Cartoon to ID fanatics: put your money where your mouth is
This cartoon makes a nice point.
Big Media’s monopolistic cravings lead to more corruption at the FCC
If this Common Dreams report on FCC corruption doesn’t make you angry, no media issue will:
…Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer rocked the re-confirmation hearings for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin when she released a suppressed FCC study from 2004 – leaked to her by an FCC whistleblower – that indicated locally owned television stations did far more local news programming than TV stations owned by big conglomerates. A former FCC lawyer acknowledged that agency officials ordered the report and all supporting material be destroyed.
Martin, who was on the FCC in 2004 but not yet its Chairman, said he had no idea the report had been done in the first place and knew nothing about its disappearance. Then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell also claims he knew nothing about it, and, in classic Bush-era fashion, he took no responsibility for what transpired under his command.
In their minds, this was some sort of clerical error — and the sooner everyone forgot about it, the better. The FCC could go back to its time-honored job of doling out tens of billions of dollars in monopoly privileges to massive media and communication firms in relative anonymity.
That PR approach collapsed this week on Monday, Sept. 18, when another repressed FCC study was leaked to Senator Boxer by an FCC whistleblower. This study demonstrated that independent radio ownership plummeted after the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, even though the number of commercial radio stations actually increased. As with the first study, by
Proactive architects fight CO2 levels
Last week, at Washington University, I attended a lecture by architect Edward Mazria, who speaks nationally and internationally on the subject of climate change and architecture. Mazria’s organization, Architecture2030 is dedicated to “slowing the growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions and then reversing it over the next ten years.” His proposals are getting lots of attention among architects.
As he states at his website, it is imperative that we deal seriously with CO2. It will
require immediate action and a concerted global effort. As Architecture 2030 has shown, buildings are the major source of demand for energy and materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases. Stabilizing emissions in this sector and then reversing them to acceptable levels is key to keeping global warming to approximately a degree centigrade (°C) above today’s level.
Mazria began his talk with a PowerPoint presentation that largely paralleled Al Gore’s presentation in “An Inconvenient Truth.” Here’s how he sizes things up currently:
Two profound, life changing events are converging to create the most significant crisis of modern time— the warming of the earth’s atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, and the rapid depletion of global petroleum and natural gas reserves. As these events intensify over the coming years, they will dramatically change how we live and how we relate to the natural world.
Here’s how Architecture2030 illustrates the warming of the earth (see the Architecture2030 site for better resolution):
As you can see, CO2 levels (the upper blue line) have never been as high as they …
A quick lesson on evolution, brought to you by Guinness
This Guinness commercial is quite entertaining, if not entirely substantiated by the fossil record. While watching this I had to wonder what Charles Darwin would have thought.
Why are there so many synonyms for poop?
I don’t usually go around discussing poop.
That might have changed forever, though, once I stumbled upon smellypoop.com, a site dedicated to disseminating information about . . . well, poop. Smellypoop.com is a refreshingly frank site presenting “solid” information on a subject that simultaneously compels and repels.
For example, smellypoop.com addresses each of the following topics (as well as others):
- What is poop made of?
- Why does poop stink?
- Why is bird poop white?
- Are there people who eat poop?
- Why does some poop float?
- What Happens When I’m At WORK and I have to Poop?
But there’s more. Smellypoop.com provides comprehensive research on the topic of farts. You can order fake poop and poop-themed greeting cards at the site (click on “Order Fake Poop and Other Great Gifts”). There is a poop forum and a poop photo gallery. You’ll find poop poems, poop riddles, and poop sayings, including “Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day” (attributed to Harry S Truman).
What especially interests me, though, is the comprehensive list of poop synonyms at smellypoop.com. There are hundreds of them. Though I was already aware of dozens of poop terms (including the classic four-letter reference and oldie-but-goodie “number two”), I was woefully unaware of the vast number of poop synonyms. Thanks to stinkypoop.com, my repertoire now includes terms like “blind eels,” “bootycakes,” “colon cobras,” “dookie-doop-droop” “mooky-stinks,” and the quaint but useful “pooplets.”
Why so many synonyms for a basic bodily function, I wondered? Then it hit me: …