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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

21 Feb - RSS Picks and Following on Blogger

A Quarter of U.S. Nuclear Plants Are Leaking a Radioactive Material Linked to Cancer

  Like a decayed flotilla of rickety steamers, at least 27 of America's 104 aging atomic reactors are known to be leaking radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer if inhaled 


The fallout has been fiercest at Vermont Yankee, where a flood of cover-ups has infuriated and terrified near neighbors who say the reactor was never meant to operate more than 30 years, and must now shut.

In 2007 one of Yankee's 22 cooling towers simply collapsed due to rot.

Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has confirmed tritium levels in a monitoring well at Vernon to be 3.5 times the federal safety standard. The leaks apparently came from underground pipes whose very existence was recently denied by VY officials in under-oath testimony at a public hearing.

 Outraged Citizens Campaign Forces History Channel to Rethink Miniseries About the Kennedys

Robert Greenwald launches growing campaign that calls historically revisionist series backed by a producer with ties to Roger Ailes, "right-wing character assassination."  

 

Hiring Death Squads Is Coming Back to Haunt U.S. Companies

 

 A federal judge recently refused to dismiss a civil suit filed against Chiquita which charges that the company paid leftist (FARC) guerrillas operating near its plantations in Columbia -- during a period when the FARC killed four American missionaries, according to CNN
The company's position -- which it has held consistently since it voluntarily disclosed the payments to the Department of Justice -- has been that both left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries forced the company in an extortionate manner to make the payments "to protect the lives of its employees."
But that's become an increasingly untenable position -- especially since some of the same paramilitaries who took the payments have come in from the cold, disarming and submitting to Columbia's "Justice and Peace" process -- which allows them to receive reduced jail time for confessing to all of their terrorist crimes. The problem for Chiquita -- and now for Dole (and potentially for Del Monte) -- is that the confessions reveal a much different story.

 Michael Pollan: Forget Nutrition Charts, Eat What Grandma Said Is Good for You

being able to do research is important ...

MP: Oh, absolutely, and history in particular. I think if there's a failing of American journalism, and there are many, one is a disregard for history--very often in the origins of a phenomenon you discover the meaning of a phenomenon. And so, it's a perspective I always cover. I'm always very interested in digging back to find the history of whatever I'm writing about. So, even if it's a scientific subject, it's really important to understand the history behind it.
HK: For instance, history can make us aware that the way we get our food today really goes back to the early '70s, and that the appointment of Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz was a pivotal turning point.
MP: Well, that's a great example. We all know that subsidies are part of the problem and a waste of money. And then you dig back and you realize: oh, we changed every thing in the 1970s; we changed our agricultural policies. And there is a real turning point in the history of American agriculture and food, and that is when Earl Butz was appointed by President Nixon with the explicit mandate of forcing down the price of food, because we'd had this about food inflation. Americans took to the streets because food got so expensive in 1973. Nixon hired Earl Butz, who was very skillful in agricultural economics, and he kind of redesigned the whole system of crop support in this country in a way that stimulated farmers.
We used to hold up prices, basically, and he moved from that system to subsidizing crops and encouraging farmers to overproduce, to produce as much as possible. He was the guy who said: get bigger, get out, plant fence row to fence row, move toward monocultures, just crank out that corn and soy, and he redesigned the structure of the subsidies to encourage that.

Scientists develop new plastic made from sugar that can be composted

 Did Bill Gates Just Give the Most Important Climate Speech of the Year?
February 16, 2010  |  
 
 On Friday, the world's most successful businessperson and most powerful philanthropist did something outstandingly bold, that went almost unremarked: Bill Gates announced that his top priority is getting the world to zero climate emissions.

 Field commanders who tried to warn McChrystal penalized

Congress launches investigation into gas drilling practices

The fluids used in hydraulic fracturing are laced with chemicals -- some of which are known carcinogens. And because the process is exempt from most federal oversight, it is overseen by state agencies that are spread thin and have widely varying regulations. 

 

 

Posted by opit at 3:31 PM
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