The deadliest, costliest and most intense tropical cyclones 1851-2004 (NOAA via unfutz)
Daily Archives: 4 Sep 05
Brown pushed from last job
“Horse group: FEMA chief had to be `asked to resign'” (Boston Herald)
Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive
It is not clear how, but in an ‘intriguing parasitic strategy’, the parasitic Nematomorph hairworm ‘hijacks’ the brain of the grasshoppers and crickets inside which it grows when it is time for it to transform into an aquatic adult. The worm produces proteins which directly affect its insect host’s CNS to make the land-dwelling host behave in ways it would never ordinarily do, by seeking out and plunging into water. This allows the mature hairworm to emerge and swim away to find a mate, leaving the insect host dead or dying in the water. (New Scientist) I know, not everything is a political parable, but although it is certainly a fascinating story in its own right, it it also an apt description of what the parasites in the White House are doing to the body of the U.S.
The 29 Healthiest Foods on the Planet
“The following is a ‘healthy food hot list’ consisting of the 29 food that will give you the biggest nutritional bang for you caloric buck, as well as decrease your risk for deadly illnesses like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Along with each description is a suggestion as to how to incorporate these power-foods into your diet. ” [via robot wisdom]
Hawking reduced to talking with his blinks
“Disabled scientist Professor Stephen Hawking is using a hi-tech gadget to communicate by blinking because his deteriorating health limits movement.” (BBC)
New Orleans mayor fears CIA to take him out
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who cuts a fine media figure these days, thinks he might be a target for elimination because of the choice words he has had for George Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Hey, so what if it’s from World Net Daily? It’s a great story.
One More Word
Video: Distraught Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu threatens to punch out the President. (onegoodmove)
U.S. the new Saddam
“The U.S. Air Force’s senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the American-installed regime ‘more or less indefinitely.’ Jumper’s bombshell went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina.
Gen. Jumper let the cat out of the bag. While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection.
Jumper’s revelation confirms what this column has long said: The Pentagon plans to copy Imperial Britain’s method of ruling oil-rich Iraq. In the 1920s, the British cobbled together Iraq from three disparate Ottoman provinces to control newly-found oil fields in Kurdistan and along the Iranian border.” — Eric Margolis (Toronto Sun via Common Dreams)
Look to Looka!
One of my long-term favorite weblogs has always had been an authentic New Orleans voice. One of the first places to which I turned for a real perspective on Katrina when I came out of the woods at the end of the week and learned what had happened while my family and I were out of range of news updates. I am very glad all of Chuck Taggart’s family are safe and sound and that his voice has not been silenced by the catastrophe.
It’s a miracle
Mice regrow hearts, amputated limbs and damaged organs. The self-healing strain of mice could regenerate any damaged body part except the brain. Scientists at the Wistar Institue, a US biomedical research center, serendipitously discovered the regenerating ability of the strain of mice when the identification holes they punch in the ears of the mice healed without a scar. The ability seems to be controlled by about a dozen genes, comparable genes to which are “almost certain” to exist in humans. When fetal cells from the self-healing strain were transferred to other mice, the recipients too acquired the ability to regenerate. To my knowledge, this is the first demonstration of this phenomenon, well-known in less complex vertebrates, in a mammalian species. (The Australian)
Conservative Blog Taxonomy
Mithras’ Fables of the reconstruction has this acerbic roster. I have one quibble, however. Jeff Jarvis (“Buzzmachine”) doesn’t just hate liberals and Democrats, he hates whomever doesn’t reflect his grandeur. Mithras is right about the essential ludicrousness of a man whose basis for punditry rests on being a TV Guide writer. ` [via Just Between Strangers]
Curiouser and curiouser
Designer models interpret Alice in Wonderland, as photographed by Annie Liebovitz. [via boing boing]
Vitamin E gives mice a longer, more acrobatic life
Great if you are a tightrope walker with an accelerated aging syndrome. (New Scientist)
Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?
Anne Rice: “What do people really know about New Orleans?
Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?” (New York Times op-ed)
The Bursting Point
David Brooks: “It’s already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade. Americans have had to acknowledge dark realities that it is not in our nature to readily acknowledge: the thin veneer of civilization, the elemental violence in human nature, the lurking ferocity of the environment, the limitations on what we can plan and know, the cumbersome reactions of bureaucracies, the uncertain progress good makes over evil.
As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970’s, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.
…Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970’s. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order. (Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.” (New York Times op-ed)
It’s not the ’70’s again; it’s always been the ’70’s, but it took a long time for people like Brooks to notice.
United States of Shame
Maureen Dowd: “Why does this self-styled ‘can do’ president always lapse into such lame ‘who could have known?’ excuses.
Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.’s prewar reports.
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans’s sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy’s uneasy fishbowl.” (New York Times op-ed)
