March 23, 2015

Oldie but goodie. Guaranteed chuckle: frog plays video game

&sns=tw

March 23, 2015

Ted Cruz is the Dominionists' "Anointed One"

Alternet:
http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/brucewilson/ted-cruzs-father-suggested-his-son-anointed-bring-about-end-time-transfer

CrooksandLiars:
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/rafael-cruz-declares-son-ted-cruz-anointed-

March 22, 2015

Coal State of WV in Transition to Solar Energy

A group devoted to creating alternative energy jobs in Central Appalachia is building a first for West Virginia’s southern coalfields region this week: a rooftop solar array, assembled by unemployed and underemployed coal miners and contractors.

From an Article by Mikala Reasbeck, Mint Press News, February 19, 2015

West Virginia may be best known as the source of the coal that built America and keeps its lights on, yet communities throughout the state are taking back their energy independence and going solar.

At just 9.70 cents per kilowatt hour, West Virginians pay the third-lowest electricity rates in the nation.* Yet they don’t enjoy the nation’s lowest electricity bills, and they’re not likely to in the future, either.

Indeed, from 2007 to 2011, electricity rates jumped an average of 50 percent across the state. And on Feb. 3, the state’s Public Service Commission approved another rate increase for Mon Power and Potomac Edison, subsidiaries operating under the Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. Together, these subsidiaries serve over 520,500 customers in 34 counties and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

This latest hike is “just 7.4 percent more reason to go solar,” according to Joey James’ reading of the document from the commission.

James is a staff scientist with the Energy Program of Downstream Strategies, a Morgantown, West Virginia-based environmental consulting firm. ...

“There’s a community of young West Virginians who all have the same vision: What’s happened historically isn’t working. And we’re all looking ahead to something new,” James told MintPress News.

That “something new” is slowly, but surely, coming in the form of solar power. Over the past couple of years, community solar co-ops have been popping up on the hills and in the hollers of West Virginia, and more are in the works.

-snip-

“West Virginia’s coal built America”

West Virginia’s identity and economy has long been tied to the coal-based energy it produces not just for itself — the state generated at least 96 percent of its own electricity from coal last year — but also the nation.

“West Virginia’s coal built America. It fired its steel mills, lit its homes, and provided the cheap energy to create the wealthiest nation in the world,” Patrick Reis wrote for the National Journal in 2013.

Yet, as that article goes on to note, this hasn’t improved the lives of West Virginians. The state consistently ranks among the nation’s poorest, its residents scoring the lowest in well-being indices and with nearly the lowest life expectancy.

...

Read more from FrackCheckWV
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/frackcheckwv/~3/FHq9QVKKMjQ/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email


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*Can't prove that by my HREA bills. One would think the New Deal-era program would offer inexpensive electricity, but I pay more per month just to run a fridge and night-only flood light at my WV cabin than I do for whole house full of electronics in SW PA. How can that be?

It also distresses me that REA buts into, and strongly sells, coal-fired elec production.

March 22, 2015

Revenge is a dish best served glittery: company offering to glitter bomb your enemies sells out

The Guardian
Australian startup that lets you ship glitter to your enemies for $10 is swamped with orders from people keen to wreak sparkly revenge

An Australian startup promising to “ship glitter to your enemies” said it had been overwhelmed by demand within 24 hours of its launch, exceeding its founder’s supply of all seven colours of the substance.

Sydney-based entrepreneur Mathew Carpenter, 22, said he had been swamped with orders from people keen to wreak sparkly revenge on those who had wronged them.

After being featured on Reddit, the Huffington Post, Gizmodo and Business Insider hours after it launched on Tuesday, ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com crashed for several hours.

Ordering was temporarily suspended after “thousands” of orders from around the world exceeded Carpenter’s supply of glitter. “People seem to have a lot of enemies,” he said.

For just $10, Carpenter will send “the herpes of the craft world” to any address in the world, along with a note explaining what they did to deserve it.

“We’ll send them so much glitter in an envelope that they’ll be finding that shit everywhere for weeks,” the site promises. “Hint: the glitter will be mixed in with the note, thus increasing maximum spillage.”

More
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jan/14/company-offering-to-glitter-bomb-your-enemies-sells-out

March 20, 2015

Cat alarm clocks

Link to list of more
https://m.youtube.com/#/results?q=cat%20alarm%20clock%20compilation&sm=1

March 20, 2015

Which Came First: the Dinosaur or the Bird?

Which Came First: the Dinosaur or the Bird?
Michael Balter

The consensus is in: Birds are living dinosaurs. But how that epic evolutionary leap took place remains one of science’s greatest mysteries.

The Structure & Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College’s Hertfordshire campus, ...

...

... evolutionary biologist Ashley Heers ...

... watching birds for much of her life. But as a postdoctoral researcher studying avian evolution, she sees them for what most paleontologists think they really are: living dinosaurs. ... She is using the latest video and computer modeling technology to study how baby birds develop the ability to fly, looking for clues as to how dinosaurs evolved into birds—one of the most dramatic and successful evolutionary transformations in the history of life on earth.

...

... In the course of her research, she has piled up considerable evidence that baby birds do indeed resemble the avian dinosaur ancestors, which had feathers but little if any ability to fly.

... while the chick relied mostly on its legs to make the leap, it also flapped its wings between two and three times, adding just enough lift to successfully bridge the gap. “They can’t yet fly very far,” Heers says, “but those tiny little wings are still very useful.” This strongly suggests, she adds, that even if early dinos evolved feathers for other reasons—to keep warm or for peacock-like sexual displays—they were already on their way to becoming birds.

Much more
https://www.audubon.org/magazine/january-february-2015/which-came-first-dinosaur-or-bird?utm_source=engagement&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2015-03-19_email_wingspan

March 18, 2015

Awesome St. Paddy's Day aurora! Awesone photos!

Awesome St. Patrick’s Day aurora – March 17, 2015 – from Pekka Isomursu in Finland.

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, hit Earth’s magnetic field early yesterday morning (March 17, 2015) and sparked a wonderful geomagnetic storm, the strongest geomagnetic storm of the current solar cycle – sporadically peaking at G4 intensity on the five-point scale. Before sunrise on March 17, people in several northern U.S. states including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, the Dakotas and Washington reported auroras. Of the early-morning March 17 display, Colin Chatfield in Canada wrote:

I have been fortunate to take thousands of aurora pictures previously, but this was the best display I have ever seen.

More pix
http://earthsky.org/todays-image/awesome-aurora-march-17-18-2015?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=6fd5a540e3-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-6fd5a540e3-393525109

March 17, 2015

Fracking and environment -- more and more concerns

Science Shorts from S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

A Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE) analysis of the more than 400 peer-reviewed studies to date on the impacts of fracking and shale gas development is startling:

· 96 percent of papers published on health impacts indicate potential risks or adverse health outcomes

· 87 percent of original research studies published on health outcomes indicates potential risks or adverse health outcomes

· 92 percent of all original research studies on air quality indicate elevated concentrations of air pollutants

· 73 percent of original research studies on water quality indicate potential, positive association, or actual incidence of water contamination.

-snip-


Contaminated water in 2 states linked to faulty shale gas wells

The scientists from Duke, Ohio State, Stanford, Dartmouth and the University of Rochester published their peer-reviewed study Sept. 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using noble gas and hydrocarbon tracers, they analyzed the gas content of more than 130 drinking water wells in the two states.

“We found eight clusters of wells — seven in Pennsylvania and one in Texas — with contamination, including increased levels of natural gas from the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and from shallower, intermediate layers in both states,” said Thomas H. Darrah, assistant professor of earth science at Ohio State, who led the study while he was a research scientist at Duke.


Researchers find alarming levels of these new contaminants in wastewater released into Pennsylvania and West Virginia streams

Two hazardous chemicals never before known as oil and gas industry pollutants—ammonium and iodide—are being released and spilled into Pennsylvania and West Virginia waterways from the booming energy operations of the Marcellus shale, a new study shows.

Ammonium and Iodide are making their way into streams and rivers, both accidentally and through deliberate release from treatment plants that were never designed to handle these contaminants… The Duke team found ammonium levels in streams and rivers from energy industry wastewater outflows at levels 50 times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s water-quality threshold… Iodide forms disinfection products in water with toxic and carcinogenic properties.
(emphasis added)


Coping with earthquakes induced by fluid injection

“Large areas of the United States long considered geologically stable with little or no detected seismicity have recently become seismically active. The increase in earthquake activity began in the mid-continent starting in 2001 and has continued to rise. In 2014, the rate of occurrence of earthquakes with magnitudes of 3 and greater in Oklahoma exceeded that in California. This elevated activity includes larger earthquakes, several with magnitude greater than 5, that have caused significant damage. To a large extent, the increasing rate of earthquakes in the mid-continent is due to fluid-injection activities used in modern energy production.” This includes both fracking and storage wells.


The title says it all in these two

Internal Documents Reveal Extensive Industry Influence Over EPA’s National Fracking Study
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/03/03/internal-documents-reveal-extensive-industry-influence-over-epas-national-fracking

Why the Scientific Case Against Fracking Keeps Getting Stronger
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/inquiring-minds-anthony-ingraffea-science-fracking-methane


See also:  http://www.FrackCheckWV.net and http://www.Marcellus-Shale.us



More of article (a few sub-articles cut)
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/frackcheckwv/~3/JquW8C_ulg0/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
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x post Appalachia

March 17, 2015

Why would GOP delay confirmation of African-American woman to extort votes for an anti-choice rider

in a bill meant to aid sex slaves?

Did the question answer itself?


#pattern? #misogyny #racism #obstruction


BTW, Great mini-bio on Lynch by Maddow tonight

March 16, 2015

Women's health care doesn't register at all with self-righteous theocrats

Their single-minded focus on their own moral outrage blinds them from seeing the fallout of their attacks on individual freedom, medical privacy & health concerns, family & indiv economics, and overall healthcare for women.

Only religious fanatacism could drive such inconsideration of far-reaching effects and apparent fervent misogyny, often based on blatant ignorance of biology. (Swallow a camera to view a fetus?!)

The TRAPs which target women's health clinics completely ignore the fact that they are vital to overall women's health issues. They are willing to risk women's lives, usually lower-income women, to satisfy their extremist ideology. It matters not to them that many of the clinics they close or prevent from opening may only counsel, not actually provide abortions.

Further evidence of their unconcern for health issues are the unregulated CPCs (Crisis Pregnancy Centers). These wolves-in-sheeps'-clothing don't just mislead desperate women about reproductive choices, they out-right lie and endanger health by masquarading as legitimate health & reference professionals.

The battles have focused on choice but the war is quality healthcare. The moral question has been used by the antis yet their morals are rather skewed. They'd see thousands of women's health suffer to save a handful of 'pre-borns.' What kind of morality is that?

Abortions will always exist. They have since before recorded history and no matter what the fanatics do, they will continue. We must focus the campaign on health, which includes safe abortion as a necessary aspect, not the major goal. Otherwise, the moralists' fearmongering and guilt-driven arguments may prevail.

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