THE MIKIVERSE IS UNDERGOING RENOVATIONS. The Mikiverse is growing new branches, and whilst this page will still act as The Mikiverse tree of life, moving forward, all of the information that you have found on here, will live on the new branches. My belief is that this change will make it easier for you all to find the different pieces of information that you like to consume within this habitat. NOTHING WILL BE REMOVED FROM THIS HABITAT UNTIL IT HAS A BRANCH TO EXIST AND LIVE IN. From now on, new posts will be located in the relevant subject branch, but, this central trunk will link to all the branches.
Sun Smiles, Michael Byers aka Tetractys Merkaba.
MIKIVERSE HEADLINE NEWS
http://mikiverseheadlinenews.blogspot.com/
All of the important stories from the last 7 days. After this time, news will go to the relevant subject branches.
MIKIVERSE LAW
http://mikiverselaw.blogspot.com/
A sober, logical, and practical exploration of the laws we have made to benefit the navigation of our lives.
MIKIVERSE FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS
http://mikiversefalseflagops.blogspot.com/
Soberly exploring all of the various false flag op's in the world, past & present.
Still under construction. Will open up to reveal further branches of interest.
MIKIVERSE SPIRIT
http://mikiversespirit.blogspot.com/
Exploring tools that might assist us in our spiritual development and our desire to attain balance with our heart, mind, body & soul.
MIKIVERSE HEALTH
http://mikiversehealth.blogspot.com/
Exploring and sharing the elements that will help our health to flourish and flower.
MIKIVERSE MONEY
http://mikiversemoney.blogspot.com/
Still under construction. Will open up to reveal further branches of interest.
MIKIVERSE CULTURE
http://mikiverseculture.blogspot.com/
Click here for all manner of sonic delights, comedy & other things besides.
Still under construction. Will open up to reveal further branches of interest.
MIKIVERSE HISTORY
Still under construction. Will open up to reveal further branches of interest.
Follow The Mikiverse on Twitter
https://twitter.com/theMikiverse
MIKIVERSE HEADLINE NEWS
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Gulf Spill Is the Largest of Its Kind, Scientists Say
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
NEW ORLEANS — The BP spill is by far the world’s largest accidental release of oil into marine waters, according to the most precise estimates yet of the well’s flow rate, announced by federal scientists on Monday.
Nearly five million barrels of oil have gushed from BP’s well since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, according to the latest data. That amount outstrips the estimated 3.3 million barrels spilled into the Bay of Campeche by the Mexican rig Ixtoc I in 1979, previously believed to be the world’s largest accidental release.
The BP spill was already thought to be the largest spill in American waters, but it was unclear whether it had eclipsed Ixtoc.
“We’ve never had a spill of this magnitude in the deep ocean,” said Ian R. MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University.
“These things reverberate through the ecosystem,” he said. “It is an ecological echo chamber, and I think we’ll be hearing the echoes of this, ecologically, for the rest of my life.”
Federal science and engineering teams, citing data that are “the most accurate to date,” estimated that 53,000 barrels of oil a day were pouring from the well just before BP was able to cap it on July 15. They also estimated that the daily flow rate had diminished over time, starting at about 62,000 barrels a day and decreasing as the reservoir of hydrocarbons feeding the gusher was gradually depleted. Before Monday’s announcement, federal scientific teams had estimated the spill in a range from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.
The teams believe that the current estimates are accurate to within 10 percent. They also reported that of the roughly 4.9 million barrels that had been released from the well, about 800,000 had been captured by BP’s containment efforts. That leaves over four million barrels that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from April 20 to July 15.
As the estimates of the number of barrels spilled increases, so, too, do the penalties under the Clean Water Act, which calls for fines of $1,100 per barrel, or $4,300 per barrel if the government finds that gross negligence led to the spill.
At 4.9 million barrels, that means that the total fine could be $5.4 billion — and, if gross negligence led to the spill, $21 billion. If BP successfully argues that the 800,000 barrels it has recovered should mitigate the penalty, then the figure drops to $4.5 billion and $17.6 billion, respectively.
The amount of oil estimated to be pouring from the well has been a matter of dispute from the earliest days of the spill. Federal and BP officials initially announced that no oil appeared to be leaking, then 1,000 barrels a day, then 5,000 a day, frequently repeating that spill estimates are rough at best and that the main goal was to stop the well. But criticism mounted that no effort was being made to measure the leak with more certainty.
The Obama administration announced the creation of a scientific group dedicated to analyzing the flow rate, which came up with a new estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day in late May, a figure that was met with skepticism. That, too, was later revised upward several times before Monday’s announcement. Previous estimates came from analysis of videos from remote-controlled vehicles at the wellhead, modeling of the reservoir and measurements of the oil that was collected by surface ships in the response effort.
After BP capped the well, these measurements could be reinforced by pressure readings within the well. Those pressure readings were compared with pressure estimates when the well was first drilled to determine whether the rate had changed over time, which it apparently had.
The government is continuing to study the data and may refine the estimate.
Meanwhile, BP continued efforts Monday to permanently seal the well. It said it was preparing to conduct final testing on Tuesday to determine whether to go ahead with a plan to pump heavy drilling mud into the runaway Macondo well, in hopes of permanently sealing it by the end of the week.
During the tests, a surface ship will slowly inject small amounts of mud into the well to make sure the mud will reach the oil reservoir from the column of pipes and valves that sit atop it. If that is accomplished, BP will pump higher volumes of mud, and possibly cement, into the well, in an operation known as a static kill or bullheading.
BP executives said Monday that they expected positive results from the tests, which will also check the pressure of the well to ensure that it is safe to pump the mud.
The efforts come 18 days after BP placed a tight-fitting cap on the well that put a temporary end to months of leaking. Engineers had planned to begin the tests on Monday but had to delay when they found a small hydraulic leak in the capping control system above the well.
Kent Wells, senior vice president for exploration and production at BP, said on Monday that a day or two after the pumping of mud began, engineers would consider pumping cement into the well, which could permanently plug it. Engineers might also decide to wait for a relief well to be completed before pumping cement in. There is also a chance that they will pump cement during the static kill and later through the relief well, to make sure the runaway well is sealed.
“We want to end up with cement in the bottom of the hole, completely filling the entire Macondo well,” Mr. Wells said Monday. “Whether that comes from the top or whether it comes from the relief well, those will be decisions made along the way.”
An estimated 2,000 pounds of mud is to be flooded into the well this week.
Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is leading the federal response to the spill, cautioned against rushing to declare the static kill a final victory over the well. “I don’t think we can see this as the end-all, be-all, until we actually get the relief wells done,” he said.
Mr. Wells said the last 100 feet of the first of two relief wells should be completed by Aug. 15. A final killing of the well by pouring mud and cement just above the reservoir could take a few days or as much as a few weeks. If the first relief well somehow misses its target, a second one is being drilled for insurance.
There Are Drugs in Drinking Water. Now What?
By MIKE NIZZAThere are traces of sedatives in New York City’s water. Ibuprofen and naproxen in Washington, D.C. Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety drugs in southern California.
A 2,550 word article from The Associated Press is drawing attention to the widespread problem of trace amounts of pharmaceutical chemicals turning up in the drinking water supply of millions of Americans, but no one seems to know how to react. The report itself culminated with a doctor offering a tried-and-true deduction for the Ages: “That can’t be good.”
But how bad is it, exactly? The answers range in degrees of confidence and alarm, though no one was ready to predict imminent doom.
”We recognize it is a growing concern and we’re taking it very seriously,” said Benjamin H. Grumbles, the Environmental Protection Agency’s water chief. But the government has not established any safety limits for pharmaceutical drugs in drinking water, as it has for many other chemicals; the agency is just learning how to detect low concentrations of drugs in water, let alone assess the risk posed by them.
The American Water Works Association, a trade group representing thousands of water utilities, seemed to suggest that the problem is the testing data, not the water. A California water official warned The A.P. before it published the article that that the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” from the tests.
Tom Curtis, the deputy executive director of the association, explained. “Today’s advanced technology has allowed scientists to detect more substances — at lower levels — than ever before,” he said. He called for calm, saying there was no research demonstrating “an impact on human health” from the detected levels of drugs in public water supplies.
So why has this burdensome fact of life been dropped on the shoulders on Americans? The lack of scientific proof of a threat does not rule one out, of course. Little study has been devoted to the long-term effects of low-concentration exposure on humans. But as the A.P. relates, research on the effects on wildlife has yielded some scary examples: Pharmaceuticals in river and lake water are being blamed for “feminized” male fish and other changes observed in earthworms and zooplankton.
So how are all these drugs getting in the water in the first place? Some fraction of every dose a person takes passes through unmetabolized and is evacuated by the body and flushed into sewage systems. Sewage treatment plants are meant to remove the more familiar kinds of pollutants, and typically do not remove pharmaceuticals from waste water as it is cleaned up and released back into the environment, eventually to find its way into other water supply systems. In some places, treated sewage water is reused directly for drinking water after several filtration processes to make it safe, although none of the systems in wide use effectively remove pharmaceuticals.
That Brita filter in your kitchen is not likely to do the trick, either. As for bottled water, it, too, may come from a tap, rather than some remote mountain spring. And the trade group representing bottled-water sellers told The A.P. that they aren’t testing for the presence of trace drugs anyway.
RELATED: Last April, Cornelia Dean covered drugs in the water in Science Times: Drugs Are in the Water. Does It Matter?
Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States
From: http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/American eugenics refers inter alia to compulsory sterilization laws adopted by over 30 states that led to more than 60,000 sterilizations of disabled individuals. Many of these individuals were sterilized because of a disability: they were mentally disabled or ill, or belonged to socially disadvantaged groups living on the margins of society. American eugenic laws and practices implemented in the first decades of the twentieth century influenced the much larger National Socialist compulsory sterilization program, which between 1934 and 1945 led to approximately 350,000 compulsory sterilizations and was a stepping stone to the Holocaust. Even after the details of the Nazi sterilization program (as well as its role as a precursor to the "Euthanasia" murders) became more widely known after World War II (and which the New York Times had reported on extensively and in great detail even before its implementation in 1934), sterilizations in some American states did not stop. Some states continued to sterilize residents into the 1970s.
While Germany has taken important steps to commemorate the horrors of its past, including compulsory sterilization (however belatedly), the United States arguably has not when it comes to eugenics. For some states, there still is a paucity of reliable studies that show how and where sterilizations occurred. Hospitals, asylums, and other places where sterilizations were performed have so far typically chosen not to document that aspect of their history. Moreover, until now there has never been a website providing an easily accessible overview of American eugenics for all American states.
This site provides such an overview. For each state for which information is available (see below), there is a short account of the number of victims (based on a variety of data sources), the known period during which sterilizations occurred, the temporal pattern of sterilizations and rate of sterilization, the passage of law(s), groups indentified in the law, the prescribed process of the law, precipitating factors and processes that led up a state’s sterilization program, the groups targeted and victimized, other restrictions placed on those identified in the law or with disabilities in general, major proponents of state eugenic sterilization, “feeder institutions” and institutions where sterilizations were performed, and opposition to sterilization. A short bibliography is also provided.
While this research project was initially intended to give short accounts for each state, it quickly moved beyond this goal. For those states for which detailed monograph-length studies are availabe, it merely summarizes existing scholarship, but for other states for which such information is not readily available, it establishes the core parameters within which a state's eugenic sterilizations were carried out. As part of this research the current state of the facilities where sterilizations occurred or that served as feeder institutions is addressed.
This research brought into relief one particular piece of information that might not be known even to the specialists in the field. In Nazi Germany, during the peak years of sterilization between 1934 and 1939, approximately 75-80 sterilizations occurred per year per 100,000 residents. In Delaware, during the peak period of sterilizations (late 1920s to late 1930s), the rate was 18, about one fourth to one fifth of Germany's during its peak period, or half of Bavaria’s in 1936.[1] While the difference in the sterilization rate for a totalitarian regime with a federal sterilization law soon to commit mass murder on a historically unprecedented scale and a democratically governed state in a democratic nation remains significant,[2] it is much smaller than one might perhaps expect.
Contributions to this project were made by sophomore honors students at the University of Vermont as part of an Honors College course on Disability as Deviance. These students wrote up the primary accounts, which were then edited and amended by Lutz Kaelber, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Vermont, who is solely responsible for its contents and any errors or omissions. Research that went into this project was supported in parts by grants of the College of Arts and Science’s Dean’s Office and the Center for Teaching and Learning, and by funds of the University of Vermont's Honors College.
Comments or questions? Email:
Link to "Eugenics" and Nazi "Euthanasia" Crimes gateway page.
Stories about this site and project: UVM Today, 03/04/2009; Honors College Newletter, 03/24/2009
____________________________________________
[1] Calculations based on available population figures. For Bavaria's number of sterilizations, see Max Spindler, Dieter Albrecht, and Alois Schmid, eds. 2003. Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte. Munich: Beck, pp. 551-2. For additional comparison: The Canadian province of Alberta's rate was about 9 during its peak period of eugenic sterilizations between 1929 and 1939 (Grekul, Jana, Harvey Krahn, and Dave Odynak. 2004. "Sterilizing the 'Feeble-Minded': Eugenics in Alberta, 1929-1972." Journal of Historical Sociology 17, 4, p. 377).
[2]Apart from its link to genodical policy, the Nazi sterilization policy remain unique insofar as "only here was compulsion applied so consistently; nowhere else a bureaucracy existed that was as comprehensive and efficient in its racial hygiene; and only here eugenics was theoretically and practically integrated into a centralized and institutionalized racial policy" (Michael Schwartz. 2008. " Eugenik und 'Euthanasie': Die internationale Debatte und Praxis bis 1933/45."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)