Left of the Dial

Rocket Fuel in Our Drinking Water

I had planned to write more today about the largest welfare bill in history. For instance, did you know that President Ronald Reagan once said: 

''If you had a stack of $1,000 bills in your hand only four inches high, you'd be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of $1,000 bills 67 miles high.''

Really takes the breath away, does it not? And that's pretty much the amount of cabbage they're debating up on the hill today. And that cash money's all coming from you and me, folks. Good times! 

I also thought about writing about the new spider web that appears in my car each morning and what a disconcerting way that is to start the day. 

And I've been meaning to write about my reappraisal of Wilco. 

But then I read this. And I think, to use a term my friends on the right enjoy using, that this goes beyond policy debates. I think the people who make these decisions have entered into the realm of Evil. 

I wish I were kidding. You read that headline and you think it must be from The Onion. 

If only. 

EPA won't limit rocket fuel in U.S. drinking water

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.

EPA reached the conclusion in a draft regulatory document not yet made public but reviewed Monday by The Associated Press.

The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.

The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems."

The conclusion, which caps years of dispute over the issue, was denounced by Democrats and environmentalists who accused EPA of caving to pressure from the Pentagon.

"This is a widespread contamination problem, and to see the Bush EPA just walk away is shocking," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate's environment committee.

Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif., added: "This is an unconscionable decision not based upon science or law but on concern that a more stringent standard could cost the government significantly."

The Defense Department used perchlorate for decades in testing missiles and rockets, and most perchlorate contamination is the result of defense and aerospace activities, congressional investigators said last year.

The Pentagon could face liability if EPA set a national drinking water standard that forced water agencies around the country to undertake costly clean-up efforts. Defense officials have spent years questioning EPA's conclusions about the risks posed by perchlorate.

The Pentagon objected strongly Monday to the suggestion that it sought to influence EPA's decision.

"We have not intervened in any way in EPA's determination not to regulate perchlorate. If you read their determination, that's based on criteria in the Safe Drinking Water Act," Paul Yaroschak, Pentagon deputy director for emerging contaminants, said in an interview.

Yaroschak said the Pentagon has been working for years to clean up perchlorate at its facilities. He also contended that the Pentagon wasn't the source of as much perchlorate contamination as once believed, noting that it also comes from fireworks, road flares and fertilizer.

Benjamin Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water, said in a statement that "science, not the politics of fear in an election year, will drive our final decision."

"We know perchlorate in drinking water presents some degree of risk, and we're committed to working with states and scientists to ensure public health is protected and meaningful opportunities for reducing risk are fully considered," Grumbles said.

Grumbles said the EPA expected to seek comment and take final action before the end of the year. The draft document was first reported Monday by the Washington Post.

Perchlorate is particularly widespread in California and the Southwest, where it's been found in groundwater and in the Colorado River, a drinking-water source for 20 million people. It's also been found in lettuce and other foods.

In absence of federal action, states have acted on their own. In 2007, California adopted a drinking water standard of 6 parts per billion. Massachusetts has set a drinking water standard of 2 parts per billion.

Stuff of Life

Why Elections Matter

Brains

Oh sure. Lots to write about. I could write about the dear soon-to-be-departed (but not soon enough) Gonzo and the way he tried his darnedest to demolish the Department of Justice...and did a heckuva job of it. We could wallow in the schadenfreude brought on by the hideous spectacle of United States Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) and his "wide stance."

But we’ve got more pressing matters. Much, much more pressing.

Thank Allah one man is brave enough to tell the truth about this horrific scourge.

Big Baby

Man, how awesome is the stuff you can buy at Home Depot these days?

I gotta say, though, I'm not much of a Do It Yourselfer. I don't think I'd trust myself with one of these babies.

Illumination

A minivan’s kinda a big vehicle. Not as big as, say, an 18-wheeler or an SUV but, still, you know. Big.

So how is it that a small interior light can run down the battery in twelve hours? I mean, for pete’s sake, a pair of C batteries can power a bulb this size for about four hours. How can a minivan’s battery not do triple that without breaking a sweat?

I suspect communist influence somehow.

Real Romeo and Juliet

Heard this on the way home. How sweet. You know, for something so awful and creepy:

Embrace lasted for 5,000 years
Skeletons show death's tender side
By Ariel David
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ROME -- Archaeologists have unearthed two Neolithic-era skeletons locked in a tender embrace that were buried outside Mantua -- just 25 miles south of Verona, where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet."

Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig.

"As far as we know, it's unique," Menotti said Wednesday. "Double burials from the Neolithic are unheard of, and these are even hugging."

The burial site was located Monday during construction work for a factory building near Mantua. Experts will now study the artifacts and the skeletons to determine the burial site's age and how old the two were when they died, she said.

Luca Bondioli, an anthropologist at Rome's National Prehistoric and Ethnographic Museum, said double prehistoric burials are rare -- especially in such a pose.

The find has "more of an emotional than a scientific value." But it does highlight how the relationship people have with each other and with death has not changed much in thousands of years, he said.

The bodies, which cuddle closely while facing each other on their sides, were probably buried at the same time, possibly an indication of sudden and tragic death, Bondioli said.

He said DNA testing could determine whether the two were related, "but that still leaves other hypotheses; the 'Romeo and Juliet' possibility is just one of many."

The news story I heard also mentioned that it’s possible he was killed first and, so’s they could be together for all eternity, she was then sacrificed and buried with him. You know, to keep him company. How sweet. And ghastly. [Kind of like being married to me prolly is.]

Apparently, police, having still not ruled out foul play, are interested in questioning a Mister William Shakespeare, aka, Willy the Shake, in connection with the case.

Fawlty Logic

So. The normally redoubtable Karen said of a math problem she and her daughter were working on:

Here's how my daughter and I would both respond to the following problem in her math book:

Larry ordered 3/8 of a pizza. He gave Pat 1/3 of his pizza. How much of a pizza did Pat get?

She and I would both say this sort of thing:

"Do you think Pat is a guy? Or his wife? And why would someone order 3/8 of a pizza? That's ridiculous. I might order by the slice, but never in fractions. Pat must be a guy friend, because Larry certainly would give his own wife more than 1/3 of 3/8 of a pizza. Are you hungry? Let's get something to eat. Then maybe we could write a story about a hungry mother and daughter who abandon math, join forces to open a pizzeria and hire people to do all the stuff that makes them lapse slowly into comas ... i.e., the measuring, the math ...."

I am astonished at Karen’s gapular thinking.

Clearly Pat is a female, because if you have three slices of pizza and two people, one and only one with a Y chromosome, then the He in this equation is clearly going to eat two of the pieces and leave but one for the XXer, jamming both of his slices in his mouth as quickly as possible, if necessary. He’ll look at his beloved wife and decide that she’d want him to have twice as much pizza, and that by eating two slices and leaving her only one, he’s actually making her happy—indeed, performing a good deed. Doing her a solid, as they say.

Whereas if Pat’s a guy friend, the math problem would have made mention of the fistfight the two of them got into over that final piece and how the police had to be called and how they both ultimately ended up on C.O.P.S.

But it didn’t say anything about that. So Pat’s clearly a female.

And that’s where I get stuck. I had to ask Max for help solving the actual problem. Just one more illustration of how and why females are ever so much better.

And now I’m hungry.

Clonechops!

I really, truly, honestly do not get this.

I mean, jeez louise, never mind that this seems to be a product in desperate search of a market, and about as purely necessary as a pet rock. And let’s ignore for the moment the fact that five years really doesn’t seem like a long enough time to study something like this—for pete’s sake, Dolly the Sheep was only cloned ten years ago: does it really seem likely this science has been perfected yet?

But no. Let’s break it down even further:

Is there anyone out there who isn’t simply creeped out by this idea?

Cloneburger with cheese, please: Cloned critters get FDA ok

Fans of cloned meat and dairy products -- c'mon, we know you're out there -- rejoice! The US government declared today that food products made from cloned animals is "safe to eat," and probably won't require labeling to disclose the fact:

After more than five years of study, the Food and Drug Administration concluded that cloned livestock is "virtually indistinguishable" from conventional livestock. FDA believes "that meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day," said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.

Oh, and here’s the answer to my question:

For food that does come from clones, the Food and Drug Administration is unlikely to require labels, officials said.

Ah, yes. In other words, no. there’s no one who’s not utterly skeeved by this notion.

Therefore we shall hide it.

Cloning companies say the technology would be used primarily for breeding and not for steak or pork tenderloin. Thus, consumers would mostly get food from their offspring and not from the clones themselves.

Still, some clones would eventually end up in the food supply. As with conventional livestock, a cloned bull or cow that outlived its usefulness would probably wind up at a hamburger plant, and a cloned dairy cow would be milked during her breeding years.

Oh. Okay. Because I’m quite confident we can correctly predict what problems might conceivably (so to speak) pop up in a clone’s great-grandkid.

Or, hey! Here’s an idea! Why don’t we stick to the way things have, you know, pretty much always worked? Boy cow meets girl cow, they have cowlets, cowlets grow up and we eat ‘em.

A fairly decent system, seems to me.

‘Course, I’m not a cow.

But then, I’m also not a money-grubbing bidnizman drooling over this new-fangled cash cow. So to speak.

Ukraine Babies and Stem Cells

I heard this on the news during my evening commute yesterday. It was on one of them crunchy NPR stations I love, so I couldn’t believe my ears—the story seemed more likely to come from The World Weekly News or its internets equivalent, WorldNet Daily.

I googled every permutation of the story I could think of when I got home, but couldn’t find anything. I started thinking it was some ghastly aural hallucination on my part.

And then this morning it pops up.

This cannot be real:

Ukraine babies in stem cell probe
By Matthew Hill
BBC Health Correspondent

Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests.

Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what happened to them.

Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world.

There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases.

But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies.

Wall of silence

The BBC has spoken to mothers from the city of Kharkiv who say they gave birth to healthy babies, only to have them taken by maternity staff.

In 2003 the authorities agreed to exhume around 30 bodies of foetuses and full-term babies from a cemetery used by maternity hospital number six.

One campaigner was allowed into the autopsy to gather video evidence. She has given that footage to the BBC and Council of Europe.

In its report, the Council describes a general culture of trafficking of children snatched at birth, and a wall of silence from hospital staff upwards over their fate.

The pictures show organs, including brains, have been stripped - and some bodies dismembered.

A senior British forensic pathologist says he is very concerned to see bodies in pieces - as that is not standard post-mortem practice.

It could possibly be a result of harvesting stem cells from bone marrow.

I have to confess, I don’t know much about the reputation of the BBC—is it a New York Times or Wall Street Journal, an institution with political leanings but generally high standards, or more like a New York Post, an institution with a surplus of leanings but a deficit of high standards?

I hope this turns out to be a sick hoax. This is beyond horrific.