The Radium Girls of Ottawa get a memorial

I don't really have anything new to say regarding this topic as there is plenty of information already available on the Internet.  The news is that this past Labor Day a memorial statute was dedicated.

News Tribune - News - Local - 'Radium Girls' memorial unveiled in Ottawa

That and the entire documentary made in 1987 has been made available.



People like to think that something like this could never happen in these modern times.  Yet today in the news:


"I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover," Obama said in a statement. "With that in mind, and after careful consideration, I have requested that Administrator Jackson withdraw the draft Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards at this time."


Is there anybody that is really in favor of poor quality air?  Then again we can never know for certain what may be happening overseas...

Neat Video - Radio not Dead

Radio from Cody Butler, Cottonwood Media on Vimeo.

(I really should post more often.)

Metropolis Steelworkers

Locked-Out Honeywell Workers Travel Far and Wide to Fight Company - Working In These Times

I've been meaning to write up something about this mess. This article will have to do for the moment. Just a brief back-story: Defense Contractor Honeywell owns a uranium enrichment plant in Metropolis Illinois where the workers have been locked out for nearly a year now because Honeywell wants to cut medical benefits. Medical is essential to working in this factory as it is nearly certain one is going to get sick from working there. Honeywell is so intent on making a stand on this issue that they are willing to hire scab workers, blow the place up a few times and spend far more money than if they just kept the union contract as it is.

Oh Boy! Really old Recordings!

The Library of Congress has just released a wide range of early recordings in many genres as part of their National Jukebox.  William Howard Taft is quite the hoot a hundred years later.  Who knew?

Available for listening only at this point, but definitely worth checking out. Broadcast might be possible under existing licenses.

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/

About the National Jukebox
The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.
Find out more about the National Jukebox project

Fracking for Natural Gas

This post is about a topic that I keep hearing about, but most people I know have not.  There is a process known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking for short.  It's a relatively new way for energy companies to extract natural gas.  It involves injecting "fracking fluid," a mixture of water, diesel and "secret" chemicals, deep underground where it can crack the shale apart, releasing the gas to be collected and allowing the poison fluid to more easily interact with groundwater.  As a bonus the fluid then gets removed and comes back as a highly contaminated water that's also radioactive.  Oh Joy!


The only downside of burning natural gas is the carbon that is put into the atmosphere - other than that it is a very clean burning fuel.  (If it wasn't gas stoves and ranges found in kitchens wouldn't be possible.)  Now the emphasis I put on the word burning is there because there is a much greater cost associated with collecting it.  Originally natural gas was found as the unwanted by-product of drilling for crude oil and was simply burned off in the oil field.  Somewhere along the way someone realized what a great waste this was and a network of pipes was installed all over the country to deliver the natural gas directly to homes for heating and such, thereby turning a waste product into a profit source.  But since land based crude oil wells have declined in great numbers in the United States there isn't so much natural gas along with it.  Lucky for gas companies they discovered that layers of shale formations deep underground contains lots of natural gas, albeit not accompanied by crude oil.  Never mind though, they figured out a way to get at the natural gas and make it highly hazardous to the environment all at the same time.  Wasn't that nice of them?


(Update on May 24:  I should add that there are still plenty of crude oil wells producing natural gas that is flared off and wasted.  Unfortunately those wells are located on the North Slope of Alaska.  A proposed pipeline to bring this wasted gas down to the lower 48 has been put on hold because it wouldn't be profitable enough what with all the cheap fracked gas available.) 


Lets start the lesson with a TeeVee show called NOW.  NOW is no longer bringing in-depth journalism to PBS on Friday night, but thanks to the Internet you can watch this episode right on your computer.  Or, if you are so inclined, watch the DVD of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Gasland" from which much of this episode of NOW is based on.




Next, read this article from the New York Times which is current as of February 26, 2011.  This is a really great article with multimedia and interactive features to better illustrate how fracking is done.  Also it addresses how all that radioactive water is gets disposed of.  If you were thinking it happens in a safe manner with strict government oversight you are very much mistaken.


Then there's the earthquakes, specifically the Guy-Greenbrier earthquake swarm in Arkansas.  To be fair there is only anecdotal evidence that over a 1000 earthquakes-which started shortly after used fracking fluid was disposed of-by injecting it into deep wells (to be permanently forgotten about)-drilled into a previously unknown fault line that has been dormant for millions of years...  Yeah, nobody can really say the waste fluid wells caused the tremors, which reached a peak of 4.7, but after that further injection was ceased and now the tremors seem to be subsiding.  No real connection there though.


For more information do your own Google search.  There is also a much better blog post by someone else.

Planned Obsolescence Documentary

Pyramids of Waste -or- The Lightbulb Conspiracy is a documentary about how our economic system is based on consumerism and planned obsolescence.  Lightbulbs could last for decades, but then how would the manufactures make money?  The first nylon stockings were practically indestructible, so DuPont told their engineers to make a new formula that would tear and get runs.  Inkjet printers that simply stop working after a certain number of pages get printed - but don't worry, someone came up with software to reset the counter and get more use out of that printer.  Then there is the social engineering of conditioning people to replace their perfectly functional stuff with new crap on a continuous basis.  Finally, more of the heartbreaking scenes of poor people in third world nations dealing with hazardous electronic refuse.  All that and more awaits in this film.  Maybe after watching it you will start to think more critically about what you purchase.

Link to the film. (In English and a few other languages, but this version has complete English subtitles.)

Finally Good For Something

It is no real surprise that, once again, nobody in the media bothered to check out that latest James O'Keefe prankster video of NPR exec Ron Shiller before sticking it in the news cycle and calling it journalism.  The surprise is that it was reporters at Glen Beck's website The Blaze that revealed it was in fact a heavily edited smear job.

http://wonkette.com/440468/glenn-becks-website-reveals-npr-lunch-video-was-edited-to-ruin-npr

Paul Krugman

An older article, but still relevant.

Bubbles and the Banks

Well gee, Lets start a blog.

Some people say I'm smart.  I don't particularly think so, I just tend to absorb and retain information a little better than most people.  Perhaps differently.  Whichever, whatever...I usually have the answer and if not then I know how to find it.  Usually, in most cases, though not always.  I'll try to use this blog to post articles of interest that I notice that may help to stem the broad trend of general public ignorance.

My current particular view of the world is neatly summed up by this satire