The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting genetically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany. Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed “a danger to the environment,” a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.

Righteous.

The glitch between the two vehicles occurred about 25 minutes before the Progress ship was due to automatically park itself at a berthing slip on the station’s Russian Zvezda module.

Instead, Progress floated past the station at a safe distance of about 2 miles, said NASA spokesman Rob Navias, adding that the six-member Russian-American crew was never in any danger.

This new study seems to validate the role of cell phone radiation as a contributing factor in declining bee populations.

Andrew Goldsworthy, a biologist from the UK’s Imperial College, London, has studied the biological effects of electromagnetic fields. He thinks it’s possible bees could be affected by cell phone radiation.

The reason, Goldsworthy says, could hinge on a pigment in bees called cryptochrome.

“Animals, including insects, use cryptochrome for navigation,” Goldsworthy told CNN.

“They use it to sense the direction of the earth’s magnetic field and their ability to do this is compromised by radiation from [cell] phones and their base stations. So basically bees do not find their way back to the hive.”

More from the Gulf

Comments anyone?

The mess we have today in the Gulf of Mexico is not the first time BP has committed crimes against the environment and against people. This is a proverbial drop in the bucket for BP. This outfit has been cheating humanity since its inception.

How not to contain an oil spill starring BP. Then let your stomach churn reading this Kos post about the potential for future catastrophes.

Link to a conversation about the worst case scenario regarding BP’s goddamn blowhole.

NEW ORLEANS — Scientists provided a new estimate for the amount of oil gushing from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday that indicates it could be leaking up to 2.52 million gallons of crude a day.

A government panel of scientists said that the ruptured well is leaking between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons of oil daily. The figures move the government’s worst-case estimates more in line with what an independent team had previously thought was the maximum size of the spill.

Uh…

Which is to say,-Has Total Wellhead Failure Happened?

Then take the edge off with these amusing videos.

Oh man this is a good one.

Obama has also called in some of the many scientists on the federal payroll, led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Chu at one point pushed the unusual idea of using gamma rays to peer into the blowout preventer to determine if its valves were closed, a technique he experimented with in graduate school while studying radioactive decay.  

The suggestion at first elicited snickering and “Incredible Hulk” jokes. Then they tried it, and it worked. “They weren’t hot on his ideas,” a senior White House official said of BP’s initial reaction to Chu’s suggestions. “Now they are.”

That’s going to be a great scene in the movie.

(h/t Atrios)

Analysis here. We’ve been saying this since at least 1998, so our patience with reductionism/mechanism is wearing thin.

Article here. Pull quote here:

The automobile, once a rite of passage for American youth, is becoming less relevant to a growing number of people under 30.

Some calmer perspective here:

It’s tough being an Obama supporter in the oilfield, especially in Houston.

First, BP is not tackling this mess alone. The entire drilling industry is involved, including Exxon (who has a great record when it comes to offshore drilling, not oil shipping). It’s not like only BP engineers are calling the shots, all sorts of experts are involved.

…. All these efforts are reported heavily in the Houston Chronicle and nola.com, but doesn’t seem to get much for national coverage. If you only monitor the national coverage, you’d think BP is going it alone while we all sit by, but the reality is this is an industry-wide effort because we all know what’s at stake.

On having Obama “do more,” WTF is he supposed to do? Everybody seems to be calling for more fire in his belly and scary, threatening speeches. What does that accomplish? It’s like people want him to do a dramatic speech like post-9/11 about bringing the criminals to justice. It does nothing to actually plug the damn well. The government does not have the expertise to do more to stop this gusher. It’s in BPs interest to stop the gusher. All the conspiracy theories about wanting to preserve the well for future production are technically wrong and ignore that NOBODY in the industry benefits from this gusher continuing. BP wants what everybody else wants, though I’ll concede that I suspect dispersants are about killing life where it’s less easily photographed. Dispersants aside, the only conflict of interest is regarding the causes of the blowout, not the capping of the well. Fed investigations are already taking care of that part.

On the pace, I’m pissed because I thought top kill should have been the first thing they tried after the ROVs failed to close the BOP. The reason for delay was partly because it looked like a war zone down there initially due to all the debris from a mile long riser coming down with the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. So there was cleanup to make everything accessible. Also, one issue with the top kill is that it does have some risk of making the leak worse by eroding whatever blockages exist to limit the blowout rate. It could also overpressure the wellhead to open up new leaks upstream of the current ones. My guess is they wanted a better understanding on the chance of success before taking those risks.

All this talk of “push BP out of the way” is uninformed.

The cell was created by stitching together the genome of a goat pathogen called Mycoplasma mycoides from smaller stretches of DNA synthesised in the lab, and inserting the genome into the empty cytoplasm of a related bacterium. The transplanted genome booted up in its host cell, and then divided over and over to make billions of M. mycoides cells.

Venter and his team have previously accomplished both feats – creating a synthetic genome and transplanting a genome from one bacterium into another – but this time they have combined the two.

Exciting as long as it’s contained. ETC Group gives the counterpoint.

From Kos:

Interesting, this points out what many believe, that having just been in office for less than a year and a half, the Obama administration should have corrected decades of ill-preparedness and, within a month, instituted technologies and whip the Navy and Coast Guard into shape so they would be better equipped to deal with this matter.

Matthews speculated that perhaps we could send divers 5,000 feet below the surface of the water, with torches, to shut off the leak. He has been criticizing the administration for days, yet he knows so little regarding the mechanics, the existing technology, and the hardship involved in undertaking such an enterprise.  

MATTHEWS: Well, that‘s what I‘m asking about. Is the problem getting a submarine to get—can we use our fleet of submarines to go down there and get men, frogmen, down there with torches and begin to close up that—that hole in that pipe? What is the problem, getting there?  Is it the transportation to the bottom of the sea, a mile down, or is it the technology of closing that hole?

EARLE: We don‘t have submersibles that can go to 5,000 feet, except for the Alvin, a few systems that exist in the whole world.  There are only four submersibles that can go to half the ocean‘s depth.  And this country doesn‘t have any of those.  It‘s Japan, China, France.  We‘re not—and Russia—we‘re not in the game to go really deep with manned systems.

MATTHEWS: How did we drill—how did we drill this pipeline?  How did we create this oil well down there, if we couldn‘t get down there?

EARLE: We have got the technology to actually accomplish that kind of work in the deep sea, even essentially nearly twice as deep, and the robots that are developed to be able to go down for maintenance, inspection and repair. But that‘s under normal circumstances.

To deal with something of this sort is a major challenge that I think nobody anticipated that we would ever have to do this.  There are some unique problems with dealing in deep water and dealing with the oil that comes out of such an area, as compared to what is released at the surface. For one thing, of course, it‘s cold.  And then there‘s the pressure.  These are factors that we‘re just not prepared to have to—to deal with.  And we have to get up to speed fast.  The technologies arguably do exist.  I mean, the capability is there.

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

EARLE:  But we haven‘t made the investment to have a garage filled with submarines, a garage filled with remotely-operated systems, and the talent to be able to go down independently of industry and respond.

MATTHEWS:  Well that was an exquisite description of a horror. Thank you so much, Sylvia Earle of the National Geographic, terrible horror, nonetheless.

This is not Hurricane Katrina. I know there are many salivating at the prospect of comparing Barack Obama to George W. Bush in terms of his response to this man-made crisis, but this case does not provide a realistic comparison.

The issue of stopping the flow of oil into the gulf, following the destruction of the Deep Water Horizon oil rig, is an issue of operational and technological inadequacy, of decades of neglect, and industry shortsightedness, this new administration is working diligently with the tools in its possession, unfortunately the tools are not good enough. I know some might expect Barack Obama to go down to the bottom of the ocean and wrestle this beast into submission, but realistically speaking, it is not feasible.

via Atrios:

BP has told the Environmental Protection Agency that it cannot find a safe, effective and available dispersant to use instead of Corexit, and will continue to use that chemical application to help break up the growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

At last, an algorithm that recognizes sarcasm (pdf file), making certain emoticons obsolete.

I like the take on this over at Bayblab: “Next Up: An Irony Meter.”

A close shave on the Deepwater Horizon.

Amateur video of Gulf oil slick

This is awesome:

As BP’s high-priced industry experts flail, the president has turned to a rag-tag band of big-think scientific renegades, and sent them on a mission to somehow MacGyver a way to stop up the leak — before it’s too late.

…except I don’t see Bruce Willis on the team.

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2010) — A flyover of Belize’s thick jungles has revolutionized archaeology worldwide and vividly illustrated the complex urban centers developed by one of the most-studied ancient civilizations — the Maya.

Until now, Maya archeologists have been limited in exploring large sites and understanding the full nature of ancient Maya landscape modifications because most of those features are hidden within heavily forested and hilly terrain and are difficult to record. LiDAR effectively removes these obstacles.

..”It’s very exciting,” said Arlen Chase. “The images not only reveal topography and built features, but also demonstrate the integration of residential groups, monumental architecture, roadways and agricultural terraces, vividly illustrating a complete communication, transportation and subsistence system.”

Here’s the punch at the end of the article-

The team’s results also give him a snapshot of forest vegetation in that part of the world and how it was influenced by land-use practices 1,000 years ago. This may help scientists understand past human-environment interactions and changes that should be made today.

Somebody call the A-Team.

He said, “There are some plans in place that are being evaluated where the pipe could be crimped or potentially just cut off and a new blow-out preventer placed above it. The real problem is the engineering associated with that and how to mechanically accomplish it 5,000 feet down.

“But both those scenarios … are being looked at right now. They are a higher degree of difficulty and there is more risk associated with that than with any of the current mitigating efforts.”

“Transocean Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Explosion Shows New Risks”

Got it. From the article:

The investigation will focus on human error and mechanical malfunction, says Mr. Pinon, adding that such advanced rigs “need a lot of tender loving care to operate.”

“We’ve had hurricanes and fires on the rigs, but I can’t remember that we ever had this type of explosion and definitely not on this type of rig,” Plaquemines Parish president, Billy Nungesser, told the New York Times.

While hurricanes often batter oil rigs, explosions and fires are rare. In 1988, the Piper Alpha offshore rig exploded, killing 167 people. And in 2001, the Petrobas 36 platform off Brazil’s coast also exploded, killing 11 workers.

“Rigs are some of the safest places to be … which is what makes the explosion on the oil rig in the Gulf all the more unexpected and means it was likely one that happened very fast,” reports CNN’s Ali Velshi, who was once evacuated from an oil rig.

Thousands of photos of students taken remotely … Classic!!

Of course to GMO-friendly New Scientist magazine, the thoughtful, lucid, data-rich folks running the pro-organic Rodale Institute are an unhinged, irrational people.

Crittercam: Sea Lion 1, Octopus 0.

Deam Kamen shows off a prosthetic arm he created while working with DARPA.

Handily named “Luke”, though Anakin would have been more accurate.

It has long been a semi-fantasy of mine to willingly replace my eyes with something artificial. Something along the line of Geordi La Forge’s upgrades seen in First Contact (I think), but with the added capabilities full spectrum vision settings, and hopefully a zoom function, macro and micro (think stargazing).

So with that out in the open, these guys claim to be getting close to curing blindness, which means 25-35 years from now…well, who the hell can really predict that long from now?

A group of experts from the Tel Aviv University (TAU), led by Professor Yael Hanein from the university’s School of Electrical Engineering, announced major progress in developing bionic eyes. The group has been investigating ways of merging man and machine for many years, and they say that the foundational research needed to make this a reality has been completed.

This could mean that the long-heralded future of bionics may finally be upon us. 

Sweet.

An exploration of the late Robert Anton Wilson’s work.

The flavor-

A Non Euclidean Rumination On Subliminal Rationalists and Recalling Robert Anton Wilson

“Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”
-Robert Anton Wilson

“Positivists decline to acknowledge any a priori knowledge. They wish to reduce everything to sense perceptions. Generally they contradict themselves in that they deny introspection as experience. … They use too narrow a notion of experience and introduce an arbitrary bound on what experience is”
-Kurt Godel

Kudos to The Anomalist.