Last month, the Bush administration declared polar bears a threatened species because of global warming. This month, the administration gave permission for companies to ‘annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas,’ the Associated Press reported Saturday. The article reported the Fish and Wildlife Service as having already issued regulations for legal protection of seven oil companies with a provision that only ‘small numbers’ of polar bears and Pacific walruses be harmed in the process. ‘The oil and gas industry in operating under the kind of rules they have operated under for 15 years has not been a threat to the species,’ H. Dale Hall, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s director, told The Associated Press on Friday. ‘It was the ice melting and the habitat going away that was a threat to the species over everything else.’ Environmental groups already filed notice earlier this month that they planned to sue the federal government for not imposing harsher regulations for oil development in the polar bear habitat, Reuters reported. ‘The only thing keeping pace with the drastic melting of the Arctic sea ice is the breakneck speed with which the Department […]
The face of the gay community worldwide may be changing, according to a University researcher’s recently released study. Epidemiology professor Simon Rosser said he learned that ‘while the gay population is stable or increasing,’ in all but the world’s largest cities, ‘the size of the physical gay community appears to be contracting.’ This means the number of gay bars, clubs and bookstores appears to be thinning or becoming more mainstream. Rosser credits it to a changing culture. ‘What we think is happening is that, in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, gay men came together out of a sense of oppression, a desire to meet similar others,’ he said. ‘Now, some of the reasons that brought them together are very different.’ Rosser cited the Internet as a possible reason for the change in the community. ‘There comes an economic tipping point where the bars and clubs are all reporting they’re somewhat quieter than before the rise of the Internet,’ he said. The study, released June 9, looked at 17 cities worldwide. The effects can be seen in the Twin Cites as well. After 38 years, Amazon Bookstore , an independent Minneapolis bookstore with a […]
Former Sydney University professor Dr David Mills couldn’t find funding for his giant solar power plants in Australia, but US investors had no qualms wagering at least $40 million on the idea. Dr Mills’ first factory for the mass production of ‘solar parks’ will open in Las Vegas later this month. It hosted a gaggle of interested Australian politicians last night in Nevada, including the NSW Environment Minister, Verity Firth. The power plants, conceived in Dr Mills’s Sydney University lab, will reflect sunlight with mirrors to boil water and use the steam to spin turbines, generating electricity for a price not much higher than that of a coal-burning power station. But, unlike some solar power systems, they can function when the sun isn’t shining by storing heat in insulated chambers for a rainy day, and continue steadily feeding power into the grid. The technology, some of which the company is keeping under wraps, is not complicated or particularly expensive, but it is being exploited in Nevada rather than NSW because that is where the financial backing is, Dr Mills said. ‘We’re not really talking about government money or subsidies, we’re trying to establish a level […]
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. They shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ - God is great - as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar’s head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face. Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as ‘the worst of the worst.’ But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo’s Camp Four who hissed ‘infidel’ and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn’t: The U.S. government had the wrong guy. ‘He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government,’ a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was […]
The following is an excerpt from the book Zapped! Irradiation and the Death of Food by Wenonah Hauter (Food & Water Watch, 2008). Over the decades, the effects of irradiation have been compared dismissively to sunlight and glibly to atomic bombs — and many images in between. Few grasp it completely, one of many reasons for its obscurity. Though the issue is kaleidoscopic, one needn’t be an expert in physics or food science to gain a basic understanding. Knowing what irradiation isn’t is just as important as knowing what it is, if not more so. Irradiated foods don’t glow in the dark. It doesn’t make food measurably radioactive, though a mind-boggling FDA ruling could change this by dramatically increasing the maximum allowable radiation dose. And you won’t sprout a sixth finger if you eat the stuff. Now for what irradiation is. It uses astronomically powerful blasts of X-rays, electron beams, and gamma rays to kill bacteria, to extend shelf life of food by delaying ripening and spoiling, and to eradicate fruit flies and other invasive pests. Here’s where a little chemistry and physics come in. This radiation is ionizing, meaning it has enough energy to blow […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
