Gulf oil dispersants cause internal hemorrhaging. Not kidding.

More disgusting news on the BP front: word is getting out about the toxicity of the dispersants being used to “clean” up the oil spill. These highly, fatally toxic chemicals don’t actually clean anything, but make the spill look a bit prettier while adding a whole other brand of hell to the Gulf region. Please read and share this article. People need to know. This is pure evil, and BP’s desire to make money is going to cost many more lives, marine and human.

Excerpted:

“While noting that BP couldn’t hide the spill any longer due to having to make its live underwater camera available to the public, Kaufman said the use of dispersants had not slowed.

“‘… Consequently, we have people, wildlife—we have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do. EPA now is taking the position that they really don’t know how dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how dangerous it is. And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around fifty. It’s very dangerous, and it’s an economic—it’s an economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.‘

“And that’s not all. Kaufman alludes to possible collusion between one owner of BP, BlackRock, and the United States government to cover up the extent of the Deepwater Horizon spill. “Follow the money,” Kaufman said, referring to an article in Vanity Fair about Larry Fink, a man who owns shares in a great deal of corporate America. Fink owns BlackRock, and BlackRock owns a significant interest in BP.”

via Watchdog says EPA covering up toxicity of Gulf oil dispersants.

Please, please spread the word. Facebook it. Twitter it. Blog it. Blab it to everyone you care about. I’m exhausted from a very long day of work too, but this is vitally important, so please just take a minute. If you don’t have friends or family near the Gulf, I’ll bet you know someone who does, so please don’t think that this doesn’t affect you.

And if you haven’t already, STOP BUYING BP PRODUCTS!@#% BP brands to boycott include Castrol, ARCO, Aral, am/pm, Amoco, Wild Bean Cafe Boykottiert ARAL. (From Boycott BP on Facebook)

Still think having children is every human’s right?

Jail for couple whose baby died while they raised online child – CNN.com.

I honestly believe that the world would be much better off if we weren’t all brainwashed to believe that we must all make babies, or worse, that we are entitled to make babies. Sucks when people who are ill-equipped to be parents realize that taking care of a baby isn’t as much fun as playing video games.

Omg the sun is so cool. Er, hot.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory released some amazing new images and movies (!) of the sun, and they are fa-reakin awesome:

First Light for the Solar Dynamics Observatory – NASA Science.

A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures. Reds are relatively cool (~60,000 K); blues and greens are hotter (> 1,000,000 K). Credit: SDO/AIA

Priority Check

Once again, browsing a news aggregate site, I happen upon a list of “hot” stories, sorted by… What? Color? Flavor?

As always, nice to see we have our priorities straight. And since I am such a huge fan of ketchup, I can’t hate on Heinz for making those not-at-all wasteful disposable packets even more convenient!

Nobel prize as encouragement?

I am certainly an Obama supporter, but I think his Nobel win is not such a good thing at a time when he is subject to such merciless criticism over his 9 month tenure as president; some of the criticism is justified, and some of it is based solely on our overblown expectations of the man we assigned the job of “hero”.

From a CNN.com article:

Jagland said he hoped the prize would help Obama resolve the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, last year’s laureate, said it was clear the Nobel committee wanted to encourage Obama on the issues he has been discussing on the world stage.

“I see this as an important encouragement,” Ahtisaari said.

What I and I’m sure many others on both sides of the debate are wondering is whether or not this form of incentivizing is really helpful, and what kind of message it sends to the people with whom Obama is trying, albeit sometimes passively, to influence in a positive way. If someone was trying to negotiate with me, and I hated everything that person stands for, I don’t think I’d be encouraged by that person getting rewarded preemptively for an assumed victory in pressing their agenda upon me.

That said, I do hope it works.

The timing is terrible. The announcement of the Nobel award comes just days after Obama’s decline to meet with the Dalai Lama, which has been criticized as a placating move to appease China, a renown human rights offender. Also, Obama’s under fire from the LGBT community for his lack of follow through on his promised support for gay rights, including his policy on repealing the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy, which is that, well, they’re just not going to deal with it right now.

But the biggest problem with this award is that he’s under fire from pretty much everyone in the U.S. who went to bed on election night with Utopian dreams of equality, peace and prosperity on January 21st, only to discover nine months in that unfortunately, Obama is human and not miraculously flipping off the partisan bicker switch, pulling money out of his ass, and making everyone in the world love each other. We had high hopes for him–what happened? Well, we saw an imaginary superhero, and some people don’t want to admit that maybe our expectations were a little bit deluded. And some people have elevated themselves to Lex Luthor status to foil the plans of this superhero, also not willing to admit that maybe it’s all a bit overdramatic.

So I think this award is a bad thing for Obama because it reinforces the delusion. I’d rather wait until he actually stops a speeding bullet.

Priorities

saw this on a news aggregate website’s front page:

the Iranian missile test is the number two story behind sex advice for single baby boomers, but just ranked above a probe into American chicken. nice to see we have our priorities straight.