According to an Alabama Local News article, BP has been allegedly in talks with various scientists surrounding the Gulf, offering them extremely lucrative salaries for their help in defending the corporation during the impending Natural Resources Damage Assessment lawsuit to be issued by the U.S. government.
The catch? The contract involves some very strict terms including the stipulation that the hired scientist would not be allowed to publish their data for at least the next 3 years.
Is BP trying to silence potential accusatory scientific evidence by paying off the researchers in the field?
BP Chair Tony Hayward attended a yacht race on the weekend despite the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
I don't claim to know the intricacies of this guy's schedule, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest this might not be the best time to be taking vacation.
Are you living in a new home? Have you developed severe sinus problems? Has your newborn baby stopped breathing? Stopped growing? Do you feel unclean? Are there sketched out hobos constantly hanging out on your front lawn?
Congratulations! You just might be one of many Americans lucky enough to be living in a former Meth Lab; much like the family described in this article. A truly horrifying story. It will meth you up.
The Hollywood, Florida woman who struck and killed Miami firefighter Leslie Luma with her car two weeks ago has admitted that she had taken whippets within 20 minutes of hitting Luma while he was on his motorcycle. It also appears she was on a cocktail of prescription drugs as well.
A wife and 3 kids are without a husband and a father, but at least the world still has this piece of shit, Sherry Marks.
Albert Snyder's son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder was killed in Iraq in 2006. Protesters from Westboro Baptist Church showed up at Snyder's funeral to picket their cause. Apparently this church has decided that dead soldiers are one of god's punishments for homosexuality in america.
Anyways, Albert Snyder sued this church for ruining his son's funeral and lost. Now the judge has ordered Snyder to pay the defense fees for the church.
Snyder can't really afford this so he has started collecting money online assuring that any excess will go towards benefiting returning veterans.
I hate that my donation is ultimately going to end up in the hands of this cesspool calling itself a church or even its scum lawyers, but I cant stand the thought of this guy handling it on his own.
In what could be a landmark decision, a U.S. district court judge has struck down patents on two genes; BRCA1 & BRCA2 which are linked to cancer in humans.
The decision could have an impact on the approximately 20% of human genes already patented, and could have a major effect on future genetic research. It could also fundamentally change the ways in which biotech companies do business.
Bravo Texas!! Way to set the standard in learning back 100 years. Texas public school students will no longer learn about evolution, the enlightenment period, woman's suffrage, Thomas Jefferson, and a large chunk of black history (e.g., MLK day) to name a few. Glad to see that conservative Christian bullshit is dictating what is taught in school.
Link to a great NPR discussing the Texas school broad decision. Included in the show is a panel of members for and against it, including Don McLeroy the spokesperson in support of the Texas curriculum changes.
Bill McCollum, the Republican attorney general under fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, told a news conference that the lawsuit would be filed once President Obama signs the health care bill into law.
Granted I failed government in high school, but once its signed into law, doesn't it at that point become constitutional?
Some lucky people at a New Jersey Walmart on Sunday, got to hear the following announcement on the PA system.
"Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers, all blacks need to leave the store."
Authorities are trying to use the in store surveillance cameras to determine who the culprit was. They assume it wasn't a customer since a customer wouldn't have the code to the PA.
My friend Pete gave me the code to the kendall walmart years ago. i just did heavy breathing though.
I wonder if anyone at walmart headquarters will be smart enough to realize that there could be unique PA codes given to each employee so that
A. there is accountability as to who used the PA
and
2. when Pete quits walmart, they can turn off his code so I can't do my heavy breathing joke anymore.
It may sound like the next SNL reject's breakout movie, but its actually the true story of a real life boy named Michael Hicks who has trouble boarding airplanes as he shares the name of someone on the Transportation Security Administrations 'No Fly' list.
Problems boarding first occurred when Mikey was only a baby. He was patted down first when he was 2 years old.
Mrs. Hicks said the family was amused by the mistake at first. But that amusement quickly turned to annoyance and anger. It should not take seven years to correct the problem, Mrs. Hicks said.
The 2 truths of this story that really blow my mind are
1. There is a frighteningly stupendous amount of incompetence in the government and who it hires. Who was put in charge of creating a database and thought first and last name was sufficient uniqueness for identifying people? This seemingly innocent and harmless issue should have people fired all the way to the top.
2. What the fuck is wrong with the people behind the counter that they are incapable of assessing that a baby, or a 2 year old, or an 8 year old boy is not a terrorist without having to call supervisors. Are they unable to or unwilling to break protocol? Are there any Americans at all capable of thinking and acting for themselves?
James Bain has been proven innocent of a rape and murder, for which he was imprisoned, that occurred over 30 years ago. DNA evidence exonerated him.
On Thursday, state attorney Jerry Hill told the judge that DNA testing had excluded Bain from the crime.
"He's just not connected with this particular incident," Hill said.
I love Hill's comment. It could be argued that it was just a bad choice of words, but to me, it comes off as "In our defense, he is black and probably guilty of something"
Here is a story about Portland, Ore., pastor Rick McKinley, part of the advent movement to curb the retail aspect of Christmas.
"It's the shopping, the going into debt, the worrying that 'If I don't spend enough money, someone will think I don't love them'"
He suggests that families should spend much less on Christmas and donate part of the savings to charity.
McKinley likes to point out that a fraction of the money Americans spend at retailers in the month of December could supply the entire world with clean water
Nothing new, but this is a well written piece by Michael Luo from the New York Times.
There are interviews from job seekers that actually go out of their way to obfuscate their race on their resumes.
“If they’re going to X me,” Mr. Williams said, “I’d like to at least get in the door first.”
It also ponders the question of whether or not there is a backlash from Obama being elected president.
Several interviewed went so far as to say that they believed there was only so much progress that many in the country could take, and that there was now a backlash against blacks.
In the aftermath of Obama's honorary degree from The University of Notre Dame, Catholic leaders are discussing how much control they have over their brand.
Under canon law, bishops can revoke the right of a school to call itself Catholic, according to Edward Peters, a canon lawyer at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
Can we please get a law from the board of education that revokes the right of a church to call itself a school???
The price of gas gone up 18 cents in the last month. While we are all no stranger to fluctuations in gasoline costs the motivation behind it is typically thought to be for profit or supply and demand. The primary reason this time, however, is a weak US dollar that has sent investors to oil, pushing up crude prices over the past few months. In a ever competing market the the weakening of the dollar could not come at a worse time when countries like Japan and China are continuing to demand more and more crude oil.
"According to the International Energy Agency, OPEC has increased oil production by about 1 million barrels of oil per day since the first quarter of the year. Meanwhile, demand in Asia is picking up, especially in China. In September, oil demand increased 14 percent compared to year ago and in October demand increased at double digit levels, says Paul Ting of Paul Ting Energy Vision, a leading analyst of China petroleum demand."
“China has mostly absorbed the increase in production from OPEC,” says Mr. Ting, estimating the increased oil thirst at about 1.2 million barrels of oil per day."
I found this article to be a good read on the relationship between the Science and Religion within the U.S. Just going to supply a couple of stats I found in this article that interested me:
In addition, scientists tend to be much less religious than the public overall. A poll of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in May and June 2009, found that 51% of scientists believe in God or a higher power. That figure is far below the 95% of the American public that professes such belief, according to a Pew Research Center survey of the general public conducted in July 2006.
[...] All but a small number of scientists accept Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection; according to the 2009 Pew Research Center survey of scientists, 87% of scientists accept evolution through natural processes. But a complementary May 2009 Pew Research Center poll of public attitudes toward science shows that only 32% of the general public fully embraces Darwin's theory. One-in-five (22%) believe that evolution has occurred but that it has been guided by a supreme being, and 31% contend that humans and other livings things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.
[...] When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, for instance, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people in an October 2006 Time magazine poll said they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept a contrary scientific finding.
It is being called the "worst mass shooting at a U.S. military base". 12 are dead and 31 are wounded after a gunman opened fire in the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood, Texas.
Apparently the shooter, Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan was either an army psychologist or psychiatrist.
Although nobody has yet released the full details, you have to wonder what exactly set this guy off. For users of idiotechnica in the military, have you ever seen anything similar to this? Also, how much does having an Islamic name in a Texas military base factor in to what happened here?
There's something that doesn't smell right about these tickets, but you're not quite sure what.
Is it the huge profits the government and their cohorts, the camera manufacturers, make on them? The District doubling the number of tickets it issued just two years ago, raking in $36 million last fiscal year? The fact that Redflex, one of the big manufacturers of these cameras, posted a 48 percent jump in revenue last year while the rest of the economy tanked?
People get worked up. Put these cyborgs on a ballot, and the voters beat them to the pavement.
Three cities Tuesday — two in Ohio, one in Texas — voted to rip the things down. In College Station, Tex., the camera manufacturer and their subcontractors reportedly spent $60,000 campaigning to keep them in place, more than five times the amount raised by the opposition, and lost anyway. Voters in Chillicothe, Ohio, went against the cameras at a rate of 72 percent. In Heath, Ohio, the mayor got caught removing anti-camera campaign signs from an intersection. He, and the cameras, got sent packing...
Excellent expose written by Greg Beato for reason.com about Rob Zicari and Janet Romano a married couple currently in prison for producing pornography of extremely questionable content. Their conviction was apparently the crown-jewel of a Bush task force on the obscene that Obama decided to leave in place. The article gets to the issue at all angles including the legalities, the ethics and the hypocrisy.
Of the campaign against him, in 2004, Zicari told reason.com:
This is the World Series, and they're the Boston Red Sox,” he exclaimed. “They're getting a chance that they haven't had in 9 billion years, and if they blow this, they can never come back. Because where can you go after a jury says there's nothing wrong with these movies? How do you go after a movie involving a husband and wife and the guy's wearing a condom? How do you get someone to go after that, when you couldn't even prosecute a tape where the guy comes in the girl's mouth, and then he fucking stabs her? This is their one shot, and they fucking know it.”
According to an Alabama Local News article, BP has been allegedly in talks with various scientists surrounding the Gulf, offering them extremely lucrative salaries for their help in defending the corporation during the impending Natural Resources Damage Assessment lawsuit to be issued by the U.S. government. 
USA Today reports on the results of a United States Food and Drug Administration investigation. Here are some highlights:
BP Chair Tony Hayward attended a yacht race on the weekend despite the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. 
Are you living in a new home? Have you developed severe sinus problems? Has your newborn baby stopped breathing? Stopped growing? Do you feel unclean? Are there sketched out hobos constantly hanging out on your front lawn? 
Albert Snyder's son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder was killed in Iraq in 2006. Protesters from Westboro Baptist Church showed up at Snyder's funeral to picket their cause. Apparently this church has decided that dead soldiers are one of god's punishments for homosexuality in america. 
In what could be a landmark decision, a U.S. district court judge has struck down patents on two genes; BRCA1 & BRCA2 which are linked to cancer in humans. 
Bravo Texas!! Way to set the standard in learning back 100 years. Texas public school students will no longer learn about evolution, the enlightenment period, woman's suffrage, Thomas Jefferson, and a large chunk of black history (e.g., MLK day) to name a few. Glad to see that conservative Christian bullshit is dictating what is taught in school.
Bill McCollum, the Republican attorney general under fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, told a news conference that the lawsuit would be filed once President Obama signs the health care bill into law.
Some lucky people at a New Jersey Walmart on Sunday, got to hear the following announcement on the PA system.
It may sound like the next SNL reject's breakout movie, but its actually the true story of a real life boy named Michael Hicks who has trouble boarding airplanes as he shares the name of someone on the Transportation Security Administrations 'No Fly' list. 
Here is a story about Portland, Ore., pastor Rick McKinley, part of the advent movement to curb the retail aspect of Christmas. 
In the aftermath of Obama's honorary degree from The University of Notre Dame, Catholic leaders are discussing how much control they have over their brand.
The price of gas gone up 18 cents in the last month. While we are all no stranger to fluctuations in gasoline costs the motivation behind it is typically thought to be for profit or supply and demand. The primary reason this time, however, is a weak US dollar that has sent investors to oil, pushing up crude prices over the past few months. In a ever competing market the the weakening of the dollar could not come at a worse time when countries like Japan and China are continuing to demand more and more crude oil. 
There's something that doesn't smell right about these tickets, but you're not quite sure what.
Excellent expose written by Greg Beato for reason.com about Rob Zicari and Janet Romano a married couple currently in prison for producing pornography of extremely questionable content. Their conviction was apparently the crown-jewel of a Bush task force on the obscene that Obama decided to leave in place. The article gets to the issue at all angles including the legalities, the ethics and the hypocrisy. 
