May 2010 archive

Science is one of those subjects I’m passionate about. Without Science, we’d still be casting spells, and coaxing The Fates.

If we’re not careful, we may be headed back to those “bad old days”.

Scientists Fault Lack of Studies Over Gulf Oil Spill

Justin Gillis, NYTimes – 05/19/2010

“It seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled,” Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “It seems baffling that we don’t know where the oil is in the water column.”

The administration acknowledges that its scientific resources are stretched by the disaster, but contends that it is moving to get better information, including a more complete picture of the underwater plumes.

“We’re in the early stages of doing that, and we do not have a comprehensive understanding as of yet of where that oil is,” Jane Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator, told Congress on Wednesday. “But we are devoting all possible resources to understanding where the oil is and what its impact might be.”

Maybe NOAA was too busy, texting BP?

Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for  no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more  fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of  greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I  can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening.  In due course of time they will come into their own.

When  the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary  watch, he turns his eyes toward the Southern Cross, burning  luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches the  Southern Cross begins to bend, and the whirling worlds change their  places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of  Time upon the dial of the universe; and though no bell may beat the glad  tidings, the look-out knows that the midnight is passing – that relief  and rest are close at hand.

Let the people take  heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, midnight is  passing, and joy cometh with the morning.–Eugene V. Debs

My sister-in-law, who knows that I am “Going Green”, sent me this article about the nutritional and practical uses for the consummate salad component, the cucumber. While I can attest ot some of the accuracy of the nutritional information, I have yet to try out cleaning the sink or eating cucumber slices to ward off a hangover. So for something amusing

1. Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.

2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a cucumber. Cucumbers are a good source of B Vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours.

3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower? Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance.

4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds? Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area.

Earlier this week, Caractacus ventured into the world of Michel Foucault.  It’s a world which with, although I am not a philosopher, I have become quite familiar.

We people of the trans variety have often had to deal with the concept of normativity, a concept which Foucault wrote about rather extensively.

If you have not read any Foucault, you probably should, though I should warn you that there will be heavy lifting.  After all, in 2007, Foucault was classified as the most cited intellectual in the humanities.

First off, let’s try to get a grip on the word “normativity”.  

In philosophy, normative statements affirm how things ought to be, how to value them, which things are good or bad, which actions are right or wrong.  Normative is usually contrasted with positive…  Positive statements are factual statements that attempt to describe reality.

This is a must read review in Salon of today’s court ruling on “Boumediene vs Bush”  written by Glenn Greenwald, which gives the history of the creation of Bush’s prison gulag in 2006 with the Military Commissions Act, and background and then says:

  Congratulations to the United States and Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind.  

If you’re secretly kidnapped by, say,  a military for profit contractor and shipped off to Gitmo, the Bush DOJ contended that the detainee under Boumediene has a right to a hearing (when they get “around to it,” years later, if you survived the torture) but when you’re secretly kidnapped by Only God Knows What or Who and shipped off to Bagram’s Secret little hell holes in Afghanistan, then the non existent detainee has no rights to any such kind of hearing.  

Greenwald:

 In other words, the detainee’s Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged.  One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when, last February, as The New York Times put it, Obama lawyers “told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.”

But last April, John Bates, the Bush-43-appointed, right-wing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram.  

But which Bagram are they being shipped to ?  The known Bagram Prison, or the one Gen McChrystal’s Secret Special Forces and the CIA and Blackwater Xe’s operations aren’t admitting the existence of ?  

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

1 Louisiana marshes hit by Gulf oil slick

by Clement Sabourin, AFP

Thu May 20, 6:47 pm ET