“Finally, now I can swim in shark-infested waters like I’ve always wanted. A bright fellow called Vladimir Vlad has filed a patent for a shark-repellent wet suit that creates an electrical field. The idea is that sharks have sensitive receptors in their noses which would normally help them track prey, but when faced with an especially strong electrical field, they will back off. This wet suit would be made of metal and neoprene, with thin piezoelectric ceramic fibres woven in. Voltage is then delivered by the fibres depending on their length. The suit continually generates several volts which flow through the water, and the faster you swim, the higher the voltage…” (Gizmodo)

False claims about poverty abound in the media, and RNC tTalking points are to blame for the distortion: “…CNN contributor Joe Watkins and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly both made false comparisons of the poverty rates under President Clinton and President Bush. Since then, similar false claims about poverty have appeared in other news outlets.

The Washington Post claimed in an editorial that ‘Since 1999, the rate has been edging steadily, and disturbingly, upward.’ After Media Matters pointed out that, in fact, the poverty rate declined from 1999 to 2000 (as it went down every year of the Clinton administration) before increasing from 2000 to 2001 (and every year of the Bush presidency), the Post corrected its error. Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III used his nationally syndicated column to dismiss as ‘comical’ Clinton’s claim that his administration ‘moved 100 times as many people out of poverty in eight years as had been moved out in the previous 12 years.’ In fact, Clinton was understating the disparity, as Media Matters noted: ‘The presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush actually saw a dramatic net increase in the number of impoverished Americans, whereas Clinton’s presidency witnessed an even more dramatic net decrease.’

Fox News contributor and former Clinton adviser Dick Morris also got in on the act. On Fox News host Sean Hannity’s nationally syndicated radio show, Morris made the highly misleading claim that the U.S. poverty rate is ‘two points lower than when he [Clinton] took office, and it’s lower in the midpoint of Bush’s term than it was at the midpoint of his [Clinton’s] term.’ That may be true, but Morris ignored the more important trend that poverty declined every year of Clinton’s presidency and has risen every year of Bush’s.

So where did this flood of misinformation about the Clinton and Bush records on poverty come from? Is it just an odd coincidence? Or is it a result of the recently revealed daily conference calls and emails through which the Republican National Committee gives marching orders to ‘about 80 pundits, GOP-leaning radio and TV hosts, and newsmakers’?” (Media Matters)

“FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, D.V.M., resigned unexpectedly today. No formal reason was given immediately, but Dr. Crawford reportedly told his staff it was time to step aside.

Dr. Crawford was in the midst of a major controversy over the FDA’s repeated delays in making a decision on an application to approve the morning-after pill, Plan B, as an over-the-counter drug.

The delays finally led to the resignation of the FDA’s women’s health chief. Just this week, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, in a Perspective called A Sad Day for Science at the FDA, wrote that ‘this decision — or nondecision — deserves serious scrutiny, since it appears to reflect political meddling in the drug-approval process.'” (Medpage Today)

“In an age of terrorist danger and with memories of the nightmare in New Orleans still fresh, the Texas exodus raises a troubling question: Can any American city empty itself safely and quickly?” (Yahoo! News)

“Next month’s debate in the House of Lords could begin the process of changing the law on euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. To help doctors decide where they stand, this week’s BMJ publishes a range of opinions. ” (Medical News Today)

A modest proposal to finance Iraq and New Orleans efforts; an alternative to Bush’s psychotic “faith-based” accounting: “I like the idea of bringing back ‘bonds similar to World War II’s Liberty Bonds,’ but I wouldn’t use them to pay for the Katrina rebuilding. I’d use the war bonds to pay for the war. The war in Iraq has, coincidentally, cost about $200 billion so far. Where is that money coming from? According to the president, it’s more magic money — spent without offsetting spending cuts or tax increases.

I have little hope that our no-responsibility/no-accountability government is capable of launching (or administering) a 21st-century war bonds program. But that’s not the only problem.

I’m not sure the public could handle it either.

This is, after all, the same American public that thinks ‘support for the troops’ entails nothing more than putting a yellow-ribbon magnet on your car. These people can’t even make the kind of long-term commitment involved in an adhesive bumper-sticker. Magnets don’t jeopardize your paint job. And magnets can be easily removed should the political winds shift.

…If you’re not enlisted in America’s military, you’re not involved in the war in Iraq. You have neither the obligation, nor the opportunity to contribute to or sacrifice for the war effort. And your president insists that this is the way it should be.

The American public does not today have the character to support a new war bonds effort. (We don’t have the savings, either, since most of us are in debt up to our eyeballs. Our national savings rate is negative — and likely headed down once the housing bubble bursts. But bracket that for now.)

So here’s a modest proposal for a remedial first step: Have the USO start selling “official” versions of those @#&$ “Support the Troops” magnets. Full-sized ones would cost, say, $500. Smaller ones would cost $100. Whenever you spotted someone with one of the unofficial magnets, you’d be justified — even obliged — to mock them as a freeloading, fair-weather patriot until finally they were shamed into putting their money where their tailpipe is. ” (slacktivist via making light)

“Tackling hurricanes before they make landfall by calming them down or steering them off course may be a good way to prevent a storm striking a city. Experts are working on numerous ways to do this but it may take some time – and it has never been done before. Hurricanes are fuelled by the warm waters they pass over. So hurricane mitigation strategies all focus on depriving hurricanes of this fuel.” (New Scientist)

“Why did Leahy decide to vote for Roberts? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the person(s) who mailed weapons-grade anthrax to him and fellow Democratic senator Daschle in 2001 were never identified.

The curious lack of a perpetrator in the anthrax mailings — mailed exclusively to Democratic senators in powerful positions — is in some ways even more alarming than the fact that the same administration also managed not to catch Osama bin Laden. ” (skimble)