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| Bye bye, Vesta, bye bye |
"Anyone who thinks an athlete has a fair shot in front of CAS should review the Alberto Contador case. Contador was found to have a minuscule, insignificant amount of clenbuterol in his urine during the 2010 Tour de France. After hearing 4,000 pages of testimony and debate, CAS acknowledged that the substance was too small to have been performance-enhancing and that its ingestion was almost certainly unintentional. Therefore he was guilty. He received a two-year ban. CAS’s rationale? “There is no reason to exonerate the athlete so the ban is two years,” one member of the panel said.
Would you want to go before that court?"
"Gradually warming waters have driven storm tracks -- the ocean paths in the Atlantic and Pacific along which most cyclones travel -- northward. We speculate that sea ice serves as the 'middleman' in a scenario where increased storm activity yields increased stirring winds that will speed up the Arctic's transition into a body of turbulently mixing warm and cool layers with greater potential for deep convection that will alter climate further," said Hakkinen. "What I find truly intriguing about confirming the link between the rise in storminess and increased sea ice drift is the possibility that new sinks for carbon dioxide may emerge from this relationship that could function as negative feedback for global warming."
"But Romney believes he can ignore this maxim and win anyway. He's working under the assumption that the political rules have changed, we've entered a new era of post-truth rhetorical norms, and there are no longer punishments for deliberately saying the opposite of the reality.-------
Indeed, we've created a system of incentives -- Romney will benefit by crafting a racially-charged lie, which has no bearing in fact, but which rallies his base, for whom the distinction between fact and fiction isn't terribly important. At the same time, the lie will begin to permeate the mainstream's understanding of current events, thanks to reporting that tells voters, "Romney claims Obama gutted welfare law; Obama disagrees."
Greg Sargent added, "It's true that there's serious truth-stretching on both sides.... But it remains the case that we are seeing nothing from the Obama side that's anything like what Romney is attempting. Romney right now is premising one of the central arguments of his whole campaign on a complete lie."
And with each passing day, Romney appears increasingly certain he can get away with it."
To help cover the electricity gap, Japan increased its usage of oil, coal, and natural gas, much of it imported. The approach of summer, when consumption of electricity is greatest, led public officials to set goals for less consumption.The panel reports that. But the problem is implementing those solutions, unproven, in a power-stretched country and an uncertain economy. I don't think it's doable.
Oil, coal, and natural gas pose environmental health concerns, largely from greenhouse gas emissions. However, a Japanese environment ministry panel recognizes increased use of these sources is temporary. It will take years to build up the country's supply of safe, renewable power from sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass. Still, the panel reports that by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced to 25% below 1990 levels, with up to 35% of electricity generated from non-polluting renewable sources. These projections assume no nuclear power will be used.
“It’s clear that inadequate federal funding is the number one threat to the future of the national parks and the national park idea,” Kiernan said. “We’re at a crossroads of historic importance here.” [That I believe.]
Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), who co-chairs the bipartisan Congressional National Parks Caucus, said that he has lobbied the administration and his colleagues to restore park funding but that he’s “not optimistic” the current trajectory will reverse itself. “It’s just the blind zeal for cuts in the discretionary part of the budget, regardless of the consequences,” Kind said. [As we suspected; Republicans trying to balance the budget by addressing only 1/3 of it.]
Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), [emphasis on the "rob"]who chairs the House Natural Resources subcommittee on national parks, forests and public lands, said the Park Service should eliminate all new land acquisitions and reevaluate its mission. The administration’s fiscal 2013 budget includes $59 million for parkland acquisition. [Which would mean not preserving anymore land from development or exploitation. Nice move, Rob.]
“Why don’t we prioritize and realize the federal government cannot print money fast enough to do everything that needs to get done?” Bishop said. [Like preserving natural environments in their natural state and historically significant locations. No, that's not a big deal, Rob.]
"The researchers asked 48 women ages 19 to 33 to dance to an identical drumbeat during both the late follicular, or fertile phase, of their cycles and the nonfertile mid-luteal phase. Fertility was gauged by counting back from the woman's last period. Two hundred men, mostly undergraduate and graduate students, were then shown silhouettes of the women dancing. Hair was pulled back and the women wore identical form-fitting outfits to reduce the differences between them.So, if your babe is dancing good, prepare to get lucky -- and take precautions if you aren't ready to start a family.
The results revealed that though the men had no idea fertility was even being studied, they judged fertile women as more attractive dancers than women in their nonfertile phase. The researchers also captured video of the women's silhouettes walking and found that fertile women's gait was also judged more attractive than nonfertile women's."
In the study, funded by the Energy Biosciences Institute, Feng's team successfully tested the use of a non-ionic surfactant, or co-polymer, to create small structures that capture and hold the butanol molecules.
"This keeps the amount of butanol in the fermentation broth low so it doesn't kill the organism and we can continue to produce it," he said.
This process, called extractive fermentation, increases the amount of butanol produced during fermentation by 100 percent or more.
But that's only the beginning. Feng's group then makes use of one of the polymer's properties-its sensitivity to temperature. When the fermentation process is finished, the scientists heat the solution until a cloud appears and two layers form.
"We use a process called cloud point separation," he said. "Two phases form, with the second facing the polymer-rich phase. When we remove the second phase, we can recover the butanol, achieving a three- to fourfold reduction in energy use there because we don't have to remove as much water as in traditional fermentation."
"To little befuddlement, Mitt Romney has flipped-flopped on climate change numerous times. While Governor of Massachusetts he enacted restrictions on carbon dioxid emissions on power plants in his state. But while running for President, he has said the "idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us." He recently acknowledged that the globe is warming, but added, "we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet." This stance is equal to a man who has been diagnosed with cancer by 98% of the world's doctors but can't bring himself to accept such a diagnosis nor to take steps to heal his illness.Another indication that Romney is no friend to the rank-and-file Republicans, including a LOT of Tea Party members in the middle social stratum of flyover states. And Ryan's budget would cut emergency preparedness and disaster management funding, too. Remember in November.
And this is where the true irony enters, much of the states bearing the brunt of the global warming-induced droughts are deep red states such as Texas and Oklahoma. More rural, conservative areas of the country are expected to see the most immediate effects of climate change in the near future in the form of continued drought and other forms of extreme weather like heightened flooding and tornado outbreaks with increased viciousness."
If the HuffingtonPost map is accurate, then the real key element is this at the moment: even if Romney won all the states currently shown as "toss up", he'd lose.
So I think the Republicans are going to push as close to the fiscal cliff disaster as they can, because the closer it gets, the more the economy is going to slow down, according to the University of Maryland's Peter Morici. More on this REALLY soon.
