*** When times are tough what do you do? Laughter is the best stress reliever! Here are 8 posts from this week's posts at Denny's blogs for you to enjoy.
From Denny: Between Colbert and Stewart, well, let's just say they have BP's shenanigans covered. Nothing gets past them!
In my ongoing effort to provide stress relief when the national conversation is so depressing - because of the BP Gulf Coast oil spill, a fragile economy and politicians who continually refuse to do right by the American people - we all need to keep laughing our way through these times until they get better. Trust that times will get better and they will. Until then, while we are in transition, we must develop coping skills for managing daily stress like making sure we are laughing often.
This is one of those times when it is true that "the pen is mightier than the sword" for the right kind of writing can bring relief to thousands in one moment over the internet. Pretty cool when you think about it. How many people can accomplish so much out of thin air? :)
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*** Check out the fun world soccer cartoons and click on more links to funny cartoon posts for this week!
From Denny: Come check out the best of this week's political cartoons, lampooning politicians, Life and sports. Instead of paging through 50 websites pages to look at one cartoon at a time, I've embedded a dozen or more per post to enjoy easily. Can you tell I find it annoying to load page after page just to see all the latest cartoons? :)
These were only a few world soccer cup cartoons available for embedding. To see more just click on the link under the cartoons to take you to the cartoonists' sites. It seems like every night on the TV news we would hear those vuvuzela horns making their joyful noise while they blew out everyone's eardrums. Cartoonists had a lot of fun with that cultural icon.
Congrats go the USA soccer team as they made us proud. It was an amazing run with upset after upset. We got some bad referee calls when it was obvious the gambling syndicate phoned in how they wanted the game to be called. America's team still went forward to win after win. This week it was Ghana's turn to win against America and knock us out of the race for the world cup.
America's team went into this competition with little hope and fewer expectations. As far as Americans are concerned our team was a Cinderella team. They succeeded in winning our hearts and ignited a huge interest in this country for the game of soccer. From my corner of the world, I'd say your game was well played, guys!
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*** Big Oil finds ways to eliminate the competition from taking over any segment of the fuel market in the world.
From Denny: OMEGA is an alternative energy program experiment costing $10 million. Turns out the NASA administrator of this project, Charles Bolden, also happens to own a large share of oil stock. So, the question of the day is: Does the influence of Big Oil extend to NASA?
What the OMEGA Project is all about
OMEGA = Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae.
It's a two-fold project that is a win-win for the environment. The idea is to grow algae as an alternative energy product - as well as a waste water eater to return clean water to the ocean. The lead researcher is Jonathan Trent at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. The project has three goals in mind. They wanted to be able to produce bio fuels using few resources and in a confined area. They were keen on finding an inexpensive way to clean municipal wastewater. The third idea was to capture the greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide that are produced in this process.
Basically, they go out into the ocean and lay down huge sheets of plastic bags filled with algae. The algae is fed waste water, and, true to their algae nature they clean the dirty water, removing what is foul by using the water, solar energy and carbon dioxide to accomplish their mission. The clean water gets leached back into the ocean through the huge plastic bags because the bags are only a one-way membrane for the clean water to exit.
Algae also creates bio fuel
Did you know that as the algae cleans the water it also produces fat soluble molecules called lipids? The algae produces sugars that it converts into the lipids. Those lipids can be harvested as an alternative energy bio fuel. NASA has been in the business of algae for a long time as it can be used as a fuel for life support systems in space. That was the reason for this experiment initially rather than as an alternative fuel source to supplant fossil fuel.
What about if the algae escapes its plastic bag confines? Could it invade the oceans with a new invasive species? Scientists say there is no worry about that since this is a fresh water algae. The minute the plastic bags were compromised and the salt water came rushing in the salt water would kill the algae.
So how long do these plastic bags last in the ocean? About three years is their estimate. Researchers suggest recycling the plastic bags as mulch or chopping them to build soil and retain moisture.
Economics and replacing fossil fuel
This whole idea is an economic model that is reasonably priced and easily accessible to even the more impoverished nations. What's more this OMEGA project made a bid last year to replace aviation fuel with this bio fuel! They think they can easily produce 21 billion gallons a year for aviation fuel. They figure they need to farm about 10 million acres of ocean to fill that order.
Downside of this project?
Scientists are still concerned about the plastic, wondering how well it can withstand pounding ocean waves, the sun and the cold temperatures. This whole process depends upon osmosis and researchers wonder if the plastic can become too brittle for the process to work easily all the time. They envision maybe franchising the process, having fishermen monitoring it constantly.
Conflict of interest with NASA administrator of this project owning oil stock
All this sounds like a great idea and quite usable to benefit the whole world. The problem is that this administrator of the project was also on the board of the Marathon Oil Company who basically told him to nix the project. They advised him that "this project was not worth the investment at this time" which he was quick to repeat to the media and in his reports about the viability of this project. Bolden owns about $500,000 to $1 million in Marathon Oil stock. Hmmmm.... just a bit of conflict of interest, don't you think?
Sound familiar with every other alternative fuel project for the past 30 years? Big Oil keeps on trashing the competition with callous disregard to the environment, the world economy and world health.
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*** Links to funny posts from several of Dennys blogs this week!
From Denny: I just love the enthusiasm of this funny dog running full tilt, tongue flailing out and slapping his face. He is undeterred and happy anyway. If only we humans could live in the moment like this dog. Well, not to worry, I've found some funny things on the web this week and posted them: jokes, funny quotes, funny photos and funny videos. Knock yourselves out. And, hey, make sure to send me photos of you laughing - and having a good time falling off your chair. :)
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From Denny: The world is full of funny, and, in these trying political and economic times, we all need to laugh as much as possible! These are some of the posts I've put up this week on The Social Poets and Ouch Outrageous Obnoxious And Odd blogs.
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*** Check out news, political opinion - serious and funny cartoons, recipes, science and health news, poetry, funny posts, photography, spiritual thoughts and great quotes.
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*** New technology idea to help clean up BP oil spill.
In my state of Louisiana this brown Pelican was just taken off the endangered list right before the BP oil spill. Now look at this poor bird, covered in oil and cancer-causing dispersant that Britain outlawed 10 years ago yet with depraved indifference and callous disregard used it freely on America's shores - without informing - and refusing to inform when queried by the American government as to the chemicals in it. That alone is enough for a huge lawsuit. Photo by Charlie Riedel/AP
From Denny: New ideas for cleaning up this nasty BP oil spill disaster keep rolling in as fast as the oil rolls in to shore. The tech guys have come up with a promising idea that just might work. What they are proposing is to use a specially treated cotton fabric. This fabric will be able to both admit water yet repel the oil. Most fabrics used right now are oil containment fabrics not repellents.
Certainly, the textile industry will be happy to get the looms working again in America. While the company is not divulging the particulars of this secret chemical, a polymer, it does have the ability to reach out and grab the oil, then transport it from the water. If I were the President I would like my scientists to be shown the chemical makeup - they can sign all the confidentiality agreements they want to protect the product) to make sure it will not cause more problems while cleaning up the oil from the ocean water. Trading one problem for another is not productive.
How this treated cotton fabric works
Basically, this treated cotton fabric acts as a filter, not a barrier or even as an absorber, says researcher Di Gao at the University of Pittsburgh. Just think, the water doesn't slide off but passes through, leaving the oil like a fine sieve. “It’s kind of like a spoon or a bucket.”
When dipping the cotton treated fabric into oil-tainted water there is a trough made from the polymer-coated cotton fabric. It acts to keep the oil in but lets the water flow through like a sieve. The cotton fabric acts like a bucket that you just lift up out of the water and transfer the collected oil to a tanker. “I believe that our technique will work and is currently the best way to clean up the oil spill in Mexico,” Gao said.
The simplicity of this new use for cotton fabric is astounding. When the fabric is soaked in the polymer fluid it then gets dried in the open air or an oven. That's it. Then it has the ability to both attract water and repel oil. The next question is when is this fabric available for use in the home kitchen? :)
Current ineffective oil spill clean up technology is expensive and cumbersome
Right now oil spill cleanup crews might as well be using technology from the Dark Ages. They use oil absorbent booms to try and stop the spread of oil. The oil containment booms made of fabric float on top of the water and are easily subject to getting tossed around by rough seas. They extend about a foot underwater through the use of hanging chains.
Their effectiveness is pretty weak. As it is, many of those booms, once soaked, have not been picked up and have floated deep into Louisiana's marshlands landing next to rookeries, making matters worse. One company that makes those oil booms is Slickbar, that is a major manufacturer of oil spill products.
Get this, Steve Reilly, the CEO of Slickbar states, “I’ve never heard of that before,” he said when asked about an oil boom that could repel oil." And you wonder why the Gulf Coast and the government is having such a tough time getting these guys to step up the pace on clean up.
Advantages of new fabric over oil booms
There is deeper water that oil booms cannot reach and this new cotton fabric is thought to be more useful for oil clean up because of the limitations of the oil booms.
The oil booms have to be collected and disposed of properly or burned after reaching their saturation level. Get this, the new cotton fabric is re-usable, actually recovering oil instead of losing it to burn off. Then all you have to do is send that fabric recovered oil to an oil refinery and add it to the national supply chain. This certainly goes a long way toward defraying clean up costs considerably.
Another advantage is that this treated fabric is so simple anyone can produce it easily. “Yes, cleanup crews can make these filters themselves,” Gao said. All that’s required are industrial-size cotton sheets, containers for soaking, lots of empty space for them to dry, and of course the special solution. I don’t know why nobody’s contacting me,” Gao said as he was asked for a response to recent news reports warning of catastrophic boom shortages on the Gulf coast. “They should talk to me.”
This new fabric is the result of about five years of research, according to Gao. He and his team were planning to patent the material until this BP oil spill disaster happened. He says the chemical used to soak the cotton sheets to make it an oil repellent is actually commercially available, though he isn't disclosing the ingredients. “It takes a long time to patent this, the situation is so urgent that we’re trying to use it to clean up the oil spill,” he said.
Does it work?
They have already tested it along the Louisiana coast and it is confirmed to be a success. Here is Gao demonstrating the effectiveness of the fabric using samples taken from the Gulf of sea water and the crude oil in a video demo to show you how simple and easy it is to use for oil spill clean up efforts:
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*** Check it out from the funny to the serious like lots of funny posts with funny ideos, BP oil spill news, political commentary, political cartoons, recipes, poetry, health news.
Photo of coffee from Brazil by Quoquo @ flickr
From Denny: This was a light week for writing as I spent so much time watching a lot of BP oil spill news from everywhere trying to catch details of what was filtered out of the mainstream copycat media. This is a shifting situation minute by minute as BP tries to twist the truth and manipulate the media to report their lies. It's like a giant shell game from a multinational corporation grifter.
Those of us living in Louisiana and others on the Gulf Coast are committed to holding our government AND most especially BP's mean little toes to the hot coals until they comply fully. The philosophy of "The Minimum Acceptable" from Big Business arrogance and cavalier handling of an environmental and economic disaster is unacceptable in America. If this was happening to the British shores I would be just as outraged and pushing back just as hard.
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