In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a
marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT
researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power:
storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because
storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and
grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have
hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing
solar energy.
Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this
discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of
all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for
years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera,
the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a
paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power
has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think
about solar power as unlimited and soon.”
The National Autism Association (NAA) today joins
thousands of parents around the country in demanding an apology and
retraction from radio talk show host Mike Savage for his July 16
broadcast in which he stated that children affected by autism are
“brats,” and that bad parenting is to blame for a “fraudulent” epidemic
now affecting one in 150 children, according to a press release from
the NAA.
“Autism is a very serious condition that greatly impacts the lives of those affected,” said NAA board member Lori McIlwain.
“Many
children with autism experience tremendous physical pain from
underlying pathologies, which accounts for the screaming this person
callously dismisses. To have an uneducated opinion about autism is
perfectly within one’s right, but to earn a living by shock-value
exploitation of children’s suffering, while suggesting they should be
called ‘idiots,’ is disgraceful,” she said.
SAVAGE: Now, you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I’m not talking about autism? A fraud, a racket. For a long while, we were hearing that every minority child had asthma. Why did they sudden — why was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I’ll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in and was told [fake cough], “When the nurse looks at you, you go [fake cough], ‘I don’t know, the dust got me.’ ” See, everyone had asthma from the minority community. That was number one.
Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.
What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, “Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.”
Autism — everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, “Don’t behave like a fool.” The worst thing he said — “Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.” That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning
your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.
Sales of Spam — that much maligned meat — are rising as consumers are
turning more to lunch meats and other lower-cost foods to extend their
already stretched food budgets.
Brother can you spare a dime?
Food prices are increasing faster than they’ve risen since 1990, at 4 percent in the U.S. last year, according to the Agriculture Department. Many staples are rising even faster, with white bread up 13 percent last year, bacon up 7 percent and peanut butter up 9 percent.
There’s no sign of a slowdown. Food inflation is running at an annualized rate of 6.1 percent as of April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The price of Spam is up too, with the average 12 oz. can costing about
$2.62. That’s an increase of 17 cents, or nearly 7 percent, from the
same time last year. But it’s not stopping sales, as the pork meat in a
can seems like a good alternative to consumers.
[…]
Spam’s maker, Hormel Foods Corp., reported last week that it saw strong
sales of Spam in the second quarter, helping push up its profits 14
percent. According to sales information coming from Hormel, provided by
The Nielsen Co., Spam sales were up 10.6 percent in the 12-week period
ending May 3, compared to last year. In the last 24 weeks, sales were
up nearly 9 percent.
Silver-colored metal dental contain mercury that may cause health problems in pregnant women, children and fetuses, the Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday after settling a related lawsuit.
As part of the settlement with several consumer advocacy groups, the FDA agreed to alert consumers about the potential risks on its website and to issue a more specific rule next year for fillings that contain mercury, FDA spokeswoman Peper Long said.
The lawsuit settlement was reached on Monday with several advocacy
groups, including Moms Against Mercury, which had sought to have
mercury fillings removed from the U.S. market.
While the FDA previously said various studies showed no harm from
mercury fillings, some consumer groups contend the fillings can trigger
a range of health problems such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s
disease. In 2006, an FDA advisory panel of outside experts said most
people would not be harmed by them, but said the agency needed more
information.
Mercury has been linked to brain and kidney damage at certain
levels. Amalgams contain half mercury and half a combination of other
metals.
Charles Brown, a lawyer for one of the groups called Consumers for
Dental Choice, said the agency’s move represented an about-face. “Gone,
gone, gone are all of FDA’s claims that no science exists that amalgam
is unsafe,” he said in a statement.
The Bush administration released a climate change assessment on
Thursday — four years late and pushed forward by a court order — that
said human-induced global warming will likely lead to problems like
droughts in the U.S. West and stronger hurricanes.
President George W. Bush’s stance on the issue has evolved from
denying climate science to acknowledging that global warming is
happening. In March, watchdog groups said Bush’s decision to intervene
in setting air pollution standards was part of a pattern of meddling in
environmental science.
The “Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the
United States” released on Thursday synthesized previous reports,
including those by the government’s climate change science program and
last year’s work by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change.
According to the Global Change Research Act (1990), the government needs to issue a report on global warming every four years. However, no other report has been issued since 2000, which determined environmental groups to demand the Bush administration to fulfill its obligations.
It is well known that the Bush administration takes more of an economic approach on global warming, rather than an objective one, and that greenhouse emissions regulation is not something they support.
That’s stating the obvious. Can 2009 possibly get here quickly enough?
After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about
(Melissa) Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy
Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.
By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class.
The diagnosis process had begun in February and it appears to be Asperger’s syndrome. This is gonna leave a mark.
The other students said he was “disgusting” and “annoying,” Barton said.
“He was incredibly upset,” Barton said. “The only friend he has ever made in his life was forced to do this.”
St. Lucie School’s spokeswoman Janice Karst said the district is
investigating the incident, but could not make any further comment.
Vern Melvin, Department of Children and Families circuit administrator,
confirmed the agency is investigating an allegation of abuse at
Morningside but said he could not elaborate.
This is what meaningful environmental leadership looks like.
Air pollution regulators in the San Francisco Bay area voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve new rules that impose fees on businesses for emitting greenhouse gasses.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s board of directors voted 15-1 to charge companies 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit, an agency spokeswoman said.
Experts say the fees, which cover nine counties in the Bay Area, are the first of their kind in the country. The new rules are set to take effect July 1.
The modest fee probably won’t be enough to force companies to reduce their emissions, but backers say it sets an important precedent in combating climate change and could serve as a model for regional air districts nationwide.
“It doesn’t solve global warming, but it gets us thinking in the right terms,” said Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s not enough of a cost to change behavior, but it tells us where things are headed. You have to think not just in financial terms, but in carbon terms.”
Cathy Reheis-Boyd, chief operating officer for the Western States Petroleum Association, said that climate change is “a big issue that needs a comprehensive statewide plan to address it. We believe it’s premature for local air districts to design local programs before we have a state program.”
(T)wo-thirds of all U.S. adults (66%) believe it is important that the
next president of the United States have a policy which addresses
climate change. Almost half, or 44%, believe it is extremely or very
important, and only 14% believe it is not at all important. A
significant majority of Americans — sixty-three percent (63%) of U.S.
adults — say it is important that the new president, soon after taking
office, initiates strong action to address global warming/climate
change.
In the political arena, there seems to be no shortage of sleaze merchants who happen to have magical regenerative powers. Part of their DNA appears to be a propensity for getting publicly taken to task by those who they work for. It’s a win-win situation. The sleaze merchant puts out false and/or irresponsible info then willingly takes the fall as a “loose cannon” while those who they work for get to pretend that they’ve taken the high road by issuing public condemnations, even calls for the loose cannon’s resignation.
Of course the lack of name recognition that the loose cannon has makes it easy for them to show up with a repeat performance months later, while the average soundbite consumer’s mind doesn’t pick up on the fact that they’ve just watched a re-run. But the most ambitious members of the GOP’s designated fall guy battalion set their sites on breathing the rarified air of the unaccountable celeb shill (- see Malkin, Coulter, Rush, et al).
I now introduce you to one of the fully bought and paid for hopefuls trying to make that leap; Bill Hobbs, Communications Director for the Tennessee State Republican Party.
I actually worked with - or shall I say in spite of the guy. We were both on staff at an environmental blog for much of 2007, though Hobbs wasn’t serving in any official capacity for the Tennessee GOP at that time. Hobbs’s writing was what I considered to be very antagonistic to the environmental movement and he would engage in what I perceived to be blatantly biased attacks on Al Gore, to the point where I and each of the other bloggers on the site actually mentioned in email exchanges with him that we thought he was behaving like a GOP attack dog, which he disputed. There is much that can and should be written about that experience, but for today I will focus on the GOP’s use of Hobbs as the fall guy de jour, as well as his penchant for showing up in situations that have caused him to be accused of engaging in bigotry.
You’re of course aware of Obama’s warning shot to those who have chosen to attack his wife. The following appeared in the NY Daily News’s report on the story:
Bill Hobbs, communications director for the (Tennessee) state (Republican) party, fired right back. He said Obama’s warning was “hypocritical,” “condescending” and a “little scary.”
“If Sen. Obama thinks that his wife can go out there and make campaign speeches and yet somehow be immune - or be off limits - to criticism for the things she says in campaign speeches on his behalf, then, he’s just wrong.”
Hobbs said Michelle Obama is a campaign surrogate and “we have every right as Americans” to examine and criticize her public statements.
Asked to respond to Barack Obama’s claim that the state party distorted his wife’s remarks, Hobbs replied, “A lot of people said that about Jeremiah Wright’s words, too, and then we found out that Jeremiah Wright really was the way he was portrayed.”
Note the use of the word “scary” in the Hobbs statement, along with the inevitable Jeremiah Wright inclusion. Actually got the Revs name two times into one sentence.
This is the same Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee state Republican party, who less than three months earlier was the fall guy for tactics that were perceived as racist, even to the point for John McCain was forced to publicly voice his disapproval. Hobbs put out a press release titled “Anti-Semites for Obama“.
Chris Matthews saw it for what it was:
As did Keith Olbermann:
John McCain was forced to condemn the tactics and after initially adopting an appallingly ham-fisted and simple-minded defense, the state party removed the press release from their website.
Updated 4:58 p.m. CST: Lee Pitts, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), has issued the following statement: “Senator Alexander has talked with Robin Smith, and she is removing the release and the photo from the website. She and the senator agreed it could be easily misinterpreted, taken out of context and considered inappropriate.”
Updated 4:04 p.m. CST: Crystal Benton, a spokeswoman for the John McCain for President campaign has issued the following statement to Tennessee media: “Senator McCain has made clear that he rejects these sort of tactics and will campaign on his record.”
Updated 2:44 p.m. CST: State Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis), a member of the Tennesseans for Obama steering committee, has called on the Tennessee Republican party to apologize for the press release titled “Anti-Semites for Obama.” Hardaway told NashvillePost.com, “This is a bigoted press release that had to come from the mind of a bigot.” He then called on Republican Party Chairwoman Robin Smith to repudiate and distance herself from GOP Communications Director Bill Hobbs.
Since the story broke on Wednesday drawing attention to a press release issued by the Tennessee Republican Party titled “Anti-Semites for Obama,” the state party has been either publicly chastised or rebuked by the Republican National Committee, likely GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, GOP Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, GOP Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn and former GOP state party chair State Rep. Beth Harwell, just to name a few.
…
Almost universally, support for GOP chair Robin Smith among donors and elected officials remains strong and she is getting high marks for her overall leadership of the state party. However, those same individuals who asked not to be named out of deference to her want to see a shake-up at her office and are pointing squarely at her communications director, Bill Hobbs.
Among the issues these Republican stalwarts have with Hobbs are his propensity to make the story about himself or his beliefs, which they say are not representative of the entire party. They feel that there a number of strong issues that Republicans can focus on in this election year, yet the message coming out of the Tennessee Republican Party consistently lacks discipline or merit. These are just a few of the issues these influential party members had before Wednesday.
Now, there is a growing feeling among donors and legislative members that Hobbs has either embarrassed the state party at the national level or that he has become so “toxic” that he will not be a credible voice for their message.
One state legislator told NashvillePost.com that, coupled with the reasons Hobbs left at Belmont University almost two years ago – depending on who you talk to, he either resigned or was fired – after posting an anti-Islamic drawing on the internet, the “Anti-Semites” release is indefensible and he should go.
(A)t the height of Muslim furor over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, Hobbs created a contest in which he invited readers to submit drawings of Mohammed. “Exercise your right to free expression by drawing pictures of Islam’s ‘Prophet Mohammed,’ ” Hobbs wrote, “before the West gives in to Islamist intimidation and fear of Islamist violence and makes it illegal to do so.” To kick things off, he posted a stick-figure drawing of Mohammed holding a bomb. Underneath the cartoon, in crude lettering, he wrote, “Mohammed Blows.”
Mike Kopp, a longtime Democratic politico, unearthed Hobbs’ failed attempt at satire and posted about it on his blog, tennesseepoliticalpulse.com. “I have no quarrel with a person’s right to free speech, but as a Christian, I believe this kind of expression goes against all the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament,” Kopp wrote, claiming the faithful high ground. He then rhetorically challenged Bryson and Belmont to defend their affiliation with Hobbs.
In the comments thread, Hobbs replied. “I posted that cartoon, and invited others to draw their own cartoons, as a way of protesting both American media cowardice and Islamist attempts to suppress free speech via threats of bombs and bullets and burning and beheading,” he wrote. Then, he added an apologetic afterthought: “But then I never publicized the site and, quite frankly, forgot is was up until today.” From there, the comments thread descended into a series of recriminations, marked by several quick posts in which Hobbs defended himself a little too vociferously. One might say nervously. Oh, and he deleted the cartoon.
…
But by deliberately desecrating Islam’s central figure—“the ‘Prophet Mohammed’ ” as Hobbs sneered, using quote marks for sardonic emphasis—he attacked an entire religion, not a group of fanatics who pervert the religion’s teachings. Then he drew him as a bearded stick figure holding a bomb and said he “blows.” It seems bearded Muslim terrorists are the new big-nosed, money-grubbing Jews. The more things change…. Here’s the best analogy five minutes of thought will yield: a stick figure rendering of Jesus sipping lemonade on the front porch while whipping an anguished bunch of black servants. “Jesus Slays,” the caption would read.
Here’s a copy of the controversial drawing that Hobbs posted, then removed:
Classy, huh?
If you go to his personal blog, you’ll find the following entry from 2007, which shows further behavior that some may consider to be consistent with racism:
My lunch yesterday…when you go to a Subway and ask for a “BLT” and they ask you what you want on and it you say “cheese,” you don’t think you also have to say “lettuce and tomatos” because you figure the sandwich-maker knows that’s what the LT in a “BLT” is, right? Apparently not if the clerk is an, uh, recent arrival from somwhere south of Texas…
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