U.S. facing hearing loss epidemic – study | Reuters
CHICAGO, July 28 (Reuters) – One of three U.S. adults already suffers from some degree of hearing loss and the use of personal stereos and an aging population may create a hearing impairment epidemic, researchers said on Monday.A team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore estimated that 55 million Americans have hearing loss in one or both ears, with men, whites and the least-educated most affected. …
Britney, Paris Air Savage Anti-McCain Ad – Borowitz Report
One day after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) broadcast an anti-Obama ad in which he compared the presumptive Democratic nominee to celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, the two tabloid mainstays fought back with an eviscerating anti-McCain spot of their own.While Mses. Spears and Hilton said they had planned to remain on the sidelines during the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. McCain’s negative ad “left us no choice,” the notorious party gals said today…
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, chief medical officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional subcommittee on July 22 that the risk of a large-scale biological attack on the nation is significant and that the U.S. government knows its terrorist enemies have sought to use biological agents as instruments of warfare. Runge also said that the United States believes that capability is within the terrorists’ reach.
Runge gave his testimony before a subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology that was holding a field hearing in Providence, R.I., to discuss the topic of “Emerging Biological Threats and Public Health Preparedness.”
During his testimony, Runge specifically pointed to al Qaeda as the most significant threat and testified that the United States had determined that the terrorist organization is seeking to develop and use a biological weapon to cause mass casualties in an attack. According to Runge, U.S. analysis indicates that anthrax is the most likely choice, and a successful single-city attack on an unprepared population could kill hundreds of thousands of citizens.
Later in his testimony, Runge remarked that many do not perceive the threat of bioterrorism to be as significant as that of a nuclear or conventional strike, even though such an attack could kill as many people as a nuclear detonation and have its own long-term environmental effects.
We must admit to being among those who do not perceive the threat of bioterrorism to be as significant as that posed by a nuclear strike. To be fair, it must be noted that we also do not see strikes using chemical or radiological weapons rising to the threshold of a true weapon of mass destruction either. The successful detonation of a nuclear weapon in an American city would be far more devastating that any of these other forms of attack.
In fact, based on the past history of nonstate actors conducting attacks using biological weapons, we remain skeptical that a nonstate actor could conduct a biological weapons strike capable of creating as many casualties as a large strike using conventional explosives — such as the October 2002 Bali bombings that resulted in 202 deaths or the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191.
We do not disagree with Runge’s statements that actors such as al Qaeda have demonstrated an interest in biological weapons. There is ample evidence that al Qaeda has a rudimentary biological weapons capability. However, there is a huge chasm of capability that separates intent and a rudimentary biological weapons program from a biological weapons program that is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Office Depot posts quarterly loss | Reuters
ATLANTA (Reuters) – Office Depot Inc (ODP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) reported a second-quarter loss on Wednesday as declining spending by smaller businesses and retail customers hurt sales.The office supplies retailer had a loss of $2 million, or a penny a share, compared with earnings of $105.6 million, or 38 cents a share, a year earlier.
Small business owners have cut back on spending in the weak U.S. economy, bringing pain to the office supply sector.
Lee Gomes asks, quite reasonably,
It’s a fair question to ask: Can someone who never touches a computer truly be in touch with what is happening in the world? The computer industry has worked very hard over the past few decades to cause us to suspect as much. But what about the opposite question: Does anyone who spends all day in front of a PC, forging a river of data posing as information, have any time to think?
LOS ANGELES (AP) – In the impoverished neighborhood of South Los Angeles, fast food is the easiest cuisine to find—and that’s a problem for elected officials who see it as an unhealthy source of calories and cholesterol.
The City Council was poised to vote Tuesday on a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a swath of the city where a proliferation of such eateries goes hand-in-hand with obesity.
“Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods,” City Councilman Bernard Parks said.
The aim of the yearlong moratorium, which was approved last week in committee, is to give the city time to try to attract restaurants that serve healthier food.
WASHINGTON, DC, July 28, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. EnvironmentalProtection Agency is ordering its staff to “not respond to questions ormake any statements” if contacted by congressional investigators,reporters or its own Office of Inspector General, according todocuments released today by Public Employees for EnvironmentalResponsibility, PEER.
Gag Order Imposed on U.S. EPA Staff
Kitten found near Boca exposes 8 to rabies
An 8-week-old kitten has tested positive for rabies after being found near Boca Raton and biting or scratching at least eight people, Palm Beach County health officials said today.All eight will undergo a monthlong series of anti-rabies shots, but authorities fear that other people and animals may have been exposed to the deadly viral disease. The county animal control office has begun trapping feral cats near where the kitten was found.
How social networking is changing — and will continue to change — the world.
Somewhere in the last few months, half the population of the planet became mobile telephone subscribers. In a decade’s time we’ve gone from half the world having never made a telephone call to half the world owning their own mobile.
I commented on Puc Puggy’s Florida Nature Blog regarding this matter, and I liked it so much I thought I’d post it here.
The science behind greenhouses is slightly different from that of global warming, but the principles are exactly the same.
In a greenhouse, shortwave infrared radiation (which, technically, is not “heat” until it interacts with matter) enters through the glass easily. It strikes surfaces inside the greenhouse and causes them to heat. This heat is radiated as longwave infrared radiation, which does not pass through the glass so readily. It bounces back, contributes to more heating, more radiation, bounces back, etc.
In short, not all the energy coming in can escape, the same thing that happens in an automobile sitting in the sun with the windows rolled up. If the windows are down, much of the heat is dispersed when air, heated by contact with the hot surfaces, leaves the car through natural circulation. With the windows up, there is no place for the energy to go.
Greenhouse gases create a similar effect in the atmosphere. The shortwave infrared radiation from the sun passes through, while much of the longwave is stopped by molecules in the upper atmosphere.* The shortwave infrared heats the surface (including the water) and longwave radiation is emitted, which cannot pass through the gases near as readily to escape. (Some does pass through, fortunately, or we’d be in deep doo-doo already, as George the First was wont to remark.) There is a net energy gain in the atmosphere, just as in the greenhouse. Over time, it becomes significant, as has occurred over the past two hundred years or so.
Incidentally, global warming is not a new concept at all. The Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, in the London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine of April, 1896, wrote the following:
We are evaporating our coal mines into the air. [This must be causing] a change in the transparency of the atmosphere…
“And so,” as Fitzgerald wrote, “we move on, boats against the current, drawn back ceaselessly into the past.”
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*This is why the Thermosphere is at a much higher temperature than the air beneath it.
