Lake Palin, Kandahar to hard, Gorillas need Guards

Lake Palin cont...
An American Chernobyl

...The Chernobyl disaster was caused more or less directly by political ppointeesm: the people in charge of the reactor control room had no background in nuclear reactor operations or nuclear chemistry, having got their jobs through the Communist Party. They attempted a dangerous experiment, executed it ncompetently, and the result was an explosion and a meltdown. The Deepwater Horizon disaster will perhaps be found to have similar causes. BP, the owner of Deepwater Horizon, is chaired by one Carl-Henric Svanberg—a man with no experience in the oil industry. The people who serve on the boards of directors of large companies tend to see management as a sort of free-floating skill, unrelated t o any specific field or industry, rather similarly to how the Soviet Communist party bought of and tried to use the talents of its cadres. Allegations are already circulating that BP drilled to a depth of 25000 feet while being licensed to drill up to 18000 feet, that safety reviews of technical documents had been bypassed, and that key pieces of safety equipment were not installed in order to contain costs. It will be interesting to see whether the Deepwater Horizon disaster, like the Chernobyl disaster before it, turns out to be the direct result of management decisions made by technical incompetents.

cluborlov
Long term this accident:
1) discredits the enthusiasm for USA offshore drilling.
2) discredits the cornucopian claim that there is plenty of oil.
Much of the 'plenty' suggested is very deep offshore.
So the Peak Oil theory is greatly reinforced.
The actual damage may be only a few hundred million in lost fishing,
and a (large?) area of destroyed wetlands.
The idealogical damage is greater
................
digitaljournal
..On Thursday, a Greenpeace official called BP's reaction to the Gulf
oil spill "response theater."
...
4 — Try to buy off the locals with tiny amounts of money (BP is
offering $5,000 each to coastal residents in Mississippi) in exchange
for waivers promising not to sue for damages.
5 — Slap gag orders on anyone doing business with the corporation.
(Fishermen who want work from BP in the cleanup efforts have to agree
in writing not to speak to the media. The gag orders are legally
meaningless; it’s the intimidation factor that counts.)

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This from before the lake:

The deepwater wells, on which we are basing much of our energy future, may not be as productive as previously thought. Until recently the poster child for deepwater oil production was BP's Thunderhorse platform that, after years of delay, started producing in 2008 and was supposed to produce a billion barrels of oil at the rate of 250,000 barrels a day (b/d). At first all seemingly went well with production reaching 172,000 b/d in January of 2009, but then production started falling rapidly to a low of 61,000 b/d last December. BP refuses to comment publicly on what is happening at Thunderhorse, but outside observers are growing increasingly skeptical that the platform will ever produce the planned billion barrels. At least 25 other deepwater projects are said to be facing problems of falling production, raising the question of just how much oil these very expensive deepwater projects will ever produce.
..................

the-world-cant-live-without-deepwater-oil

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Android rising

...Sales of mobile phones that run Google's Android operating system (OS), including the Motorola Droid and Google's own Nexus One, outstripped the iPhone in America for the first time between January and March.

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Gaza prohibited items:
Prohibited items include common ones like sage, cardamon, jam, vinegar, chocolate, fruit preserves and dried fruit, seeds and nuts, biscuits and sweets, fresh meat, fabric for clothing, fishing rods, musical instruments, writing implements, notebooks, newspapers, toys, razors, heaters, horses, donkeys, goats, cattle, and chicks.

Any and as many of the above items can be changed arbitrarily by military order without further explanation - Israel's customary practice to harass, abuse and cause harm
sjlendman.
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/05/israels-exclusion-and-restriction-of.html

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Kandahar to hard
...Afghanistan-war-Kandahar-offensive-is-now-in-the-slow-lane
– Mon May 17, 11:10 am ET

Kandahar, Afghanistan – Although it's just beginning, the U.S.-led
effort to pacify Kandahar – the Taliban's spiritual capital in southern Afghanistan –
already appears to be faltering. ....The problem: Karzai's brotherThe
largest impediment remains President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. ... McChrystal used 10,000 troops in Helmand to gain control of a
rural river valley with about 50,000 residents. But in Kandahar, however, Afghanistan's second largest city, with an estimated population of 800,000, he's calling for just 20,000 troops. Marjah "is already coming
unraveled," the U.S. defense official said. He noted that on the eve of the
Marjah offensive in February, McChrystal described how he planned to bring
in a "government in a box."

"But when they opened the box, there was
nothing in it,"

csmonitor
Yesterday the Talib killed a Canadian colonel, and put Bagram base under fire for 9 hours.

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Gorillas need Guards

the 43 children in the second-grade class give $244 a month to support
a rarely paid and poorly equipped wildlife ranger half a world away in
the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Joseph Aloma Major is a foot soldier in the war to save the world's
critically endangered mountain gorillas, an employee of the Institut
Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), Congo's wildlife
service.
Before the money started flowing from Colorado, directly donated
online via a new charity website, WildlifeDirect.org, Mr. Aloma could
barely do his job.
wildlifetrackers
lolayabonobo

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how the fuck to get blogspot to start a new line???

Fast rail Sucks
When construction is taken into account, high speed rail journeys from
London to Manchester will produce 60% more carbon than conventional
rail and 35% more carbonthan car journeys. They will generate only 25%
less carbon than plane travel(5).
monbiot

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astrobiology blog
A truly wonderful paper was published a couple of years ago in which
Falkowski, Fenchel and Delong laid out the big picture for life on
Earth. In essence, they argue that single-celled microbial life is the
manifestation of an even deeper truth; the core planetary gene set.
This is the set of recipes for metabolism, or how to harvest a planet
for energy, and we all rely on them. The result of billions of years
of natural selection, these genes are widely dispersed across the
microbial biosphere. This is true to such an extent that should 99% of
life be wiped out by an asteroid collision, supervolcano, or dirty
telephone receiver, the information for the molecular machinery that
drives all organisms will be safely preserved in the surviving 1%.
lifeunbounded
cosmicvariance

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Borneo Stick Insect
bigger than Weta??

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