News-esque – Page 12 – B12 Solipsism

Beneath Dead Sea, Scientists Seek Natural History

December 18, 2010December 18, 2010 Seth Anderson1 Comment

Speaking of the 6,000 year old earth¹, there’s some interesting work being done in the Dead Sea…

EIN GEDI, Israel — Five miles out, nearly to the center of the Dead Sea, an international team of scientists has been drilling beneath the seabed to extract a record of climate change and earthquake history stretching back half a million years.

The New York Times Ein Gedi lies about five miles from the drilling platform The preliminary evidence and clues found halfway through the 40-day project are more than the team could have hoped for. The scientists did not expect to pull up a wood fragment that was roughly 400,000 years old. Nor did they expect to come across a layer of gravel from a mere 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. That finding would seem to indicate that what is now the middle of the Dead Sea — which is really a big salt lake — was once a shore, and that the water level had managed to recover naturally.

(click to continue reading Beneath Dead Sea, Scientists Seek Natural History – NYTimes.com.)

Footnotes:

I am being sarcastic, if you don’t know. The earth is much, much older than 6,000 years old, only the anti-science Christian fundamentalists think otherwise [↩]

Delusions Abound on Energy Savings

August 18, 2010August 18, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

Americans deluded about energy and energy savings? Who would have thought? We’re so well informed about other topics…

When it comes to saving energy, many Americans seem to get it — and at the same time they don’t get it at all.

That’s the takeaway from a new study by researchers from Columbia University, Ohio State University and Carnegie Mellon University who found that people are far more likely to focus on switching off lights or unplugging appliances than on buying new bulbs or more efficient refrigerators. But people’s perceptions of the relative savings of various actions are significantly at variance with reality.

“Participants estimated that line-drying clothes saves more energy than changing the washer’s settings (the reverse is true) and estimated that a central air-conditioner uses only 1.3 times the energy of a room air conditioner (in fact, it uses 3.5 times as much),” the researchers wrote.

Perhaps more to the point, people seem conditioned to think of energy savings as they would of saving money: that they can save by simply reducing use, the study found. But the biggest energy savings are tied to replacing things that use a lot of energy with things that use far less.

Habits like turning out the lights when leaving a room may be virtuous but don’t move the needle much on energy savings. Yet that action was cited by more of those surveyed (19.6 percent) than any other method of saving energy. By contrast, just 3.2 percent cited buying more energy-efficient appliances.

The top five behaviors listed by respondents as having a direct impact on energy savings (turning off the lights, riding a bike or public transportation, changing the thermostat, “changing my lifestyle/not having children” and unplugging appliances or using them less) yield savings that are far outweighed by actions cited far less, like driving a more fuel-efficient car.

(click to continue reading Delusions Abound on Energy Savings – Green Blog – NYTimes.com.)

The full study (PDF) is here, if you are curious about methodology and so on.

In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming

August 17, 2010August 17, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

Bears repeating, a million times: the weather is going to become more extreme as we finish the job of destroying planet Earth. Paid shills like George Will may dispute the facts, may be given a national platform to spew their garbage, but science will triumph.

“The climate is changing,” said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. “Extreme events are occurring with greater frequency, and in many cases with greater intensity.”

He described excessive heat, in particular, as “consistent with our understanding of how the climate responds to increasing greenhouse gases.”

Theory suggests that a world warming up because of those gases will feature heavier rainstorms in summer, bigger snowstorms in winter, more intense droughts in at least some places and more record-breaking heat waves. Scientists and government reports say the statistical evidence shows that much of this is starting to happen.

(click to continue reading In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming – NYTimes.com.)

and

Thermometer measurements show that the earth has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution, when humans began pumping enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. For this January through July, average temperatures were the warmest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Friday.

The warming has moved in fits and starts, and the cumulative increase may sound modest. But it is an average over the entire planet, representing an immense amount of added heat, and is only the beginning of a trend that most experts believe will worsen substantially.

If the earth were not warming, random variations in the weather should cause about the same number of record-breaking high temperatures and record-breaking low temperatures over a given period. But climatologists have long theorized that in a warming world, the added heat would cause more record highs and fewer record lows.

The statistics suggest that is exactly what is happening. In the United States these days, about two record highs are being set for every record low, telltale evidence that amid all the random variation of weather, the trend is toward a warmer climate.

Next winter there will be a snow storm, and some wag or idiot¹ will make a lame joke about Al Gore and cold weather. Remember this quote:

“Global warming, ironically, can actually increase the amount of snow you get,” said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “But it also means the snow season is shorter.”

Footnotes:

the two terms are closely related [↩]

The Web Means Everything Is On Your Permanent Record

July 21, 2010July 21, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

I am lucky that I was a teen and finished college before the digital age. As far as I know, there are no permanent records of my exploits anywhere on the web, accessible by casual web searchers, or overzealous customs officials. Like most 19 year olds, I did some crazy stuff, participated in some questionable behavior with my peers, but never was actually arrested by law enforcement. Thankfully. Because otherwise, I’d worry…

Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her “Drunken Pirate” post was not protected speech.

When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced is only one example of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing — where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever. With Web sites like LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal revelations from Facebook users, ill-advised photos and online chatter are coming back to haunt people months or years after the fact. Examples are proliferating daily: there was the 16-year-old British girl who was fired from her office job for complaining on Facebook, “I’m so totally bored!!”; there was the 66-year-old Canadian psychotherapist who tried to enter the United States but was turned away at the border — and barred permanently from visiting the country — after a border guard’s Internet search found that the therapist had written an article in a philosophy journal describing his experiments 30 years ago with L.S.D.

According to a recent survey by Microsoft, 75 percent of U.S. recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their companies require them to do online research about candidates, and many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants — including search engines, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing sites, personal Web sites and blogs, Twitter and online-gaming sites. Seventy percent of U.S. recruiters report that they have rejected candidates because of information found online, like photos and discussion-board conversations and membership in controversial groups.

(click to continue reading The Web Means the End of Forgetting – NYTimes.com.)

Land of the free, right.

Oh, and since Jeffrey Rosen didn’t specify the 66 year old Canadian psychologist who took LSD in 1967, his name is Andrew Feldmar, and I blogged about this travesty in 2007. He really was barred from entry to the US in May, 2007, because he wrote an article about his drug use – in 1967!

We are Not Ready on Nuclear Power

July 20, 2010July 20, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

Bob Herbert is absolutely right: a catastrophic nuclear accident in a populated area like Ohio or Illinois would instantly trivialize the BP Gulf disaster. Nuclear power has some positive aspects, but the negative consequences are horrific.

[this is actually a coal plant, I think, in northern Indiana]

Americans are not particularly good at learning even the most painful lessons. Denial is our default mode. But at the very least this tragedy in the gulf should push us to look much harder at the systems we need to prevent a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power plant, and for responding to such an event if it occurred.

Right now, we’re not ready.

Nuclear plants are the new hot energy item. The Obama administration is offering federal loan guarantees to encourage the construction of a handful of new plants in the U.S., the first in decades. Not to be outdone, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a certifiable nuke zealot, would like to see 100 new plants built over the next 20 years.

There is no way to overstate how cautiously we need to proceed along this treacherous road. Building nuclear power plants is mind-bogglingly expensive, which is why you need taxpayer money to kick-start the process. But the overriding issues we need to be concerned about, especially in light of our horrendous experience with the oil gushing in the gulf for so long, are safety and security.

We have to be concerned about the very real possibility of a worst-case scenario erupting at one of the many aging nuclear plants already operating (in some cases with safety records that would make your hair stand on end), and at any of the new ones that so many people are calling for.

(click to continue reading Bob Herbert- We’re Not Ready on Nuclear Power – NYTimes.com.)

Nuclear waste, possibility of a meltdown, and the energy corporations that build and maintain nuclear plants are not trustworthy – i.e., are more concerned about quarterly profits, and getting corporate welfare – I’m certain there are other objections, but aren’t these enough?

Christopher Hitchens and Mel Gibson

July 19, 2010July 19, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

Christopher Hitchens is not fooled by Mel Gibson’s publicists – Gibson has been a seething racist for most of his career.

We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.

This schismatic crackpot sect is headed by Mel Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson, a nutty autodidact with a sideline in Holocaust denial. During the controversy over The Passion of the Christ, Gibson junior said that he had never heard anything but the truth from his father. I have some of old man Gibson’s books on my shelf, including his self-published classics Is the Pope Catholic? and The Enemy Is Still Here!, which essentially accuse the current papacy of doing the work of the Antichrist. My favorite sample of his prose style is the following: “Our ‘civilization’ tolerates open sodomy and condones murder of the unborn, but shrinks in horror from burning incorrigible heretics—essentially a charitable act.” He attacks the late Pope John Paul II for having said, in one of his “outreaches” to the Jewish people, “You are our predilect brothers and, in a certain way, one could say our oldest brothers.” Hutton Gibson’s comment? “Abel had an older brother.” I don’t think that there’s much ambiguity there, do you? Like many ultra-conservative Catholics, the Gibsons, père et fils, have never forgiven the Vatican for lifting the charge of deicide against the Jews in 1964.

Nor have they forgiven the British Isles for breaking away from Rome during the 16th-century Reformation and destroying the monopoly of Holy Mother Church. In a series of ultra-violent propaganda movies, from Braveheart to The Patriot, Gibson has represented the English as a generally foul tribe. Those of us who have English descent can of course laugh this off as the writhings of a thwarted theocracy (combined in this case with some symptoms of a colonial inferiority complex), but the historic connection of the Catholic right with European fascism is not so amusing.

(click to continue reading Mel Gibson’s tirades are the distilled violence, cruelty, and bigotry of right-wing Catholic ideology. – By Christopher Hitchens – Slate Magazine.)

Praying to the wrong direction

July 19, 2010July 19, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

Lest a reader think we are singling out Islam for ridicule, we are not, because all religions are by very definition, nuts.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s Muslims learned on Friday they have been praying in the wrong direction, after the country’s highest Islamic authority said its directive on the direction of Mecca actually had people facing Africa.

Muslims are supposed to face the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia during prayer and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) issued an edict in March stipulating westward was the correct direction from the world’s most populous Muslim country.

“But it has been decided that actually the mosques are facing Somalia or Kenya, so we are now suggesting people shift the direction slightly to the north-west,” the head of the MUI, Cholil Ridwan, told Reuters. “There’s no need to knock down mosques, just shift your direction slightly during prayer.”

Ridwan said Muslims need not fear that their prayers have been wasted because they were facing the wrong way.

“Their prayers will still be heard by Allah,” he said.

(click to continue reading Indonesian Muslims told to change prayer direction | Oddly Enough | Reuters.)

This logic¹ makes me giggle – if an Indonesian Muslim is facing the wrong direction while praying, the prayers apparently don’t count. Except Mr. Ridwan reassures the faithful that their prayers were still received by Allah, but if the prayer was still heard, why go to all the trouble of figuring out the precise direction to pray in?

Footnotes:

illogic? [↩]

Tax Cuts For the RIch Means Asphalt Roads Return to Gravel

July 17, 2010July 17, 2010 Seth Anderson2 Comments

If the knuckle-draggers in Washington¹ hadn’t pissed away gazillions of dollars fighting three² concurrent wars – Iraq, Afghanistan, and the so-called War on Terror – while simultaneously reducing the taxes for the wealthy individuals and corporations, perhaps places like North Dakota and Michigan would be able to keep their highways and roads paved.

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Al

abama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as “poor man’s pavement.” Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring “washboard” effect of driving on rutted gravel.

But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.

(click to continue reading Economic Crisis Forces Local Governments to Let Asphalt Roads Return to Gravel – WSJ.com.)

[South Dakota]

On the other hand, presumedly, gravel roads reflect less sun, and thus have some sort of effect upon the temperature of the planet. Maybe it’s a good thing to move away from the American love of automobiles.

Footnotes:

of both “parties” [↩]
or four, if you include the Drug War [↩]

Plants can think and remember

July 14, 2010July 14, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

Odd. We better watch our backs – we as a species have destroyed a lot of plants. If they ever start to communicate with each other, and organize, watch out…

Plants, scientists say, transmit information about light intensity and quality from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to our own nervous systems.

These “electro-chemical signals” are carried by cells that act as “nerves” of the plants.

The researchers used fluorescence imaging to watch the plants respond In their experiment, the scientists showed that light shone on to one leaf caused the whole plant to respond.

And the response, which took the form of light-induced chemical reactions in the leaves, continued in the dark.

This showed, they said, that the plant “remembered” the information encoded in light.

“We shone the light only on the bottom of the plant and we observed changes in the upper part,” explained Professor Stanislaw Karpinski from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland, who led this research.

He presented the findings at the Society for Experimental Biology’s annual meeting in Prague, Czech Republic.

“And the changes proceeded when the light was off… This was a complete surprise.”

(click to continue reading BBC News – Plants ‘can think and remember’.)

William Jasper – and John Newton

July 13, 2010July 13, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

“Parson Weems: A Biographical and Critical Study” (Lawrence Counselman Wroth)

Hmm, always wondered why there are so many Jaspers and Newtons so close to each other…

William Jasper (c. 1750 – October 9, 1779) was a noted American soldier in the Revolutionary War. He was a sergeant in the 2nd South Carolina Regiment. Jasper distinguished himself in the defense of Fort Moultrie on June 28, 1776. When a shell from a British warship shot away the flagstaff, he recovered the South Carolina flag, raised it on a temporary staff, and held it under fire until a new staff was installed . Governor Rutledge gave a golden sword to Jasper in recognition of his bravery. The golden sword is now in the possession of his great great great grandson Jeremy Jasper. In 1779, Sergeant Jasper participated in the Siege of Savannah, led by General Lincoln, which failed to recapture Savannah, Georgia, from the British. He was mortally wounded during an assault on the British forces there. Sgt. Jasper’s story is similar to that of Sgt. John Newton. Several states have adjacent counties named Jasper and Newton, as though these were remembered as a pair, due to the popularity of Parson Weems’ fictionalizing early American history.

Places named after Jasper

Jasper County, Georgia

Jasper County, Illinois

Jasper County, Indiana

Jasper County, Iowa

Jasper County, Mississippi

Jasper County, Missouri

Jasper County, South Carolina

Jasper County, Texas and the city of Jasper, Texas

City of Jasper, Alabama

City of Jasper, Arkansas City of Jasper, Florida

Town of Jasper, Tennessee

City of Jasper, Georgia

City of Jasper, Minnesota

(click to continue reading William Jasper – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Mehserle Guilty in Killing That Inflamed Oakland

July 8, 2010July 8, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

We noted this travesty at the time it occurred, hope Oakland doesn’t explode into riots as result of the light punishment.

A white Bay Area transit officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Thursday by a Los Angeles jury in the shooting death of an unarmed black man on Jan. 1, 2009, ending a closely watched trial that percolated with racial tension and cries for peace in the city of Oakland, Calif., where the killing occurred.

The officer, Johannes Mehserle, 28, had been accused of a more serious charge, second-degree murder, in the death of Oscar Grant III, 22, butcher’s apprentice who was shot while lying face down on a platform after being removed from a Bay Area Rapid Transit train during a fight.

City officials were worried about a reprise of the 2009 riots that erupted in downtown Oakland, with crowds burning cars and smashing storefronts after Mr. Grant’s shooting, which was captured on cellphone video and widely disseminated on the Internet.

(click to continue reading Officer Guilty in Killing That Inflamed Oakland – NYTimes.com.)

Afghanistan and Toxic Sand

June 28, 2010June 28, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

Sounds like another reason to leave Afghanistan sooner than later.

U.S. troops already face plenty of threats in Afghanistan: AK-47–wielding insurgents, improvised bombs, an intransigent and incompetent government. Now add a less familiar challenge to that list of woes: Afghanistan’s toxic sand.

The pulverized turf, it turns out, contains high levels of manganese, silicon, iron, magnesium, aluminum, chromium and other metals that act as neurotoxic agents when ingested. Combine the country’s frequent sandstorms and the kicked-up dust that results from helicopter travel with troops’ nostrils, mouths and pores, and you’ve got an unexpected example of how inhospitable the terrain is for the soon-to-be 98,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines fighting the war.

That’s all according to new research presented this month to a neurotoxicology conference in Oregon by a senior scientist with the Navy Environmental Health Effects Laboratory. That scientist, Palur G. Gunasekar, tells Politics Daily’s Sheila Kaplan that “[a]s the sand extract dose increases at the higher concentration you see cell death.”

(click to continue reading U.S. Troops Face New Threat: Afghanistan’s Toxic Sand | Danger Room | Wired.com.)

CTA Red Line fire

June 21, 2010June 21, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

We happened to be walking past this area, and noticed the commotion:

Investigators worked late into the night Sunday to figure out what had sparked an extra-alarm fire on an underground track that sent 19 people to hospitals for smoke inhalation and respiratory problems.

Five people were transported with serious injuries, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Richard Rosado said. The injured included a 10-year-old boy who was being held overnight at Children’s Memorial Hospital for smoke inhalation. The extent of their injuries was not known Sunday night.

“The smoke was so thick you couldn’t see across the aisle,” said passenger Dillon Johnson, 23. “We all started to sit down on the floor where the smoke wasn’t as bad.”

Fire officials said railroad ties caught fire just before 5 p.m. on the northbound track between the Red Line stops at Chicago Avenue and Clark/Division. Black smoke could be seen billowing from several subway grates and vents in the area, including near Gibsons Bar and Steakhouse on Rush Street. Red Line trains and several bus routes were redirected while firefighters fought the small underground blaze.

Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said it’s unclear what sparked the fire, but that railroad ties occasionally catch fire during the summer heat.

(click to continue reading Red Line fire: 19 people injured in CTA track fire – chicagotribune.com.)

Easily twenty fire trucks, plus various Chicago Transit Authority police cars, a couple of Water Department trucks, and police too. They had cordoned a large area off from cars, but were allowing pedestrians to still walk through, so of course I had to see what was going on.

Also yesterday witnessed a large arrest of some sort on Chicago and State Streets, an arrest that involved 7 or 8 police cars and SUVs, and a dude being detained on the ground in hand cuffs. Still don’t know what that was. Oh, and earlier called 911 when we witnessed a young boy riding his bike swerve against an oncoming taxi¹ and ram his head right into a street light post. We heard the collision from a block away. He was with his father and a couple of brothers, all on bikes, but we were worried he might have sustained a concussion. Didn’t stay to see however, just called for an ambulance.

Crazy day.

Footnotes:

the bikes were going the wrong way on a one way street [↩]

Senator Chuck Schumer and His Intemperate Gaza Talk

June 13, 2010June 13, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

If Senator Charles Schumer were a journalist, like Helen Thomas perhaps, would there be a call for him to resign?

Speaking to the Orthodox Union earlier this week, Chuck Schumer offered a revealing policy rationale for the Gaza blockade—it’s collective economic punishment of the local population:

“The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Torah, in David, in a Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not. The fundamental view is, the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them OUR lad – this is Palestinian thinking .. You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.”

“The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re gonna get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go makes sense. “

I find these sentiments disgusting, but I don’t want to jump all over Schumer with the condemnations too quickly. The important thing in the first instance is to say that it’s good to debate this issue honestly. The Gaza blockade isn’t a security measure designed to prevent Hamas from getting rockets. It’s a collective punishment aimed at making civilians’ lives miserable, while avoiding mass starvation. You can make a case for that if you like, but that’s what you’re making the case for. I’ll note for the dozenth time that the majority of the residents of the Gaza Strip are children, so the moral logic here seems to be particularly grizzly. A policy undertaken with this rationale also seems to be clearly in violation of international humanitarian law.

(click to continue reading Matthew Yglesias » Senator Chuck Schumer Wants to “Strangle” Gaza Residents “Economically” as Collective Punishment.)

Yes, punish the children for the alleged crimes of the parents. What a lovely policy.

Tests Confirm Spreading Oil Plumes in the Gulf

June 9, 2010June 9, 2010 Seth Anderson0 comment

Despite BP’s near-constant denial, these massive plumes of oil are spreading below the surface of the Gulf. Can we all just say in unison, BP sucks!

The government and university researchers confirmed Tuesday that plumes of dispersed oil were spreading far below the ocean surface from the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, raising fresh concern about the potential impact of the spill on sea life.

The tests, the first detailed chemical analyses of water from the deep sea, show that some of the most toxic components of the oil are not necessarily rising to the surface where they can evaporate, as would be expected in a shallow oil leak. Instead, they are drifting through deep water in plumes or layers that stretch as far as 50 miles from the leaking well.

As a rule, the toxic compounds are present at exceedingly low concentrations, the tests found, as would be expected given that they are being diluted in an immense volume of seawater.

“It’s pretty clear that the oil that has been released is becoming more and more dilute,” Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in an interview. “That does not mean it’s unimportant — far from it. The total amount of oil out there is likely very large, and we have yet to understand the full impact of all that hydrocarbon on the gulf ecosystem.”

BP’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, continued to insist Wednesday morning on the “Today” show on NBC that no underwater oil plumes in “large concentrations” have been detected from the spill, saying that it “may be down to how you define what a plume is here.”

But scientists outside the government noted that the plumes appeared to be so large that organisms might be bathed in them for extended periods, possibly long enough to kill eggs or embryos. They said this possibility added greater urgency to the effort to figure out exactly how sea life was being affected, work that remains in its infancy six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded.

(click to continue reading Tests Confirm Spreading Oil Plumes in the Gulf – NYTimes.com.)

Nancy Snow writes:

Hey friends, try this search term “BP Sucks” and see what you find.

Those good folks at British Petroleum don’t want us to miss out on the company’s herculean efforts to clean up the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s why you can find all the BP-sponsored advertising links when you type in more innocuous Google search terms like “oil spill” or “oil spill cleanup.” You’ll find friendly come-ons prominently displayed at the top of your search page with phrases like “Learn more about how BP is helping.”

Seems the company finally got a clue, hmm, over six weeks in, that this might just be a PR debacle of supersize proportions for BP.

I don’t know what Google charges to buy frequency and recency placement in favorable advertising. I do know that it’s a fundamental principle of strategic communication in targeted messaging. When you are hungry, McDonald’s wants you thinking burgers and fries. And when you’re thinking oil spill, BP wants you to click on its version of the story first and keep coming back for more news about how BP is helping.

(click to continue reading Nancy Snow: Google This! BP Sucks, Just Not Enough Oil.)

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this:

Go ahead & Share this: