October 2, 2015

Friday Toon Roundup 1: I'm getting real tired of having to post massacre toons

October 2, 2015

Toon: First Rule of Beat Hillary Fight Club is….

October 2, 2015

Clinton-associated economists attack Elizabeth Warren over Brookings firing

By Kevin Cirilli - 10/01/15 07:03 PM EDT
Five top Democratic economists are criticizing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and the left-leaning Brookings Institution for forcing one of its nonresident economic fellows to resign.

Warren raised concerns earlier this week that Robert Litan, a nonresident and unpaid economics fellow at the think tank, was using Brookings to peddle an industry-backed study that was critical of a financial advice regulatory pitch championed by Warren and the White House.

In a letter to Brookings earlier this week, Warren questioned the independence of the study, which Litan openly notes in the text "was supported by the Capital Group, one of the largest mutual fund asset managers in the United States."

Hours later, Litan was forced to resign.

The Democratic economists say they're "concerned" about Litan's treatment.

…

The letter was signed by former Clinton economic advisers W. Bowman Cutter and Everett Ehrlich; Harvard University international trade and investment professor Robert Z. Lawrence; former Clinton chief budget economist Joseph Minarik; and former Clinton economic adviser Hal Singer, who co-authored the report in question with Litan.

the rest

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/255726-dem-economists-attack-warren-over-brookings-firing

Frankly that list doesn't make me feel like she made a mistake. Quite the contrary….

October 2, 2015

Mr. Fish Toon

October 1, 2015

Toon: When will it ever end?

replace Tucson with Oregon.

October 1, 2015

Duke Energy 'Settlement' Slashes Fine, Grants Amnesty for Coal Ash Pollution

Environmental organizations condemned deal as a steal for the corporation—and a bad deal for the North Carolina's environment and people
by Sarah Lazare

North Carolina regulators on Tuesday agreed to dramatically slash a fine initially imposed on Duke Energy for its coal ash pollution at a site in the west of the state—and grant the company amnesty for dumps at all of its 14 locations—prompting outcry from communities and environmental organizations.

"In another typical move, DEQ [Department of Environmental Quality] is cutting Duke Energy a break and failing to demand action," said Amy Adams of the advocacy organization Appalachian Voices. "Apparently, they missed the state motto, Esse quam videri, 'To be rather than to seem,' because seeming to be environmental protectors is about all they have done with this settlement."

The deal was struck during a court hearing between Duke Energy and DEQ, which changed its name from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources due to an apparent reorganization of state departments earlier this month. It stipulates that DEQ will abandon charges over pollution at the L.V. Sutton power plant, where high levels of boron were found in groundwater.

Going further, the deal will settle groundwater contamination cases at all of Duke's 14 coal ash dump locations across the state.

more

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/30/duke-energy-settlement-slashes-fine-grants-amnesty-coal-ash-pollution

October 1, 2015

Anti-gay marriage Oregon bakery defies state order to pay damages to couple

The owners of a Portland-area bakery are refusing to pay $135,000 in state-ordered damages to a same-sex couple who were denied service, despite a crowdfunding effort on their behalf having raised more than $500,000.

Melissa and Aaron Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, cited religious beliefs when they refused to bake a wedding cake for Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer more than two years ago.

State labor commissioner Brad Avakian awarded the damages in July for emotional suffering, saying the owners had violated the women’s civil rights by discriminating on the basis of their sexual orientation.

The Kleins have filed an appeal of the ruling and are defying the order to pay. They are claiming financial hardship despite the crowdfunding efforts on their behalf, the Oregonian newspaper reported.

The couple closed the Gresham store in 2013 and now operate the business from home.

more
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/01/anti-gay-marriage-oregon-bakery-refuses-to-pay

October 1, 2015

Crows May Learn Lessons From Death

In recent years, a peculiar sort of public performance has taken place periodically on the sidewalks of Seattle.

It begins with a woman named Kaeli N. Swift sprinkling peanuts and cheese puffs on the ground. Crows swoop in to feed on the snacks. While Ms. Swift observes the birds from a distance, notebook in hand, another person walks up to the birds, wearing a latex mask and a sign that reads “UW CROW STUDY.” In the accomplice’s hands is a taxidermied crow, presented like a tray of hors d’oeuvres.

This performance is not surreal street theater, but an experiment designed to explore a deep biological question: What do crows understand about death?

Ms. Swift has been running this experiment as part of her doctoral research at the University of Washington, under the guidance of John M. Marzluff, a biologist. Dr. Marzluff and other experts on crow behavior have long been intrigued by the way the birds seem to congregate noisily around dead comrades. Dr. Marzluff has witnessed these gatherings many times himself, and has heard similar stories from other people.

“Whenever I give a talk about crows, there’s always someone who says, ‘Well, what about this?’ ” he said.


more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/science/crows-may-learn-lessons-from-death.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

October 1, 2015

Scientists find worms can safely eat the plastic in our garbage

PETER DOCKRILL1 OCT 2015


Garbage is a big problem. Even with so many of us doing our bit to help out with recycling, the amount of unrecyclable and discarded plastics in the US alone comes close to 30 million tonnes annually, thanks to things like disposable coffee cups (2.5 billion of which are thrown away by Americans every year). We’re looking at you, Starbucks.

Now, for the first time, researchers have found detailed evidence that bacteria in an animal’s gut can safely biodegrade plastic and potentially help reduce the environmental impact of plastic in landfill and elsewhere. The animal in question? The humble mealworm – which turns out to be not so humble after all.

Researchers led by Stanford University in US and Beihang University in China found that the mealworm – the larval form of the darkling beetle – can safely subsist on a diet of Styrofoam and other kinds of polystyrene, with bacteria in the worm’s gut biodegrading the plastic as part of its digestive process. The findings are significant because it was previously thought that these substances were non-biodegradable – meaning they ended up in landfill (or worse, our oceans, where they’d accumulate for decades).

“Our findings have opened a new door to solve the global plastic pollution problem,” co-author Wei-Min Wu, a senior research engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford, said in a statement.

more

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-worms-can-safely-eat-the-plastic-in-our-garbage

October 1, 2015

Something Strange Is Happening Inside Saturn

Unusual ripples in Saturn's rings are revealing the mysterious inner workings of the great gas giant. Planetary scientists and modelers are slowly picking apart that mystery.

Billions of particles race around Saturn's 170,000-mile-wide (273,600 kilometers) set of rings, which are mostly water ice with a smattering of rock. The rings are full of activity, including waves that ricochet outward in spiral patterns, most caused by the gravitational pull of Saturn's 62 moons. Waves caused by the moons, which orbit outside the rings' sphere, always travel outward.

But then there's a set of waves heading inward. That means there's something moving inside, too. [Video: Fly Through Space 'In Saturn's Rings']

Most scientists' models of Saturn and other gas giants assume the planet is pretty uniform — just a large gas envelope surrounding a small, dense core that's perhaps the size of Earth. But by studying the rings' waves, researchers are finding the picture much more complicated.

"The one thing that might produce this [series of waves] is that some sort of disturbance inside Saturn itself is spinning around with a period that's less than 7 hours," Phillip Nicholson, a planetary scientist at Cornell University in New York, told Space.com. Researchers first noticed hints of that disturbance in the 1990s, and Nicholson's team used more precise measurements to fully document the ring waves' structures, which reflect the oscillations of the planet within — sort of like recurring Saturn quakes.

more
http://www.space.com/30665-unraveling-saturn-ring-mystery.html