-national state in Ukraine. Both the “Patriot of Ukraine” and the S.N.A. engage in political violence against minorities and their political opponents. The leader of the “Patriot of Ukraine” and of the Social-National Assembly is Andriy Biletsky.
Louis Freeh’s Latest Investigation: Billionaire Businessman Accused of Bribing African Government
Louis Freeh, the former FBI director whose wife was deeded half of a $3 million beachside penthouse by a businessman–just nine days after Freeh cleared that same businessman of wrongdoing–is onto a new job: Helping exonerate a billionaire businessman accused of bribing an African government.
As I reported here the other day, Freeh has made piles of money since leaving government service by hiring himself out to conduct allegedly independent corporate and political investigations. These investigations are clearly a growth business, because now Freeh’s firm is helping coordinate the defense of an Israeli billionaire who is being investigated on three continents in regard to bribes he allegedly paid to win a mining stake in one of the world’s poorest countries.
The case involves Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz, who controls BSGR, a holding company that in 2008 obtained a huge stake in a gigantic iron mine in the West African nation of Guinea. BSGR reportedly paid nothing for its rights to Simandou and two years later flipped 51% of its stake to a Brazilian mining giant for $2.5 billion – twice the size of Guinea’s annual budget. The deal was consummated two weeks before the death of Lansana Conté, a homicidal dictator who had ruled since a 1984 coup.
An investigation by the current government of Guinea found that a shell company controlled by BSGR paid at least $2.4 million to Mamadie Touré, a wife of the former dictator, in return for her help in acquiring the rights to the mine for BSGR. Earlier this year the government annulled BSGR’s stake in the mine, saying the firm had obtained it through corruption.
Here comes the GOP Congress
WASHINGTON — The new Republican-run Congress convenes Tuesday eager to pursue a dream the party’s been chasing for six years: Dilute, dismantle or defang key Obama administration policies on immigration, environment, health care and more.
First up this month will be approving the Keystone XL pipeline that Obama’s been reluctant to back. Next on the agenda: Trying to overturn his November action easing deportation policies for millions of undocumented immigrants.
There’s lots more. Many Republicans plan to grill and possibly stall Obama’s defense secretary and attorney general nominees, try to block the president’s new Cuba policy and chip away at the 2010 health care law.
Republicans start the year with a lot of muscle. The party will control 247 of the 435 House of Representatives seats, the biggest Republican bloc in 84 years. The party will have 54 of the Senate’s 100 seats.
GOP focus for Congress: Cut deficit, don't stumble
Submitted by: enhyda lutris
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the first Republican-dominated Congress to confront President Barack Obama, GOP leaders will focus on bolstering the economy and cutting the budget — and oh yes, avoiding self-inflicted calamities that make voters wonder if the party can govern competently.
When the new Congress raises the curtain Tuesday, Republicans will run both the House and Senate for the first time in eight years. GOP leaders want to showcase their legislative priorities, mixing accomplishments with showdowns with Obama but shunning government shutdowns and other chaotic standoffs.
Another priority is minimizing distractions like the recent admission by No. 3 House leader Steve Scalise, R-La., that he addressed a white supremacist group in 2002.
"Serious adults are in charge here and we intend to make progress," incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told The Associated Press recently.
McConnell says the Senate's first bill would force construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which Republicans call a job creator but Obama and many Democrats say threatens the environment.
The Future of Getting Arrested
What they're gonna do when they come for you
Even the most straightforward arrest is built upon an incredibly complex foundation: the moment the handcuffs go on is the moment some of our society’s most hotly contested ideas about justice, security, and liberty are brought to bear on an individual. It’s also a moment that’s poised to change dramatically, as law-enforcement agencies around the country adopt new technology—from predictive-policing software to surveillance cameras programmed to detect criminal activity—and incorporate emerging research into the work of apprehending suspects.
Not all of the innovations that are in the works will necessarily become widely used, of course. Experts say that many of them will ultimately require trade-offs that the public may not be willing to make. “We’re approaching a world where it’s becoming technologically possible to ensure 100 percent compliance with a lot of laws,” says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. “For example, we could now pretty easily, if we wanted to, enforce 100 percent compliance with speed limits.” That doesn’t mean we will.
Here, drawn from interviews with a range of thinkers and practitioners, is a glimpse of how tomorrow’s police officers may go about identifying, pursuing, and arresting their targets.
How They’ll Know a Crime Is Taking Place,
Devices designed to detect questionable activity are proliferating. Several cities have recently put in place networks of microphone-based gunshot sensors, and others are likely to adopt similar systems. When a sensor picks up a suspicious noise, a computer program analyzes the sound and, if it resembles gunfire, determines its point of origin to within a few yards. A human reviews the report and, if warranted, dispatches officers to the scene—all within about 40 seconds of the gunshot. Meanwhile, a Vancouver company is testing marijuana breathalyzers that can approximate the amount of THC in a person’s system; Guohua Li, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, thinks they will probably be in routine use within five years. Police may also start making use of intelligent surveillance cameras equipped with sensors that can identify abnormal or suspicious behavior. According to Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, such technology is being tested in several American cities and is already sophisticated enough to “notice” when someone leaves a bag unattended, or when a car repeatedly circles the same block.
A New Jersey bid to privatize water without public votes
If approved by Gov. Christie, bill would give municipalities with aging pipes right to sell systems to private companies
Submitted by: NCTim
A bill that would allow New Jersey municipalities to sell their public water utilities to private, for-profit corporations without putting the measure to voters is awaiting Gov. Chris Christie’s signature.
Until now, any municipality in New Jersey that sought to sell off its water system to a private bidder had to hold a public vote. But a bill passed with bipartisan support by the state’s Senate last week would allow municipalities with aging and deteriorating water systems to put their systems up for sale without holding a referendum.
While supporters of the bill say privatizing water systems could save municipalities money, it allows companies to factor the purchase price of the systems into the rates they charge customers, meaning taxpayers could ultimately be on the hook for the sale of their water systems.
Many New Jersey municipalities have turned to privatization as a way to get quick cash infusions for their deteriorating water systems. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the state would need $41 billion over the next 20 years to repair its water, stormwater and wastewater systems.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature the continuing strike of the men women and children of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills in Georgia. Evicted from their homes and living in army tents, they continue to resist conditions of peonage.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye Praise Pope Francis For Smacking Down U.S. Evangelicals
At the end of a multi-guest episode of StarTalk, host Neil deGrasse Tyson is joined by Bill Nye “The Science Guy,” and I F*cking Love Science blogger Elise Andrew in a free-wheeling discussion that ranges from the loss of Pluto as a planet to evangelicals attempting to re-jigger the scientific method in an effort to bolster creationism.
And then talk turned to the Pope’s recent pronouncements on science.
Addressing Nye, Tyson asks, “Bill, I want to distinguish between someone who says God created humans because the Bible says, and God created humans because we found scientific evidence to support it, right? One of them is sort of religious thought, and the other one is putting a science patina on it. So someone who says ‘I believe science and there is science in the Bible,’ so you must have confronted that.”
Referring to his debate with Kentucky creationist Ken Ham, Nye replied, “I don’t know if you got this far into this thing in Kentucky, but the guys has ‘observational science’ and ‘historical science.’ In other words, if you weren’t there, it doesn’t count.”
Listen here.
Ready to shiver? Arctic air to put America on ice
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Kocin, an expert on winter storms, said it is a classic pattern of massive blasts of Arctic air hitting just about everyone east of the Rockies. He said it will rival last year's January Arctic outbreak that introduced the phrase "polar vortex" to America.
"This is going to be a big cold outbreak, pretty windy as well," Kocin said. "It's going to drive all the way down south."
The wind and cold could mean wind-chill factors that will make the temperature feel like 30 degrees below zero — 50 degrees below zero in Minneapolis and Chicago, said meteorologist Ryan Maue of the private Weather Bell Analytics. He called it "old-timer's type of cold."
Kocin predicts a small Midwestern band of intense snow along with the cold, with some also in parts of the Northeast.
Venus once shrouded in oceans of liquid-like CO2 gas, study suggests
The second planet from the Sun may once have been home to vast oceans of carbon dioxide that flew as liquid in “soap bubbles,” American researchers suggest. The oceans could have helped to create the Earth-like geological surface features of Venus.
“Presently, the atmosphere of Venus is mostly carbon dioxide, 96.5 percent by volume,” lead study author Dima Bolmatov, a theoretical physicist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told Space.com.
Previous research has suggested that despite Venus’ current status as an immensely hot and dry planet, it may have once been home to enough water that an ocean of water 25 meters deep covered the planet.
However, Bolmatov’s research instead suggests that Venus may have once had oceans of supercritical carbon dioxide, that is carbon dioxide in a fluid state, held above its critical temperature and pressure.
The Solar System Is Slowly Re-Arranging Itself
The Enūma Anu Enlil, a series of 70 clay tablets, was found in the ruins of King Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh (on the eastern bank of the River Tigris, opposite modern-day Mosul in Iraq). The name means “in the days of Anu and Enlil”; Anu was the sky god, Enlil the wind god. The tablets, which date as far back as 1950 BC, list 7,000 omens from Babylonian astrology: “If the moon can be seen on the first day, the land will be happy.” But tablet 63 is different: it gives the times when Venus first became visible, or disappeared, over a 21-year period. This Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa is the earliest known record of planetary observations.
The Babylonians were expert astronomers who produced star catalogues and tables of eclipses, planetary motion and changes in the length of day. They were also capable mathematicians, with a number system much like ours, but using base 60 rather than ten. They could solve quadratic equations and calculate the diagonal of a square with precision, and they applied their mathematical skills to the heavens. In those days, mathematics and astronomy were part and parcel of astrology and religion, and the whole package was intimately bound up with agriculture through the progression of the seasons.
The torch of astronomy passed by way of ancient Greece to India. In sixth-century India, mathematics was a sub-branch of astronomy, and astronomy still played second fiddle to reading omens in the stars. The Arab world made further advances in our understanding of the cosmos, and kept the ancient knowledge alive until Europe once more turned its attentions to the science of the heavens.
In 1601 Johannes Kepler became imperial mathematician to the Holy Roman emperor Rudolf II. Casting the emperor’s horoscope paid the bills, and it also left time for serious mathematics and astronomy. Kepler had inherited accurate observations of Mars from his former master Tycho Brahe, and from these he extracted three mathematical patterns, his laws of planetary motion. By then, thanks to Nicolaus Copernicus, it was known—though still controversial, to say the least—that the planets revolve round the sun, not the Earth. Their orbits were thought to be combinations of circles, but Kepler’s calculations showed that planets move in ellipses. His other two laws govern how quickly the planet moves and how long it takes to go round the sun.
Comcast Wants Customers to Pay More for Using the Internet Too Much
Supporters of net neutrality have long argued that content on the Internet is at risk of being available to the highest bidder without intervention via government regulation. Up until now, it has focused on the ability of ISPs to control content providers' access to Internet users. While the debate continues, ISPs are taking advantage of the delay to find alternative ways to control the gateway and make a profit.
It seems like Comcast is looking at the past to move into the future.
In the early 1990s, using the Internet for non-work related purposes was just beginning to come into fashion. Dialing in via a phone line was the only way to connect, and it didn't come free. Services such as Prodigy and AOL would charge a monthly fee to use email and explore the world as created by them via message boards and chat rooms from the comfort of a Compaq computer. Other services had similar plans, charging hourly rates, which were higher during peak times.
For many users this became an expensive proposition.
It was quite a deal when the price dropped in 1995 to $9.95 for those five hours a month, though per hour charges would start to add up. Finally, unlimited was introduced the next year and for $19.95 a month, hundreds of thousands of people would log on excited to hear a connection instead of busy tone and the message "You've got mail!" This would be the norm for several years until broadband access and free email service became more widely available.
Now, Comcast would like to charge you like it's 1995, except instead of charging by the hour, they are charging by the gigabyte.
The Evening Greens
Weekend Edition Editor - Agathena
“Climate is not an environmental issue, it is a civilization issue… It is our future.
Mary Christina Wood
Pity the Planet: Environmental Agencies Are Failing Us
As industries work to manipulate the regulatory process to serve their own objectives, “environmental law has become dangerous in the hands of politicized agencies,” she says.
How Do We Make Cities Sustainable?
by Marianne Lavelle, National Geographic
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 24, 2014
The world's cities occupy 4 percent of the Earth's land area, yet they are home to more than half of the world's people. By 2030, that percentage will swell to 60 percent. Indeed, the United Nations projects that cities will absorb most of the world's population increase between now and 2050—more than two billion people—with the vast majority of urban expansion taking place in the developing world.
Nothing new here, it was first published in the Spring of 1993. If only we had listened...
Thirty Ways To Get Sustainable - At Home
It’s easier than you might think
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Hellraisers Journal: Mine Owners' Gunthug-Detective Appointed Custodian of Colorado Senate
Bernie's 12 Step Program
2015 Reminder: Government Word is Worthless
The Conflicts In Afghanistan and Iraq Were “The Most Expensive Wars In U.S. History” … and They’re Not Wrapped Up Yet
RIP Edward Brooke. He Was the 1st Elected African-American U.S. Senator Since Reconstruction.
Global deflation and the Black Death
A Little Night Music
Steve Earle and The Del McCoury Band - Harlan Man
Steve Earle - Mercenary Song
Check out how young Steve is in this one and how freaking good he is already.
Steve Earle - Hillbilly Highway
Steve Earle - Copperhead Road
Steve Earle - Until The Day I Die
Steve Earl and the Del McCoury Band - Texas Eagle
Steve Earle - Galway Girl
Steve Earle - Guitar Town
Steve Earle - Johnny Come Lately
Steve Earle - I Feel Alright
Steve Earle - Oxycontin Blues
Steve Earle - Rich Mans War
Steve Earle - Back To The Wall
Steve Earle - My Old Friend the Blues
Steve Earle - The Revolution Starts Now
Steve Earle - Little Emperor
Steve Earle - Transcendental Blues
Steve Earle - When I Fall
Steve Earle - Snake Oil
Steve Earle - Down The Road
Steve Earle - Nowhere Road
Steve Earle and Del McCoury Band - Pilgrim