Perhaps some good news from the Deepwater Horizon spill...the oil seems to have dispersed on the surface faster than people thought it would.

The dissolution of the slick should reduce the risk of oil killing more animals or hitting shorelines. But it does not end the many problems and scientific uncertainties associated with the spill, and federal leaders emphasized this week that they had no intention of walking away from those problems any time soon.

...

Scientists said the rapid dissipation of the surface oil was probably due to a combination of factors. The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps. Though none of the seeps is anywhere near the size of the Deepwater Horizon leak, they do mean that the gulf is swarming with bacteria that can eat oil.

The winds from two storms that blew through the gulf in recent weeks, including a storm over the weekend that disintegrated before making landfall, also appear to have contributed to a rapid dispersion of the oil. Then there was the response mounted by BP and the government, the largest in history, involving more than 4,000 boats attacking the oil with skimming equipment, controlled surface burns and other tactics.

Some of the compounds in the oil evaporate, reducing their impact on the environment. Jeffrey W. Short, a former government scientist who studied oil spills and now works for the environmental advocacy group Oceana, said that as much as 40 percent of the oil in the gulf might have simply evaporated once it reached the surface.

One of the things the story speculates on is that since oil has been leaking naturally into the Gulf more or less forever, there's a pre-existing supply of bacteria in the water which feeds on oil and breaks it up naturally.

While this is clearly good news, there are still concerns about the effect of the oil at depth.

It's almost as if the Earth and it's various ecosystems are large and complex things we don't fully understand. One might think that would lead scientists and policy makers to exercise a degree of humility when it comes to sweeping pronouncements and economy killing edicts of various kinds.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:36 AM | Comments (233)
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Poor, overshadowed Preston. He stayed at his post. When the trainees ran, he stayed.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:04 AM | Comments (178)
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Welcome to the boringest night of the week.

Hey Remember Valley Girls?

Well here's video of a Valley Girl contest that took place in Encino, CA in 1982. It's from an episode of Real People and is like a time capsule of a simpler time when ValSpeak wasn't like totally despised.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:55 PM | Comments (787)
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Well a lot of police and security guards would like you to think so.

Here's a case out of Maryland where a man is facing 16 years in prison for violating Maryland's wiretapping laws. His crime - videotaping a MD State Trooper in plain clothes pulling a gun on him and giving him a ticket.

Back on March 5th Anthony Graber was riding his motorcycle with a videocamera attached to his helmet on I-95 and when he exited the interstate a car suddenly pulled in front of him and a man jumped out with his gun pulled. That man turned out to be an off-duty State Trooper in civilian clothes and in his personal vehicle. He identified himself and gave Graber a ticket (which he clearly deserved since he had reached speeds up to 127mph during his filming). Afterwards Graber posted the video on YouTube.

Ten days later when the officer found out about the video, the state police got an arrest warrant for Graber and raided his house early in the morning seizing all computers and video cameras. He's now facing up to 16 years in prison for taping the encounter. Apparently Maryland is one of the few states that requires approval of both parties being recorded and that's the basis for charging him with wiretapping.

Update: Progressoverpeace notes that it's the audio - not the video - that makes the state's wiretapping law apply.

Here's the video in question

So a couple of points -

1. He was clearly speeding and so deserved the ticket. It would be interesting to see what speed the officer wrote him up at.
2. The officer didn't identify himself until he was right up to the driver. I don't know what the standard police procedures are but if Graber had pulled his own weapon or fled, I would have considered that reasonable behavior under the circumstances. I'm guessing the trooper screwed up which is why he wanted the video removed.
3. It's hard to argue that the recording was surreptitious when the GoPro helmet camera was clearly visible and the officer approached the driver against his will in a public place. So the whole case seems to just be an example of police harassment.

And here's Glenn Reynolds' view on the case and harassment against public photography in general.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 04:21 PM | Comments (303)
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Sorry I keep doing this. I am on a deadline to complete a written piece. I had hoped to finish this past weekend, but I was sick as a dog Friday and Saturday. Now I'm under the gun.

I'll be here tomorrow, too, but will hang the open blog sign again: I really do need to finish this thing.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (285)
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Well, you and I call it "Qantas". Ace calls it the "N.C.C 1701-F".

Currently a self-guided audio tour at the caves in the Blue Mountains is offered in eight languages, but staff came up with the idea of adding the fictional language Klingon as the caves did once feature in the popular TV series.

"In the Star Trek universe, Jenolan Caves was first immortalized in the Next Generation episode 'Relics,' through the naming of a 'Sydney Class' Starship — the USS Jenolan," the Jenolan Caves Reserve Trust said in a statement.

"Now, this relationship will be developed further, when Jenolan Caves adds the language of Star Trek's great warrior race to a tour of their most popular cave."

I didn't really have much to add to this nerdarific story. I just wanted to punk Ace in a headline.

But since I have led y'all down this geeky path, I suppose I should reward you for following.

So here's a photo of the red-headed hottie in the new Doctor Who series. Which isn't a bad show. If you watch it with the sound off, and only when she is on the screen.

Posted by: Jack M. at 10:25 AM | Comments (252)
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How, exactly, did a settlement originally thought to benefit a couple of thousand black farmers swell into a general $50,000-a-head handout to nearing a 100,000 people, most of whom weren't even farmers?

Well, one part you know -- instead of money being paid to black farmers, the settlement soon applied to... blacks who could allege they considered taking up farming but were dissuaded, supposedly, by rumors the USDA would deny them loans later should they get into financial difficulty.

So... Um, okay, any black person who can write down on a claim form that he once had an "intent to farm" is now eligible for free federal money.

What could go wrong?

We already paid just shy of one billion in damages for this nonsense and now Congress is supposed to authorize another $1.5 billion to, you know, make whole all those people who now say, "Oh yeah, I forgot, I wanted to buy a farm too but didn't because of racism."

(And gee! Who could have guessed there were so many until we started writing checks out to those who would claim they wanted passionately to farm!)

In related news, I'm black, and I have always felt a need for seed.

Posted by: Ace at 10:20 AM | Comments (155)
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Regarding Tim Geithner's damn-with-faint-praise statement that the country can withstand higher taxes:

"This administration defines 'good policy' as what the country can withstand? The country cannot withstand more spending more borrowing more bailouts or more taxes, and House Republicans will fight this tax increase with everything we've got."

Meanwhile, a PJM writer speculates that Democrats are pondering how to reverse their course without seeming like they're reversing course.

The Democrats must know $75 billion in new taxes next year (and $1.4 trillion over 10 years, according to Michael Boskin in the Wall Street Journal) could push the economy into a coma. It could certainly stifle job growth.

The Congressional Budget Office agrees. In fact, it nearly doubles down on the figures. It estimates $115 billion next year and $2.6 trillion by 2020.

Now, they may not read the bills they pass. But the Democrats must be aware that the CBO predicts big damage if they let the tax cuts expire.

They need the makeup and disguises in order to finesse what they must do. They must keep all or most of the Bush tax cuts or they must replace them with other tax cuts. They cannot afford to drug the economy with tax increases at this stage.

How do they pull this off?

...

They can hardly admit their opponents were right — the critics who called for tax cuts 18 months ago, not to mention those who months ago called for Congress and the president to announce they would extend the Bush cuts.

Also, there is a swig of castor oil you must take when you admit your opponent is right. You must concede you were wrong. If they extend tax cuts now, they concede their recovery plan was wrong. With it, they spent, rather than cut. They gave the back of their hand to small and mid-sized businesses. In this they were wrong and dumb and out of touch with the real world of job creation.

I linked a few weeks ago a piece by Keynesian liberal economist Brad DeLong making the case we needed a bigger stimulus, or a new one, but noting that he'd be happy with tax cuts -- which, he noted (as if it needed noting), also constitute Keynesian stimulus.

Sure would have been nice for Obama to have noticed that a year and a half ago.

Oh wait, he didn't write the bill; he let Nancy Pelosi write it for him.

Sure would have been nice for Nancy Pelosi to have noticed that a year and a half ago.

Posted by: Ace at 10:01 AM | Comments (94)
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Information wants to be fierce!

I've been derelict in mentioning this. Via Hot Air, a summary by an Afghanistan vet who notes the leaks tell us little we didn't know about the war, but a little more about what we already suspected of International Intersex Investigator Julian Assange.

I myself first went to Afghanistan as a young Army officer in 2002 and returned two years later after having led a small special operations unit — what Mr. Assange calls an “assassination squad.”

...

The Guardian editorialized on Sunday that the documents released reveal “a very different landscape ... from the one with which we have become familiar.” But whoever wrote that has not been reading the reports of his own newspaper’s reporters in Afghanistan.

The news media have done a good job of showing the public that the Afghan war is a highly complex environment stretching beyond the borders of the fractured country. Often what appears to be a two-way conflict between the government and an insurgency is better described as intertribal rivalry. And often that intertribal rivalry is worsened or overshadowed by the violent trade in drugs.

...

Mr. Assange says he is a journalist, but he is not. He is an activist, and to what end it is not clear. This week — as when he released a video in April showing American helicopter gunships killing Iraqi civilians in 2007 — he has been throwing around the term “war crimes,” but offers no context for the events he is judging. It seems that the death of any civilian in war, an unavoidable occurrence, is a “crime.”

If his desire is to promote peace, Mr. Assange and his brand of activism are not as helpful as he imagines. By muddying the waters between journalism and activism, and by throwing his organization into the debate on Afghanistan with little apparent regard for the hard moral choices and dearth of good policy options facing decision-makers, he is being as reckless and destructive as the contemptible soldier or soldiers who leaked the documents in the first place.

I don't think his first desire is to promote peace. I think he shares the same Internet Disease many of us have -- his first desire is to promote himself, to make himself a star.

Apparently he got sick of being an ugly-duckling Club Kid and decided to try his hand at international intersex investigation.

Guy's Got One Source? Pfc Bradley Manning was already charged with leaking the so-lied "Collateral Murder" video. The Pentagon suspects he also leaked this stack of minor documents.

This guy should be in jail for the rest of his life.

If this Julian Assange's one big source -- well, I think his fifteen minutes are up, even if he does look like Andy Warhol's scheduling secretary.

Oh: One of the big "gets" here, supposedly, is the revelation that helicopters are being brought down by anti-aircraft missiles, similar to the Stingers we armed the anti-Soviet forces with in the eighties.

The leap made immediately by the left is that these are in fact Stingers, because the left loves that Narrative, We Armed Them And Now The Chickens Are Coming Home To Roost.

But the documents don't say that, at least not that I've seen.

You know, a lot of people now make these missiles. What was advanced tech 25 years ago is now easily knocked-off by the Chinese, Russians, or other similar reverse-engineer techo-parasites.

Could a Stinger even be functional after over 25 years?

Could it be functional after 25 years of being lugged around a rocky environment and secreted in caves that likely get very hot and very cold?

Could it functional after 25 years of being maintained by... well, as Ash would say, primitive screwheads?

The Pashtuns are not Arabs, but as they say of the Arabs: Arabs don't do maintenance. I doubt the Pashtuns are bears about it, either.

Encore for Jazz-Hands: The Glenn Beck goof on Adam Gadahn is below.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (223)
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Kind of minor, but funny.

"They'll implement a truly dangerous agenda," Franken said Saturday. "Everything is on the table, from repealing health care reform to privatizing Social Security." Not only will GOP lawmakers "punch loopholes in our regulations," they will also "shred the social safety net," while their "corporate backers" work to enact "an even more dangerous agenda."

Bad as all that might be, Franken suggested that a little-known Republican congressman from California is plotting something even worse. "Darrell Issa is planning to double his staff," Franken said, referring to the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "and embark on a witch hunt in hopes of bringing down the Obama administration."

A lot of Republicans chuckled when they heard that. Issa planning to double his staff? Well yes, that's what happens when a party takes over the House. Since 1995, the practice of the oversight committee has been to have a two-to-one ratio of majority to minority staff. When Democrats took control after winning the House in 2006, they doubled their staff, while the losing Republicans cut theirs in half. If Republicans win in 2010, they will double their staff and Democrats will cut theirs in half. That's the way it works.

Perhaps Franken, who has only been a senator for a year, and always with a big Democratic majority, doesn't know that. He has never experienced the dislocation a change in party control brings to Capitol Hill. Of course, if Democrats lose the Senate in November, he'll learn quickly.

In related news, if Republicans win in November, they're planning on "packing the committees" with members of their party, and "slashing" the number of Democrats on them.

Also: Franken warns that Issa and Boehner are actually planning to bestow themselves with "new titles" implying some kind of "heirarchical, top-down leadership structure."

Jazz-hands!

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (119)
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