Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music is brought to you by guest VJ NCTim and features rockabilly and country artist Rosie Flores. Enjoy!
Rosie Flores - Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine
Note: We here at the Evening Blues Weekend Edition often step beyond the boundries of traditional blues music. Joe shikspack so adeptly covers the blues genre in his weekday series that we at the Weekend Edition would find most trad blues offerings we could serve up as being redundant. Therefore Joe, in magnanimous manner has allowed us to color outside of the lines and we appreciate and thank him for that. Almost all modern American music has it's roots in traditional blues music anyway, so ultimately we do not stray far from the mother language. As Muddy Waters sang:
The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll, let us add to that list (jazz, country, bluegrass, ragtime, folk, gospel, soul, swing and rhythm and blues) and all subsets thereof. -- JtC
The white man who is our agent is so stingy that he carries a linen rag in his pocket into which to blow his nose, for fear he might blow away something of value.
Piapot - Cree Chief
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors:
enhydra lutris
NCTim
Funkygal
mimi
Defying Troika, Greece Chooses 'Democracy Over Fear' With 'No' Vote on Austerity
'For the first time in history, austerity politics have been put to a popular vote and they have been resoundingly rejected,' says Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now
News outlets are officially reporting that the 'No' side has won a decisive victory in Greece, rejecting a bailout offer from foreign creditors that would have imposed further austerity and economic hardship.
Reuters reports that government officials "immediately said they would try to restart talks with European partners," perhaps as soon as Sunday night.
At Vox, Matthew Yglesias explores what a "No" vote really means.
"The people of Greece have stood up to the bully boys of the Troika and the violent imposition of their neoliberal policies," said Global Justice Now's Nick Dearden in a statement responding to the early results. "Our deeply unequal global economy relies on ordinary people having no real voice over economic decisions, so this ‘no’ vote strengthens the battle for a fairer, more humane, people-centred Europe."
Behind the Greek Crisis
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
Focusing exclusively on the monetary aspects of the Greek crisis the media misses much of what disturbs the Greeks and also what might make a solution possible.
For over half a century, Greeks have lived in perilous times. In the 1930s, they lived under a brutal dictatorship that modeled itself on Nazi Germany, employing Gestapo-like secret police and sending critics off to an island concentration camp. Then a curious thing happened: Benito Mussolini invaded the country.
Challenged to protect their self-respect and their country, Greeks put aside their hatred of the Metaxis dictatorship and rallied to fight the foreign invaders. The Greeks did such a good job of defending their country that Adolf Hitler had to put off his invasion of Russia to rescue the Italians. That move probably saved Josef Stalin since the delay forced the Wehrmacht to fight in Russia’s mud, snow and ice for which they had not prepared. But, ironically, it also saved the Metaxis dictatorship and the monarchy. The king and all the senior Greek officials fled to British-occupied Egypt and, as new allies, they were declared part of the “Free World.”
Meanwhile, in Greece, the Germans looted much of the industry, shipping and food stuffs. The Greeks began to starve. As Mussolini remarked, “the Germans have taken from the Greeks even their shoelaces…”
Angela's Ashes: How Merkel Failed Greece and Europe
Link Submitted by: mimi
Angela Merkel relishes her reputation as queen of Europe. But she hasn't learned how to use her power, instead allowing a bad situation to heat up to the boiling point. Her inability to take unpopular stances badly exacerbated the Greek crisis.
Angela Merkel was already leaving for the weekend when she received the call that would change everything. The chancellor had just had a grueling day, spending all of it in meetings with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras -- sometimes as part of a larger group, and others with only him and French President François Hollande.
They discussed debt restructuring and billions of euros in additional investments. When it comes to issues important to him, Tsipras can be exhaustingly stubborn. In the end, though, Merkel was left with the feeling the EU summit was the milestone that could quite possibly mark a turn for the better.
Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, had pulled Merkel aside in Brussels and whispered to her that Tsipras was seeking allies in the opposition, with whom he could push a reform program through Greek parliament even without the consent of the radical wing of Syriza, if necessary. "Can you help me?" Tsipras had asked Schulz. Schulz has good connections in the Social Democratic PASOK Party.
IMF might have lost its policy clout over Greece
In an increasingly bilateral world, it may be time for the agency to start nurturing rather than hectoring countries in need of bailout assistance
Link Submitted by: mimi
Until not so long ago, governments and markets were in thrall to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF is one of the world's most powerful institutions and its word on global stabilisation efforts has generally been seen as sacrosanct and final. When economies hit hard times and sought the IMF's help, it was universally accepted for countries to take its tough monetary medicine without question.
For Greece, it has been much too bitter a pill to swallow. As the Greek crisis has come to a head, the country's radical left government has stared the IMF in the eye - and the IMF blinked first. It looks like it's time for the IMF to start nurturing rather than hectoring countries in desperate need of bailout aid. A new era of better conciliation and less confrontation is required.
The global financial crisis might have given the IMF new impetus as the world's corrector of imbalances, but the hiccup over its handling of the Greek crisis has dented the organisation's credibility. In an increasingly bilateral world, there is a risk the agency's policies becoming too outdated.
The IMF's supporters would claim the organisation has accomplished great miracles since its inception in 1945, sparing many countries from deeper chaos with its support packages and bailout aid.
Plundering Our Freedom with Abandon - Robert Scheer on Reality Asserts Itself
Link Submitted by: NCTim
On Reality Asserts Itself, Robert Scheer says you get drunk on the power of this culture and its military, its wealth, and you can become incredibly destructive. And we have been incredibly destructive.
Islamic State crisis: Air strikes target Syria stronghold
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The US-led coalition against the Islamic State group says it has carried out a series of air strikes in Syria on its main stronghold, Raqqa.
The city is seen by the militants as the capital of the "caliphate" they declared in Syria and Iraq in 2014.
The US military described the 16 strikes as one of the largest assaults carried out in Syria so far.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 23 IS members were killed in the attack.
Russia braces for ‘Euromaidan’ in Armenia
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Yerevan is seldom in the world headlines except when Turkey works itself into frenzy over a fresh move in an odd western capital to pass a parliamentary resolution naming the massacre of Armenians in the early part of the last century as “genocide”.
But that may be about to change. That is, if the 6-day-old mass protests in the Armenian capital, ostensibly against a hike in electricity prices with effect from August 1, snowball into another “Euromaidan” as in Ukraine last year.
Why Armenia? The short answer is that the country is a vital piece of real estate to hold for both the West and Russia. Consider the following.
Armenia is the only country other than Tajikistan where Russia has a big military base. A few months ago, Armenia under its current leadership of President Serz Sarkisian joined the Eurasian Economic Union, which the United States regards as a Russian project to integrate the former Soviet republics under its leadership.
James Loewen on Racism and US History
Link Submitted by: Funkygal
This week on CounterSpin: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past,” recited Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984. Nowadays, news media have a good deal of control over our knowledge and understanding of the past: The Fourth of July weekend will doubtless feature media chatter about what America “stands for,” and how our history has shaped us.
But much of the talk will bear little relationship to the country’s actual history, which is roughly a million times more complicated and conflict-riddled than the image we are usually presented: a more or less steady march of “progress,” with perhaps a few bumps in the road. Someone who’s thought a lot about how we mis-learn history and how that shapes our political life is James W. Loewen. He’s the author of the classic book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, which assesses the textbooks used in US classrooms, turning up falsehoods, elisions and distortions. He explains some of the reasons students say they hate history–and non-white students hate it most of all.
Thai Navy to buy three Chinese submarines
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The Royal Thai Navy has resolved to buy three submarines from China in a government-to-government contract worth Bt36 billion, Navy Commander-in-Chief Adm Kraisorn Chansuwanit said Thursday.
He said he did not know when Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan would submit the proposed procurement to the Cabinet for deliberation.
The Bangkok Post reported on June 26 that the navy had picked Chinese submarines costing 12 billion baht, quoting a source on a government committee. The majority of the 17-strong committee reportedly voted to buy the Chinese vessels, saying it was the “best value for money.” The rest were said to be split between submarines from Germany and South Korea. The navy also received offers from Russia, Sweden and France.
The threat to US is rising China, rising Asia
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
That uproar you’re hearing over the South China Sea? Is it war klaxons? Or dinner bells?
Over at Foreign Policy, J. Randy Forbes, Representative, Virginia, and Chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, opined on June 17 : “As of now, the military component to the rebalance amounts to shifting 2,500 Marines to the region while increasing America’s naval presence by three ships per year, to a total of 67 ships by the end of the decade. That response is so modest that, even if it is achievable, it is more a sign of weakness than strength.”
As to what an adequately muscular response would be, on June 23 Mark Thompson, Time magazine’s national security correspondent tweeted: “Navy finally decides how many ships it needs.”
And he reproduced testimony from Rear Admiral Paul Fanta before Forbes’ committee: “If we had a choice, we would walk across the Pacific on the deck of a destroyer, occasionally stubbing our toes stepping down onto a submarine, and up onto an aircraft carrier.”
Hillary Clinton: “If I’m President, We Will Attack Iran”
Link Submitted by: NCTim
On Friday, presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton addressed a hand-picked audience at a Dartmouth College campaign event. She lied calling Iran an “existential threat to Israel… I hope we are able to get a deal next week that puts a lid on (its) nuclear weapons program.”
Even if we do get such a deal, we will still have major problems from Iran. They are the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism.
They use proxies like Hezbollah to sow discord and create insurgencies to destabilize governments. They are taking more and more control of a number of nations in the region and they pose an existential threat to Israel.
We…have turn our attention to working with our partners to try to reign in and prevent this continuing Iranian aggressiveness.
The Naga insurgency and the ‘idea of India’
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The Naga insurgency arose out of Naga nationalism which focused on the sovereignty and territoriality of the Naga people. Naga nationalism was suppressed brutally by independent India. The long and painful saga of the Naga struggle for independence is well recorded. In 1963, India granted statehood to the Naga people but the demand for independence did not vanish. Peace moves initiated by India during the 1950s and ‘60s had only limited impact.
The Naga insurgency is the oldest and most powerful insurgency in India today. Bertil Lintner, in his perceptive book Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier, 2012, says that the Nagas were the first in independent India to challenge the ‘idea of India’ — a concept which preoccupies elite scholarship in India today.
After a prolonged struggle, Naga insurgents are now divided into two main groups: the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (greater Nagaland) or NSCN-IM led by Isaac Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah and NSCN-K led by SS Khaplang who does not want to dilute the original demands, namely sovereignty and territoriality. The former group, now willing to function within the Constitution of India, is in secret peace talks with government of India. The latter is excluded from the talks ostensibly because Khaplang is not an Indian citizen but a domicile of Myanmar.
Five Facts that the Israeli Government Would Prefer you did not Know
Link Submitted by: NCTim
1. Binyamin Netanyahu claims to speak for the majority of world Jewry although, in fact, he represents only a minority of Jewish Israelis and Americans – those who support his right-wing, Likud Party. To many others, particularly in Europe, he is considered a US-financed, Zionist rabble-rouser with an extremist political agenda that rejects any Palestinian state and requires the ‘transfer’ of all indigenous Arabs out of former Palestine.
2. Israeli policies such as the illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state); the 8 year blockade of essential supplies into Gaza; the mis-labelling of exported fruit and vegetables to Europe and the horrific killing of hundreds of defenceless women and children in Gaza – all have the effect of exacerbating antisemitism around the world. The agenda of the Israeli government against the indigenous Arab population being the primary driver of anti-Jewish feeling both in Europe and globally.
3. Netanyahu is well aware of this link and the detrimental effect of his policies on the security of Jewish communities worldwide, and on public opinion, but he also knows that the greater the increase in antisemitism the more French, British and other Jewish nationals will be forced to sell their homes and reluctantly leave the countries of their birth to seek sanctuary in Israel. This is a key principle of the Netanyahu government agenda that all American, European and diaspora Jews should be ‘persuaded’ to emigrate to the Israeli state – together with their assets.
4. However, this agenda is also partly supported by millions of evangelist, Christian Zionists in America, who believe in the literal word of the bible and whose goal is for all 14 million Jews in the world to be relocated to the Israeli state where they can be baptised and converted, en masse, into the Christian church! The Israeli government ministers smile knowingly behind their hands as they accept this support – without which their economy would collapse.
Boko Haram attack caps week of bloodshed in Nigeria
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
A suicide bomber has attacked a church in Nigeria, capping a week in which more than 200 people died in Boko Haram violence.
At least five worshippers were killed in Sunday's attack as they were entering the church in Potiskum in the north-east of the country.
The Islamist extremists of Boko Haram have carried out a six-year campaign of violence in Nigeria's northeast.
The recent attacks have brought condemnation from Nigeria's president.
Revealed: the role of the west in the runup to Srebrenica’s fall
Classified documents and research show that British, American and French governments were negotiating to cede ‘safe area’ town to Serbs
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The fall of Srebrenica in Bosnia 20 years ago, prompting the worst massacre in Europe since the Third Reich, was a key element of the strategy pursued by the three key western powers –Britain, the US and France – and was not a shocking and unheralded event, as has long been maintained.
Eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed over four days in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb death squads after they took the besieged town, which had been designated a “safe area” under the protection of UN troops. The act has been declared a genocide by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadžic and General Ratko Mladic await verdicts in trials for directing genocide.
Blame has also been placed on Dutch troops, who evicted thousands seeking refuge in their headquarters, and watched while the Serbs separated women and young children from their male quarry.
But a new investigation of the mass of evidence documenting the siege suggests much wider involvement in the events leading to the fall of Srebrenica. Declassified cables, exclusive interviews and testimony to the tribunal show that the British, American and French governments accepted – and sometimes argued – that Srebrenica and two other UN-protected safe areas were “untenable” long before Mladic took the town, and were ready to cede Srebrenica to the Serbs in pursuit of a map acceptable to the Serbian president, Slobodan Miloševic, for peace at any price.
Gay marriage ruling leaves debate about religious liberty wide open
The Supreme Court made a number of important decisions this term, but none more transformative than legalizing gay marriage. The decision, however, does not settle the issue of gay rights and religious liberty.
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Washington — Two blockbuster cases dominated the docket at the United States Supreme Court in its recently-concluded term – one stands as a civil rights landmark, the other is slipping into quiet obscurity.
In its 2014-15 term, the high court decided 74 cases, including rulings upholding the president’s power to determine US policy over the contested status of Jerusalem, permitting Texas to exclude the confederate flag from specialty license plates, and barring prosecutors from treating an undersized grouper as the legal equivalent of a shredded document.
But by far the term’s biggest decisions came in the court’s historic ruling for same-sex marriage and in a 6-to-3 vote upholding distribution of tax credits in President Obama’s health care reform law.
While the same-sex marriage decision will reverberate for years, the high court’s ruling in the Obamacare case has quickly fallen off the national radar now that the once-dire threat to millions of health insurance policies has subsided.
China rolls out emergency measures to prevent stock market crash
China's stock markets face a make-or-break week after officials rolled out an unprecedented series of steps at the weekend to prevent a full-blown stock market crash that would threaten the world's second-largest economy.
The government is anxiously awaiting the market opening on Monday to see if the new measures will halt a 30 percent plunge in the last three weeks, or if panicky investors who borrowed heavily to speculate on stocks will continue to sell.
In an extraordinary weekend of policy moves, brokerages and fund managers vowed to buy massive amounts of stocks, helped by China's state-backed margin finance company which in turn would be aided by a direct line of liquidity from the central bank.
China has also orchestrated a halt to new share issues, with dozens of firms scrapping their IPO plans in separate but similarly worded statements over the weekend, in a tactic authorities have used before to support markets.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature a report on Day 8 of the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World. The convention debates Section 2 of Article 1: how the labor organization will be structured.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Pope Francis starts Latin American visit in Ecuador
Link Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Pope Francis is travelling to Ecuador for the start of a seven-day tour of South America, his second visit to the region since becoming pontiff in 2013.
His trip will focus on the issue of poverty, the Vatican said.
The pontiff will also travel to Bolivia and Paraguay, but not his home country of Argentina.
The Vatican said the decision not to visit the continent's larger nations reflected the Pope's interest in the "peripheries".
Climate Change versus the Dangers of Nuclear War. “Three Minutes to Midnight”
Link Submitted by: NCTim
Sixty five Nobel winners were meeting in Mainau, Lake Constance in Southern Germany at their annual conference of Nobel Laureates sponsored by the Lindau Foundation.
Among the donors to the Lindau Nobel initiative are Lockheed Martin, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Bayer, Merck, Novartis and Microsoft.
Climate Change was on the agenda. The venue was largely a science gathering. There was no declaration or scientific debate on broader issues of war and peace. (See the program)
The “Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change” compares the threat of climate change to that of nuclear war in the heyday of the Cold War era.
Nasa scientists work to revive Pluto-bound spacecraft after glitch
New Horizons craft suffered malfunction – which triggered an 81-minute break in radio communications – just nine days before it was due to fly past Pluto
Nasa scientists were working on Sunday to revive the New Horizons spacecraft, after it suffered a computer malfunction just nine days before it was due to fly past Pluto.
The probe has been barreling toward the dwarf planet and its primary moon, Charon, since January 2006.
On Saturday, an unknown glitch caused New Horizons to switch to a back-up computer, which triggered an 81-minute break in radio communications with mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, Nasa said in a status report.
“Full recovery is expected to take from one to several days,” Nasa said. “New Horizons will be temporarily unable to collect science data during that time.”
Secrecy over fracking chemicals clouds environmental risks, advocates say
Despite a report that links practice to contaminated drinking water, list of more than 1,076 chemicals used during fracking process remains unknown to public
The fracking industry must be compelled to provide far more detailed information to regulators if the public is to be accurately informed of any risks to the environment, advocacy groups say.
A report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last month found that hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas can lead, and has led, to the contamination of drinking water. It was the first time the federal government had admitted such a link.
The study, based on “data sources available to the agency”, found levels of any contamination to be small compared to the number of wells across the country, the EPA said.
But Gretchen Goldman, a lead analyst at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union for Concerned Scientists, told the Guardian that the EPA’s study – which is now open for comment – was nothing “more than a literature review” and called for the industry to be required to divulge greater data.
GoPro turtle inspires people to save Great Barrier Reef in mesmerizing footage
Our planet’s beauty and fragility can never be understated. So, scientists with a GoPro teamed up with some turtles to take the viewer on a tour of the Great Barrier Reef – the endangered paradise, as seen from the point of view of its inhabitants.
Turtles are proving invaluable research companions in WWF’s quest to learn as much as they can about the disappearing underwater landscape. The organization has been tagging green turtles, the ones that grow to weigh up to 400 pounds and are the size of a small child.
To help them get a good look at what is going on underneath, they’ve strapped a GoPro to a tagged turtle’s shell, and the fun began.
Underwater views of exquisite beauty open up as the animal swims past the endangered coral reefs and exotically-colored fish and marine life.
Melting Arctic Ice Is a Warning, but Oil Companies See It as a Chance to Drill
Truthout recently interviewed Ben Stewart, who heads media relations for Greenpeace International and is the author of Don't Trust Don't Fear Don't Beg.
Mark Karlin: What was the action that members of Greenpeace on the ship Arctic Sunrise undertook in 2013?
Ben Stewart: It was September, and the codename we gave this action was Azeroth. The plan was to sail the Arctic Sunrise towards the Prirazlomnaya oil platform, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and do something to stop its drilling and simultaneously draw global attention to what was happening up there. At that point the Prirazlomnaya was the most controversial oil platform in the world; it was trying to be the first rig to pump oil from the icy waters of the Arctic. It was at the vanguard of the new Arctic oil rush.
There were 30 people on board our ship - 28 activists and two journalists. The plan was to scale the side of the rig and hang a one-ton survival pod off the side. Some protesters would live in the pod, tweeting and Skyping from it. It would stop the drilling and allow them to communicate why they were there.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Seafaring spiders depend on their 'sails' and 'anchors'
Spiders travel across water like ships, using their legs as sails and their silk as an anchor
Spiders travel across water like ships, using their legs as sails and their silk as an anchor, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study helps explain how spiders are able to migrate across vast distances and why they are quick to colonise new areas.
Common spiders are frequently observed to fly using a technique called 'ballooning'. This involves using their silk to catch the wind which then lifts them up into the air. Ballooning spiders are estimated to move up to 30 km per day when wind conditions are suitable, helping in their quest for new habitats and resources.
This dispersal strategy, however, involves a significant risk. The airborne spider has little control over where it travels and could end up landing on water, which has been thought to be unsuitable for its survival.
Lead author Morito Hayashi from the Natural History Museum, London, UK, said: "Even Darwin took note of flying spiders that kept dropping on the Beagle miles away from the sea shore. But given that spiders are terrestrial, and that they do not have control over where they will travel when ballooning, how could evolution allow such risky behavior to be maintained?"
Where the Wild Things Aren't: Cats Avoid Places Coyotes Roam
Domestic cats might be determined hunters, but they stick mostly to residential areas instead of venturing into parks and protected areas where coyotes roam. That’s the key finding from a North Carolina State University analysis of more than 2,100 sites – the first large-scale study of free-ranging cats in the U.S. published in the Journal of Mammalogy.
Why is it important to know where 74 million pet cats spend their time away from home?
“Domestic cats are estimated to kill billions of birds and small mammals each year,” says lead author Roland Kays, a zoologist with NC State’s College of Natural Resources and the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. “Knowing where they hunt helps assess the risk to wildlife.”
Kays and his colleagues used camera trap data collected by hundreds of students and citizen scientists in six Eastern states. They analyzed millions of images from motion-sensitive cameras located in 32 protected sites and the urban neighborhoods of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Researcher Discovers Groundwater Modeling Breakthrough
A University of Wyoming professor has made a discovery that answers a nearly 100-year-old question about water movement, with implications for agriculture, hydrology, climate science and other fields.
After decades of effort, Fred Ogden, UW’s Cline Chair of Engineering, Environment and Natural Resources in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, and a team of collaborators published their findings in the journal Water Resources Research this spring. The paper, titled “A new general 1-D vadose zone flow solution method,” presents an equation to replace a difficult and unreliable formula that’s stymied hydrologic modelers since 1931.
“I honestly never thought I would be involved in a discovery in my field,” Ogden says.
He anticipates this finding will greatly improve the reliability and functionality for hundreds of important water models used by everyone from irrigators and city planners to climate scientists and botanists around the country and the world, as well as trigger a new surge in data collection.
Farmers eager for drones, but most can't legally fly them
Watching a flying demonstration on Maryland's Eastern Shore, the Missouri farmer envisions using an unmanned aerial vehicle to monitor the irrigation pipes on his farm — a job he now pays three men to do.
"The savings on labor and fuel would just be phenomenal," Geske says, watching as a small white drone hovers over a nearby corn field and transmits detailed pictures of the growing stalks to an iPad.
Nearby, farmer Chip Bowling tries his hand at flying one of the drones. Bowling, president of the National Corn Growers Association, says he would like to buy one for his Maryland farm to help him scout out which individual fields need extra spraying.
Another farmer, Bobby Hutchison, says he is hoping the man he hires weekly to walk his fields and observe his crops gets a drone, to make the process more efficient and accurate.
Study examines the role of naturally occurring halogens in atmospheric deposition
It’s been difficult to explain patterns of toxic mercury in some parts of the world, such as why there’s so much of the toxin deposited into ecosystems from the air in the southeastern United States, even upwind of usual sources.
A new analysis led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that one key to understanding mercury’s strange behavior may be the unexpected reactivity of naturally occurring halogen compounds from the ocean.
“Atmospheric chemistry involving bromine and iodine is turning out to be much more vigorous than we expected,” said CU-Boulder atmospheric chemist Rainer Volkamer, the corresponding author of the new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “These halogen reactions can turn mercury into a form that can rain out of the air onto the ground or into oceans” up to 3.5 times faster than previously estimated, he said.
The new chemistry that Volkamer and his colleagues have uncovered, with the help of an innovative instrument developed at CU-Boulder, may also help scientists better understand a longstanding limitation of global climate models. Those models have difficulty explaining why levels of ozone, a greenhouse gas, were so low before the Industrial Revolution.
Study examines overall carbon cost of fuel from Canadian oil sands
Gasoline and diesel fuel extracted and refined from Canadian oil sands will release about 20 percent more carbon into the atmosphere over the oil’s lifetime than fuel from conventional crude sources in the Unied States, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory; the University of California, Davis; and Stanford University.
The researchers used a life-cycle, or “well-to-wheels,” approach, gathering publicly available data on 27 large Canadian oil sands production facilities. The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found the additional carbon impact of Canadian oil sands was largely related to the energy required for extraction and refining.
“The level of detail provided in this study is unprecedented,” said co-author Sonia Yeh, a research scientist at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis, who helped lead research on emissions related to land disturbance. “It provides a strong scientific basis for understanding the total carbon emissions associated with using this resource, which allows us to move forward with informed discussions on technologies or policy options to reduce carbon emissions.”
Cluster of great white sharks has Monterey Bay scientists in awe
An unprecedented gathering of baby great white sharks near the Monterey Bay shoreline this week has scientists as curious as the public about what happens next.
The arrival of more sharks, perhaps even the giant great whites on the tails of these smaller ones? Or their departure from local beaches to the sites of large elephant seal populations for feeding?
Most of the sharks are 8- to 12-foot juveniles, part of a rookery that has been displaced north by the gathering strength of an El Niño, said Sean Van Sommeran, executive director of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation.
“It’s the same process of dynamics and water currents that has driven sea lions north,” Van Sommeran said. “In Monterey Bay, we’ve seen triggerfish, needlefish (species common off Mexico). The currents are really warm.”
California electricity rates to undergo biggest change in 15 years
California regulators radically revamped the way electricity rates work in the state, approving changes Friday that will raise monthly utility bills for the most energy-efficient homeowners while giving many bigger energy users a break.
The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to narrow the gap between prices paid by people who use very little electricity and those who consume more. Over time, that gap has grown so wide that the most efficient Californians now pay less for electricity than the utilities spend supplying it to them.
California has long charged utility customers higher prices for using large amounts of electricity as a way to encourage conservation. And while the commission’s vote will benefit many homeowners who use more than average, the biggest energy “hogs” now will face a new penalty, a “super-user electric surcharge” designed to prod them to conserve.
In addition, most residential customers will soon pay different prices for electricity use at different times of day, with the highest prices likely hitting in the afternoon. The move, long studied by California officials, could reduce the strain on the state’s power grid when electricity demand reaches its daily, late-afternoon peak.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
The Times' Condescending Attitude Toward Bernie Sanders
Mentally Ill Man Faces 11 Years After Cops Caught on Video Using His Body for Batting Practice
Coal Investment Is the Most Urgent Climate Threat
Hellraisers Journal: "We want to have under that banner our brothers and sisters of the world."
Greece, Polls Closed, Official results 60% No so far.....
26 Centuries later, Athens has come full circle
DOJ: Title IX protects transgender students
A Little Night Music
Rosie Flores - Crying Over You
Rosie Flores - You Tear Me Up!
Rosie Flores - Little, But I'm Loud
Rosie Flores - Surf Demon #5
Rosie Flores - Cadillac Ranch
Rosie Flores - Bop Street
Rosie Flores - This Cat's In The Doghouse
Rosie Flores - Hot Dog
Ray Campi & Rosie Flores - I'm Gonna Wear The Pants
Rosie Flores - Honky Tonk Moon
Rosie Flores - My Own Kind of Hat
Rosie Flores - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Rosie Flores - Wrong Side Of His Heart
Rosie Flores - God May Forgive You, But I Won't
Rosie Flores - Say Mama
Rosie Flores - Red Red Robin
Rosie Flores - Blues Keep Callin'
Rosie Flores - Love Must Have Passed Me By
Rosie Flores - His Rockin' Little Angel