Saturday, January 30, 2010

Lech Walesa at Chicago Tea Party

The man is a giant. The two individuals most instrumental in tearing down The Wall were him and Pope John Paul II. Walesa set the table, when John Paul II kissed the ground in Poland it was over.

William Casey sent Lane Kirkland to Poland to help Walesa get the Solidarity movement up and running. These two men deserve credit for helping to tear down The Wall as well.

image courtesy of Founding Bloggers
Video at the
link
h/t
Brumar89

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Salmon Farming Can Be Sustainable

Seafood Watch–whose guidelines are gospel to the sustainable seafood crowd–announced its support for a new salmon-farming technique, the first it has ever endorsed. Most fish farms raise salmon in vast ocean net pens; the fish can escape and spread disease to wild populations. But at AquaSeed Corp., an aquaculture company based in Rochester, Washington, salmon are bred to be kept in freshwater tanks on land, which reduces pollution and the spread of sea lice and other maladies. The fish receive special feed, requiring less wild-caught fishmeal than the salmon at traditional farms. Furthermore, their meat contains plentiful omega-3 fatty acids and low enough levels of PCBs to land it squarely–cue the heavenly chorus!—on the Seafood Watch’s “Best Choices” and “Super Green” lists.

Smithsonian

Smokestack Lightning

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Deep Thoughts with Carl Sagan

"I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves,'' wrote the former Cornell University professor. "I wrote the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down."

Schaffer Library of Drug Policy

Murray Rothbard on the founding of the Federal Reserve

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Cattlemen fight EPA with 'Climategate'

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association has filed a petition to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to overturn the EPA's recent greenhouse gas "endangerment" ruling.

The ruling states that gases believed to cause global warming pose a human health risk and is the first step toward their regulation by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. The NCBA and other producer groups fear the ruling could lead to lawsuits and new restrictions on the nation's livestock industries.

The NCBA plans to argue the government's finding is based on faulty and incomplete science and that the Clean Air Act is the improper vehicle for regulating greenhouse gases, said Tamara Thies, the organization's chief environmental counsel.

"We are taking a position that we do not believe the science with regard to alleged manmade climate change is there," Thies said. "The EPA has a responsibility to conduct a rigorous scientific analysis and look at all the science out there instead of just cherry-picking certain studies that agree with its position about manmade climate change."

Capital Press

Trailer from a new documentary on Walker Percy

Friday, January 1, 2010