The only consistency in U.S. foreign policy, and Congress’ reaction to it, is deadly stupidity combined with hypocrisy and, now, illegality George Will can eloquently bite, when he wants to. I quote him in respect for his turns of phrase: In a bipartisan cascade of hypocrisies, a liberal president, with the collaborative silence of most [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: character play, Congress, George F. Will, Greek, Is Obama above the law?, Libya, peace of mind, post-presidency, President Lincoln, Shakespearean, tragedy, War Powers Resolution
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- 31 May 2011 – 23:46
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
News from the Natural Resources Defense Council’s website The NRDC press release said: Approximately 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to healthy farm animals at low doses to promote faster growth and compensate for unsanitary living conditions — a practice that has increased over the past 60 years despite evidence [...]
Categories: Agriculture,Public Health
Tagged: David M. Livermore, Dissemination of NDM-1 positive bacteria, Janice Weeks, Mark A. Toleman, New Dehli, NRDC, Superbug Suit Groups Sue FDA Over Risky Use of Human Antibiotics in Animal Feed, Timothy R. Walsh
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- 26 May 2011 – 23:39
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
“Why is this comment pertinent to anything we care about, Pete?” It is easy to miscommunicate science and medicine. Especially, since our media-dominated culture puts a premium on sensationalizing everything. That’s bad in an already science-averse culture. Attention-getting exaggeration poses difficulty for science-related reporting because science and medicine plod. Discoveries that justify breathlessness are exceedingly [...]
Categories: Climate,Climate change,Science
Tagged: climate, climate change, Earle Holland, energy transfer, exaggeration, Helheim, hyperbole, Jakobshavn Isbrae, Kangerdlugssuaq, ocean, Two Greenland Glaciers Lose Enough Ice to Fill Lake Erie
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- 25 May 2011 – 20:01
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Here’s an example of the unedited, time-wasting crap that lesser-ranked journals often print Blather seems to characterize our world. When intellectually incoherent blather slops over into what is supposed to be science, I’m irritated. Here is an example of scientific incoherence that left me wondering what the (apparently obtuse) people who wrote it are like [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Corie N. Radka, David A. Cleveland, Effect of Localizing Fruit and Vegetable Consumption, fruit, greenhouse gas emissions, Hannah Van M. Wright, localized agriculture, Nicole J. Rekstein, non sequitur, Nora M. Mller, Sydney E. Hollingshead, Tyler D. Watson, UC Santa Barbara, University of California, vegetables
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- 21 May 2011 – 21:44
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
That was quick Since April 1, Amazon has sold 105 Kindle books for every 100 print books sold. These numbers include books that have no Kindle edition. Also, for all of 2011 so far, Amazon has had the fastest year-over-year growth rate for its books business due to the overwhelming Kindle sales and steady print [...]
Categories: Culture
Tagged: Kindle Books Outsell Print Books on Amazon, military, move, print books, Tiffany Kaiser
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- 20 May 2011 – 08:28
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Bolivian mountain poverty necessitates physical risks and difficult family lives Riding the 400 meter long cables the farmers use to cross the river canyon to get to their coca fields are challenging enough. The bus ride they have take to market on a narrow and precipitous road is scarier still. Al Jazeera did an outstanding [...]
Categories: Culture,Economy
Tagged: Al Jazeera English, Bolivia, coca, farmer, Risking it all The flying men of Yungas valley
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- 17 May 2011 – 23:16
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Zaire ebola virus has a very high mortality rate in humans A research team headed by Gary Kobinger of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboaratory reported that: Domesticated Landrace pigs were challenged through mucosal exposure with a total of 1 ×106 plaque-forming units of ZEBOV [Zaire ebolavirus] and monitored for virus replication, shedding, and pathogenesis. Using similar conditions, [...]
Categories: Public Health
Tagged: Ami Patel, Anders Leung, Darryl Falzarano, Gary P. Kobinger, Greg Smith, Hana M. Weingartl, Infectious Diseases Society of America, James Neufeld, Jason S. Richardson, John Heys, Kevin Tierney, National Microbiology Laboratory, pathogenesis, Replication Pathogenicity Shedding and Transmission of Zaire ebolavirus in Pigs, respiratory, shedding, Study Finds Pigs Susceptible to Virulent Ebolavirus Can Transmit the Virus to Other Animals, symptoms, virus duplication, ZEBOV
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- 16 May 2011 – 19:31
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Bats that eat insects may benefit each cotton acre by $12 to$173 Extrapolate those figures to farmland nationwide, and you come up with a range of $3.7 to $53 billion of benefit per year, with the authors who made the estimate settling on $22.9 as roughly accurate estimate. White-nose syndrome (most likely caused by the fungus Geomyces destructans) and [...]
Categories: Agriculture,Environment
Tagged: Economic Importance of Bats in Agriculture, Gary F. McCracken, Geomyces destructans, Justin G. Boyles, mortality, Paul M. Cryan, Thomas H. Kunz, White-nose Syndrome, wind turbines
- Published:
- 13 May 2011 – 18:32
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
It did seem a little more tumultuous than normal April was a month of historic climate extremes across much of the United States, including: record breaking precipitation that resulted in historic flooding; recurrent violent weather systems that broke records for tornado and severe weather outbreaks; and wildfire activity that scorched more than twice the area [...]
Categories: Climate,Climate change
Tagged: Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000, Arno G. J. Hilberts, Climate Progress, Dag Lohmann, Dáithí A. Stone, Francis W. Zwiers, Gabriele C. Hegerl, Human contribution to more intense precipitation extremes, Myles R. Allen, National Climatic Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Pardeep Pall, Peter A. Stott, Seung-Ki Min, Tolu Aina, Toru Nozawa, Xuebin Zhang
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- 11 May 2011 – 01:24
- Author:
- By BrainiYak
Not that you cared (until now) Penn State’s Kevin Luhman’s small brown dwarf discovery (WD 0806-661B) appears to be about 300 Kelvin and is approximately 7 times the mass of Jupiter. Michael Liu’s University of Hawaii team found a slightly warmer one, measuring 370 K. These cool-temperature dwarfs belong to a proposed Y-class of stars. [...]
Categories: Science,Uncategorized
Tagged: anthropomorphize, brown dwarf, Cold Almost-Stars May Herald Hordes of Unseen Lurkers, gas giant, Kelvin, Kevin Luhman, L-class, Michael Liu, Penn State, sun, University of Hawaii, Y-class, Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
- Published:
- 6 May 2011 – 18:39
- Author:
- By BrainiYak