I’m not a fan of McDonald’s food (although I do occasionally crave their fries and sundaes…) but I have to give them props for this wonderful ad. It’s well executed, very professional and has a great message:
Too bad we likely will never see it on US TV stations.
BP early Wednesday used robot submarines and a complex maneuver in an attempt to stop the massive flow of crude oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.And forget about the 5,000 barrels a day figure. That number now stands at 19,000, with a 20% projected increase after the cut is performed, and with the caveat that the figure is likely higher still given that we’re quite likely fed lies by BP and probably the government:
The company appeared to be making its second cut into the undersea well's riser pipe, the initial steps toward placing a cap over the well that has spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day since late April.
Meanwhile, rust-colored oil washed ashore Tuesday on barrier islands off Alabama and Mississippi as a beleaguered BP tried to stop the continued flow of the largest spill in U.S. history.
But the operation carries the risk that the flow of crude from the ruptured well could increase by up to 20 percent once the damaged riser is cut away.And the last bit of terrifying news is that the hurricane season started yesterday and if one hits, it’s going to multiply the disaster:
And the gusher may not be shut down until August when BP expects to complete relief wells that will take the pressure off the one now spewing into the Gulf.
The 5,000-foot-deep well erupted after an explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20. Eleven people were killed. The rig sank two days later, leaving up to 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons) of oil pouring into the Gulf, according to federal estimates.
After fouling sections of Louisiana's marshes over the past two weeks, the oil was spreading toward the northeast on Tuesday. Tar balls and patches of reddish-brown "weathered" oil came ashore on Dauphin Island, Alabama, south of Mobile, Alabama, and on Mississippi's Petit Bois Island, off Pascagoula, Mississippi, authorities reported.
In Louisiana, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser warned a hurricane in the area could drive more oil ashore.Charming. Thanks oil companies!
"We don't want to scare anybody, but we need to be realistic about it," Nungesser said. "If a storm does top out levees, it will probably bring oil with it."
He said residents who evacuate ahead of a hurricane might return "not to a flooded home, but to a home that is completely contaminated with this oil."
Ok, this is one of the saddest and most fraked up things I’ve ever read:
Taking a deep drag on his cigarette while resting on the steering wheel of his truck, he looks like a parody of a middle-aged lorry driver.
But the image covers up a much more disturbing truth: At just the tender age of two, Ardi Rizal's health has been so ruined by his 40-a-day habit that he now struggles to move by himself.
The four-stone Indonesia toddler is certainly far too unfit to run around with other children - and his condition is set to rapidly deteriorate.
But, despite local officials' offer to buy the Rizal family a new car if the boy quits, his parents feel unable to stop him because he throws massive tantrums if they don't indulge him.
His mother, Diana, 26, wept: 'He's totally addicted. If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.'
Ardi will smoke only one brand and his habit costs his parents £3.78 a day in Musi Banyuasin, in Indonesia's South Sumatra province.
But in spite of this, his fishmonger father Mohammed, 30, said: 'He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem.'
Ardi's youth is the extreme of a disturbing trend. Data from the Central Statistics Agency showed 25 per cent of Indonesian children aged three to 15 have tried cigarettes, with 3.2 per cent of those active smokers.
The percentage of five to nine year olds lighting up increased from 0.4 per cent in 2001 to 2.8 per cent in 2004, the agency reported.
Child advocates are speaking out about the health damage to children from second-hand smoke, and the growing pressure on them to smoke in a country where one-third of the population uses tobacco and single cigarettes can be bought for a few cents.
However, imposing a non-smoking message will be difficult in Indonesia, the world's third-largest tobacco consumer.
Health Minister Endang Sedyaningsih conceded turning young people off smoking will be difficult in a country where it is perceived as positive because cigarette companies sponsor everything from scholarships to sporting events.
Absolutely pathetic.
“'He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem.” That father should be shot.
So sad.The Alaotra grebe, also called the rusty grebe, had been highly vulnerable as it was found only in Lake Alaotra, eastern Madagascar, according to the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles the Red List of endangered species.
The grebe was wiped out by habitat destruction, by the introduction of a carnivorous fish called the snakehead murrel and by nylon gill-nets which accidentally caught and drowned many birds.
"No hope now remains for this species. It is another example of how human actions can have unforeseen consequences," said Leon Bennun, director of science at BirdLife International.
The IUCN sounded the alarm for wetland birds, imperilled by the draining of marshlands and by alien species that are introduced for food.
"Invasive alien species have caused extinctions around the globe and remain one of the major threats to birds and other biodiversity," Mr Bennun said.
My mother-in-law sent me these. Some are hysterical:
Sign over a Gynecologist's Office:
"Dr. Jones, at your cervix."
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In a Podiatrist's office:
"Time wounds all heels."
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On a Septic Tank Truck:
Yesterday's Meals on Wheels
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At a Proctologist's door:
"To expedite your visit, please back in. "
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On a Plumber's truck:
"We repair what your husband fixed."
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On another Plumber's truck:
"Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber."
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On a Church's Bill board:
"7 days without God makes one weak."
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At a Tire Shop in Milwaukee :
"Invite us to your next blowout."
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At a Towing company:
"We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows.."
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On an Electrician's truck:
"Let us remove your shorts."
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In a Nonsmoking Area:
"If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."
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On a Maternity Room door:
"Push. Push. Push."
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At an Optometrist's Office:
"If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."
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On a Taxidermist's window:
"We really know our stuff."
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On a Fence:
"Salesmen welcome! Dog food is expensive!"
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At a Car Dealership:
"The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment."
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Outside a Muffler Shop:
"No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.."
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In a Veterinarian's waiting room:
"Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!"
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At the Electric Company
"We would be delighted if you send in your payment.
However, if you don't, you will be."
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In a Restaurant window:
"Don't stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up."
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In the front yard of a Funeral Home:
"Drive carefully. We'll wait."
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At a Propane Filling Station:
"Thank heaven for little grills."
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And don't forget the sign at a
CHICAGO RADIATOR SHOP:
"Best place in town to take a leak."
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Sign on the back of another Septic Tank Truck:
"Caution - This Truck is full of Political Promises"
A wonderful cartoon by Patrick Corrigan that exemplifies the perils of over-sharing on social networking sites:
The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday.Lifeless oceans are a very real possibility. After all, fish eat fish. Once a species is wiped out, whatever ate it will starve if it can’t find an alternative food source. And on and on.
"If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.
A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected zones -- ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.
Collapse of fish stocks is not only an environmental matter.
One billion people, mostly from poorer countries, rely on fish as their main animal protein source, according to the UN.
According to the UN, 30 percent of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning they yield less than 10 percent of their former potential, while virtually all fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050.
The main scourge, the UNEP report says, are government subsidies encouraging ever bigger fishing fleets chasing ever fewer fish -- with little attempt to allow the fish populations to recover.
Fishing fleet capacity is "50 to 60 percent" higher than it should be, Sukhdev said.
A new study points out how much the loss of nature and biodiversity is going to cost humankind when we’ll have to find ways to do what nature now does for us for free:
The Earth's ongoing nature losses may soon begin to hit national economies, a major UN report has warned.
The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) says that some ecosystems may soon reach "tipping points" where they rapidly become less useful to humanity.
Such tipping points could include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death.
"We continue to lose biodiversity at a rate never before seen in history - extinction rates may be up to 1,000 times higher than the historical background rate."
The global abundance of vertebrates - the group that includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and fish - fell by about one-third between 1970 and 2006, the UN says.
While progress is being made in some regions, the global failure means an ever-growing number of species are on the Red List of Threatened Species.
"Twenty-one percent of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds (and)... 27% of reef-building corals assessed... are threatened with extinction," said Bill Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains the Red List.
The relationship between nature loss and economic harm is much more than just figurative, the UN believes.
An ongoing project known as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is attempting to quantify the monetary value of various services that nature provides for us.
These services include purifying water and air, protecting coasts from storms and maintaining wildlife for ecotourism.
The rationale is that when such services disappear or are degraded, they have to be replaced out of society's coffers.
TEEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.
"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).
"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world.
"The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."
The more that ecosystems become degraded, the UN says, the greater the risk that they will be pushed "over the edge" into a new stable state of much less utility to humankind.
For example, freshwater systems polluted with excess agricultural fertiliser will suffocate with algae, killing off fish and making water unfit for human consumption.
Will we listen? Will our politicians make the hard choices?
