Monthly Archives: July 2010

Sunday Roast: A Brief History of Disbelief

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In his “Brief History of Disbelief,” Jonathan Miller talks frankly and reasonably about his own lack of belief in God — he doesn’t spend time screeching that believers are stupid — and explores the history of atheism.

This quote sums it up quite nicely for me:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
The he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able, and willing?
Thence whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God.
~Epicurus

Part 1 of 6 (each about 10 minutes long)

Part 2

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Rights? You don’t have no stinkin’ property rights.

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This is local to Pennsylvania, but had to do with that whole “Fracking” thing.

From John Cole’s page:

A consortium of natural gas drillers has given a tentative blessing to Pennsylvania’s enactment of a severance tax (we’re still the only state not to impose such a levy) on the condition that it allow“forced pooling.” This would allow gas companies to drill across property lines and under land belonging to folks who refuse to lease for drilling.

The industry claims in its defense that forced pooling reduces the environmental impact of drilling because it allows for more gas to be extracted from fewer drill sites, and that the involved land owners will be paid royalties for gas removed from their land. Still, the measure walks all over the notion of individual property rights and does little to allay fears of further ground water contamination.

On July 4, 1776, we declared our independence from….?

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Apparently, 26% of us don’t know!!  Or named China or France or Spain…

That is shameful.  BTW, it was England…in case you were wondering.  Write it down somewhere.

Here’s a run-down of the list of Keith’s Worst Persons in the World:

Worst:  Rep Louie “Dumber Than a Truckload of Dumb” Gohmert, who didn’t think to get the name of the Grandma of the Future Terrorist Baby ™.

Worser:  Gov Jan “Losing Her Head” Brewer, for having persistent delusions that the Arizona desert is chock full o’ headless bodies.

Worstest:  26% of us…ugh, don’t make me say it again…

To our commenters!

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One of TP’s trolls seems to have flown over here yesterday. The coward never showed his face, but used intelligence  gathered here over at Think Progress and we all know it can’t be nice if a troll says it.  We have decided, for the time being, to pull yesterday’s thread for your protection. Yesterday’s post and our wicked cesspool parties will in the future be password protected. We need your permisssion to use the wordpress registration email, so we can send you the password to your login e-mail account. Please just say so in the comments to this post and you’ll get the word from us and remember to check that email, if it’s not your regular one.

We are proud and happy to have you all here, so we’re sorry for the inconvenience. By this measure we want to make sure that among a great community you and us, we all can let our hair down without reading about it over at Troll Central.

Music night. Happy Birthday, Michelle

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So sometimes this birthday thing is a learning experience to me. Who the hell is Michelle Branch, this doddering old man wondered? I guess she was a pretty big deal in a world I didn’t occupy, just a few years ago. And, well, by jingo she has a fairly cool voice and isn’t hard on the eyes. What else do we ask of our pop or crossover stars? And the Wreckers? Two purdy girls and some damn good harmonies! Anyway, it’s her birthday!

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CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + 2 H2O and more dead zones result from it

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The balanced formula above shows what happens if methane encounters oxygen. It is not a spontaneous reaction, boys wouldn’t need to light farts if it was, but is helped along either by fire, catalysts or by methanotrophic microorganisms which metabolize methane into CO2 and water.  Methane is found in the permafrost environment e.g. in Siberia and, as global climate change warms up those areas, poses a great risk, because it’s 25-30 times more effective a greenhouse gas as CO2. Here those microorganisms live on top of the permafrost ice and are really beneficial.

The permafrost in the Lena Delta begins only a few centimetres below the surface and extends down to a depth of 600 metres. The ice in the polygon pools starts 50 centimetres below the water surface. Methanogenic micro-organisms live directly on top of the ice and convert organic carbon into methane – almost one third of the organic carbon stored throughout the world is locked up in Arctic permafrost soils. However, methane gas has an extremely large influence on the climate: the greenhouse effect of one molecule of methane is 25 to 30 times greater than that of one molecule of carbon dioxide. (read article)

Methane can be found in arctic mud volcanoes like the Haakon Mosby mud volcano, too. And here, as well, the said methanotrophs exist. At the rim of the volcano.

In the central region, scientists discovered a new bacterium species that use oxygen to feed on methane. In sediments of the sulphur bacteria region, the team found a new group of methanotrophic Archaea (archaic bacteria) that form a symbiosis with bacteria and use sulphate to oxidize methane, a process called the anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM). (read article)

Unfortunately Methane is one of the major components of the BP oil spill, too. A methane explosion is said to be the cause for it.

The deadly blast on board the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas, an investigation by BP has revealed.

A report into last month’s blast said the gas escaped from the oil well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding. (read article)

Biologists now found new dead zones in the Gulf (additionally to the existing ones) caused by the above mentioned effect. This discovery offers a good explanation why unusually many fish and sharks are being seen in the shallow waters off the Gulf of Mexico’s coast. The migration of the fish is obviously only the part that we can really see, what we won’t see ist the extinction of all living things in those oxygen depleted zones that are not able to just swim away. Add the methanotrophs to the oil eating bacteria, that will eventually clean up the (then probably dead) Gulf who also need oxygen for their metabolism and we are looking at another facet of the destruction, which may yet reach extinction level after all.