Tuesday, April 12th, 2016
michelle r. smith, - abc News/Associated Press
Stephan: My family roots on my mother's side go back to the early 1600s; I grew up in a house built in 1653 on the shores of Mobjack Bay. Much of my life has been tied up with the Tidewater and Piedmont of Virginia.
I wrote a movie for Colonial Williamsburg about the colonial town and its time, worked for several newspapers in Virginia, and have written extensively about the Commonwealth's history and particularly founder George Mason, political mentor of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and the philosophical force behind the Bill of Rights. The Eastern seaboard was the context for much of my life until I was in my thirties. And what I see happening to it is just tragic and heartbreaking.
As matters stand now, as this story describes, much of American history is about to be submerged and lost to future generations. How strange it will be when the Boston Harbor where the revolution began, and Yorktown where Cornwallis surrendered to Washington and it ended, are both lost to the sea.
Bowen’s Wharf Newport, R.I.
Credit: AP
With scientists forecasting sea levels to rise by anywhere from several inches to several feet by 2100, historic structures and coastal heritage sites around the world are under threat. Some sites and artifacts could become submerged.
Scientists, historic preservationists, architects and public officials are meeting this week in Newport, Rhode Island — one of the threatened areas — to discuss the problem, how to adapt to rising seas and preserve historic structures.
“Any coastal town that has significant historic properties is going to be facing the challenge of protecting those properties from increased water and storm activity,” said Margot Nishimura, of the Newport Restoration Foundation, the nonprofit group hosting the conference.
Federal authorities have encouraged people to elevate structures in low-lying areas, but that poses challenges in dense neighborhoods of centuries-old homes built around central brick chimneys, Nishimura said, especially ones where preservationists are trying to keep the character intact.
Many of the most threatened sites in North America lie along the East Coast […]
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Tuesday, April 12th, 2016
David Edwards, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Believe it or not this is a trend. The Theocratic Right is becoming increasingly agitated about women and masturbation.
My first inclination when I read this was that it was a joke or some aberrant sex obsessed preacher. But I tracked back to the original source described in this story, and from there to half a dozen more sites in the surreal world of the "Christian" Right. This women masturbating business is part of the Quiverful, wifely submission, girls are vulnerable to the devil and must be controlled worldview.
These are people who live in constant fear of opening themselves to demons, and they are quite serious about this. I mean the full late Medieval Hieronymus Bosch demonology. It is hard for me to enter into their worldview, but I do understand there are hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. who share this perspective and, in some states, they are a strong political and cultural force.
I think it is notable that you almost never encounter any of this in Europe. Europeans spent much of a millennia fighting over religion, and religion and the state, until the bodies just piled up too high, and with the exception of the Irish, and the breakup states of Yugoslavia, they just quit.
Credit: Shutterstock
Christian author and publisher Mack Major warned over the weekend that “Christian women are losing their salvation” by using dildos, which he called a “direct path to Satan.”
“Too many Christian women are losing their salvation because they masturbate,” Mack wrote on the Eden Decoded Facebook page. “Dildos and all of those other sex toys have been used for thousands of years in demonic sex rituals. It’s one of the main ways ancient pagan societies worshiped their demonic gods.”
“Masturbation is a direct path to Satan,” he added. “There’s nothing normal about it. And shame on any Christian that says so.”
On the Eden Decoded website, Mack urged readers not to be “ignorant of Satan’s devices.” And he suggested that the ancient city of Pompeii was destroyed because it was “completely engulfed in a culture of pornography, homosexuality, wild orgies and the worship of the little god with the huge member known as Priapus.”
“Many of you who are reading this have sex toys in your possession right now,” he noted. “And […]
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Stephan: This is the best exegetic essay about Monsanto I have read. I agree with it, and note that it raises a question that I too wonder about: How do you work for a company that is evil? What do you tell yourself? Why is data no longer dispositive for you? I think those are important questions to ask. And important to answer.
Credit: Jason Jenkins
Is Monsanto “evil”?
Just pop that question into Google and you’ll find out quickly why Monsanto ranks near the top of every “most hated company” list. And ask any news editor … the name “Monsanto” is guaranteed clickbait that reels in readers by the bushel.
It’s probably why you are reading this right now.
Perhaps you, like many anti-GMO farmers, environmental watchdogs and consumer advocates, see Monsanto as the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with corporate America. Its name is synonymous with unbridled greed, indifference to the environment, bipartisan cronyism and a demonstrated willingness to steamroll the little guy.
To wit, Monsanto wields a three-decade-old Supreme Court patent ruling like a scythe as it cuts down farmers who dare to save seeds for the next planting season. It has also beaten back challenges from organic farmers who fell victim to “genetic drift” when Monsanto’s patented crops cross-pollinated with their non-GMO neighbors and therefore rendered them unsellable.
Monsanto keeps pushing genetically modified […]
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Alejandro Davila Fragoso, - Think Progress
Stephan: A few days ago, the day it was discovered, I saw this story in the Canadian press. The spill was so small it didn't really seem of any significance. But of course, as with so much of the Keystone Pipeline, the initial story is not the real story. Of course it is much worse. But that's not why I am running this.
Corporate demand for reduced regulation is producing more incidents. Aging infrastructure is augmenting this. It is also giving impetus to an already quickening trend, conversion to non-carbon energy. I think we are seeing one of history's great ironies play out.
Keystone pipeline pump station
Credit: AP/Nati Harnik
Nearly a week after pipeline operator TransCanada shut down a section of its Keystone line over an oil leak, the company reported Thursday thousands of gallons of oil were spilled, not less than 200 as it first said.
Based on soil excavations, TransCanada said about 16,800 gallons of oil leaked onto a field in South Dakota, the Associated Press reported. After the leak was discovered Saturday and the line was shut, TransCanada said about 187 gallons of crude oil had spilled, an accident that environmental groups said shows the dangers of shipping oil by pipeline. Though the spill is larger than first thought, it poses no significant environmental effects or threats to public safety, the AP said. However, Keystone transports Canadian tar sands oil, which is more difficult to clean than conventional oil.
The company behind the rejected Keystone XL line has yet to reveal what caused the leak, but it said the spill is being controlled, […]
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Bren Smith, Executive Director, Greenwave - Quartz/Medium
Stephan: This is a beautiful and moving story about how the sea and the beings of the Earth can be saved. It is very good news.
Credit: Robert F. Bukaty/AP
I’m a fisherman who dropped out of high school in 1986 at the age of 14. Over my lifetime, I’ve spent many nights in jail. I’m an epileptic. I’m asthmatic. I don’t even know how to swim. This is my story. It’s a story of ecological redemption.
I was born and raised in Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, a little fishing village with 14 salt-box houses painted in greens, blues, and reds so that fishermen could find their way home in the fog. At age 14 I left school and headed out to sea. I fished the Georges Banks and the Grand Banks for tuna and lobster, then headed to the Bering Sea, where I fished cod and crab. The trouble was I was working at the height of the industrialization of food. We were tearing up entire ecosystems with our trawls, chasing fish further and further out to sea into illegal waters. I personally have thrown tens of thousands of pounds of by-catch back […]
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