Author: Brian

A difficult childhood reduces life expectancy by 20 years among adults who experienced six or more particular types of abuse or household dysfunction as kids, while those who suffered fewer types of trauma lost fewer years of life, a large-scale epidemiological study finds.

put a mark on the wall:

“In some of the Maya city-states, mass graves have been found containing groups of skeletons with jade inlays in their teeth – something they reserved for Maya elites – perhaps in this case murdered aristocracy.”

How the Maya disappeared:

No single factor brings a civilization to its knees, but the deforestation that helped bring on drought could easily have exacerbated other problems such as civil unrest, war, starvation and disease.

The economy is so bad that:

• I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
• I ordered a burger and the kid at the counter asked, “Can you afford fries with that?”
• CEO’s are now playing miniature golf.
• If the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call them and ask if they meant you or them.
• Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.
• McDonalds is selling the 1/4 ouncer.
• Parents in Beverly Hills have fired their nannies and learned their children’s names.
• A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.
• Dick Cheney took his stockbroker hunting.
• The Mafia is laying off judges.
• Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

And finally, Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal:

• Oh, great!! The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!

Thirty years under the jingo of laissez-faire seems to have become thirty years of destroying simple oversight.

Sue Sturgis:

An in-depth review of monitoring data from coal ash ponds located next to 13 coal-burning power plants in North Carolina has revealed that all of them are contaminating groundwater with toxic metals and other pollutants — in some cases at levels exceeding 380 times state groundwater standards.

The contaminants reported include arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead…

Ethanol receives at least six times the subsidy per delivered BTU that domestic oil does, even though their energy security benefits per gallon are identical.

The US corn ethanol industry doesn’t need to grow further, because it is already within striking distance of the target set by the government, which also appears to represent the maximum prudent level of output for a fuel source that makes such heavy use of water and fossil energy sources in its production, and that ultimately competes with the consumption of corn as food or feed, here and abroad.

Geoff Styles:

The GAO report estimates the cost to the Treasury of the ethanol blenders’ credit at $4 billion last year, growing to $6.75 billion by 2015, if not sooner. Although at a time of trillion-dollar deficits that may look no more significant than a rounding error in the government’s books, continuing this outdated and unnecessary incentive sends a bad message to the developers of other, less mature alternative energy sources. It tells them that they don’t need to worry so much about making their technologies competitive with conventional energy, because the government is likely to subsidize them until the end of time–or until the Treasury runs out of money, a date that will surely arrive faster, the more unnecessary subsidies it hands out.

After having been extended by last year’s Farm Bill, the present Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit and the tariff on imported ethanol that mirrors it are due to expire at the end of next year.

After 30 years of assistance–spanning my entire career in energy–it’s time to find out whether this industry can either survive and compete on its own.

Read this twice:

More and more, important information about our crops and the food they produce is coming from companies that are interested in showing only the positive side of their products.

For many decades prior to genetic engineering, farmers relied on university agriculture extension scientists to perform tests comparing new and standard crop varieties.

But it is increasingly difficult for university scientists to conduct these important tests on GE varieties, because they are prohibited from doing research on GE crops without company permission.

And when scientists do receive permission to do research, it is usually with strings attached that restrict the usefulness of the studies for comparing crop varieties.

The Real Scoop by Doug Gurian-Sherman

While genetic engineering has so far failed to deliver drought-tolerant crops, modern plant breeders are successfully creating varieties that will help farmers in developed and developing countries alike.

On the pew of free-market doctrine, here are the members of just one agricultural policy committee:

American Meat Institute, American Seed Trade Association, American Soybean Association, Corn Refiners Association, Dairy Farmers of America, International Dairy Foods Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, National Corn Growers Association, National Cotton Council, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, National Oilseed Processors Association, National Pork Producers Council, National Potato Council, National Renderers Association and Western Growers Association…

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked more questions in an hour than Clarence Thomas has asked “over the course of several years”.

NYTimes Michael Moss:

Records he unearthed show that hamburgers can be “made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin.”

Some of the ingredients were treated with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Mashed meat scraps? Ammonia? If it weren’t for Moss, we might not know that.

The meat industry, Moss writes, treats “the ingredients in ground beef as trade secrets.”

tip Knight Science Tracker. Paul Raeburn says, “This is investigative reporting at its finest. Give it a careful read. And give it some thought. What other stories are crying out for the same treatment?”

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Federal Trade Commission:

The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.

Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

Analysis and discussion at TechDirt

The Politics of Spite, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times:

There was what President Obama likes to call a teachable moment last week, when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago’s bid to be host of the 2016 Summer Games.

“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.

So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement … has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth…: the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple.

If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

CleanTechnica:

Coal power is not base-load electricity by itself. To enable coal to reliably deliver electric power, it took the creation of an entire other national infrastructure; the trans-continental railroad system.

Without the unceasing rail-car-load delivery, every 12 hours, on the hour, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year, of every next 12-hour-supply of fuel for the fire; the fire would go out, the water wouldn’t boil, the steam wouldn’t rise, the turbine wouldn’t turn; the next 12 hours of electricity wouldn’t be made. The fire must never go out.

Coal plus railroad = base-load power.

Even today, a century later, every 12 hours in this nation a trainload of coal from Wyoming or Pennsylvania or Ohio, must arrive at an electric power station near your city, to make your coal power for the next 12 hours. No trainload of coal; no coal power. What does that have to do with wind storage?

Wind plus storage = base-load power.

Recent assertions from Rocky Mountain Institute:

• If America used electricity only as efficiently as the top ten states averaged just four years ago, five-eighths of U.S. coal-fired electricity would become unnecessary.
• Using electricity fully cost-effectively would save even more, displacing all coal power and more.
• Windpower in available windy sites can displace all U.S. coal power at least four times over (or all Chinese electricity at least twice over); just the windpower stuck today in the interconnection queue could save half of U.S. coal power.
• We could save two-fifths of the coal power by properly exploiting industrial co-generation, plus a lot more in buildings.
• A third of coal power could be replaced immediately by running already-built but partly-idle combined-cycle gas plants more and coal plants less (at an extra cost many-fold less than displacing coal with new nuclear plants).

“Getting off coal requires nowhere near all these steps, let alone the many other attractive options,” Amory Lovins said. “We just need to apply part of what we know.”

1. “More carbon dioxide can dissolve in cold water than warm,” he said.
2. North Pole seawater to reach corrosive levels within 10 years. The water will then start to dissolve the shells of mussels and other shellfish and cause major disruption to the food chain.
3. By the end of the century, the entire Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic.

The Guardian:

California’s political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster – his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush.

“Do you ever feel like you’re watching the end of the California dream?” asks the reporter.

‘There is so much beyond all that has ever yet been imagined‘

Mental health disorders in this country has nearly doubled in the past 20 years.

Who is treating all of these patients?

Many of the training programs—especially some Doctorate of Psychology (PsyD) programs and for-profit training centers—are not grounded in science.

Australia Science:

There is an increasing amount of evidence that corrupt politicians and businessmen, unethical lawyers, some radical activists and many others who may have reached positions of authority or power have psychopathic personalities.

And these are the psychopaths we are more likely to encounter or be affected by in our lives.

What is a psychopath?

Research is critical because few who have worked in this field doubt the enormous destructive power of the psychopathic personality, a personality that seems resilient to any known therapy or intervention.

It Takes a Pillage.

How we got here and where we went wrong.

Instead of the rapacious robber barons of the early 20th century, we have the debt peddlers from investment banks, insurers and megabanks gorging on the Bush-era anti-regulatory buffet.

Muckraking journalist Nomi Prins explains how Wall Street converted loans into assets that allowed it to borrow much, much more than it could afford.

James Woolley says:

Interesting to note that the chairman of the American Enterprise Institute is also the owner of the one of the largest hedge funds on the planet (was rated the largest for two years running) and individuals from that outfit are forever out pandering for the banksters!

Now that $1.5 trillion is leveraged to how many trillions? Nobody actually knows. The hedge funds and the private equity buyout funds are all about quick turnarounds and quick and dirty bucks — raping and pillaging companies and employees and the real creators of progress and wealth and social stability!

DailyKos is running a series: 1,000 Companies Attacked -> 1,200,000 Jobs Destroyed

We are just barely beginning to appreciate the impact of losing our top predators.

William Ripple:

I’ve read that when Gen. George Armstrong Custer came into the Black Hills in 1874, he noticed a scarcity of coyotes and the abundance of wolves. Now the wolves are gone in many places and coyotes are killing thousands of sheep all over the West.

This won’t be the last bad rap on green projects and it hurts the industry. Read it when you can because it won’t be forgotten in Africa, extra hurdles for new proposals that will now require frank discussion and costly assurances.

The problem is, none of those promises came to be. “It was a combination of international hype and local organizations who were … selling seeds at very high prices claiming that they were special certified seeds when really they were just seeds collected from old trees in the wild,” Newman says. The plants also did not do well in arid conditions. “[The plant] was more fragile, especially in its initial establishment phase, than we thought,” says Jan Van den Abeele, executive director for Better Globe Forestry, a Nairobi-based group that studies optimal conditions for planting trees in dry areas. And many farmers had no buyers for their seeds.

An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions

Andy Worthington:

(The Intelligence Daily) — In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to uncovering shocking information, but for sheer cynicism, I am struggling to think of anything that compares to the revelations contained in the unclassified ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti prisoner whose release was ordered last week by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

In the ruling, to put it bluntly, it was revealed that the US government tortured an innocent man to extract false confessions and then threatened him until he obligingly repeated those lies as though they were the truth.

Midnight Oil, whose frontman Peter Garrett is now Australia’s Environment Minister, is joined on the new soundtrack by Serena Ryder, Lily Allen, Andre, Fergie, the Scorpions, and close to 40 other musicians, plus the voices of Annan and Desmond Tutu.

Their new refrain:

The time has come to take a stand,
It’s for the Earth, it’s for our land.
The time has come, a fact’s a fact.
The heat is on, no turning back.
How can we dance when our Earth is turning?
How can we sleep while our beds are burning?

Atlantic Online – Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s former chief campaign strategist, said today that if former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin were to be the Republican nominee, it would be “catastrophic” for the Republican Party. …

Washington Post – Speaking at the First Draft of History conference at the Newseum in Washington on Friday morning, former John McCain chief strategist Steve Schmidt took some none-too-subtle swipes …

Washington (CNN) — The man who ran John McCain’s presidential campaign warned Friday that Sarah Palin could lead to a ‘catastrophic’ election …

Heaps of coverage at Google News. Schmidt selected and promoted her. Now he’s worried.