Australia is facing a controversy that is all too familiar to Americans. Fundamentalists in state schools are teaching children that humans and dinosaurs lived together and Noah brought dinosaur eggs on to the Ark.
Children are also taught that Adam and Eve were not eaten by dinosaurs “because they were under a protective spell.”
This is consistent with Palintology — the new science advanced by Sarah Palin — which insists that man and dinosaur must have co-existed despite carbon dating and simple logic.
Source: News
Trader,
Regarding the comments on the WP article:
Selection bias?
Good Elaine M.,
I don’t want my God to smote you today…..Now just remember Jesus may love us all, BUT I am his Favorite. I have been chosen…..for what I am not sure….my god has just told me that I am Chosen and that the earth is 6,000 years old and if anyone disagrees one of the truth “slayers” or maybe two of them are from Arizona…I wonder how John is doing today? He was given a tip a few years ago to buy the property for investment purposes…..You see it will be ocean front in time…
AY–
According to Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen the is indeed 6,000 years old.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtzJhTfQiMA&hl=en_US&fs=1]
Wait a New York minute…You mean to tell me that the earth is not 6,000 years old….Take it back Elaine M., or my god will smote you. Don’t you know it only too 5.999 years to have the dinosaurs become fully fossilized to make oil……
‘TraderB 1, August 5, 2010 at 5:31 am
These comments at WaPo support my statement that lefties are ignorant about science.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080401404_Comments.html
‘
mirror mirror on the wall…..
Mike A.–
So…now TraderB is into people’s comments at WaPo serving as information to support statements he/she has made about lefties.
LOL!
And don’t forget–dinosaurs and humans coexisted…and the Earth is approximately 6,000 years old.
😉
TraderB: The WaPo article actually proves nothing about anything; it merely reports certain data compilations. I could argue with the same degree of truthfulness (meaning none) that your comment proves my point that scientists make illogical generalizations. It was a rather silly and condescending comment, the same sort of sweeping non sequitur that plagues many policy discussions in this country.
These comments at WaPo support my statement that lefties are ignorant about science.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080401404_Comments.html
yes, good words, nice fishy 😉
“Not that I am totally against finding out the whos and whys…because maybe that is a helpful step in preventing it ever happening again”
Right now we remain adrift in a sea of apathy.
First two rules of navigation
1. Figure out where you are
2. Figure out where you’re going.
Clarifying the ‘whos and whys’ is part and parcel of figuring out where you are so you can thence figure out where you’re going.
ya know, you guys have stronger stomaches for this stuff than me. At the end of the day, and i don’t think it matters if we are talking World Trade Tower or Gulf of Mexico, the fact is, devastating events, man made and man delivered, have impacted this country on a scale that is obviously so huge it has inspired fear on a level that has stoked cover-up and blow back that are almost if not more devastating than the event itself. All the argument in the world will not clean up the mess if it derives from a point of who gets blamed for the initial mess. All argument should be aimed at what is the best course of action for cleaning the messes and saving the people and creatures and environment that was soiled and hurt in the first place. That would be productive, no?
Not that I am totally against finding out the whos and whys…because maybe that is a helpful step in preventing it ever happening again,but also, lets be real…these events hurt us here in the US first…but screwed EVERYBODY on the planet. EVERYBODY!
Welcome to the web, the world of ONE.
Here we go again, I kinda wanna be more than Friends.
Slarti: “So I’ve given examples of how the processes I’m talking about work at both much bigger and much smaller scales – if the Chicxulub impactor had enough kinetic energy to liquify 25,000 square kilometers of rock on impact then why is it so hard to believe that debris hitting the ground heat up slightly?”
Horseshit. Your examples were inane and inapplicable because ‘slight heat’ was not at issue.
At issue was explaining how pools of molten metal were created at Towers 1 & 2 and WTC 7 and how they continued to exist for months thereafter.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201moltenmetal#a091201moltenmetal
Impactor example = nonsense because the gravitational acceleration of Earth and the terminal velocity barrier for free falling bodies simply will not allow a Mach 3.94 collision with Earth. Accordingly, a steel beam dropped 100 stories from a building would never liquify on impact. It would bounce.
Paper clip example: also inane since it demonstrates that a single or double bend, as what would happen to a beam in a collapse, would not be sufficient to create any noticeable heat; much less molten metal.
FROM ABC News (The Drum)
Spray, baby, spray: oil spill solutions part of the problem
By Jess Hill
Updated Thu Jul 29, 2010 7:24am AEST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/29/2967160.htm?site=thedrum
Excerpt:
Splash: In the Gulf of Mexico, BP is using one toxic chemical to mitigate the effects of another. But could the clean-up effort be doing more damage than the oil itself?
Since the oil spill began in April, 6.5 million litres of chemical dispersant has been sprayed into the Gulf of Mexico. BP has been using two types of dispersant – Corexit 9500A and Corexit 9527A – which are both composed mostly of detergents, and share many of their ingredients with household cleaning products.
In the case of oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon, dispersants are generally considered to be the lesser of two evils. By breaking up oil slicks and sinking them below the surface, chemical dispersants prevent oil from oozing inexorably towards sensitive coastal habitats.
Dispersants do not, however, reduce the amount of oil entering the environment, according to a National Academy of Sciences report. They just send it underwater. “It is an environmental trade-off: the protection of one habitat at the cost of another,” says Carys Mitchelmore, an aquatic toxicologist at the University of Maryland.
But many marine scientists don’t believe it’s a fair, or even effective, trade-off. Susan Shaw has been a marine toxicologist for 30 years, and is one of few scientists who have actually dived in the Gulf to see the spill’s effects firsthand. She says that not only is the dispersant toxic to marine life, it’s also hampering the clean-up efforts.
“The only way to get at an oil spill safely is to get it off the surface while it is still all in one mass,” she said, speaking on the phone from the Marine Environmental Research Institute in Maine.
Corexit disperses oil by breaking it up into bite-sized globules, which then hang suspended underwater. The theory is that this makes the oil more easily edible for oil-eating microbes. However, because the dispersant is being sprayed at the source of the leak (more than a kilometre underwater) the dispersed oil has formed thick plumes, one more than 16 kilometres long. These plumes are enveloping and killing microbes and small shrimp and fish, says Dr Shaw. And because it’s now congealed underwater, there’s no way to collect it.
“It’s a strategy without precedent, which is admitted by our officials,” she says, “and no-one knows what the impacts will be,” she says.
In June, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, admitted as much to the Louisiana Seafood and Marketing Promotion Board.
“They (dispersants) have never been used at this volume,” she said. “What I say to folks is that we are in unchartered waters. We have no data. None. If I had it, I would show it to you.”
After BP refused a directive from the EPA in May to find a less toxic alternative to Corexit, the EPA launched its own independent study into eight different types of dispersant, including Corexit. On June 30, two months after BP started spraying the dispersants, the EPA announced that all of the dispersants ranged from ‘practically non-toxic’ to ‘non-toxic’. They had not, however, tested the toxicity of Corexit combined with oil, and have not indicated when that data will be available.
Dr Shaw says the EPA tests are pointless.
“We already know that dispersants are less toxic than oil,” she says. “But nobody in the Gulf is encountering Corexit on its own – it’s Corexit combined with oil they need to be testing.”
She says several peer-reviewed studies have already shown the combination to be more toxic than either Corexit or oil alone.
From New York Times
Swimming Through the Spill …
By SUSAN D. SHAW
(Susan D. Shaw is a marine toxicologist and the director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, a nonprofit scientific research and educational organization.)
Published: May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30shaw.html?_r=1
EXCERPT:
Though all dispersants are potentially dangerous when applied in such volumes, Corexit is particularly toxic. It contains petroleum solvents and a chemical that, when ingested, ruptures red blood cells and causes internal bleeding. It is also bioaccumulative, meaning its concentration intensifies as it moves up the food chain.
The timing for exposure to these chemicals could not be worse. Herring and other small fish hatch in the spring, and the larvae are especially vulnerable. As they die, disaster looms for the larger predator fish, as well as dolphins and whales.
As I swam back to the surface, some big fish came up to the boat — cobia, amberjacks weighing up to 60 pounds — looking for a handout. These are the fish that have made the Gulf a famously productive fishing area. But they rely on the forage fish that are now being devastated by the combined effects of oil and chemical dispersants. In a short time, the predator fish will either starve or sicken and die from eating highly contaminated forage fish.
Yes, the dispersants have made for cleaner beaches. But they’re not worth the destruction they cause at sea, far out of sight. It would be better to halt their use and just siphon and skim as much of the oil off the surface as we can. The Deepwater Horizon spill has done enough damage, without our adding to it.
Whistleblower Hugh Kaufman, a Senior Policy Analyst with EPA, talks about the Gulf oil spill and the use of dispersants with Lawrence O’Donnell.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4-eoNE-izk&hl=en_US&fs=1]
Slartibartfast
1, August 4, 2010 at 1:29 am
Blouise,
Bob and I have taken so much umbrage at each other that I honestly hardly notice it anymore. He’s disrespectful and condescending to me and I am snide and condescending to him – we have a real mutual disadmiration society going on… Plus sparring with Bob is much more challenging than, say, showing the absurdity of just about anything that Tootie writes (and Bob certainly doesn’t run away from a fight when it starts getting interesting like she does). ….
=======================================================
… sometimes it’s just plain fun to tweak pomposity … but I, a serious poster, would never do that 🙂
(I’m not up late, but have risen early … much to do today … best of luck with the 25 pages … see Buddha’s post on the Sisters thread)
Blouise,
Bob and I have taken so much umbrage at each other that I honestly hardly notice it anymore. He’s disrespectful and condescending to me and I am snide and condescending to him – we have a real mutual disadmiration society going on… Plus sparring with Bob is much more challenging than, say, showing the absurdity of just about anything that Tootie writes (and Bob certainly doesn’t run away from a fight when it starts getting interesting like she does).
Byron,
I doubt that Bob and I could agree on enough to write a book – we can’t even agree on basic physics. If he could just admit that I’m right about work converting energy from one form into another (or that James Joule is right about work converting energy from one form into another) and that pretty much all energy eventually ends up as heat then maybe, but I’m not holding my breath.
Bob said:
“And I could say the same about your inane & inapplicable examples and analogies; e.g. your meteor impact and paper clip analogies. However, rather than attack you personally, I simply reminded you where we left off.”
A meteor impact is an excellent example of kinetic energy being transformed into thermal energy (and other forms) by impact (via the mechanism of internal friction – I know how important that is to you, Bob). The paperclip experiment allows you to actually feel the energy converted from kinetic energy into heat in the paperclip by bending it. I’m not making that up – if you bend a paperclip as fast as you can then you will be able to feel noticeable heat at the bend. So I’ve given examples of how the processes I’m talking about work at both much bigger and much smaller scales – if the Chicxulub impactor had enough kinetic energy to liquify 25,000 square kilometers of rock on impact then why is it so hard to believe that debris hitting the ground heat up slightly? And if you can feel the heat generated by bending a paper clip, why don’t you think that a steel beam bent or sheared in a fraction of a second is going to heat up even more? It’s really not my fault that you have chosen to pick a fight about basic physics by taking a position that would earn any first year physics student a failing grade nor is it my fault that you have resisted my repeated efforts to educate you on the subject (I guess I’m a bad teacher). As for reminding me where I left off – sure, I’m up for another round.
{W(t)=C : b < t < (now)} said:
"what freak rabbit hole did I fall down……"
Right there with you.
better late than never, I suppose…..
‘Feds to add dispersant test to seafood safety tools
By: Susan Buchanan, Contributing Writer
Posted: Monday, August 2, 2010 11:59 am
The Gulf fish you ate recently may have tasted fine but you might have wondered if it was tested for the dispersant COREXIT-used by BP to break oil into smaller pieces. Seafood inspections since the spill have been mostly sniff tests for oil. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, however, says a new dispersants test for seafood is in the works and should be ready soon.’
http://www.louisianaweekly.com/news.php?viewStory=3121
—————————
TraderB 1, August 3, 2010 at 10:40 am
“The video is even more misleading. They quote a toxicologist as saying that the hydrocarbon levels are very high to condemn Corexit. Hydrocarbons make up the bulk of crude oil. They are used in Corexit, but there is no way to distinguish the two. They would have to find propylene glycol or docusate sodium to say it came from Corexit 9500A. The human toxicity of both is extremely low.”
“there is no way to distinguish the two”…..?
SO WHAT!
Corexit was used because the oil was gushing out in a negligent disastrous event…you cannot separate the two, either, both and both together caused a great harm. The argument is how much and for how long……..
and please, they hadn’t even developed a test to check for food web toxicity yet???? what freak rabbit hole did I fall down……..
Byron,
Exactly!
Style:
b : a distinctive manner or custom of behaving or conducting oneself … or The way in which something is said, done, expressed, or performed
Ploy:
a : a tactic intended to embarrass or frustrate an opponent or a manoeuvre or tactic in a game, conversation, etc.; stratagem; gambit
Obfuscate:
1 a : darken b : to make obscure
2 : confuse
Not quite sure how that one applies but suspect a witticism is on the table.