Friday, July 30, 2010

Getting paid to be a pot critic

Ansel Adams photos found at garage sale worth $200 million

Man paid $45 at a California garage sale for 65 glass plates
Experts concluded negatives were lost Ansel Adams photos
Negatives were stored under a pool table for years
Photos are a "missing link" in Adams' career

more at CNN
h/t
Jungle Trader

Update:
Tale of Ansel Adams Negatives Grows Hazy

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Velikovsky was right!



One of the best preserved craters yet found on Earth, the Kamil crater was initially discovered in February during a survey of satellite images on Google Earth. Researchers think the crater formed within the past couple thousand years.
National Geographic

Saturday, July 24, 2010

"Fairness" used as rationale for raid on buying club

Some people balk at restrictions on selling unprocessed milk and other foods. 'How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?' one says. Regulators say the rules exist for safety and fairness.

With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.

"I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us because we're selling raw dairy products?"

Cartons of raw goat and cow milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30 raid by federal, state and local authorities — the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what people can put in their mouths.
full article at the LA Times

Officials have always used "public health" and "safety" as excuses for cracking down on raw food consumers. I think they've let the cat out of the bag on this one. It's all about protecting Big Ag. There is a chilling video at the link (embed is disabled) of cops with guns drawn searching for raw milk and other contraband. Gotta watch those hemp-clad people!

Added: The food fight continues to be in the news

Elizabeth Cook

Elizabeth Cook is touring England right now, someone over there did a nice job with snapshots and a GREAT video.

Elizabeth Cook gallery
Elizabeth Cook's website

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Joe the Plumber solves the problem

An anonymous plumber provided sketches of a flange and seal design six weeks ago that is almost identical to the containment cap lowered onto the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. It's the latest effort to stop the BP oil spill.

"Joe the Plumber" became a household name in 2008, but will anyone ever know the identity of the plumber who may have brought BP to the brink of stopping the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Six weeks ago, Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, received a late-night call from an apologetic "mystery plumber." The caller said he had a sketch for how to solve the problem at the bottom of the Gulf. It was a design for a containment cap that would fit snugly over the top of the failed blowout preventer at the heart of the Gulf oil spill.

Professor Bea, a former Shell executive and well-regarded researcher, thought the idea looked good and sent the sketches directly to the US Coast Guard and to a clearinghouse set up to glean ideas from outside sources for how to cap the stubborn Macondo well.

When Bea saw the design of the containment cap lowered onto the well last week, he marveled at its similarity to the sketches from the late-night caller, whose humble refusal to give his name at the time nearly brought Bea to tears.

"The idea was using the top flange on the blowout preventer as an attachment point and then employing an internal seal against that flange surface," says Bea. "You can kind of see how a plumber thinks this way. That's how they have to plumb homes for sewage."

full article at the Christian Science Monitor

Added:
Is this the guy?

Hank Cochran, RIP

Monday, July 5, 2010

Bee Population Restored With Neonicotinoids Ban

Following France and Germany, last year the Italian Agriculture Ministry suspended the use of a class of pesticides, nicotine-based neonicotinoids, as a "precautionary measure." The compelling results - restored bee populations - prompted the government to uphold the ban. Yesterday, copies of the film 'Nicotine Bees' were delivered to the US Congress explaining the pesticide's connection to Colony Collapse Disorder. Despite the evidence, why does CCD remain a 'mystery' in the US?

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Blessing of the crabs


About seventy Buddhists from as far as Canada will gather on a Delaware beach this weekend for the second annual blessing of the horseshoe crabs.

Pass The Biscuits Please

Friday, July 2, 2010

What's the FBI doing in my milk?

A yoga instructor blogs at HuffPo about a raid on a private buying club.