Chill out.

Let’s hope so. The takeaway: the suburbs could become as arty, social, and income-generating as the cities, but they’d have to get a lot quirkier.

The whalers have all but admitted defeat. Congratulations all around!

FAJ official Tatsuya Nakaoku blamed the suspension on harrassment by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has made life progressively more difficult for the whaling fleet each year by sending faster and better-equipped boats.

This season, it has regularly managed to park across the back of the Nisshin Maru factory ship, making it impossible to winch whales on board.

Mr Nakaoku said it was a question of Sea Shepherd boats endangering safety.

So has Sea Shepherd won? It has pursued its campaign not only in face of physical opposition from the whaling fleet, but also objections from some anti-whaling observers who believe the annual confrontations handed the FAJ an opportunity to garner support by painting an image of anti-whaling activists as anti-Japanese and akin to terrorists.

The whiners at Greenpeace have been saying this for years while Sea Shepherd was out there saving whales. But I must grudgingly admit Greenpeace has done a little. Still, this victory belongs to the Sea Shepherd and everybody knows it.

“A primer on police, military, gender and capitalist dynamics behind the Egyptian uprising”

This blog post is, quite dazzlingly, the best explanation of WTF is going on in Egypt I’ve seen yet.

Mubarak is already out of power.

As the signs say, “GAME OVER MUBARK”.

What one always hears is that salt = necessary for life, but from the far corners of the natural foods/health nut world comes a contrary minority view: not just that too much salt will give you high blood pressure, but that ZOMG SALT IS TEH TOXXXIC!!

Salt eating is an addiction begun prenatally and shortly after birth as the parents force salt into the baby to the extreme repulsion and disgust of the child. After a few weeks of forced eating the baby’s body becomes so weakened that it forms a craving and addiction. This continues throughout its life.

I think of them as the “Eek! Salt!” crowd.

They will be irritated to learn of this paper, “Can Dietary Sodium Intake Be Modified By Public Policy?”

The complexity and sophistication of the central control of sodium appetite offers compelling support for the proposition that vertebrates evolved a mechanism to assure that their physiologic needs for sodium are defended when dietary access to it is limited or when excessive amounts of sodium are lost under conditions of stress …

In other words, people want their goddamned salt, and they will never eat below a certain threshold, resisting all health guidelines and governmental efforts.

It does appear however, that a couple of this paper’s authors have worked for the Salt Institute in the past … And here’s an “Eek! Salt!” person slamming the Salt Institute:

So would most Americans be better off if they consumed a lot less salt as most public health organizations suggests? Not if you believe the Salt Institute.

The Salt Institute has long maintained that “Healthy persons with normal blood pressure have no problems with sodium or salt intake” [3]. If you listen to the Salt Institute it is easy to come away with the impression that only about 1/3 to 1/2 of those who already have hypertension (HTN) need cut back on dietary salt because they are “salt sensitive”. They argue that since 75% of the U.S. population does not have HTN (currently defined as a blood pressure (BP) of more than 140/90 mmHg) only a small minority of Americans should be concerned about their salt intake. Of course, largely those who profit directly or indirectly from the use of excessive dietary salt fund the Salt Institute.

Is the Salt Institute a reliable source of information about salt? The now defunct Tobacco Institute was hardly a credible source for the health problems caused by cigarette smoking because they had an obvious conflict of interests. Over time even the news media (which seems wedded to the notion that there are two sides to every issue) came to dismiss the veracity of claims coming from the Tobacco Institute and this is what eventually doomed that institution. However, the Salt Institute�s press releases and pronouncements about the safety of dietary salt or even the dangers of too little salt often escape much critical commentary in the news media. At best, the news media will present the Salt Institute�s position as if it warrants as much credibility as that of scientific researchers. Given the economic incentives of those that support and speak on behalf of the Salt Institute it would be wise to take everything they say with a grain of salt.

Not sure what to believe now.

Whatever they care about, it isn’t the deficit. It’s deplorable, shrieking “deficits” while trying to take away your health care. Since a public option would have saved even more money than the health care they will try to take away from us, the fact that the self-styled “deficit hawks” are against it all exposes their hypocrisy. They think the deficit is the most important thing evah - right up until it impacts their political ideology. Then they’re more than happy to accept the costs of taking away health care.

It’s here.

According to the report, scientists used large ionisers, which resemble lampshades, to generate fields of negatively charged particles. That in turn creates cloud formation, leading to rain.

….The fake storms went so far as to produce hail, wind gales and even lightning, baffling residents.

….Helmut Fluhrer, founder of Metro Systems International, the Swiss company in charge of the project, appeared in a private company video promoting the project.

“We are currently operating our innovative rainfall enhancement technology, Weathertec, in the region of Al Ain in Abu Dhabi…”

…Professor Hartmut Grassl, a former institute director, told the paper that “there are many applications. One is getting water into a dry area. Maybe this is a most important point for mankind.”

Next up: privatized, weaponized weather.

Well specifically Beck’s hysterical warnings from 2008-present day that hyperinflation will happen “next year”.

Paraphrasing.

It’s not the amount of radiation, necessarily. It’s the pulsed nature of the signal.

So next time someone tells you it’s the amount of radiation, you can tell them to suck it.

Bee study author FAILS to disclose chemical company link - we call such people assholes.

The lead researcher on a study linking colony collapse disorder (CCD) to a combination of a virus and fungus, with no mention of the possible role of pesticides -including previously implicated neonicotinoid insecticides, failed to disclose his relationship with Bayer Crop Science, according to the magazine Fortune. Bayer is the manufacturer of imidicloprid, a popular and controversial neonicotinoid and has been fighting regulators around the world to keep its product on the market. The same article also reports that the researcher, Jerry Bromenshenk, PhD, operates a company, Bee Alert Technology, that stands to profit if a disease, rather than a pesticide, causes CCD.

Great article. His conclusions:

1.) This new found love of lower government spending is politically motivated. It has nothing to do with altruism or love of country. It’s about the November elections. Period.

2.) Government spending has been and always will be part of the the GDP equation

3.) Countries that tried austerity are worse off for it.

4.) Countries that inject massive amounts of the proper stimulus (such as infrastructure spending) grow at high rates.

The facts have a politically progressive bias.

Japan bribed other nations with prostitutes to get lax whaling rules.

Sam Seder on why fears of America turning into Greece are bullshit.

Fucking deficit hawks. I agree 110% with Seder about the GOP playbook: run up huge debt during GOP administrations, wait, then during Dem administrations start screaming “WE’VE GOT TO CUT THIS DEBT!” Where I come from that’s called transparent bullshit. Not sure why the press doesn’t get it, but on the other hand, you just have to look at Chuck Todd to see Walter Cronkite throw up a little bit in his mouth.

This guy:

Whether (strong growth in the organic sector is) a good or a bad thing depends on whether you think the environmental benefits of organic farming outweigh the long-term downsides of defining good farming not with science, but with what feels natural.

Hey asshole - there is a science of organic farming, and a science of anti-gmo sentiment. You might want to get your head out of your ass before making love to your own strawman. Here’s where to start:

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/index.php

http://organic-center.org/science.environment.php

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/GeneticRoulette/HealthRisksofGMFoodsSummaryDebate/index.cfm

http://natureinstitute.org/nontarget/report_class.php

http://organic-center.org/science.nutri.php

http://www.gmcontaminationregister.org/

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/Home/index.cfm

http://www.zenithcitynews.com/092909/gonzo.htm

http://gonzoscience.com/?s=soil+biologist

http://www.gonzoscience.com/?p=848

You want to side with the soil chemists over the soil biologists that’s fine with me, but don’t go saying this is all about feeling natural. This is a science vs. science story, and as usual, idiots like you are labeling the opposing side unscientific while supporting your own POV with logical fallacies. Real scientific of you. I guess being an asshat just feels natural to you.

Gonzo Science merchandise now for sale at the Gonzo Science Gift Emporium at CafePress. We got your mugs, organic t-shirts, hats, stickers, and of course, teddy bears and made-in-the-USA thongs. And so much more! Thank you for shopping Gonzo Science.

No:

…here’s a bullet-point summary of my findings:

• If anything, President Barack Obama appears to be warmly in favor of genetic engineering, although there is some wiggle room with his campaign statements.
• President Obama’s picks for Ag Secretary, campaign advisers, and other cabinet positions further suggest that he is positively disposed to GE crops. Given his emphasis on plant-based biofuels, he may also see it as a means to achieve his domestic renewable fuel goals.
• Obama did not make a written campaign statement promising to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.
• Obama did not respond to mailings from The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods, nor did his presidential campaign contact them.
• Obama’s declared agenda, now housed at the White House website, indicates that these labels are not on his agenda.
• The claim that he will “fast track” GE food labeling appears to be an invention or the result of miscommunication.
• President Obama only once expressed a desire for GE food labeling, but has not made a campaign promise or pledge that he will “require mandatory labeling” for GE food.

There is no evidence that Barack Obama ever made a statement strong enough to be considered as a campaign promise to label GE foods.

Don’t get me wrong - I love me some Obama. He knows what science is and everything. So that’s great and I can work with that. But this unwelcome news about the US trying to squash GMO labeling worldwide is the kind of stuff that’s worth fighting about.

Contact the White House here. (Phoning is always more effective than email; scroll down for phone number.)

Your Senators are found here and your Congressional Representative is here.

And in case you aren’t sure why GMOs are bad, our epic smackdown of hapless pro-GMO science writer Michael Le Page is here.

“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.

Use this to calculate the number of chickens you’d need to bring to the doctor in the GOP’s new Chickens for Checkups barter economy health care plan.

…Here’s Atrios the economist on the barter economy and why we don’t have one:

All joking aside, there’s a reason we no longer have a barter economy. It’s tremendously inefficient. Transactions require a “mutual coincidence of wants,” meaning I have to have something you actually want to have in exchange for my heart surgery. Many goods are highly indivisible - can’t trade half a live chicken - making precise pricing difficult.

Dude’s name is Samuel A. Culvert and he’s also a PhD in clinical psychology. His 2008 WSJ article ”Get Rid of the Performance Review” caused some waves and so he wrote a book with a cheeky website.

This other guy, Frank Nikols, wrote an article in 1997 for Corporate University Review (pp.54-59) called “Don’t Redesign Your Company’s Performance Appraisal System, Scrap it.” Here’s his follow-up paper “Now What? What to do after you scrap the performance appraisal system” (pdf file).

I guess this heretical idea has been around a while. There’s a footnote in the Nikols’ pdf file for a “classic” article from the Harvard Business Review, Douglas Macgregor’s “An Uneasy Look at Performance Appraisals”, from 1957.

Here’s a fun bit from from Culver’s cheeky website:

I’ll never forget Oct 20th, 2008. That’s when the Wall Street Journal printed my exposé of performance reviews. It was a high-visibility article – and the response was electric. The article was the top-viewed piece on the Journal’s online site for days, produced a thousand letters to the editor, a heated debate on the site (with plenty of name-calling), was referenced on more than another hundred websites, generated scores of requests to reprint the article in its entirety and provoked a large number of requests for radio and TV interviews. View it for yourself. Overnight I became a rock star.

I also couldn’t have designed a better experiment to gauge how people feel about performance reviews. It was as if I had enlisted a giant focus group on a topic that everyone feels strongly about and few see much to gain by speaking up. More than 80 percent were supportive – and many of them reacted as if the article had been therapeutic, giving voice to the anger and fear they had long felt.

I sympathize. It was a wow moment for me.

…Here’s another book in the same vein…”Abolishing Performance Appraisals” by Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins, 2000.

…and some Stanford professor saying the same thing. Here’s a successful model:

To Deming’s point, there is one organization I work with — a high tech firm with about 250 employees — that eliminated formal reviews except when people are being considered for a promotion or when they are having serious performance problems and are placed “on plan” (i.e., where the choice is either shape up or be fired). They have about ten different levels in the organization, and everyone at the same level gets the same pay and same sized bonus.  And they have been emphasizing more frequent and lower stakes feedback instead. 

Gosh, did I flush out some crazy people with my cheeky thank you note to Obama over at this local hipster blog?

Ye old Apollo astronauts bitching and whining about Obama pushing moon missions back. I guess they saw billions in cash up there that we could go get.

India rejects genetically modified crop. I especially like this paragraph about it from Beyond Pesticides:

Advocates of genetically engineered crops have argued that they are the only way to meet the world’s growing demand for food, and that they reduce the need for pesticides, while increasing yields. Studies have shown these claims to be false. The widespread adoption of GE crops in the United States has actually increased pesticide use but failed to increase yield. Recent studies have also linked GMO consumption to organ failure.

Those are the facts. God forbid the press - and the scientific press - should be so objective.

Too good a fate for these lads.

Three crew members of a Japanese whaling vessel suffered face and eye injuries from acid fired by anti-whaling protesters during their latest clash in the Antarctic Ocean, their Japanese employers said Friday.

The Sea Shepherd protesters said they shot butyric acid, produced from stinking rancid butter, which they often aim at the whalers to try to disrupt the annual Japanese hunt. The activists maintain that butyric acid is nontoxic.

The injuries Thursday were the first to Japanese whalers this year during confrontations with Sea Shepherd, although there have been two ship collisions that each side blamed on the other.

Japanese Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu lashed out at the activists on Friday, telling reporters: “I am full of rage. I could not believe they did such a thing.”

Glenn Inwood, spokesman for Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, which sponsors the hunt, said the injuries were not serious, but he cautioned that butyric acid can cause temporary blindness.

And harpoons can cause permanent deathness.

Great.

Despite ractopamine’s dangers and the falsified approval documents, the FDA approved ractopamine the following year for cattle–and last year for turkeys.

Whaler scum ram Sea Shepherd boat

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out:

“We are advocating very large-scale shifts in land use,” said co-author Jeffrey Opperman, a member of The Nature Conservancy’s Global Freshwater Team.

…but it may take a political genius to get these ideas implemented - they make too much sense. Working WITH nature is apparently a radical concept, see: agriculture, organic.

As this somewhat boring article explains. Still, we exist at least in part to document these sorts of things.

“Physicians are quite divided about this,” says Joseph Stubbs, MD, an Albany, Ga., internist and president of the American College of Physicians.

David Mutch, MD, a St. Louis ob-gyn, says the recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will not change his practice in any way. “It’s clearly economically driven and not patient care driven.”

Other doctors have taken a step back to study the science.

Something we’re in favor of.

…Now here’s a meaty essay on the matter I can sink my teeth into. Warning: partisan!

Scientists have introduced currency to chimps, but since deregulating it, the entire face-eater economy has collapsed:

The chimp commerce broke down amid soured transactions soon after human experimenters stopped refereeing them

Maybe we should try it with hyenas.

Alcohol researchers from the University of Florida and San Diego State University decided to gauge how drink specials influence the quantity of alcohol consumed. The findings will be published in the November issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Bar owners claim bargain drinks simply attract customers to the establishment, but that the low prices don’t spur patrons to drink more. But alcohol researchers believe many drinkers, particularly young drinkers, are sensitive to price. If they have $10 to spend they will buy two, $5-dollar drinks or five, $2-dollar drinks, depending on what the drink special is.

Read the shocking findings here.

Credit Crisis Made Easy.