Ichingcarpenter
Ichingcarpenter's JournalThe NRA's and tobacco industy vision for US children and schools.
Syrian 7 year old..... is that his school in the background?
I find this photo forbidding, distrubing and tragic.
EPA.."Major oil spill' in the Canadian pipeline
An Exxon Mobil crude oil pipeline ruptured near the town of Mayflower in the US state of Arkansas, spilling thousands of barrels of oil, the company said.
Exxon shut the 50-centimetre Pegasus pipeline, which carries crude oil from Pakota, Illinois, to the Gulf Coast, after the leak was discovered on Friday afternoon.
Exxon, which was hit with a $1.7m fine by regulators this week over a 2011 spill in the Yellowstone River, said a few thousand barrels of oil had been observed.
Local media reported the spill occurred in a subdivision, and Mayflower police said the oil had not reached the nearby Lake Conway.
Federal, state and local officials were on site and the company said it was staging a response for a spill of more than 10,000 barrels "to be conservative."
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/03/201333142826356825.html
At 6,700-acres, Lake Conway is the largest man-made game and fish commission lake in the United States. Construction of the lake began in 1948, with its waters coming from the runoff of Stone Dam Creek, Gold Creek, Palarm Creek, Little Cypress Creek and Panther Creek. Its average depth is six feet, with a maximum depth of 18 feet. The lake is approximately eight miles long with 52 miles of shoreline.
Fishing: Known as an excellent fishing lake, Conway is stocked with bass, catfish, bream and crappie. Several free public launch areas are maintained by the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission; boat rentals are available at several commercial docks on the lake. Adams', Brannon's, Bream's Nest, Gold Creek, Highway, Lawrence, Martin's Northshore, Palarm Creek, Paradise, Pierce Creek and Sevier's are the landings with boat ramps. Old creek channels that can be found on all sides of the lake are some of the best places to bass fish. Lake Conway is home to the Crappie Master’s State Tournament in the spring.
Commander of the ISS says
Chris HadfieldVerified account
?@Cmdr_Hadfield
Don't tell my crew, but I brought them Easter Eggs
Rhetoric and Reality of North Korea's military by top asian analysis
This report was originally presented at the East Asia Nuclear Security workshop held on November 11, 2011 in Tokyo
North Korea occasionally threatens to “turn Seoul into a Sea of Fire”. The South Korean, U.S. and other international media often relay this statement, amplifying its effect. But can North Korea really do this? Does it matter if they can? The short answer is they can’t; but they can kill many tens of thousands of people, start a larger war and cause a tremendous amount of damage before ultimately losing their regime.
Therefore, it doesn’t matter whether they can do it directly since they have the capability to ignite a sequence of events leading to widespread destruction and likely regime change in Pyongyang. Previous Nuclear Weapon Free Zones have usually required about three decades to implement after discussions started during periods of stasis.
Therefore, this is a period of stasis in which to explore confidence building measures and possibly something as radical as a Korea Japan Nuclear Weapon Free Zone.
If the North Korean Peoples Army (KPA) were to start a doctrinal, conventional artillery barrage focused on South Korean forces, we could expect to see around three thousand casualties in the first few minutes, but the casualty rate would quickly drop as the surprise wears off and counter-battery fires slow down the North Korean rates of fire.
If the KPA were to engage Seoul in a primarily counter-value fashion by firing into Seoul instead of primarily aiming at military targets, there would likely be around thirty-thousand casualties in a short amount of time. Statistically speaking, almost eight-hundred of those casualties would be foreigners given Seoul’s international demographic. Chinese make up almost seventy percent of foreigners in Seoul and its northern environs which means KPA might also kill six-hundred Chinese diplomats, multi-national corporation leaders, and ranking cadre children who are students in Seoul.
Horrible, but nothing approaching “millions”. Three primary factors and three secondary factors account for the huge discrepancy between rhetoric and reality:
Three Primary Factors
Range – Only about 1/3 of Seoul is presently in range from artillery along a DMZ trace. The northern reaches of Seoul within artillery range have much lower population densities than Seoul proper;
Numbers – Even though KPA has a tremendous number of artillery pieces, only a certain number are emplaced to range Seoul. KPA can’t emplace every weapon near Seoul or the rest of North Korea’s expansive border would be unguarded and even more vulnerable.
Moreover, an artillery tube immediately reveals its location as soon as it fires.
Therefore only about two-thirds of artillery will open fire at a time. The rest are trying to remain hidden;
Protection – Artillery shelters for twenty million people exist in the greater Seoul metropolitan area.
After the initial surprise has worn off, there simply won’t be large numbers of exposed people. Even during the initial attack the vast majority of people will either be at work, at home, or in transit. Few people will be standing in the middle of an open field with no protection whatsoever available anywhere nearby.
Three Secondary Factors
Read more: http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/mind-the-gap-between-rhetoric-and-reality/#ixzz2P6VwXM3D
BTW every newly elected Government in the south is tested by the north with angry rhetoric.
Go to the link for more analysis.
David Stockman Is Outraged — And A Lot Of Powerful People Won't Like What's In His New Book
This is a history book. It’s a detailed account of the key events since the Depression that have shaped modern finance. I love history, and I’m familiar with those events. Stockman’s spin on financial history makes for a very good read. There’s something for everyone. For example, were you troubled by the bailout of AIG, and TARP? If so, you’ll love this chapter:
Paulson’s Folly – The needless Rescue of AIG and Wall Street
Do you worry that Bernanke has overplayed his hand with monetary policy? Stockman rips him apart:
The Bernanke Bubble: Last Gift to the 1 Percent
or
How the Fed Brought the Gambling Mania to America’s Neighborhoods
Do TV talking heads influence Fed policy? Stockman says “yes”.
The Rant That Shook the Eccles Building: How the Fed Got Cramer’d
Worried about US indebtedness to foreign central banks? That’s covered in:
Monetary Roach Motels
Stockman puts meat on the bones to some old stories. A few examples:
Read more: http://brucekrasting.com/david-stockman-is-mad/#ixzz2P6EEh4sx
NYT.State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America
The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.
Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later — within a few years, I predict — this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.
Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the “bottom” 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans.
So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.
More:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&ref=opinion&
Highest paid banker on Wall Street Dick Handler
Highest paid banker on Wall Street suing renovators of neighbouring building for ruining view from his 360-degree glass penthouse
As the highest-paid banker on Wall Street, Dick Handler feels he has earned a $24-million glass penthouse from which to enjoy uninterrupted 360-degree panoramas of the city he conquered.
So it is unacceptable, he alleged in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan this week, that fashionable upstarts from London are preparing to spoil his view.
Mr Handler, 51, “will suffer real and irreparable harm” if Spring Studios, a Camden-based design firm, installs a lift on the roof of a neighbouring building, he claimed in his complaint.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/28/highest-paid-banker-on-wall-street-suing-renovators-of-neighbouring-building-for-ruining-view-from-his-360-degree-glass-penthouse/
First Love Child of Human, Neanderthal Found
MAR 27, 2013
The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.
If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal.
The present study focuses on the individual’s jaw, which was unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time.
“From the morphology of the lower jaw, the face of the Mezzena individual would have looked somehow intermediate between classic Neanderthals, who had a rather receding lower jaw (no chin), and the modern humans, who present a projecting lower jaw with a strongly developed chin,” co-author Silvana Condemi, an anthropologist, told Discovery News.
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/neanderthal-skeleton-provides-evidence-of-interbreeding-with-humans-130327.htm
Crap.. Ashley just said she won't run.
(CNN) - Actress and Democrat Ashley Judd, who was openly considering challenging Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell for his Kentucky seat in 2014, announced Wednesday she was "currently unable" to run for public office.
"After serious and thorough contemplation, I realize that my responsibilities & energy at this time need to be focused on my family," Judd wrote on Twitter.
The announcement comes after months of speculation that Judd – an actress with family roots in Kentucky - would jump into politics. The rumors sparked heavy backlash from Republicans, including McConnell, who began producing videos attacking Judd.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/27/ashley-judd-wont-run-for-senate/
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