Forecast for Tuesday Evening
Rain periods with possible local thunder.
Forecast for Wednesday
Rain periods with possible local thunder.
Thursday Rain periods, windy Min 16 Max 19
Friday Showers, windy Min 15 Max 21
Saturday Showers, windy Min 17 Max 23
Sunday Shower or two Min 18 Max 25
Monday Shower or two Min 17 Max 25
Tuesday Shower or two Min 17 Max 25
Data analysis of the water samples indicated that total mercury levels in the North Pacific Ocean water have risen about 30 percent over the last 20 years.
The authors attribute the rise to increases in global mercury atmospheric emission rates, particularly from Asia. “We believe the majority of Asian mercury emission comes from coal burning (for electricity generation),” stated William Landing, a marine scientist with Florida State University, one of the lead investigators for this study.
"..Customers are picking Ikea because it provides certain values."I hope the town square in Almhult is full of plastic balls for everyone to play in.Ikea's senior staff travel to Almhult, in southern Sweden, to have those values inculcated into them. It is as close to a company town as you get these days - there's an Ikea hotel, a private Ikea museum, and a host of Ikea laboratories, communications and personnel units. You are never far from a self-assembled bookcase or nice-looking but really very cheap mug.
Jesus did not come to rescue or redeem us – there is nothing from which we need to be rescued, other than our own patriarchal dysfunctionality which is our problem and not God’s...In another essay, O'Murchu explains how the term "Kingdom of God" should rendered differently:
And what would we replace it with? John Dominic Crossan (in Borg 1998, 22-55) offers one of the best suggestions I know: a companionship of empowerment.I can see it now: "Our Mother our Father...thy companionship of empowerment come".
Perhaps a reaction to Obama's partial birth abortion position? (And his quip about not wanting his "punished" by a pregnancy.)The "pro-life," anti-abortion opinion has risen from 44 percent a year ago, while the number of Americans who described themselves as "pro-choice" fell from 50 percent a year ago to 42 percent now.
The results "represent a significant shift," said Gallup, which interviewed 1,015 adults from May 7-10.
But as always, the progressive community, a far more efficient thinking machine than a handful of strategists and advisers, is looking ahead and raising a unified alarm. The message is this: anything less than absolute moral clarity from Democrats, who now control the levers of power, will enshrine Bush's abuses and undermine the rule of law for generations to come.Take some deep breaths, Peter, and calm your "thinking machine" down.
Cap-and-trade can do a very good impersonation of a carbon tax when we know the demand for emissions with certainty, when we do a great job of regulating, and when we auction off all the emissions permits. If we're uncertain about the demand for producing emissions, if it is hard to keep tabs on what various emitters are doing, or if politics intrudes into the process of handing out emissions permits, then the two approaches veer apart.Maybe the key paragraph is this:For ease of use and immunity from political meddling, the carbon tax is the clear winner. Taxes can be applied early in the fuel distribution process, which makes the logistical task much easier. That sort of upstream application would make attempts at political interference much more transparent, as well. So what about uncertainty? The big critique of a carbon tax is that it cannot guarantee a country will come in under a pre-set emissions cap. If the desire to pollute is really, really high one year, we could find that a given tax won't serve as a sufficient deterrent, and we'll blow past our limits.
Europe, though, has had the opposite problem with their cap-and-trade system. In the first phase of the program, they printed more permits to pollute than anyone wanted. That drove the price of permits near zero, deeply annoying anyone who had paid up for the right to pollute. It also meant that the system was ineffective in restraining pollution. That would be hard to do with a carbon tax.
The Cap-and-Trade Kids argue that, whatever the economic merits, their approach is the only one with a political chance. But why? Carbon taxes have certainly been seen as a political third rail, at least since President Bill Clinton dropped a proposed BTU tax in 1993. People don't want to have to pay more for energy. But how does cap-and-trade overcome this critique? If it's going to rein in eagerness to pollute, it will have to raise the cost of pollution. It may be possible to win support by pretending this won't happen, but it's worth thinking hard about whether such deception is a sound basis for creating a major long-term policy.
Obama's claim that he has to hide this evidence to protect our soldiers is the sort of crass, self-serving exploitation of "The Troops" which was the rancid hallmark of Bush/Cheney rhetoric.And he quotes Andrew Sullivan:
So Cheney begins to successfully coopt his successor.They really do treat Cheney as if he has the infernal power of mind control, even out of office. Cenk Uygur in Huffington Post writes:
This is an unbelievable moment. Dick Cheney's PR offensive over the last month actually worked. Barack Obama just crumbled and will follow Cheney's command to not release the new set of detainee abuse pictures.I have to admit, though, that I was a bit surprised when I went to the Daily Kos thread on this and found there are readers of his defending Obama's decision.
Some Caribbean religions and folk healers use mercury because they believe its supernatural powers bring good luck and drive away evil spirits. Practitioners apply mercury to the skin, add it to candles or sprinkle it around the home.
About 38 percent of 900 people mostly with Latino or Caribbean backgrounds reported that they used or knew someone who used mercury for religious, spiritual, or health purposes, according to a survey by John Snow, Inc., a Boston health consulting company. The ATSDR report warns that "such use may lead to chronic mercury exposure among those who use it in this manner and for subsequent occupants of the contaminated homes."
"Imagine if you suspected that your apartment might have had a prior occupant that sprinkled mercury on the carpet a decade ago," said Arnold Wendroff, founder of the Mercury Poisoning Project, a website dedicated to the issue. "That's not something you want to live with."
Wendroff has tracked religious mercury use since 1989 after a young boy in a class he was teaching told him his mother sprinkled mercury on the floor of their home to keep away witches. These liquid good luck charms, which can be purchased at medicine shops called botanicas, are often found in 10-gram bottles. Mercury fever thermometers, in comparison, contain only a few grams (.5 to 3.0 g) of mercury.
