http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-24/nfl-must-face-antitrust-suits-u-s-high-court-says-update1-.html
NFL Must Face Antitrust Suits, U.S. High Court Says
May 24, 2010
By Greg Stohr
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court opened the way for greater antitrust scrutiny of professional sports leagues, reviving a suit over the National Football League’s agreement with Adidas AG’s Reebok to sell clothing emblazoned with team insignias.
The justices, unanimously overturning a lower court ruling, said the NFL and its franchises aren’t automatically entitled to act as a group in licensing their trademark rights. The majority said judges instead should consider on a case-by-case basis how the league’s business practices affect competition.
“The teams compete in the market for intellectual property,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court. “To a firm making hats, the Saints and the Colts are two potentially competing suppliers of valuable trademarks.”
The ruling is a blow to pro sports leagues, which had sought to win a broad shield from antitrust claims over video- game licenses, television rights, franchise relocation and even player salaries. Only Major League Baseball is exempt from antitrust laws now. The decision may reduce the NFL’s leverage as it tries to negotiate a new contract with its players’ union and avoid a work stoppage after next season.
The case centers on a suit by American Needle Inc., which lost its right to sell team caps in 2000 when the league reached its accord with Reebok, a Massachusetts-based company later acquired by Adidas. American Needle sued the NFL, its teams, their licensing arm and Reebok.
Retail sales of NFL-licensed merchandise in the U.S. and Canada topped $3.2 billion in 2007, according to the Licensing Letter’s Sports Licensing Report, published by EPM Communications Inc. in New York. Sales of pro football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer products combined were more than $9 billion.
NFL Argument
The NFL asked the Supreme Court to declare that franchises operate as a single entity when licensing trademark rights to apparel makers and other vendors. That would have shielded the league and its teams from suits under the federal antitrust law provision that bars conspiracies to restrain trade. The league said trademark licensing helps promote that on-field product.
American Needle, based outside Chicago, said the league structure shouldn’t exempt teams from the usual rule that independently owned businesses face antitrust scrutiny when they act in concert. The company says the Reebok agreement led to price increases.
The Obama administration took a middle ground, saying the NFL is a single entity for only some of its activities.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago threw out the suit, saying collective licensing would help teams “compete against other entertainment providers.” The NFL took the unusual step of joining American Needle in requesting Supreme Court review.
The NFL had backing from the National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and other leagues. Major League Baseball isn’t involved.
Electronic Arts Inc. also supported the NFL. The video-game publisher has an exclusive license to produce video games using NFL players, teams and logos.
The case is American Needle v. National Football League, 08-661.
--Editors: Laurie Asseo, Jim Rubin.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robin Meszoly at rmeszoly@bloomberg.net.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Obama Administration on the Verge of Giant Sell-Out to Conservatives
http://www.alternet.org/news/146961/obama_administration_on_the_verge_of_giant_sell-out_to_conservatives_--_how_to_stop_them/
Obama Administration on the Verge of Giant Sell-Out to Conservatives -- How to Stop Them
May 21, 2010
George Lakoff
The Obama Administration’s move to the right is about to give conservatives a victory they could not have anticipated, even under Bush. HUD, under Obama, submitted legislation called PETRA to Congress that would result in the privatization of all public housing in America.
The new owners would charge ten percent above market rates to impoverished tenants, money that would be mostly paid by the US government (you and me, the taxpayers). To maintain the property, the new owners would take out a mortgage for building repair and maintenance (like a home equity loan), with no cap on interest rates.
With rents set above market rates, the mortgage risk would be attractive to banks. Either they make a huge profit on the mortgages paid for by the government. Or if the government lowers what it will pay for rents, the property goes into foreclosure. The banks get it and can sell it off to developers.
Sooner or later, the housing budget will be cut back and such foreclosures will happen. The structure of the proposal and the realities of Washington make it a virtual certainty.
The banks and developers make a fortune, with the taxpayers paying for it. The public loses its public housing property. The impoverished tenants lose their apartments, or have their rents go way up if they are forced into the private market. Homelessness increases. Government gets smaller. The banks and developers win. It is a Bank Bonanza! The poor and the public lose.
And a precedent is set. The government can privatize any public property: Schools, libraries, national parks, federal buildings — just as has begun to happen in California, where the right-wing governor has started to auction off state property and has even suggested selling off the Supreme Court building.
The rich will get richer, the poor and public get poorer. And the very idea of the public good withers.
This is central to the conservative dream, in which there is no public good — only private goods. And it is a nightmare for democracy.
The irony is that it is happening under the Obama administration. Barack Obama, running for office, gave perhaps the best and clearest characterization of what democracy is about. Democracy, he has said, is based on empathy — on citizens caring about and for each other. That is why we have principles like freedom and fairness for everyone. It is why social responsibility is necessary. The monstrous alternative is having a society where no one cares about or for anyone else.
HUD, under the Obama administration, is about to take a giant step toward that monstrous society.
Here is a quote from the PETRA bill. It’s intent is to:
provide the opportunity for public housing agencies and private owners to convert from current forms of rental assistance under a variety of programs to long-term, property-based contracts that will enhance market-based discipline and enable owners to sustain operations and leverage private financing to address immediate and long-term capital needs and implement energy-efficiency improvements.
Along the way, tenants’ rights will be trampled, since tenants could not longer seek redress from the government through their public officials — because the government would no longer own the buildings.
Stop PETRA. This is urgent. There is a hearing next Tuesday, May 25, before the House Financial Services Committee and the Subcommittee on Housing, organized by Rep. Maxine Waters. Phone: 202-225-2201. Fax: 202-225-7854.
To write to the committee:
http://financialservices.house.gov/contact.html
Write to your Congressperson now.
If you want to sign a petition, go to:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-public-housing.html
Here is a letter from the National Association of HUD Tenants:
http://www.saveourhomes.org/kaymathew/trapositionpaper.pdf
Here is an informational website, with letters, background information, and alternative proposals:
http://lacehh.wordpress.com/
And do what you can to get the word out. This requires a national discussion.
George Lakoff is the author of Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate' (Chelsea Green). He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.
Obama Administration on the Verge of Giant Sell-Out to Conservatives -- How to Stop Them
May 21, 2010
George Lakoff
The Obama Administration’s move to the right is about to give conservatives a victory they could not have anticipated, even under Bush. HUD, under Obama, submitted legislation called PETRA to Congress that would result in the privatization of all public housing in America.
The new owners would charge ten percent above market rates to impoverished tenants, money that would be mostly paid by the US government (you and me, the taxpayers). To maintain the property, the new owners would take out a mortgage for building repair and maintenance (like a home equity loan), with no cap on interest rates.
With rents set above market rates, the mortgage risk would be attractive to banks. Either they make a huge profit on the mortgages paid for by the government. Or if the government lowers what it will pay for rents, the property goes into foreclosure. The banks get it and can sell it off to developers.
Sooner or later, the housing budget will be cut back and such foreclosures will happen. The structure of the proposal and the realities of Washington make it a virtual certainty.
The banks and developers make a fortune, with the taxpayers paying for it. The public loses its public housing property. The impoverished tenants lose their apartments, or have their rents go way up if they are forced into the private market. Homelessness increases. Government gets smaller. The banks and developers win. It is a Bank Bonanza! The poor and the public lose.
And a precedent is set. The government can privatize any public property: Schools, libraries, national parks, federal buildings — just as has begun to happen in California, where the right-wing governor has started to auction off state property and has even suggested selling off the Supreme Court building.
The rich will get richer, the poor and public get poorer. And the very idea of the public good withers.
This is central to the conservative dream, in which there is no public good — only private goods. And it is a nightmare for democracy.
The irony is that it is happening under the Obama administration. Barack Obama, running for office, gave perhaps the best and clearest characterization of what democracy is about. Democracy, he has said, is based on empathy — on citizens caring about and for each other. That is why we have principles like freedom and fairness for everyone. It is why social responsibility is necessary. The monstrous alternative is having a society where no one cares about or for anyone else.
HUD, under the Obama administration, is about to take a giant step toward that monstrous society.
Here is a quote from the PETRA bill. It’s intent is to:
provide the opportunity for public housing agencies and private owners to convert from current forms of rental assistance under a variety of programs to long-term, property-based contracts that will enhance market-based discipline and enable owners to sustain operations and leverage private financing to address immediate and long-term capital needs and implement energy-efficiency improvements.
Along the way, tenants’ rights will be trampled, since tenants could not longer seek redress from the government through their public officials — because the government would no longer own the buildings.
Stop PETRA. This is urgent. There is a hearing next Tuesday, May 25, before the House Financial Services Committee and the Subcommittee on Housing, organized by Rep. Maxine Waters. Phone: 202-225-2201. Fax: 202-225-7854.
To write to the committee:
http://financialservices.house.gov/contact.html
Write to your Congressperson now.
If you want to sign a petition, go to:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-public-housing.html
Here is a letter from the National Association of HUD Tenants:
http://www.saveourhomes.org/kaymathew/trapositionpaper.pdf
Here is an informational website, with letters, background information, and alternative proposals:
http://lacehh.wordpress.com/
And do what you can to get the word out. This requires a national discussion.
George Lakoff is the author of Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate' (Chelsea Green). He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.
Russell Pearce's Drive to Outlaw "Anchor Babies"
"Pearce has proposed equally odious legislation previously, such as only allowing Americans to wed Americans..."
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2010/05/russell_pearce_wants_to_eat_yo.php
Feathered Bastard
Russell Pearce's Drive to Outlaw "Anchor Babies," Otherwise Known as American Citizens
Stephen Lemons, Thursday, May. 20 2010
Pearce: The sick, racist mind behind SB 1070 remains filled with bloodlust
Channel 5/KPHO's Morgan Loew did a segment for last night's newscast on state Senator Russell Pearce's plan to punish the American citizen children of undocumented parents, by making it illegal to accept or issue the birth certificate of such a child, unless one parent is a citizen.
In fact, Pearce's plans to do away with the kids nativist, anti-immigration wackos call "anchor babies" has been stewing in his hateful noggin for some time. Back in 2008, when I dubbed Pearce "Mr. Ethnic Cleansing," he had a whole slew of Nuremberg-type laws he was trying to push through the legislature.
Of the proposal concerning American children born to undocumented parents, I wrote at the time that:
Pearce has made known his intention to put a referendum on the November ballot that would prohibit hospitals from issuing birth certificates to children born of illegal parents. Never mind that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution clearly states, that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," and that, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The idea behind this proposal is something like a blood test for citizenship, something that we thankfully do not have in this country. But Pearce ain't letting the Constitution get in his way, nor human decency, nor shame.
Last night, Loew revealed some nasty e-mails Pearce has received and sent from his state Senate office account. One of those written to Pearce was chilling:
"If we are going to have an effect on the anchor baby racket, we need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that's the way nature made it. Men don't drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do."
Pearce found nothing objectionable to the sentiment or the language. Keep in mind, this is the primary sponsor of SB 1070, a man who wants to be President of the state Senate, though he is already very powerful as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Remember also that if Governor Jan Brewer is elected in November, there will be no veto to stand in his way.
Pearce has proposed equally odious legislation previously, such as only allowing Americans to wed Americans, sanctioning landlords who knowingly rent to illegal aliens, and so forth.
There have been some in the local media who have been critical of the use of the term "ethnic cleansing" to describe what's going on with SB 1070. All I can do is laugh. They have no idea how bad it's about to get.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2010/05/russell_pearce_wants_to_eat_yo.php
Feathered Bastard
Russell Pearce's Drive to Outlaw "Anchor Babies," Otherwise Known as American Citizens
Stephen Lemons, Thursday, May. 20 2010
Pearce: The sick, racist mind behind SB 1070 remains filled with bloodlust
Channel 5/KPHO's Morgan Loew did a segment for last night's newscast on state Senator Russell Pearce's plan to punish the American citizen children of undocumented parents, by making it illegal to accept or issue the birth certificate of such a child, unless one parent is a citizen.
In fact, Pearce's plans to do away with the kids nativist, anti-immigration wackos call "anchor babies" has been stewing in his hateful noggin for some time. Back in 2008, when I dubbed Pearce "Mr. Ethnic Cleansing," he had a whole slew of Nuremberg-type laws he was trying to push through the legislature.
Of the proposal concerning American children born to undocumented parents, I wrote at the time that:
Pearce has made known his intention to put a referendum on the November ballot that would prohibit hospitals from issuing birth certificates to children born of illegal parents. Never mind that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution clearly states, that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," and that, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The idea behind this proposal is something like a blood test for citizenship, something that we thankfully do not have in this country. But Pearce ain't letting the Constitution get in his way, nor human decency, nor shame.
Last night, Loew revealed some nasty e-mails Pearce has received and sent from his state Senate office account. One of those written to Pearce was chilling:
"If we are going to have an effect on the anchor baby racket, we need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that's the way nature made it. Men don't drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do."
Pearce found nothing objectionable to the sentiment or the language. Keep in mind, this is the primary sponsor of SB 1070, a man who wants to be President of the state Senate, though he is already very powerful as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Remember also that if Governor Jan Brewer is elected in November, there will be no veto to stand in his way.
Pearce has proposed equally odious legislation previously, such as only allowing Americans to wed Americans, sanctioning landlords who knowingly rent to illegal aliens, and so forth.
There have been some in the local media who have been critical of the use of the term "ethnic cleansing" to describe what's going on with SB 1070. All I can do is laugh. They have no idea how bad it's about to get.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Nationalize BP and Other Criminal Corporations
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/20-10
Thursday, May 20, 2010 by Ted Rall
Nationalize BP and Other Criminal Corporations
by Ted Rall
The Supreme Court says that corporations have the same rights as individuals. When they misbehave, shouldn't they face consequences as serious as those imposed upon an individual?
It goes without saying that a person who commits a crime ought to face punishment proportional to the offense. Large and midsize corporations, which employ thousands of employees, have far vaster reach and power than even the wealthiest ordinary citizens. So their crimes can be breathtaking in scope. The 1984 industrial catastrophe at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India killed 15,000 people. An additional 200,000 have since suffered serious injuries. Compared to the boards of directors of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, which bought the company in 2001, Ted Bundy was small potatoes.
Unlike small-time serial killers, however, corporations get away with murder. For at least a year, management of the Toyota auto company knew that brakes in millions of its cars might fail. A 2009 ABC News investigation found that at least 16 people had died. "Safety analysts found an estimated 2000 cases in which owners of Toyota cars including Camry, Prius and Lexus, reported that their cars surged without warning up to speeds of 100 miles per hour," reported the network. Yet Toyota did nothing. Instead they blamed their customers, saying they were resting their floormats on the gas pedals.
On May 18th, Toyota finally faced the wrath of the federal government. Its "punishment": a paltry $16.5 million fine, not one cent of which went to the victims or their families. The fine, which amounted to a ridiculous 5.5 percent of its 2009 profit, went into the U.S. Treasury's general fund--in other words, to kill Afghans and Iraqis.
Available to Congress and the President is a far more appropriate punishment: nationalization without compensation. Toyota's American operations ought to be seized and operated by the federal government. The top officials of the parent company in Japan, whose willful negligence murdered at least 16 American citizens, ought to be extradited and face trial in U.S. federal court.
Extreme? Expropriating private property is commonplace--when the target is Joe and Jane Sixpack. Just ask hundreds of homeowners of New London, Connecticut. When the city destroyed an entire neighborhood to build a luxury office development, the U.S. Supreme Court backed them up, radically expanding the concept of eminent domain. Unlike a lot of evil corporations, those homeowners didn't do anything wrong.
The U.S. government has not only the right but the duty to take over criminal corporations.
A 5.5 percent fine is a slap on the wrist. Nationalizing a company, on the other hand, protects the public interest. Hitting corporations in the balance sheet is a genuine deterrent to the managers of other companies contemplating lawless behavior. It brings in significant cash assets that can be used to compensate the victims of the company's criminal activities.
Nationalization can also serve the interest of public safety. The mine explosion that left at least 25 coal miners dead in West Virginia earlier this year left members of the public feeling helpless and frustrated at the slow and inept rescue attempt by Massey Energy, the site's owner and operator. Setting aside the obvious argument that natural resources ought to be exploited for the benefit of the American people rather than private businesspeople, the rescue operation would have benefited from the involvement of top experts at such government agencies as the Army Corps of Engineers.
In 2009 the Upper Big Branch mine received 450 safety violations. Massey Energy paid the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration less than $1 million total. That's less than one percent of its annual profits. That's roughly $2,000 per violation.
If you get caught speeding in Virginia, you'll pay more than what Massey Energy pays for deliberately risking the lives of its employees.
British Petroleum is spending $6 million a day on its response to the explosion at its Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. But that's a drop in the bucket next to the cost that will be borne by the people of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. The disaster is spilling the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez wreck into the Gulf every four days--and it's been three weeks. Thousands of fishermen will be ruined. The tourism industry, already in trouble due to the economic collapse, will be devastated. The full extent of the ecological damage--dead animals and aquatic plants, huge dead zones devoid of oxygen--won't be understood for years.
BP failed to ensure that a "blowout preventer" at the Deepwater Horizon would work in the event of an emergency. But their real crime was drilling for oil 5,000 feet down in the first place.
Here again, it's easy to see how nationalization might help. Rather than wait for the clueless execs at BP to come up with a solution, a BP seized by the federal government (its American operations, anyway) would come under the jurisdiction of an organization that could assign experts from NOAA and the U.S. Navy, among other agencies, to stop the leak. After the leak is plugged, the publicly-owned former BP's profits would help defray the costs of the cleanup and extend benefits to fisherman and other victims.
Imagine the possibilities. What if Too Big to Fail had been turned into Too Big to Resist?
As a nationalized asset Citibank, which received $306 billion in bailouts, would be worth $152 trillion to taxpayers. Goldman Sachs got $15 billion; they're worth $70 trillion. Sell them off and no one would ever pay college tuition again. Or to see a doctor. Or we could give everyone a 50 percent tax cut. We're a rich country--the problem is that out-of-control corporations are hogging the wealth.
Businessmen charter corporations for the express purpose of avoiding individual legal liability. Isn't it high time we started holding criminal businessmen accountable?
© 2010 Ted Rall
Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
Thursday, May 20, 2010 by Ted Rall
Nationalize BP and Other Criminal Corporations
by Ted Rall
The Supreme Court says that corporations have the same rights as individuals. When they misbehave, shouldn't they face consequences as serious as those imposed upon an individual?
It goes without saying that a person who commits a crime ought to face punishment proportional to the offense. Large and midsize corporations, which employ thousands of employees, have far vaster reach and power than even the wealthiest ordinary citizens. So their crimes can be breathtaking in scope. The 1984 industrial catastrophe at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India killed 15,000 people. An additional 200,000 have since suffered serious injuries. Compared to the boards of directors of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, which bought the company in 2001, Ted Bundy was small potatoes.
Unlike small-time serial killers, however, corporations get away with murder. For at least a year, management of the Toyota auto company knew that brakes in millions of its cars might fail. A 2009 ABC News investigation found that at least 16 people had died. "Safety analysts found an estimated 2000 cases in which owners of Toyota cars including Camry, Prius and Lexus, reported that their cars surged without warning up to speeds of 100 miles per hour," reported the network. Yet Toyota did nothing. Instead they blamed their customers, saying they were resting their floormats on the gas pedals.
On May 18th, Toyota finally faced the wrath of the federal government. Its "punishment": a paltry $16.5 million fine, not one cent of which went to the victims or their families. The fine, which amounted to a ridiculous 5.5 percent of its 2009 profit, went into the U.S. Treasury's general fund--in other words, to kill Afghans and Iraqis.
Available to Congress and the President is a far more appropriate punishment: nationalization without compensation. Toyota's American operations ought to be seized and operated by the federal government. The top officials of the parent company in Japan, whose willful negligence murdered at least 16 American citizens, ought to be extradited and face trial in U.S. federal court.
Extreme? Expropriating private property is commonplace--when the target is Joe and Jane Sixpack. Just ask hundreds of homeowners of New London, Connecticut. When the city destroyed an entire neighborhood to build a luxury office development, the U.S. Supreme Court backed them up, radically expanding the concept of eminent domain. Unlike a lot of evil corporations, those homeowners didn't do anything wrong.
The U.S. government has not only the right but the duty to take over criminal corporations.
A 5.5 percent fine is a slap on the wrist. Nationalizing a company, on the other hand, protects the public interest. Hitting corporations in the balance sheet is a genuine deterrent to the managers of other companies contemplating lawless behavior. It brings in significant cash assets that can be used to compensate the victims of the company's criminal activities.
Nationalization can also serve the interest of public safety. The mine explosion that left at least 25 coal miners dead in West Virginia earlier this year left members of the public feeling helpless and frustrated at the slow and inept rescue attempt by Massey Energy, the site's owner and operator. Setting aside the obvious argument that natural resources ought to be exploited for the benefit of the American people rather than private businesspeople, the rescue operation would have benefited from the involvement of top experts at such government agencies as the Army Corps of Engineers.
In 2009 the Upper Big Branch mine received 450 safety violations. Massey Energy paid the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration less than $1 million total. That's less than one percent of its annual profits. That's roughly $2,000 per violation.
If you get caught speeding in Virginia, you'll pay more than what Massey Energy pays for deliberately risking the lives of its employees.
British Petroleum is spending $6 million a day on its response to the explosion at its Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. But that's a drop in the bucket next to the cost that will be borne by the people of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. The disaster is spilling the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez wreck into the Gulf every four days--and it's been three weeks. Thousands of fishermen will be ruined. The tourism industry, already in trouble due to the economic collapse, will be devastated. The full extent of the ecological damage--dead animals and aquatic plants, huge dead zones devoid of oxygen--won't be understood for years.
BP failed to ensure that a "blowout preventer" at the Deepwater Horizon would work in the event of an emergency. But their real crime was drilling for oil 5,000 feet down in the first place.
Here again, it's easy to see how nationalization might help. Rather than wait for the clueless execs at BP to come up with a solution, a BP seized by the federal government (its American operations, anyway) would come under the jurisdiction of an organization that could assign experts from NOAA and the U.S. Navy, among other agencies, to stop the leak. After the leak is plugged, the publicly-owned former BP's profits would help defray the costs of the cleanup and extend benefits to fisherman and other victims.
Imagine the possibilities. What if Too Big to Fail had been turned into Too Big to Resist?
As a nationalized asset Citibank, which received $306 billion in bailouts, would be worth $152 trillion to taxpayers. Goldman Sachs got $15 billion; they're worth $70 trillion. Sell them off and no one would ever pay college tuition again. Or to see a doctor. Or we could give everyone a 50 percent tax cut. We're a rich country--the problem is that out-of-control corporations are hogging the wealth.
Businessmen charter corporations for the express purpose of avoiding individual legal liability. Isn't it high time we started holding criminal businessmen accountable?
© 2010 Ted Rall
Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
Is it time to blow up the leaking Gulf oil well?
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/it-time-blow-leaking-gulf-oil-well-b
Is it time to blow up the leaking Gulf oil well?
BP doing its best to keep that option under wraps
David Neiwert
Monday May 17, 2010
Shepard Smith had a fascinating segment on the catastrophic Gulf oil spill today, featuring an interview with a former nuclear-sub captain who argued persuasively that it was time -- past time, really -- to blow up that leaking oil well in the Gulf and put an end to the massive pollution that's resulted from its being open.
Smith originally brought on Christopher Brownfield to discuss the potential for using a nuclear bomb to stop the leak, and Brownfield said that yes, it was decided a viable way to stop it -- it has been done four times previously. But he gave many compelling reasons NOT to use a nuclear warhead for the job -- the biggest one being that the same job could be accomplished with conventional explosives.
So why aren't we talking about doing this? Well, Brownfield explained that too:
Brownfield: If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone. They lose hundreds of millions of dollars, from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well.
As Brownfield explains, "We need to seal this thing off." Desperately. But why hasn't anyone been bringing a complete shutdown of the well to the table?
Brownfield: Yes, I think -- stopping the spill immediately. And the reason why we haven't seen that option is because, frankly, BP is still at the helm. I think President Obama needs to take charge of this, bring all the assets of our military to bear, bring the U.S. Army Corps of engineers, bring the U.S. Navy, and bring in all the private-sector organizations that have the equipment for deep-sea operations to make this happen. Let's explode this, collapse the well, and put an end to it.
I don't know about the rest of you but this story seems like it should be the final straw:
Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
If Brownfield is right, BP has had its chance to save its well. The time has run out.
If Brownfield is right, it's time for the president to seize control of the situation and blow this well up.
Is it time to blow up the leaking Gulf oil well?
BP doing its best to keep that option under wraps
David Neiwert
Monday May 17, 2010
Shepard Smith had a fascinating segment on the catastrophic Gulf oil spill today, featuring an interview with a former nuclear-sub captain who argued persuasively that it was time -- past time, really -- to blow up that leaking oil well in the Gulf and put an end to the massive pollution that's resulted from its being open.
Smith originally brought on Christopher Brownfield to discuss the potential for using a nuclear bomb to stop the leak, and Brownfield said that yes, it was decided a viable way to stop it -- it has been done four times previously. But he gave many compelling reasons NOT to use a nuclear warhead for the job -- the biggest one being that the same job could be accomplished with conventional explosives.
So why aren't we talking about doing this? Well, Brownfield explained that too:
Brownfield: If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone. They lose hundreds of millions of dollars, from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well.
As Brownfield explains, "We need to seal this thing off." Desperately. But why hasn't anyone been bringing a complete shutdown of the well to the table?
Brownfield: Yes, I think -- stopping the spill immediately. And the reason why we haven't seen that option is because, frankly, BP is still at the helm. I think President Obama needs to take charge of this, bring all the assets of our military to bear, bring the U.S. Army Corps of engineers, bring the U.S. Navy, and bring in all the private-sector organizations that have the equipment for deep-sea operations to make this happen. Let's explode this, collapse the well, and put an end to it.
I don't know about the rest of you but this story seems like it should be the final straw:
Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
If Brownfield is right, BP has had its chance to save its well. The time has run out.
If Brownfield is right, it's time for the president to seize control of the situation and blow this well up.
Month after oil spill, why is BP still in charge?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_bp_in_charge
Month after oil spill, why is BP still in charge?
Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writer
Fri May 21, 2010
WASHINGTON – Days after the Gulf Coast oil spill, the Obama administration pledged to keep its "boot on the throat" of BP to make sure the company did all it could to cap the gushing leak and clean up the spill.
But a month after the April 20 explosion, anger is growing about why BP PLC is still in charge of the response.
"I'm tired of being nice. I'm tired of working as a team," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana.
"The government should have stepped in and not just taken BP's word," declared Wayne Stone of Marathon, Fla., an avid diver who worries about the spill's effect on the ecosystem.
That sense of frustration is shared by an increasing number of Gulf Coast residents, elected officials and environmental groups who have called for the government to simply take over.
In fact, the government is overseeing things. But the official responsible for that says he still understands the discontent.
"If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I'm frustrated, too," said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen.
"Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can't do something about a very big problem," Allen told The Associated Press Friday.
Still, as simple as it may seem for the government to just take over, the law prevents it, Allen said.
After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents — including paying for all cleanup — with oversight by federal agencies. Spills on land are overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, offshore spills by the Coast Guard.
"The basic notion is you hold the responsible party accountable, with regime oversight" from the government, Allen said. "BP has not been relieved of that responsibility, nor have they been relieved for penalties or for oversight."
He and Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry, the federal onsite coordinator, direct virtually everything BP does in response to the spill — and with a few exceptions have received full cooperation, Allen said.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was even more emphatic.
"There's nothing that we think can and should be done that isn't being done. Nothing," Gibbs said Friday during a lengthy, often testy exchange with reporters about the response to the oil disaster.
There are no powers of intervention that the federal government has available but has opted not to use, Gibbs said.
Asked if President Barack Obama had confidence in BP, Gibbs said only: "We are continuing to push BP to do everything that they can."
The White House is expected to announce Saturday that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and ex-EPA Administrator William K. Reilly will lead a presidential commission investigating the oil spill. Graham is a Democrat. Reilly served as EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush. The commission's inquiry will range from the causes of the spill to the safety of offshore oil drilling.
BP spokesman Neil Chapman said the federal government has been "an integral part of the response" to the oil spill since shortly after the April 20 explosion.
"There are many federal agencies here in the Unified Command, and they've been part of that within days of the incident," said Chapman, who works out of a joint response site in Louisiana, near the site of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Criticism of the cleanup response has spread beyond BP. On Friday, the Texas lab contracted to test samples of water contaminated by the spill defended itself against complaints that it has a conflict of interest because it does other work for BP.
TDI-Brooks International Inc., which points to its staffers' experience handling samples from the Exxon Valdez disaster, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helped audit the lab and approved its methods.
"A typical state laboratory does not have this experience or capacity," TDI president James M. Brooks said.
The company's client list includes federal and state agencies along with dozens of oil companies, among them BP, a connection first reported by The New York Times. TDI-Brooks said about half of the lab's revenue comes from government work.
Test results on Deepwater Horizon samples will figure prominently in lawsuits and other judgments seeking to put a dollar value on the damage caused by the spill.
Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, who traveled to the Gulf the day after the explosion and has coordinated Interior's response to the spill, rejected the notion that BP is telling the federal government what to do.
"They are lashed in," Hayes said of BP. "They need approval for everything they do."
If BP is lashed to the government, the tether goes both ways. A large part of what the government knows about the oil spill comes from BP.
The oil company helps staff the command center in Robert, La., which publishes daily reports on efforts to contain, disperse and skim oil.
Some of the information flowing into the command center comes from undersea robots run by BP or ships ultimately being paid by BP. When the center reported Friday that nearly 9 million gallons of an oil-water mixture had been skimmed from the ocean surface, those statistics came from barges and other vessels funded by BP.
Allen, the incident commander, said the main problem for federal responders is the unique nature of the spill — 5,000 feet below the surface with no human access.
"This is really closer to Apollo 13 than Exxon Valdez," he said, referring to a near-disastrous Moon mission 40 years ago.
"Access to this well-site is through technology that is owned in the private sector," Allen said, referring to remotely operated vehicles and sensors owned by BP.
Even so, the company has largely done what officials have asked, Allen said. Most recently, it responded to an EPA directive to find a less toxic chemical dispersant to break up the oil underwater.
In two instances — finding samples from the bottom of the ocean to test dispersants and distributing booms to block the oil — BP did not respond as quickly as officials had hoped, Allen said. In both cases they ultimately complied.
"Personally, whenever I have problem I call (BP CEO) Tony Hayward" on his cell phone, Allen said.
___
Associated Press writers Frederic J. Frommer and Ben Feller in Washington, Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, Matt Sedensky in Marathon, Fla., Ray Henry in Atlanta and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., and Michelle Roberts in San Antonio contributed to this story.
Month after oil spill, why is BP still in charge?
Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writer
Fri May 21, 2010
WASHINGTON – Days after the Gulf Coast oil spill, the Obama administration pledged to keep its "boot on the throat" of BP to make sure the company did all it could to cap the gushing leak and clean up the spill.
But a month after the April 20 explosion, anger is growing about why BP PLC is still in charge of the response.
"I'm tired of being nice. I'm tired of working as a team," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana.
"The government should have stepped in and not just taken BP's word," declared Wayne Stone of Marathon, Fla., an avid diver who worries about the spill's effect on the ecosystem.
That sense of frustration is shared by an increasing number of Gulf Coast residents, elected officials and environmental groups who have called for the government to simply take over.
In fact, the government is overseeing things. But the official responsible for that says he still understands the discontent.
"If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I'm frustrated, too," said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen.
"Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can't do something about a very big problem," Allen told The Associated Press Friday.
Still, as simple as it may seem for the government to just take over, the law prevents it, Allen said.
After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents — including paying for all cleanup — with oversight by federal agencies. Spills on land are overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, offshore spills by the Coast Guard.
"The basic notion is you hold the responsible party accountable, with regime oversight" from the government, Allen said. "BP has not been relieved of that responsibility, nor have they been relieved for penalties or for oversight."
He and Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry, the federal onsite coordinator, direct virtually everything BP does in response to the spill — and with a few exceptions have received full cooperation, Allen said.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was even more emphatic.
"There's nothing that we think can and should be done that isn't being done. Nothing," Gibbs said Friday during a lengthy, often testy exchange with reporters about the response to the oil disaster.
There are no powers of intervention that the federal government has available but has opted not to use, Gibbs said.
Asked if President Barack Obama had confidence in BP, Gibbs said only: "We are continuing to push BP to do everything that they can."
The White House is expected to announce Saturday that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and ex-EPA Administrator William K. Reilly will lead a presidential commission investigating the oil spill. Graham is a Democrat. Reilly served as EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush. The commission's inquiry will range from the causes of the spill to the safety of offshore oil drilling.
BP spokesman Neil Chapman said the federal government has been "an integral part of the response" to the oil spill since shortly after the April 20 explosion.
"There are many federal agencies here in the Unified Command, and they've been part of that within days of the incident," said Chapman, who works out of a joint response site in Louisiana, near the site of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Criticism of the cleanup response has spread beyond BP. On Friday, the Texas lab contracted to test samples of water contaminated by the spill defended itself against complaints that it has a conflict of interest because it does other work for BP.
TDI-Brooks International Inc., which points to its staffers' experience handling samples from the Exxon Valdez disaster, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helped audit the lab and approved its methods.
"A typical state laboratory does not have this experience or capacity," TDI president James M. Brooks said.
The company's client list includes federal and state agencies along with dozens of oil companies, among them BP, a connection first reported by The New York Times. TDI-Brooks said about half of the lab's revenue comes from government work.
Test results on Deepwater Horizon samples will figure prominently in lawsuits and other judgments seeking to put a dollar value on the damage caused by the spill.
Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, who traveled to the Gulf the day after the explosion and has coordinated Interior's response to the spill, rejected the notion that BP is telling the federal government what to do.
"They are lashed in," Hayes said of BP. "They need approval for everything they do."
If BP is lashed to the government, the tether goes both ways. A large part of what the government knows about the oil spill comes from BP.
The oil company helps staff the command center in Robert, La., which publishes daily reports on efforts to contain, disperse and skim oil.
Some of the information flowing into the command center comes from undersea robots run by BP or ships ultimately being paid by BP. When the center reported Friday that nearly 9 million gallons of an oil-water mixture had been skimmed from the ocean surface, those statistics came from barges and other vessels funded by BP.
Allen, the incident commander, said the main problem for federal responders is the unique nature of the spill — 5,000 feet below the surface with no human access.
"This is really closer to Apollo 13 than Exxon Valdez," he said, referring to a near-disastrous Moon mission 40 years ago.
"Access to this well-site is through technology that is owned in the private sector," Allen said, referring to remotely operated vehicles and sensors owned by BP.
Even so, the company has largely done what officials have asked, Allen said. Most recently, it responded to an EPA directive to find a less toxic chemical dispersant to break up the oil underwater.
In two instances — finding samples from the bottom of the ocean to test dispersants and distributing booms to block the oil — BP did not respond as quickly as officials had hoped, Allen said. In both cases they ultimately complied.
"Personally, whenever I have problem I call (BP CEO) Tony Hayward" on his cell phone, Allen said.
___
Associated Press writers Frederic J. Frommer and Ben Feller in Washington, Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, Matt Sedensky in Marathon, Fla., Ray Henry in Atlanta and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., and Michelle Roberts in San Antonio contributed to this story.
Cleaning oil-soaked wetlands may be impossible
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/1310ap_us_oil_spill_impossible_cleanup.html
Cleaning oil-soaked wetlands may be impossible
By MATTHEW BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
May 22, 2010
NEW ORLEANS -- The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said.
Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil.
They warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good. The only viable option for many impacted areas is to do nothing and let nature break down the spill.
More than 50 miles of Louisiana's delicate shoreline already have been soiled by the massive slick unleashed after the Deepwater Horizon rig burned and sank last month. Officials fear oil eventually could invade wetlands and beaches from Texas to Florida. Louisiana is expected to be hit hardest.
On Saturday, a major pelican rookery was awash in oil off Louisiana's coast. Hundreds of birds nest on the island, and an Associated Press photographer saw some birds and their eggs stained with the ooze. Nests were perched in mangroves directly above patches of crude.
Plaquemines Parish workers put booms around the island, but puddles of oil were inside the barrier.
"Oil in the marshes is the worst-case scenario," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the head of the federal effort to contain and clean up the spill.
Also Saturday, BP told federal regulators it plans to continue using a contentious chemical dispersant, despite orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to look for less toxic alternatives. BP said in a letter to the EPA that Corexit 9500 "remains the best option for subsea application."
The EPA didn't immediately comment on BP's decision.
Oil that has rolled into shoreline wetlands coats the stalks and leaves of plants such as roseau cane - the fabric that holds together an ecosystem that is essential to the region's fishing industry and a much-needed buffer against Gulf hurricanes. Soon, oil will smother those plants and choke off their supply of air and nutrients.
In some eddies and protected inlets, the ochre-colored crude has pooled beneath the water's surface, forming clumps several inches deep.
With the seafloor leak still gushing at least hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, the damage is only getting worse. Millions of gallons already have leaked so far.
Coast Guard officials said the spill's impact now stretches across a 150-mile swath, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.
Over time, experts say weather and natural microbes will break down most of the oil. However, the crude will surely poison plants and wildlife in the months - even years - it will take for the syrupy muck to dissipate.
Back in 1989, crews fighting the Exxon Valdez tanker spill - which unleashed almost 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound - used pressure hoses and rakes to clean the shores. The Gulf Coast is just too fragile for that: those tactics could blast apart the peat-like soils that hold the marshes together.
Hundreds of miles of bayous and man-made canals crisscross the coast's exterior, offering numerous entry points for the crude. Access is difficult and time-intensive, even in the best of circumstances.
"Just the compaction of humanity bringing equipment in, walking on them, will kill them," said David White, a wetlands ecologist from Loyola University in New Orleans.
Marshes offer a vital line of defense against Gulf storms, blunting their fury before they hit populated areas. Louisiana and the federal government have spent hundreds of millions of dollars rebuilding barriers that were wiped out by hurricanes, notably Katrina in 2005.
They also act as nursery grounds for shrimp, crabs, oysters - the backbone of the region's fishing industry. Hundreds of thousands of migratory birds nest in the wetlands' inner reaches, a complex network of bayous, bays and man-made canals.
To keep oil from pushing deep into Louisiana's marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal and officials from several coastal parishes want permission to erect a $350 million network of sand berms linking the state's barrier islands and headlands.
That plan is awaiting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
After surveying oil-stricken areas Saturday, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said the berms were the marshes' last hope.
"It's getting in between all the cane and it's working through from one bayou to the next," he said.
Smaller spills have been occurring in the marshes for decades. In the past, cleanup crews would sometimes slice out oiled vegetation and take it to a landfill, said Andy Nyman with Louisiana State University.
But with the plants gone, water from the gulf would roll in and wash away the roots, turning wetlands to open water.
Adm. Allen said that where conditions are right, crews could set fire to oil-coated plants.
Nyman and other experts, though, warn it's tricky. If the marsh is too wet, the oil won't burn. Too dry, the roots burn and the marsh can be ruined.
BP PLC - which leased the sunken rig and is responsible for the cleanup - said Saturday that cleanup crews have started more direct cleanup methods along Pass a Loutre in Plaquemines Parish. Shallow water skimmers were attempting to remove the oil from the top of the marsh.
Streams of water could later be used in a bid to wash oil from between cane stalks.
In other cases, the company will rely on "bioremediation" - letting oil-eating microbes do the work.
"Nature has a way of helping the situation," said BP spokesman John Curry.
But Nyman said the dispersants could slow the microbes from breaking down the oil.
White, the Loyola scientist, predicted at least short-term ruin for some of the wetlands he's been studying for three decades. Under a worst-case scenario, he said the damage could exceed the 217 square miles of wetlands lost during the 2005 hurricane season.
"When I say that my stomach turns," he said.
Cleaning oil-soaked wetlands may be impossible
By MATTHEW BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
May 22, 2010
NEW ORLEANS -- The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said.
Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil.
They warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good. The only viable option for many impacted areas is to do nothing and let nature break down the spill.
More than 50 miles of Louisiana's delicate shoreline already have been soiled by the massive slick unleashed after the Deepwater Horizon rig burned and sank last month. Officials fear oil eventually could invade wetlands and beaches from Texas to Florida. Louisiana is expected to be hit hardest.
On Saturday, a major pelican rookery was awash in oil off Louisiana's coast. Hundreds of birds nest on the island, and an Associated Press photographer saw some birds and their eggs stained with the ooze. Nests were perched in mangroves directly above patches of crude.
Plaquemines Parish workers put booms around the island, but puddles of oil were inside the barrier.
"Oil in the marshes is the worst-case scenario," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the head of the federal effort to contain and clean up the spill.
Also Saturday, BP told federal regulators it plans to continue using a contentious chemical dispersant, despite orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to look for less toxic alternatives. BP said in a letter to the EPA that Corexit 9500 "remains the best option for subsea application."
The EPA didn't immediately comment on BP's decision.
Oil that has rolled into shoreline wetlands coats the stalks and leaves of plants such as roseau cane - the fabric that holds together an ecosystem that is essential to the region's fishing industry and a much-needed buffer against Gulf hurricanes. Soon, oil will smother those plants and choke off their supply of air and nutrients.
In some eddies and protected inlets, the ochre-colored crude has pooled beneath the water's surface, forming clumps several inches deep.
With the seafloor leak still gushing at least hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, the damage is only getting worse. Millions of gallons already have leaked so far.
Coast Guard officials said the spill's impact now stretches across a 150-mile swath, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.
Over time, experts say weather and natural microbes will break down most of the oil. However, the crude will surely poison plants and wildlife in the months - even years - it will take for the syrupy muck to dissipate.
Back in 1989, crews fighting the Exxon Valdez tanker spill - which unleashed almost 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound - used pressure hoses and rakes to clean the shores. The Gulf Coast is just too fragile for that: those tactics could blast apart the peat-like soils that hold the marshes together.
Hundreds of miles of bayous and man-made canals crisscross the coast's exterior, offering numerous entry points for the crude. Access is difficult and time-intensive, even in the best of circumstances.
"Just the compaction of humanity bringing equipment in, walking on them, will kill them," said David White, a wetlands ecologist from Loyola University in New Orleans.
Marshes offer a vital line of defense against Gulf storms, blunting their fury before they hit populated areas. Louisiana and the federal government have spent hundreds of millions of dollars rebuilding barriers that were wiped out by hurricanes, notably Katrina in 2005.
They also act as nursery grounds for shrimp, crabs, oysters - the backbone of the region's fishing industry. Hundreds of thousands of migratory birds nest in the wetlands' inner reaches, a complex network of bayous, bays and man-made canals.
To keep oil from pushing deep into Louisiana's marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal and officials from several coastal parishes want permission to erect a $350 million network of sand berms linking the state's barrier islands and headlands.
That plan is awaiting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
After surveying oil-stricken areas Saturday, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said the berms were the marshes' last hope.
"It's getting in between all the cane and it's working through from one bayou to the next," he said.
Smaller spills have been occurring in the marshes for decades. In the past, cleanup crews would sometimes slice out oiled vegetation and take it to a landfill, said Andy Nyman with Louisiana State University.
But with the plants gone, water from the gulf would roll in and wash away the roots, turning wetlands to open water.
Adm. Allen said that where conditions are right, crews could set fire to oil-coated plants.
Nyman and other experts, though, warn it's tricky. If the marsh is too wet, the oil won't burn. Too dry, the roots burn and the marsh can be ruined.
BP PLC - which leased the sunken rig and is responsible for the cleanup - said Saturday that cleanup crews have started more direct cleanup methods along Pass a Loutre in Plaquemines Parish. Shallow water skimmers were attempting to remove the oil from the top of the marsh.
Streams of water could later be used in a bid to wash oil from between cane stalks.
In other cases, the company will rely on "bioremediation" - letting oil-eating microbes do the work.
"Nature has a way of helping the situation," said BP spokesman John Curry.
But Nyman said the dispersants could slow the microbes from breaking down the oil.
White, the Loyola scientist, predicted at least short-term ruin for some of the wetlands he's been studying for three decades. Under a worst-case scenario, he said the damage could exceed the 217 square miles of wetlands lost during the 2005 hurricane season.
"When I say that my stomach turns," he said.
Q&A: Pac-Man Creator Reflects on 30 Years of Dot-Eating
To play Pac-Man:
http://www.google.com/pacman/
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/05/pac-man-30-years
Q&A: Pac-Man Creator Reflects on 30 Years of Dot-Eating
By Chris Kohler
May 21, 2010
30 years ago, videogames changed forever.
On May 22, 1980, the Japanese gamemaker Namco installed the first Pac-Man machine in a movie theater in the trendy Shibuya section of Tokyo. On Saturday, the company celebrates the 30th anniversary of the little yellow circle that became videogames’ first enduring character.
Besides being the centerpiece of a novel, addictive game, the adorable Pac-Man became a media superstar, appearing on lunchboxes, in cartoons, on the covers of magazines and even in a Top 10 pop hit.
Unlike the vast majority of its contemporaries, Pac-Man’s dot-eating, ghost-chasing gameplay is still fun today. Versions for platforms like iPhone, virtually unchanged from the original, are still a big moneymaker for Namco Bandai. On Friday, Google unveiled its first-ever interactive “doodle,” a version of Pac-Man.
This is all thanks to the genius of Toru Iwatani (pictured), the game designer who set the tone for Japan and the world. By creating a cute cast of characters and a design sensibility that appealed to wider audiences than the shoot-em-up Space Invaders, Iwatani broadened the appeal and marketability of games, creating what some call the first “casual game.”
Wired.com spoke to Iwatani, now a professor at Tokyo Polytechnic University, at Namco Bandai’s Tokyo headquarters.
Wired.com: You’ve said that Pac-Man was aimed at women, which is why you based it around eating — because women enjoy “fun foods” more.
Toru Iwatani: Around the time that we launched Pac-Man, video arcades were filled with games where you shoot aliens. It seemed very dark. It was for men, it wasn’t fashionable at all. When women would go out, they’d go out in a group of friends or with a boyfriend as a couple. And I realized that if women and couples were going to come to game centers, they had to be cheerful places.
When you think about things women like, you think about fashion, or fortune-telling, or food or dating boyfriends. So I decided to theme the game around “eating” — after eating dinner, women like to have dessert.
If you take a pizza and remove one piece, it looks like a mouth. That’s where my idea came from.
Wired.com: Is that story true, that you thought of the shape of Pac-Man after removing one slice from a pizza?
Iwatani: It’s true.
Wired.com: The attractive design really made Pac-Man stand out. What else did you do to differentiate it from other games of the time?
Iwatani: At that time, it was the beginning of all games. Games hadn’t spread very far at all. Characters were more or less non-existent. There were a lot of ideas at the time, a lot of games that you could come up with. A lot of companies had new concepts for games — in Japan, Taito and other companies were producing games like Space Invaders. The space was more or less vacant.
One point of differentiation was to target women gamers. The second point was the design — the character design and the graphic design were very appropriate for women, who thought it was very cute. Even if the character was an enemy, they wouldn’t be able to hate it. The colors of the maze walls are muted, so you can see the character designs. I think there was some recognition that this was the future of videogames, because this was the first character that was introduced at the time.
Wired.com: Did you take inspiration from Japanese animation or manga?
Iwatani: Very much so. Pac-Man is inspired by all the manga and animation that I’d watch as a kid. The ghosts were inspired by Casper, or Obake no Q-Taro.
The game idea — eating a power cookie and powering up to defeat the ghosts — was inspired by Popeye eating spinach and defeating Bluto, turning the tables on him.
Wired.com: What about Pac-Man would you say came from a Japanese aesthetic, specifically?
Iwatani: Japanese youngsters really wanted “ghost” type characters — not necessarily modeled on creatures, but things that don’t really exist in this world. Even within animation, they want characters that are the products of the writer’s imaginations. In North America at the time, the games were about car races or warfare. They wanted games that simulated the real world, whereas Japan wanted otogibanashi (fairy tales).
Also, when you look at Japanese games, the characters may be deformed in such a way that their heads are half of their total height. This was not popular in the U.S., as you know, they wanted real proportional humans. In Japan, dolls like Hello Kitty are deformed into a different shape, into an animal that doesn’t really exist. The dolls in the U.S. would be a real cat.
Wired.com: When you placed that first Pac-Man machine out in public, where did it go?
Iwatani: May 22 wasn’t the launch date, it was the first location test. The game was still under development, and we were gauging the reaction of consumers. Since this was the first time the machine was shown to the general public, we consider May 22 to be Pac-Man’s “birthday.” After that, we made revisions and improvements based on the results of the location test and it was released in July.
The game was taken to a building in Shibuya that no longer exists. It was a thin, chimney-shaped building with seven or eight floors, consisting of several movie theaters. On the top floor, there was a very long, narrow room where the couples, having just seen movies, would go up to have a little enjoyment before they returned home. So they weren’t necessarily gamers.
The women and couples were very happy about the machine, very excited. They came up to it and put their hands on it, so we thought that our target concept had been very much in sync and correct. They played it, and they were more or less satisfied — they figured out how to play it. It’s not a difficult game.
On the other hand, the core gamers, the men, were not necessarily very excited about it. But it was for people who didn’t play games on a daily basis — women, children, the elderly.
It’s not like people sat around and played the machine all day, though. So we didn’t think it would be a major hit. I didn’t think that the U.S. and Europe would take it up, because it’s a rather slow relaxing game. At that time, what was popular overseas were more thrilling games, and I felt that perhaps the rhythm of Pac-Man wasn’t matching the needs of overseas users.
Wired.com: What did you change about the game after the location test?
Iwatani: The design didn’t change very much. There wasn’t a lot of time before the game was to be released in July, so we just tweaked the game balance, the difficulty level. That was pretty much just changing a few numbers in the program code.
Wired.com: And of course, the game was originally called Puck-Man, but the name was changed for America because someone might vandalize the “P” and turn it into an “F.”
Iwatani: Yes, the U.S. subsidiary said that that would be bad. We wondered, what should we do? And decided to change it to “Pac.” Then, after the American version came out with the “Pac” spelling, we used that for the entire world.
Wired.com: You weren’t involved with games like Ms. Pac-Man, which were created in the United States by Midway. In fact, after Pac-Man you created just one more game, Libble Rabble.
Iwatani: Yes, that was based on the concept of “surround.” It was an interesting game, but unpopular because it was so hard to play — you used joysticks on the left- and right-hand sides to control two arrows on the screen, but when they crossed over each other, the right hand was controlling what was going on on the left side of the screen, like a mirror.
But even now, it’s popular among core gamers.
Wired.com: Why did you stop making videogames after that?
Iwatani: After that, I became a producer. Namco was a small company, and because the organization expanded, I was promoted to section chief. Someone had to coordinate the younger developers that we’d hired.
So although I was still capable and wanted to keep developing games, I was told to serve as the supervisor — the manager of the baseball team, instead of a player.
http://www.google.com/pacman/
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/05/pac-man-30-years
Q&A: Pac-Man Creator Reflects on 30 Years of Dot-Eating
By Chris Kohler
May 21, 2010
30 years ago, videogames changed forever.
On May 22, 1980, the Japanese gamemaker Namco installed the first Pac-Man machine in a movie theater in the trendy Shibuya section of Tokyo. On Saturday, the company celebrates the 30th anniversary of the little yellow circle that became videogames’ first enduring character.
Besides being the centerpiece of a novel, addictive game, the adorable Pac-Man became a media superstar, appearing on lunchboxes, in cartoons, on the covers of magazines and even in a Top 10 pop hit.
Unlike the vast majority of its contemporaries, Pac-Man’s dot-eating, ghost-chasing gameplay is still fun today. Versions for platforms like iPhone, virtually unchanged from the original, are still a big moneymaker for Namco Bandai. On Friday, Google unveiled its first-ever interactive “doodle,” a version of Pac-Man.
This is all thanks to the genius of Toru Iwatani (pictured), the game designer who set the tone for Japan and the world. By creating a cute cast of characters and a design sensibility that appealed to wider audiences than the shoot-em-up Space Invaders, Iwatani broadened the appeal and marketability of games, creating what some call the first “casual game.”
Wired.com spoke to Iwatani, now a professor at Tokyo Polytechnic University, at Namco Bandai’s Tokyo headquarters.
Wired.com: You’ve said that Pac-Man was aimed at women, which is why you based it around eating — because women enjoy “fun foods” more.
Toru Iwatani: Around the time that we launched Pac-Man, video arcades were filled with games where you shoot aliens. It seemed very dark. It was for men, it wasn’t fashionable at all. When women would go out, they’d go out in a group of friends or with a boyfriend as a couple. And I realized that if women and couples were going to come to game centers, they had to be cheerful places.
When you think about things women like, you think about fashion, or fortune-telling, or food or dating boyfriends. So I decided to theme the game around “eating” — after eating dinner, women like to have dessert.
If you take a pizza and remove one piece, it looks like a mouth. That’s where my idea came from.
Wired.com: Is that story true, that you thought of the shape of Pac-Man after removing one slice from a pizza?
Iwatani: It’s true.
Wired.com: The attractive design really made Pac-Man stand out. What else did you do to differentiate it from other games of the time?
Iwatani: At that time, it was the beginning of all games. Games hadn’t spread very far at all. Characters were more or less non-existent. There were a lot of ideas at the time, a lot of games that you could come up with. A lot of companies had new concepts for games — in Japan, Taito and other companies were producing games like Space Invaders. The space was more or less vacant.
One point of differentiation was to target women gamers. The second point was the design — the character design and the graphic design were very appropriate for women, who thought it was very cute. Even if the character was an enemy, they wouldn’t be able to hate it. The colors of the maze walls are muted, so you can see the character designs. I think there was some recognition that this was the future of videogames, because this was the first character that was introduced at the time.
Wired.com: Did you take inspiration from Japanese animation or manga?
Iwatani: Very much so. Pac-Man is inspired by all the manga and animation that I’d watch as a kid. The ghosts were inspired by Casper, or Obake no Q-Taro.
The game idea — eating a power cookie and powering up to defeat the ghosts — was inspired by Popeye eating spinach and defeating Bluto, turning the tables on him.
Wired.com: What about Pac-Man would you say came from a Japanese aesthetic, specifically?
Iwatani: Japanese youngsters really wanted “ghost” type characters — not necessarily modeled on creatures, but things that don’t really exist in this world. Even within animation, they want characters that are the products of the writer’s imaginations. In North America at the time, the games were about car races or warfare. They wanted games that simulated the real world, whereas Japan wanted otogibanashi (fairy tales).
Also, when you look at Japanese games, the characters may be deformed in such a way that their heads are half of their total height. This was not popular in the U.S., as you know, they wanted real proportional humans. In Japan, dolls like Hello Kitty are deformed into a different shape, into an animal that doesn’t really exist. The dolls in the U.S. would be a real cat.
Wired.com: When you placed that first Pac-Man machine out in public, where did it go?
Iwatani: May 22 wasn’t the launch date, it was the first location test. The game was still under development, and we were gauging the reaction of consumers. Since this was the first time the machine was shown to the general public, we consider May 22 to be Pac-Man’s “birthday.” After that, we made revisions and improvements based on the results of the location test and it was released in July.
The game was taken to a building in Shibuya that no longer exists. It was a thin, chimney-shaped building with seven or eight floors, consisting of several movie theaters. On the top floor, there was a very long, narrow room where the couples, having just seen movies, would go up to have a little enjoyment before they returned home. So they weren’t necessarily gamers.
The women and couples were very happy about the machine, very excited. They came up to it and put their hands on it, so we thought that our target concept had been very much in sync and correct. They played it, and they were more or less satisfied — they figured out how to play it. It’s not a difficult game.
On the other hand, the core gamers, the men, were not necessarily very excited about it. But it was for people who didn’t play games on a daily basis — women, children, the elderly.
It’s not like people sat around and played the machine all day, though. So we didn’t think it would be a major hit. I didn’t think that the U.S. and Europe would take it up, because it’s a rather slow relaxing game. At that time, what was popular overseas were more thrilling games, and I felt that perhaps the rhythm of Pac-Man wasn’t matching the needs of overseas users.
Wired.com: What did you change about the game after the location test?
Iwatani: The design didn’t change very much. There wasn’t a lot of time before the game was to be released in July, so we just tweaked the game balance, the difficulty level. That was pretty much just changing a few numbers in the program code.
Wired.com: And of course, the game was originally called Puck-Man, but the name was changed for America because someone might vandalize the “P” and turn it into an “F.”
Iwatani: Yes, the U.S. subsidiary said that that would be bad. We wondered, what should we do? And decided to change it to “Pac.” Then, after the American version came out with the “Pac” spelling, we used that for the entire world.
Wired.com: You weren’t involved with games like Ms. Pac-Man, which were created in the United States by Midway. In fact, after Pac-Man you created just one more game, Libble Rabble.
Iwatani: Yes, that was based on the concept of “surround.” It was an interesting game, but unpopular because it was so hard to play — you used joysticks on the left- and right-hand sides to control two arrows on the screen, but when they crossed over each other, the right hand was controlling what was going on on the left side of the screen, like a mirror.
But even now, it’s popular among core gamers.
Wired.com: Why did you stop making videogames after that?
Iwatani: After that, I became a producer. Namco was a small company, and because the organization expanded, I was promoted to section chief. Someone had to coordinate the younger developers that we’d hired.
So although I was still capable and wanted to keep developing games, I was told to serve as the supervisor — the manager of the baseball team, instead of a player.
Neighbors from Hell
http://www.tbs.com/shows/neighborsfromhell/
When Satan learns that Petromundo, a huge global conglomerate, has created a super-drill that could potentially burrow to the center of the earth and expose Hell, he sends one of his demons to eliminate the problem. The demon is Balthazor, a good-natured, low-level torturer who has amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of the human condition thanks to his love of classic TV sitcoms.
Balathazor and his family head to earth with one mission: to blend in with the humans and figure out how to destroy the drill, thus protecting Hell. More accustomed to life in the nether regions, the Hellmans try to follow the rule of SNORFIN -- "seem normal and fit in" -- but they quickly learn that humans can be more evil than any demon ever could.
Soon, the Hellmans discover that their demonic natures are no match for the twisted ways of their earthly counterparts...
Internet Critic Review of the Month
"Michael Bay I love your work! I know what a artistic brilliant genius you are! Cast me in the next Transformers."
Heidi Montag on Twitter
Heidi Montag on Twitter
"We're trying to get a deal done"
Interview with NFLPA President DeMaurice Smith by Dave Zirin
First run at SportsIllustrated.com
When DeMaurice Smith was elected president of the NFLPA in March 2009, there was a pronounced surprise that the replacement for the late Gene Upshaw wasn't an ex-player but a former U.S. attorney. Now a little more than a year into his tenure, Smith is preparing for a lockout when the CBA expires after next season. Dave Zirin caught up with Smith in Washington, D.C.
Dave Zirin: Will there be a lockout?
DeMaurice Smith: That's what we're preparing for. I'm sorry to say that I don't have the kind of job, and the players don't have the kind of job, where we can just sit back and hope that a lockout doesn't happen. They have to prepare for the worst, certainly hoping for the best. We're trying to get a deal done. If you remember, right before the uncapped year, we said, look, we'll take a deal that's very similar to the deal we have now, let's just extend it. And the owners said no. I know that they've renegotiated every assistant coach's contract to envision a lockout, and I know their lead negotiator now is a guy named Bob Batterman, who locked out hockey for a year. They also negotiated every one of the television contracts, FOX, NBC, CBS and DirecTV with this in mind. They put a clause in those contracts to guarantee that the NFL gets every dime even if the games aren't played.
Zirin: So if there are no games they still get their TV money?
Smith: They get $4 billion. Chad Ochocinco asked me at the draft, on a scale of 1 to 10 where do you see the possibility of a lockout? I'd put it at about a 14.
Zirin: I spoke to an NFL owner who said the owners will always win against the players because players, even though they make a lot of money, live pay check to pay check. What do you think when you hear something like that?
Smith: We've asked players to save 25 percent of their salary last year, 25 percent of their salary this year. We created a guaranteed lockout savings account for every player in the league. But most importantly, we've just tried to prepare our guys. I've told them I want them to be a man and a businessman in the business of football. And for an owner to think he can break you, because you aren't being a responsible husband, father, son ... It's insulting. So the question will be, are they going to be right or are we going to be right?
Zirin: You've got a lot of reporters that say, "A pox on both their houses. It's millionaires versus billionaires." How do you make the case to say it's not just rich people squabbling, that there is something bigger at stake?
Smith: The first thing I do is challenge reporters on how much they know. When I was at the Super Bowl and I had a press conference with 120 or 130 reporters who covered football for years. I asked them raise your hand if you knew the National Football League was a non-profit organization? Silence. It is. It's a 501 C 6 non-profit. How many people know last year the National Football League generated $9 billion in revenue. According to Forbes every team averages $31 million in profit every year. Every team is worth $1 billion. And here's the kicker, over the last 15 years every team's value has grown by about 500 percent. So, that's the owner's side.
Now for the players, the average salary in the National Football League is $700,000. You will never find a player who's going to say we're crying in the poor house. I tell our players the reason you have to be responsible is that the average wage for a man between the ages of 21 and 24 in America is about $25,000. We should never be in a position where we have to give up based on money. That's insulting. But on our side of the table, the average career for a football player is 3.6 years. It takes you three years and three games in order to get five years of health care coverage when you're done playing. If you play any less than three years you don't get any health care coverage when you tire. If you play three years and three games, you still only get five years.
Zirin: What if you play 15 years?
Smith: Five years. If you play 13 years, it's five years; 12 years, it's five years. So you take a guy who graduates from college at 21, 22, the average career is 3.6 years, let's say he plays four years. Players are retiring at the ripe old age of 26, 27. Five years of health care coverage and everything after that, every injury you have is a preexisting condition. Try to find insurance for that. So when they say to me, it's a battle between billionaires and millionaires, that's where I start. But we also try to remind people that if we get locked out, we have 30,000 people who work in our stadiums. They're locked out. The concession workers and they people who are parking cars in the sleet and the rain for forth or fifth job, they're locked out. The bars and the restaurants that rely on football, they're locked out. The families of our players that rely on the health care, no health care. I don't really look at this as a battle between millionaires and billionaires. I look at this as a battle between 32 people who can unilaterally shut down our game, and America who digs it.
Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
First run at SportsIllustrated.com
When DeMaurice Smith was elected president of the NFLPA in March 2009, there was a pronounced surprise that the replacement for the late Gene Upshaw wasn't an ex-player but a former U.S. attorney. Now a little more than a year into his tenure, Smith is preparing for a lockout when the CBA expires after next season. Dave Zirin caught up with Smith in Washington, D.C.
Dave Zirin: Will there be a lockout?
DeMaurice Smith: That's what we're preparing for. I'm sorry to say that I don't have the kind of job, and the players don't have the kind of job, where we can just sit back and hope that a lockout doesn't happen. They have to prepare for the worst, certainly hoping for the best. We're trying to get a deal done. If you remember, right before the uncapped year, we said, look, we'll take a deal that's very similar to the deal we have now, let's just extend it. And the owners said no. I know that they've renegotiated every assistant coach's contract to envision a lockout, and I know their lead negotiator now is a guy named Bob Batterman, who locked out hockey for a year. They also negotiated every one of the television contracts, FOX, NBC, CBS and DirecTV with this in mind. They put a clause in those contracts to guarantee that the NFL gets every dime even if the games aren't played.
Zirin: So if there are no games they still get their TV money?
Smith: They get $4 billion. Chad Ochocinco asked me at the draft, on a scale of 1 to 10 where do you see the possibility of a lockout? I'd put it at about a 14.
Zirin: I spoke to an NFL owner who said the owners will always win against the players because players, even though they make a lot of money, live pay check to pay check. What do you think when you hear something like that?
Smith: We've asked players to save 25 percent of their salary last year, 25 percent of their salary this year. We created a guaranteed lockout savings account for every player in the league. But most importantly, we've just tried to prepare our guys. I've told them I want them to be a man and a businessman in the business of football. And for an owner to think he can break you, because you aren't being a responsible husband, father, son ... It's insulting. So the question will be, are they going to be right or are we going to be right?
Zirin: You've got a lot of reporters that say, "A pox on both their houses. It's millionaires versus billionaires." How do you make the case to say it's not just rich people squabbling, that there is something bigger at stake?
Smith: The first thing I do is challenge reporters on how much they know. When I was at the Super Bowl and I had a press conference with 120 or 130 reporters who covered football for years. I asked them raise your hand if you knew the National Football League was a non-profit organization? Silence. It is. It's a 501 C 6 non-profit. How many people know last year the National Football League generated $9 billion in revenue. According to Forbes every team averages $31 million in profit every year. Every team is worth $1 billion. And here's the kicker, over the last 15 years every team's value has grown by about 500 percent. So, that's the owner's side.
Now for the players, the average salary in the National Football League is $700,000. You will never find a player who's going to say we're crying in the poor house. I tell our players the reason you have to be responsible is that the average wage for a man between the ages of 21 and 24 in America is about $25,000. We should never be in a position where we have to give up based on money. That's insulting. But on our side of the table, the average career for a football player is 3.6 years. It takes you three years and three games in order to get five years of health care coverage when you're done playing. If you play any less than three years you don't get any health care coverage when you tire. If you play three years and three games, you still only get five years.
Zirin: What if you play 15 years?
Smith: Five years. If you play 13 years, it's five years; 12 years, it's five years. So you take a guy who graduates from college at 21, 22, the average career is 3.6 years, let's say he plays four years. Players are retiring at the ripe old age of 26, 27. Five years of health care coverage and everything after that, every injury you have is a preexisting condition. Try to find insurance for that. So when they say to me, it's a battle between billionaires and millionaires, that's where I start. But we also try to remind people that if we get locked out, we have 30,000 people who work in our stadiums. They're locked out. The concession workers and they people who are parking cars in the sleet and the rain for forth or fifth job, they're locked out. The bars and the restaurants that rely on football, they're locked out. The families of our players that rely on the health care, no health care. I don't really look at this as a battle between millionaires and billionaires. I look at this as a battle between 32 people who can unilaterally shut down our game, and America who digs it.
Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
BabeWatch: Jennifer Aniston & Miss USA
Miss USA Rima Fakih at Trump Towers in New York
Awesome Videogame of the Week: Red Dead Redemption
http://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption
America, early 1900's. The era of the cowboy is coming to an end.
When federal agents threaten his family, former outlaw John Marston is sent across the American frontier to help bring the rule of law. Experience intense gun battles, dramatic train robberies, bounty hunting and duels during a time of violent change.
Red Dead Redemption is an epic battle for survival in a beautiful open world as John Marston struggles to bury his blood-stained past, one man at a time.
Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Red Dead Redemption is now available for PlayStation®3 and Xbox 360®.
Legendary Heavy Metal Vocalist RONNIE JAMES DIO Dies
http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=140129
Legendary Heavy Metal Vocalist RONNIE JAMES DIO Dies
May 16, 2010
Wendy Dio, wife/manager of legendary heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio (DIO, HEAVEN & HELL, BLACK SABBATH, RAINBOW), has released the following statement to BLABBERMOUTH.NET:
"Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45 a.m. [on Sunday] 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private goodbyes before he peacefully passed away.
"Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all.
"We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us.
"Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss.
"Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever."
It was only a month ago that Dio, 67, spoke about his battle with cancer with the Artisan News Service on the "black carpet" of the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, which took place on April 8 at Club Nokia in downtown Los Angeles. When asked about how he had been feeling since he was diagnosed with the disease late last year, Dio said, "Well, I feel good and bad at times. It's a long process. Chemotherapy is a... I never realized what a difficult thing it was to go through. It's a real cumulative effect — the more you have, the more it piles up on top and it takes longer and longer to get over it. I find it very difficult to eat. I don't like to eat anyway, so I guess that's OK. But I know I have to. But this makes it very, very hard. But if you're determined to beat it, then you have to go with what you believe is going to beat it for you, and in this case it's that. I go to a great hospital in Houston called M.D. Anderson, which I think is the best hospital in the world, I have the best doctor in the world, Dr. Ajani, who I really trust and I really believe in, so I think I've done all the right things. It makes me feel positive about my life and positive that there is a lot more of it to live."
Earlier this month, HEAVEN & HELL canceled its summer tour plans in Europe due to Dio's treatment for stomach cancer. The band said in a statement that Dio wasn't "well enough to tour this summer. We hope that everyone understands and want to thank fans and industry colleagues for their continuing support at this time."
Born Ronald James Padavona in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Ronnie James Dio had performed with ELF, RAINBOW, BLACK SABBATH, and his own band DIO. Other musical projects included the collective fundraiser "Hear 'n Aid". He is widely hailed as one of the most powerful singers in heavy metal, renowned for his consistently powerful voice and for popularizing the "devil's horns" hand gesture in metal culture. He was most recently involved with HEAVEN & HELL, a project which also included former BLACK SABBATH bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice. Their first and only studio album, "The Devil You Know", was released on April 28, 2009.
In April, Dio appeared at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards in Los Angeles to accept the award for "Best Vocalist." As members of ALICE IN CHAINS presented the award to him, the crowd chanted, "Dio! Dio! Dio! Dio!"
Kristin Chenoweth Speaks Out on Homophobic Newsweek Article
http://www.broadway.com/shows/promises-promises/buzz/152350/promises-star-kristin-chenoweth-speaks-out-on-horrendously-homophobic-newsweek-article-defends-sean-hayes/
Promises Star Kristin Chenoweth Speaks Out on 'Horrendously Homophobic' Newsweek Article, Defends Sean Hayes
May 7, 2010
'This article offends me because I am a human being, a woman and a Christian.'
Kristin Chenoweth, the Promises, Promises star who was nominated for three Broadway.com Audience Awards on May 7, has stepped up on her soapbox. The Broadway favorite logged onto Newsweek.com to comment on an article on the website called “Straight Jacket” that suggests that gay actors struggle with playing straight characters. Ramin Setoodah, the openly-gay author of the article, specifically singles out Chenoweth’s leading man, Sean Hayes (calling his casting a problem--”the big pink elephant in the room”), and the recent appearance on TV’s Glee by Tony nominee Jonathan Groff.
"I couldn't stay silent on this one," Chenoweth wrote on Twitter after posting the response. Because she deserves as big as a soapbox as is available, we reprint Chenoweth’s comments below, with thanks to Newsweek.com.
Chenoweth writes:
As a longtime fan of Newsweek and as the actress currently starring opposite the incredibly talented (and sexy!) Sean Hayes in the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises, I was shocked on many levels to see Newsweek publishing Ramin Setoodeh’s horrendously homophobic “Straight Jacket,” which argues that gay actors are simply unfit to play straight. From where I stand, on stage, with Hayes, every night — I’ve observed nothing “wooden” or “weird” in his performance, nor have I noticed the seemingly unwieldy presence of a “pink elephant” in the Broadway Theater. (The Drama League, Outer Critics Circle and Tony members must have also missed that large animal when nominating Hayes’ performance for its highest honors this year.)
I’d normally keep silent on such matters and write such small-minded viewpoints off as perhaps a blip in common sense. But the offense I take to this article, and your decision to publish it, is not really even related to my profession or my work with Hayes or Jonathan Groff (also singled out in the article as too “queeny” to play “straight.”)
This article offends me because I am a human being, a woman and a Christian. For example, there was a time when Jewish actors had to change their names because anti-Semites thought no Jew could convincingly play Gentile. Setoodeh even goes so far as to justify his knee-jerk homophobic reaction to gay actors by accepting and endorsing that “as viewers, we are molded by a society obsessed with dissecting sexuality, starting with the locker room torture in junior high school.” Really? We want to maintain and proliferate the same kind of bullying that makes children cry and in some recent cases have even taken their own lives? That’s so sad, Newsweek! The examples he provides (what scientists call “selection bias”) to prove his “gays can’t play straight” hypothesis are sloppy in my opinion. Come on now!
Openly gay Groff is too “queeny” to play Lea Michele’s boyfriend in Glee, but is a “heartthrob” when he does it in Spring Awakening? Cynthia Nixon only “got away with it” ’cause she peaked before coming out? I don’t know if you’ve missed the giant Sex and the City movie posters, but it seems most of America is “buying it.” I could go on, but I assume these will be taken care of in your “Corrections” this week.
Similarly, thousands of people have traveled from all over the world to enjoy Hayes’ performance and don’t seem to have one single issue with his sexuality! They have no problem buying him as a love-torn heterosexual man. Audiences aren’t giving a darn about who a person is sleeping with or his personal life. Give me a break! We’re actors first, whether we’re playing prostitutes, baseball players, or the Lion King. Audiences come to theater to go on a journey. It’s a character and it’s called acting, and I’d put Hayes and his brilliance up there with some of the greatest actors period.
Lastly, as someone who’s been proudly advocating for equal rights and supporting GLBT causes for as long as I can remember, I know how much it means to young people struggling with their sexuality to see out & proud actors like Sean Hayes, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris and Cynthia Nixon succeeding in their work without having to keep their sexuality a secret. No one needs to see a bigoted, factually inaccurate article that tells people who deviate from heterosexual norms that they can’t be open about who they are and still achieve their dreams. I am told on good authority that Mr. Setoodeh is a gay man himself and I would hope, as the author of this article, he would at least understand that. I encourage Newsweek to embrace stories which promote acceptance, love, unity and singing and dancing for all!
Masterpieces Stolen From Paris Museum
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559004575255903983038016.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
MAY 21, 2010
Masterpieces Stolen From Paris Museum
DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARS
PARIS — Five paintings valued at close to €100 million ($124 million) and including works by Picasso and Matisse were stolen from one of Paris's most prestigious museums, French authorities said.
The theft was discovered early Thursday, before Paris's Musée d'Art Moderne, located across the River Seine from the Eiffel Tower, opened its doors to the public.
Police late Thursday weren't sure how the robbery was carried out but thought it could have been done by a single thief acting alone, said Christophe Girard, Paris deputy mayor in charge of culture.
They have so far collected several clues, he said: a broken padlock on a gate; a dismantled window; footage of a masked intruder caught by a surveillance camera; and five picture frames lying against a wall outside the museum.
The museum is equipped with alarm systems and surveillance cameras—equipment that was upgraded five years ago as part of a €15 million refurbishment. It was also guarded by three night wardens, said Mr. Girard.
Police examine the frames of the stolen paintings outside the Paris Museum of Modern Art on Thursday.
"People at the museum are traumatized," he said in a telephone interview. "These are such important pieces of art. It's clear that the security system was outfoxed."
The museum's alarm system had suffered technical problems in recent weeks, and a supplier had yet to deliver some replacement parts, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, said in a statement.
However, Mr. Girard said the alarm problem alone couldn't explain how a thief or a team of thieves could have broken into the museum so easily.
Four paintings—the Picasso, the Matisse, a Braque and a Léger—were stolen from one exhibition hall. The fifth, by Modigliani, was taken from another hall.
"It seems as if they knew exactly what they were looking for and knew the value of each painting," Mr. Girard said. "There were two paintings by Modigliani hung next to each other and they took the more expensive."
Police didn't rule out the possibility that the thief or thieves had accomplices within the museum, he said.
Mr. Girard said the stolen paintings were valued at a combined €92 million, according to the museum's books. The two most expensive were "Dove With Green Peas" by Pablo Picasso, valued at €25 million, and "Pastoral" by Henri Matisse, valued at an estimated €20 million, he said.
Police said it would be virtually impossible to sell the stolen paintings to museums or at art auctions because they are too well known. They said, however, that thieves sometimes try to extort money from insurance companies, which may be willing to recover stolen goods at a fraction of their value, instead of paying full compensations to museums.
The Paris mayor's office said the museum would remain closed until further notice.
Alice Farren-Bradley of the Art Loss Registry in London said the Paris theft "appears to be one of the biggest" art heists ever, considering the estimated value, the prominence of the artists and the high profile of the museum, the Associated Press reported. She also said the value of the paintings would have to be verified as museums and art dealers often value paintings differently.
French museums have suffered several thefts in recent months. Last year, a notepad with Picasso drawings, valued at an estimated $5 million, was stolen from Paris's Picasso museum, which was undergoing renovation. In December, a drawing by Edgar Degas was stolen at a museum in Marseille.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
MAY 21, 2010
Masterpieces Stolen From Paris Museum
DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARS
PARIS — Five paintings valued at close to €100 million ($124 million) and including works by Picasso and Matisse were stolen from one of Paris's most prestigious museums, French authorities said.
The theft was discovered early Thursday, before Paris's Musée d'Art Moderne, located across the River Seine from the Eiffel Tower, opened its doors to the public.
Police late Thursday weren't sure how the robbery was carried out but thought it could have been done by a single thief acting alone, said Christophe Girard, Paris deputy mayor in charge of culture.
They have so far collected several clues, he said: a broken padlock on a gate; a dismantled window; footage of a masked intruder caught by a surveillance camera; and five picture frames lying against a wall outside the museum.
The museum is equipped with alarm systems and surveillance cameras—equipment that was upgraded five years ago as part of a €15 million refurbishment. It was also guarded by three night wardens, said Mr. Girard.
Police examine the frames of the stolen paintings outside the Paris Museum of Modern Art on Thursday.
"People at the museum are traumatized," he said in a telephone interview. "These are such important pieces of art. It's clear that the security system was outfoxed."
The museum's alarm system had suffered technical problems in recent weeks, and a supplier had yet to deliver some replacement parts, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, said in a statement.
However, Mr. Girard said the alarm problem alone couldn't explain how a thief or a team of thieves could have broken into the museum so easily.
Four paintings—the Picasso, the Matisse, a Braque and a Léger—were stolen from one exhibition hall. The fifth, by Modigliani, was taken from another hall.
"It seems as if they knew exactly what they were looking for and knew the value of each painting," Mr. Girard said. "There were two paintings by Modigliani hung next to each other and they took the more expensive."
Police didn't rule out the possibility that the thief or thieves had accomplices within the museum, he said.
Mr. Girard said the stolen paintings were valued at a combined €92 million, according to the museum's books. The two most expensive were "Dove With Green Peas" by Pablo Picasso, valued at €25 million, and "Pastoral" by Henri Matisse, valued at an estimated €20 million, he said.
Police said it would be virtually impossible to sell the stolen paintings to museums or at art auctions because they are too well known. They said, however, that thieves sometimes try to extort money from insurance companies, which may be willing to recover stolen goods at a fraction of their value, instead of paying full compensations to museums.
The Paris mayor's office said the museum would remain closed until further notice.
Alice Farren-Bradley of the Art Loss Registry in London said the Paris theft "appears to be one of the biggest" art heists ever, considering the estimated value, the prominence of the artists and the high profile of the museum, the Associated Press reported. She also said the value of the paintings would have to be verified as museums and art dealers often value paintings differently.
French museums have suffered several thefts in recent months. Last year, a notepad with Picasso drawings, valued at an estimated $5 million, was stolen from Paris's Picasso museum, which was undergoing renovation. In December, a drawing by Edgar Degas was stolen at a museum in Marseille.
Toyota Buys Tesla Stake for Electric Car Tie-Up
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-21/toyota-buys-tesla-stake-for-electric-car-tie-up-update4-.html
Toyota Buys Tesla Stake for Electric Car Tie-Up
May 21, 2010
By Alan Ohnsman
(Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker, is buying a $50 million stake in electric-car producer Tesla Motors Inc. as the companies seek to offer low- polluting models.
Tesla also will buy a closed Toyota joint-venture plant in California to build its Model S and other vehicles, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said yesterday. The companies plan to cooperate in developing electric cars, parts, production systems and engineering.
The deal may help Toyota compete with Nissan Motor Co. and General Motors Co. in selling electric cars in the U.S., where regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency are pushing them to offer advanced vehicles. It may also help Toyota’s image, battered by recalls, by reviving the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant, known as Nummi, an analyst said.
“This seems like a good deal for both parties, especially Toyota, from being able to avoid the political fallout from shutting Nummi down to being able to offer a new electric vehicle with just a low initial investment cost,” said Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive officer at auto-industry researcher Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, California.
Toyota, based in Toyota City, Japan, is the world’s biggest seller of hybrid autos, and Palo Alto, California-based Tesla is the only company selling U.S. highway-legal battery-powered cars. The size of Toyota’s stake in Tesla hasn’t been fixed, Musk said in an interview.
‘Infinite Possibility’
“I’ve felt an infinite possibility about Tesla’s technology,” said Akio Toyoda, chief executive officer of Toyota, founded by his grandfather. “By partnering with Tesla, my hope is that all Toyota employees will recall that ‘venture business’ spirit.”
Daimler AG, the world’s second-biggest maker of luxury vehicles, in May 2009 invested about $50 million in Tesla, which is supplying the company with battery packs for a test fleet of electric Smart minicars.
Daimler reduced its stake in Tesla to about 5 percent in July by selling a portion of the investment to Aabar Investments PJSC, the German automaker’s largest shareholder. Tesla told Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler about the Toyota partnership on May 19, Musk said.
The Toyota-Tesla partnership doesn’t impede Daimler’s cooperation with the California automaker, said Brigitte Bertram, a Daimler spokeswoman.
Nummi Purchase
The revival of Nummi, for 25 years a joint venture between Toyota and the former General Motors Corp., will create 1,000 jobs, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said.
Musk declined to say how much his company is spending to purchase Nummi, which was shut down in April. Tesla has hired back about 90 former Nummi workers and expects to add about 50 a month, Musk said.
Nummi, in Fremont, California, had 4,700 workers and was the only factory where employees building Toyota vehicles were represented by the United Auto Workers union.
The plant’s restart “is welcome news for the state’s economy and workers after the closing of this highly productive plant,” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a statement today.
Electric-car technology has been supported by U.S. policy makers including President Barack Obama as a way to reduce the nation’s oil use and dependence on foreign energy sources. Obama set a goal of getting 1 million plug-in hybrids and electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015.
Toyota Plug-In
Toyota intends to offer a short-range electric car in the U.S. and begin retail sales of a plug-in Prius hybrid in 2012.
Toyota’s American depositary receipts, each representing two ordinary shares, rose $1.59, or 2.1 percent, to $75.59 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The regular shares fell 65 yen, or 1.9 percent, to 3,355 yen in Tokyo.
Nissan is preparing to introduce its Leaf electric hatchback in Japan and the U.S. this year. Nissan Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn has set a goal of leading sales of rechargeable vehicles, which he estimates may make up 10 percent of global auto demand by 2020, and is spending more than 500 billion yen ($5.54 billion) developing electric cars.
GM plans to introduce its Volt plug-in vehicle late this year. The car will initially be marketed to drivers in California, which requires large automakers to offer some vehicles with little or no tailpipe pollution.
Share Sale
Tesla, which hasn’t posted a profit in the six years since it was founded, is planning to raise $100 million in an initial share sale and has said it may spend the proceeds on acquisitions and for factories and equipment that may cost as much as $125 million this year.
The company was approved to receive a $465 million government loan to help produce the Model S sedan, which the company says will cost less than $50,000 after a federal tax credit.
Tesla has 2,000 reservations for the Model S and intends to begin higher-volume production in 2012, with a projected output of as many as 20,000 a year. The company has delivered about 1,000 of its $109,000 Roadster electric sports cars.
The company’s investors include Google Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the government of Abu Dhabi.
--With assistance from Makiko Kitamura and Yuki Hagiwara in Tokyo and Chris Reiter in Berlin. Editors: Kevin Orland, Jamie Butters.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at aohnsman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kae Inoue at kinoue@bloomberg.net
Toyota Buys Tesla Stake for Electric Car Tie-Up
May 21, 2010
By Alan Ohnsman
(Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker, is buying a $50 million stake in electric-car producer Tesla Motors Inc. as the companies seek to offer low- polluting models.
Tesla also will buy a closed Toyota joint-venture plant in California to build its Model S and other vehicles, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said yesterday. The companies plan to cooperate in developing electric cars, parts, production systems and engineering.
The deal may help Toyota compete with Nissan Motor Co. and General Motors Co. in selling electric cars in the U.S., where regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency are pushing them to offer advanced vehicles. It may also help Toyota’s image, battered by recalls, by reviving the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant, known as Nummi, an analyst said.
“This seems like a good deal for both parties, especially Toyota, from being able to avoid the political fallout from shutting Nummi down to being able to offer a new electric vehicle with just a low initial investment cost,” said Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive officer at auto-industry researcher Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, California.
Toyota, based in Toyota City, Japan, is the world’s biggest seller of hybrid autos, and Palo Alto, California-based Tesla is the only company selling U.S. highway-legal battery-powered cars. The size of Toyota’s stake in Tesla hasn’t been fixed, Musk said in an interview.
‘Infinite Possibility’
“I’ve felt an infinite possibility about Tesla’s technology,” said Akio Toyoda, chief executive officer of Toyota, founded by his grandfather. “By partnering with Tesla, my hope is that all Toyota employees will recall that ‘venture business’ spirit.”
Daimler AG, the world’s second-biggest maker of luxury vehicles, in May 2009 invested about $50 million in Tesla, which is supplying the company with battery packs for a test fleet of electric Smart minicars.
Daimler reduced its stake in Tesla to about 5 percent in July by selling a portion of the investment to Aabar Investments PJSC, the German automaker’s largest shareholder. Tesla told Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler about the Toyota partnership on May 19, Musk said.
The Toyota-Tesla partnership doesn’t impede Daimler’s cooperation with the California automaker, said Brigitte Bertram, a Daimler spokeswoman.
Nummi Purchase
The revival of Nummi, for 25 years a joint venture between Toyota and the former General Motors Corp., will create 1,000 jobs, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said.
Musk declined to say how much his company is spending to purchase Nummi, which was shut down in April. Tesla has hired back about 90 former Nummi workers and expects to add about 50 a month, Musk said.
Nummi, in Fremont, California, had 4,700 workers and was the only factory where employees building Toyota vehicles were represented by the United Auto Workers union.
The plant’s restart “is welcome news for the state’s economy and workers after the closing of this highly productive plant,” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a statement today.
Electric-car technology has been supported by U.S. policy makers including President Barack Obama as a way to reduce the nation’s oil use and dependence on foreign energy sources. Obama set a goal of getting 1 million plug-in hybrids and electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015.
Toyota Plug-In
Toyota intends to offer a short-range electric car in the U.S. and begin retail sales of a plug-in Prius hybrid in 2012.
Toyota’s American depositary receipts, each representing two ordinary shares, rose $1.59, or 2.1 percent, to $75.59 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The regular shares fell 65 yen, or 1.9 percent, to 3,355 yen in Tokyo.
Nissan is preparing to introduce its Leaf electric hatchback in Japan and the U.S. this year. Nissan Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn has set a goal of leading sales of rechargeable vehicles, which he estimates may make up 10 percent of global auto demand by 2020, and is spending more than 500 billion yen ($5.54 billion) developing electric cars.
GM plans to introduce its Volt plug-in vehicle late this year. The car will initially be marketed to drivers in California, which requires large automakers to offer some vehicles with little or no tailpipe pollution.
Share Sale
Tesla, which hasn’t posted a profit in the six years since it was founded, is planning to raise $100 million in an initial share sale and has said it may spend the proceeds on acquisitions and for factories and equipment that may cost as much as $125 million this year.
The company was approved to receive a $465 million government loan to help produce the Model S sedan, which the company says will cost less than $50,000 after a federal tax credit.
Tesla has 2,000 reservations for the Model S and intends to begin higher-volume production in 2012, with a projected output of as many as 20,000 a year. The company has delivered about 1,000 of its $109,000 Roadster electric sports cars.
The company’s investors include Google Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the government of Abu Dhabi.
--With assistance from Makiko Kitamura and Yuki Hagiwara in Tokyo and Chris Reiter in Berlin. Editors: Kevin Orland, Jamie Butters.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at aohnsman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kae Inoue at kinoue@bloomberg.net
Beer Baron
http://www.newsweek.com/id/237904
Beer Baron
How the founder of Sam Adams bottled lightning.
Josh Hyatt | NEWSWEEK
May 14, 2010
From the magazine issue dated May 31, 2010
Jim Koch loves to talk about little companies that take on the Big Guys: artisanal-cheese makers who battle importers, the microdistillers who taunt liquor giants—and, most of all, the tiny microbrewer who elbows aside industry behemoths with a full-flavored beer and a well-crafted marketing pitch.
That last one is Koch himself, of course. When he launched Samuel Adams Boston Lager in 1984, there were fewer than 10 microbreweries in the U.S. Store shelves were dominated by bland beers made by Miller Brewing Co. and Anheuser-Busch. By last year the number of microbreweries (companies that make fewer than 2 million barrels a year) reached 1,500, according to the Brewers Association, accounting for about 4.3 percent of total sales. And while Sam Adams may not have been the first craft brew out there ("Apple wasn't the first company to produce a PC, either," says Koch), it is the most successful. Sales reached $415 million in 2009, making it the country's largest craft brewery. "Jim Koch was the one who led the revolution for all of the other entrepreneurs who wanted to create beers," says Gerry Hills, professor of entrepreneurship at Bradley University.
Koch (pronounced "cook") was working at the Boston Consulting Group when he began brewing suds in his kitchen. He had received three degrees from Harvard (B.A., M.B.A., J.D.), but brewing was in his blood. His father and grandfather were in the business; Koch used a recipe from his great-great-grandfather. Before long, he scraped together $240,000 and launched the company. Although he named his beer after a Boston patriot, he made it at a big brewery in Pittsburgh, which allowed him to control quality better than most small brewers. "The idea of a high-quality American beer had become a complete oxymoron," says Koch. "Coming from a brewing family, I knew that wasn't true."
He originally sold beer in unlabeled bottles from his briefcase, kept cold with a chill pack. He coaxed bartenders to try them with a 10-second pitch: "Try this new beer. It's handcrafted in small batches. You'll like the taste."
Almost from the start, he annoyed rivals large and small. He took on the big brewers directly, spending big on TV, radio, and billboards. Koch added easily readable freshness dates to his labels, and pointed out that consumers couldn't easily tell if his competitors' beers were old and stale. "Instead of sexy twins or talking animated animals, he talked about the quality of the liquid," notes Sam Calagione, who founded Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in 1995.
But Koch's tactics didn't always go down smoothly with his fellow small-batch brewers, either. He had positioned Sam Adams as a quaint Boston company, but the fact that he didn't even own a brewery irked some microbrewers. Six weeks after Koch launched Sam Adams, the brand was crowned best beer by attendees at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Rumors quickly spread that Koch had worked the crowd unfairly, offering tickets to the event in return for votes, according to Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery. But Oliver says early jealousy has since fermented into admiration. "From day one, he was pugnacious and he ruffled feathers," recalls Oliver. "But very quietly, we've all learned a lot from him."
Koch, now 61, says he tries to follow the advice his father gave him when he was starting Sam Adams. "He told me, 'People don't drink the marketing, they drink the beer,' " Koch recalls. He still travels to Bavaria once a year to handpick the high-quality hops his company uses. "I knew I could put the best glass of beer in front of the American beer drinker," he says. "I didn't know how big the market would get, or what the challenges were, but I knew I could do that." And that's no small achievement.
Rand Paul Thinks Obama Is “Un-American” to Be So Mean to B.P.
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/05/rand-paul-thinks-obama-is-un-american-to-be-so-mean-to-bp.html
Rand Paul Thinks Obama Is “Un-American” to Be So Mean to B.P.
by Juli Weiner
May 21, 2010
Did Rand Paul watch the news before he became the news? He has only existed—if we’re going to use the metric of mass consciousness—for like two weeks, and already, there have been so many amateur missteps. Following this week’s ace decision to problematize the Civil Rights Act, the Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate went on Good Morning America today to discuss how “un-American” this President Obama was for blaming B.P. for the oil spill. Accidents happen! It says so in the Constitution, probably.
He tells George Stephanopoulos, “What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of B.P.’ I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.” He adds later, “It’s always part of this blame-game society where it’s always gotta be someone’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen.” Stephanopoulos responds by asking Paul if he thinks B.P. is regulated enough, to which Paul replies that he doesn’t know, although there are “hundreds of pages of regulation of drilling in the ocean and I think most of that’s justified.” Hundreds of pages! That sounds pretty regulated, what with all those pages.
Rand Paul Thinks Obama Is “Un-American” to Be So Mean to B.P.
by Juli Weiner
May 21, 2010
Did Rand Paul watch the news before he became the news? He has only existed—if we’re going to use the metric of mass consciousness—for like two weeks, and already, there have been so many amateur missteps. Following this week’s ace decision to problematize the Civil Rights Act, the Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate went on Good Morning America today to discuss how “un-American” this President Obama was for blaming B.P. for the oil spill. Accidents happen! It says so in the Constitution, probably.
He tells George Stephanopoulos, “What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of B.P.’ I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.” He adds later, “It’s always part of this blame-game society where it’s always gotta be someone’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen.” Stephanopoulos responds by asking Paul if he thinks B.P. is regulated enough, to which Paul replies that he doesn’t know, although there are “hundreds of pages of regulation of drilling in the ocean and I think most of that’s justified.” Hundreds of pages! That sounds pretty regulated, what with all those pages.
Great Quotes: Twain on Kentucky
"I want to be in Kentucky when the end of the world comes, because it's always 20 years behind."
George Will: a pompous defender of wealth and privilege
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/will-m20.shtml
George Will: a pompous defender of wealth and privilege
By David Walsh
20 May 2010
Not to put too fine a point on it, Washington Post columnist George Will is a pompous windbag, one of the most obnoxious right-wing media figures in America, and that is saying a good deal.
Will’s longtime specialty has been the pseudo-erudite defense of wealth and privilege. In his insufferably overblown manner, he has, for example, campaigned for the abolition of the minimum wage, against the paltry $250 check sent to Social Security beneficiaries—in lieu of a cost-of-living adjustment—in 2009, and, more generally, in defense of social inequality.
Will is an ideal commentator for the nouveau riche who likes to think that his or her brute greed has something elevated about it.
Nearly every one of his pieces operates along these lines, but his May 16 column, “European Union: A coalition of irresponsibility,” is worthy of special note. It is the latest of his splenetic responses to the debt crisis in Greece and Europe.
Will begins his piece by taking note of the election results in North Rhine-Westphalia, which were unfavorable to the right-wing government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. This provides him the chance to assert that “The 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War, ratified Europe’s emerging system of nation-states.”
Admirer of the ancien régime that this comment makes him out to be, Will ignores the fact that more than two centuries of social convulsion and revolutionary struggle intervened before the modern European nation-state system fully emerged. As many historians have pointed out, the Peace of Westphalia sanctioned dynastic rule and envisioned a balance of power system that was fatally disrupted by the French Revolution, among other events. Efforts to restore it after Napoleon’s defeat failed, in the end, because of dramatically altered economic and social conditions.
Will’s empty reference to the Thirty Years’ War is of a piece with his general method. He—or his many editorial assistants—enjoys using “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.” The relatively brief May 16 column is peppered with irrelevant citations. William Blackstone, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James and William Dean Howells all come in for name-dropping, without anyone being the wiser for it.
The column makes no coherent sense, except as an excuse for Will to vent against his fantasized version of European social democracy, with all its dangerous social-leveling and nationality-“neutering” tendencies, and against the Greek population.
Along the way, the columnist displays a degree of unconsciousness about his own function in society that takes the breath away. He writes: “Greece represents a perverse aspiration—a society with (in the words of Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan) ‘more takers than makers,’ more people taking benefits from government than there are people making goods and services that produce the social surplus that funds government.”
If one devoted some time to it, one could probably think of more useless parasites than Will and his fellow pundits, but it would take some doing. How does Will classify himself, in social terms, as a ‘maker’ or a ‘taker’? What ‘goods and services’ does he produce?
Nothing enrages the Post columnist more than popular opposition to austerity measures. In a May 13 column (“Greece and GM: Too weak to fail”) he observed that “Athens’ ‘anti-government mobs’ have been composed mostly of government employees going berserk about threats to their entitlements.” Will takes low-paid Greek public service workers to task for defending their jobs and living standards, but never stops to wonder at his own boundless sense of “entitlement,” along with the rest of the American ruling elite and its mouthpieces.
Will makes millions of dollars each year, grabbing as much airtime on ABC News and column space in various publications as he can get away with, as well as lecturing to groups willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to hear him. He embodies the shameful evolution of the US media. There were honest, self-critical figures in American journalism in the early and mid-20th century who didn’t earn—inflation taken into account—a fraction of what this miserable specimen of a columnist pulls in.
In his May 16 article, Will goes on: “By socializing the consequences of Greece’s misgovernment, Europe has become the world’s leading producer of a toxic product—moral hazard.” Has Will noticed what’s been going on in America? Trillions of dollars have been placed at the disposal of the banks, socializing their bad bets, with hardly a string attached. Wall Street, for whom Will shills, in the final analysis, has looted the economy and the population, bringing about a collapse that has cost 8 million Americans their jobs.
One of the “toxic products” in overabundance at present is rubbish like this.
Will pontificates about Greece’s “dishonesty and indiscipline,” about how its “vices cannot be quarantined,” about how, unhappily, “no nation will be allowed to sink beneath the weight of its recklessness.” Not for the first time, one has to rub one’s eyes. America’s financial elite is the world leader in corporate corruption and swindling, its governments have led the population into two disastrous wars on the basis of shameless lying, its reckless foreign policy and belligerent militarism threaten the human race. Will lives in another world.
As part of his sneering polemic against those who are supposedly conspiring against national sovereignties in Europe (“a continent of distinct and unaffectionate peoples”), Will goes on to say that “‘Europe’ has somehow become against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.”
This is more stupidity. How did America become unified? Is the United States—a singular, not a plural—the outcome of geography or politics? The unification of the original colonies was a pre-eminently political act, bound up with a revolutionary struggle. “Unity,” in a meaningful sense, was only achieved ultimately through a protracted, bloody civil war. Moreover, the American bourgeoisie found it necessary to exterminate the indigenous population in the course of conquering the continent for itself.
The unification of Europe is indeed a political question, but not one that can be solved on a capitalist basis. The United States of Europe is a task that confronts the working class, one that will only be resolved through a new and historic struggle…but this is far beyond Mr. Will.
In another of his brilliant essays, for Newsweek this time (“The ‘Tax the Rich!’ Reflex, July 18, 2009), Will argued openly in defense of social inequality. Measures such as progressive taxation, he asserted, “reduce the role of merit in the allocation of social rewards—merit as markets measure it, in terms of value added to the economy.”
Will obviously had himself in mind. Citing the comments of another right-winger, he pointed to the “underlying inequality” beneath “income inequality,” “due to differences in IQ, energy, health, social skills, character, ambition, physical attractiveness, talent, and luck.” He had a point. With the proper amount of those qualities…added to a willingness to defend the status quo with all one’s energy, to say and write always what is pleasing to the rich, to spend one’s life as a right-wing snob and social climber… a healthy living is almost guaranteed.
George Will: a pompous defender of wealth and privilege
By David Walsh
20 May 2010
Not to put too fine a point on it, Washington Post columnist George Will is a pompous windbag, one of the most obnoxious right-wing media figures in America, and that is saying a good deal.
Will’s longtime specialty has been the pseudo-erudite defense of wealth and privilege. In his insufferably overblown manner, he has, for example, campaigned for the abolition of the minimum wage, against the paltry $250 check sent to Social Security beneficiaries—in lieu of a cost-of-living adjustment—in 2009, and, more generally, in defense of social inequality.
Will is an ideal commentator for the nouveau riche who likes to think that his or her brute greed has something elevated about it.
Nearly every one of his pieces operates along these lines, but his May 16 column, “European Union: A coalition of irresponsibility,” is worthy of special note. It is the latest of his splenetic responses to the debt crisis in Greece and Europe.
Will begins his piece by taking note of the election results in North Rhine-Westphalia, which were unfavorable to the right-wing government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. This provides him the chance to assert that “The 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War, ratified Europe’s emerging system of nation-states.”
Admirer of the ancien régime that this comment makes him out to be, Will ignores the fact that more than two centuries of social convulsion and revolutionary struggle intervened before the modern European nation-state system fully emerged. As many historians have pointed out, the Peace of Westphalia sanctioned dynastic rule and envisioned a balance of power system that was fatally disrupted by the French Revolution, among other events. Efforts to restore it after Napoleon’s defeat failed, in the end, because of dramatically altered economic and social conditions.
Will’s empty reference to the Thirty Years’ War is of a piece with his general method. He—or his many editorial assistants—enjoys using “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.” The relatively brief May 16 column is peppered with irrelevant citations. William Blackstone, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James and William Dean Howells all come in for name-dropping, without anyone being the wiser for it.
The column makes no coherent sense, except as an excuse for Will to vent against his fantasized version of European social democracy, with all its dangerous social-leveling and nationality-“neutering” tendencies, and against the Greek population.
Along the way, the columnist displays a degree of unconsciousness about his own function in society that takes the breath away. He writes: “Greece represents a perverse aspiration—a society with (in the words of Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan) ‘more takers than makers,’ more people taking benefits from government than there are people making goods and services that produce the social surplus that funds government.”
If one devoted some time to it, one could probably think of more useless parasites than Will and his fellow pundits, but it would take some doing. How does Will classify himself, in social terms, as a ‘maker’ or a ‘taker’? What ‘goods and services’ does he produce?
Nothing enrages the Post columnist more than popular opposition to austerity measures. In a May 13 column (“Greece and GM: Too weak to fail”) he observed that “Athens’ ‘anti-government mobs’ have been composed mostly of government employees going berserk about threats to their entitlements.” Will takes low-paid Greek public service workers to task for defending their jobs and living standards, but never stops to wonder at his own boundless sense of “entitlement,” along with the rest of the American ruling elite and its mouthpieces.
Will makes millions of dollars each year, grabbing as much airtime on ABC News and column space in various publications as he can get away with, as well as lecturing to groups willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to hear him. He embodies the shameful evolution of the US media. There were honest, self-critical figures in American journalism in the early and mid-20th century who didn’t earn—inflation taken into account—a fraction of what this miserable specimen of a columnist pulls in.
In his May 16 article, Will goes on: “By socializing the consequences of Greece’s misgovernment, Europe has become the world’s leading producer of a toxic product—moral hazard.” Has Will noticed what’s been going on in America? Trillions of dollars have been placed at the disposal of the banks, socializing their bad bets, with hardly a string attached. Wall Street, for whom Will shills, in the final analysis, has looted the economy and the population, bringing about a collapse that has cost 8 million Americans their jobs.
One of the “toxic products” in overabundance at present is rubbish like this.
Will pontificates about Greece’s “dishonesty and indiscipline,” about how its “vices cannot be quarantined,” about how, unhappily, “no nation will be allowed to sink beneath the weight of its recklessness.” Not for the first time, one has to rub one’s eyes. America’s financial elite is the world leader in corporate corruption and swindling, its governments have led the population into two disastrous wars on the basis of shameless lying, its reckless foreign policy and belligerent militarism threaten the human race. Will lives in another world.
As part of his sneering polemic against those who are supposedly conspiring against national sovereignties in Europe (“a continent of distinct and unaffectionate peoples”), Will goes on to say that “‘Europe’ has somehow become against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.”
This is more stupidity. How did America become unified? Is the United States—a singular, not a plural—the outcome of geography or politics? The unification of the original colonies was a pre-eminently political act, bound up with a revolutionary struggle. “Unity,” in a meaningful sense, was only achieved ultimately through a protracted, bloody civil war. Moreover, the American bourgeoisie found it necessary to exterminate the indigenous population in the course of conquering the continent for itself.
The unification of Europe is indeed a political question, but not one that can be solved on a capitalist basis. The United States of Europe is a task that confronts the working class, one that will only be resolved through a new and historic struggle…but this is far beyond Mr. Will.
In another of his brilliant essays, for Newsweek this time (“The ‘Tax the Rich!’ Reflex, July 18, 2009), Will argued openly in defense of social inequality. Measures such as progressive taxation, he asserted, “reduce the role of merit in the allocation of social rewards—merit as markets measure it, in terms of value added to the economy.”
Will obviously had himself in mind. Citing the comments of another right-winger, he pointed to the “underlying inequality” beneath “income inequality,” “due to differences in IQ, energy, health, social skills, character, ambition, physical attractiveness, talent, and luck.” He had a point. With the proper amount of those qualities…added to a willingness to defend the status quo with all one’s energy, to say and write always what is pleasing to the rich, to spend one’s life as a right-wing snob and social climber… a healthy living is almost guaranteed.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20070327.html
Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn
03.27.07
Pasadena, Calif. -- An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.
NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures. The spacecraft's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image.
"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."
The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.
The new images taken in thermal-infrared light show the hexagon extends much deeper down into the atmosphere than previously expected, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the cloud tops. A system of clouds lies within the hexagon. The clouds appear to be whipping around the hexagon like cars on a racetrack.
"It's amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of Saturn's poles," said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, University of Arizona, Tucson. "At the south pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely different."
The Saturn north pole hexagon has not been visible to Cassini's visual cameras, because it's winter in that area, so the hexagon is under the cover of the long polar night, which lasts about 15 years. The infrared mapping spectrometer can image Saturn in both daytime and nighttime conditions and see deep inside. It imaged the feature with thermal wavelengths near 5 microns (seven times the wavelength visible to the human eye) during a 12-day period beginning on Oct. 30, 2006. As winter wanes over the next two years, the feature may become visible to the visual cameras.
Based on the new images and more information on the depth of the feature, scientists think it is not linked to Saturn's radio emissions or to auroral activity, as once contemplated, even though Saturn's northern aurora lies nearly overhead.
The hexagon appears to have remained fixed with Saturn's rotation rate and axis since first glimpsed by Voyager 26 years ago. The actual rotation rate of Saturn is still uncertain.
"Once we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated polar hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep atmosphere and perhaps the interior," added Baines.
The hexagon images and movie, including the north polar auroras are available at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/ and http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/ .
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.
Media contact: Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Giant hexagon of clouds spins on Saturn while clouds disappear from Jupiter
http://www.naturalnews.com/028797_Saturn_hexagon.html
Giant hexagon of clouds spins on Saturn while clouds disappear from Jupiter
Saturday, May 15, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) Here at NaturalNews, we normally report on Earthly events, but right now some rather grand events are taking place in our solar system that you may want to know about.
For starters, there's the odd fact that one of Jupiter's huge red stripes -- which is really a massive storm system many times larger than planet Earth -- has suddenly disappeared. Known as the "Southern Equatorial Belt", this storm system isn't exactly permanent: Jupiter's belts undergo striking transformations every 10 - 15 years, according to astronomers.
Far more bizarre and mysterious is something that NASA's Cassini spacecraft first noticed in 2007. There is a large rotating hexagon circling the north pole of Saturn.
This isn't some conspiracy theory. It's not some sort of far-fetched interpretation of random organic structure. It is quite clearly a massive hexagon, and it's circling the north pole of Saturn as we speak. And by "massive", I mean this hexagon is larger than the planet Earth.
Straight from the NASA website: "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."
The hexagon, according to NASA, is 60 miles thick (deep) and an astonishing 15,000 miles wide.
That means four Earths would fit inside it. Yes, it's really that big. And of course, it seems entirely unnatural. Clouds don't form hexagon shapes and then maintain those structures as the edges orbit the center. Looking at this shape, it is difficult to explain it as "natural."
But that's not all there is to see here.
The all-seeing eye pyramid inside the hexagon
As I was studying this animation from NASA, something struck me as particularly interesting. Inside the hexagon there's a three-sided pyramid shape. It appears quite clearly as a lighter-shade triangle set against the background of the hexagon. Imagine a pyramid placed on top of the hexagon and you'll see it.
There's even more: Inside the pyramid is the shape of the all-seeing eye. You can clearly see it in the center of the pyramid shape, which is inside the hexagon.
Here's a still image from the NASA animation:
http://www.naturalnews.com/images/Saturn-Hexagon1.jpg
In it, you can just barely make out the shape of an inverted pyramid, plus two concentric circles in the center. Here's an overlay of lines showing the structure of the pyramid, plus the all-seeing eye:
http://www.naturalnews.com/images/Saturn-Hexagon4.jpg
Now here's where this gets even more bizarre...
The all-seeing eye and the pyramid
Do you recognize this all-seeing eye with the pyramid? If not, just whip out a dollar bill from your pocket and glance at the back. There it is!
Yes, your U.S. currency contains the exact same image: An all-seeing eye, centered inside the top of the pyramid, looking over you from the back of a dollar bill.
Here's a zoomed-in image showing you this from the back of a U.S. dollar bill:
http://www.naturalnews.com/images/Dollar-Bill-Annuit-Coeptis.jpg
Reality check
Please note what you're thinking right now as you're reading this. So far, I have not presented anything other than what is evident. There is a spinning hexagon of clouds on Saturn's north pole. Inside the hexagon is a triangle (pyramid). Inside the triangle are two concentric circles that look a lot like a human eye.
This shape looks a whole lot like the pyramid with the all-seeing eye on the back of the U.S. dollar.
Notice I haven't mentioned anything about any conspiracy, or aliens, or anything of that kind. These are just observations of the world around us.
Granted, they are fascinating observations. In fact, if you told most people what I've printed here in this article so far, they would think you were absolutely nuts.
And yet all I've done so far is republished NASA photos from the Cassini spacecraft and shown pictures from the back of U.S. currency. I've also pointed out some eerie similarities between the two.
But anyone with half a brain, upon seeing these pictures, would begin to wonder: Is this just a coincidence? And why is there a 15,000-mile wide spinning hexagon on Saturn in the first place?
I've mentioned this to quite a few people, and no one I talked to was even aware of this. So what's it doing there?
Natural phenomenon or intelligent design?
There are really one two possibilities for explaining the giant hexagon on Saturn: It is either a natural phenomenon or it was intelligently designed. (Well, I suppose there's a third possibility: That the whole thing is some sort of grand NASA hoax and the pictures were faked... but to what end?)
I can't wait to see the debates about this on our Facebook page, by the way, because "intelligently designed" could include anything: God, an alien race, a supernatural being, a previous Earthly civilization, a civilization from a parallel universe... who knows?
"Intelligently designed" means some conscious, intelligent being (or group of beings) intentionally created it. If so, you'd have to wonder: For what purpose? What would a giant spinning hexagon on Saturn actually accomplish?
Cymatics and the physical structure of sound
The far more likely explanation for the giant hexagon on Saturn may be that it is a natural phenomenon. And the only phenomenon I'm familiar with that might explain this involves the field of cymatics.
Cymatics is the study of how sound can alter the physical structure of materials, creating interesting structural patterns. To see this for yourself, you can turn a stereo speaker on its edge (with the speaker facing up), then place a liquid pudding of corn starch and water on top of a layer of plastic wrap, on top of the speaker. When you crank up the music, the corn starch creates bizarre and fascinating shapes due to the expression of the structure of the sound.
See an example of this "DIY cymatics" on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaYvYysQvBU
I've been thinking that the giant hexagon on Saturn could theoretically be caused by very low-frequency sound waves emanating from some sort of geological action on the planet's surface. Perhaps these sound waves are being focused toward the north pole of the planet in much the same way that earthquake shockwaves can "bounce" off subterranean geological features. These sound waves could theoretically create a "cymatic" effect that we're seeing as a giant hexagon swirling around the pole.
It sounds far-fetched, I know. But not nearly as far-fetch as "aliens built it." When it comes to bizarre phenomena like this, all the explanations sound far-fetched.
You can come up with your own theory to explain all this, of course. But make no mistake: There is a giant hexagon of clouds 15,000 miles wide swirling around the north pole of Saturn, and even NASA has no idea why or how it got there. Who or what maintains the hexagon structure and keeps the clouds swirling in a six-sided geometric pattern?
Or is this a "natural" event taking place on a massive scale? If it's natural, it would demonstrate that nature can create some astonishingly complex (and large-scale) designs in the worlds around us. That's particularly interesting because the FDA believes nature is incapable of creating even a single plant-based nutrient that has any beneficial effect whatsoever on the human body.
There's a lot of denial in Washington about the power and "creativity" of nature. Maybe those folks should look toward the heavens and take note of what's really happening in our universe... because some of it is pretty darned spectacular.
Just ask NASA.
Please let us know YOUR thoughts on this giant hexagon on Saturn. Is it a NATURAL event? Was it created by MAN? Was it put there by GOD? Is it an elaborate NASA HOAX?
Chime in with your own thoughts at http://facebook.naturalnews.com where our readers love to discuss and debate fascinating ideas!
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. He has created over 100 CounterThink cartoons and produced several popular hip-hop songs on socially-conscious topics. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and pursues hobbies such as Pilates, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening.
Giant hexagon of clouds spins on Saturn while clouds disappear from Jupiter
Saturday, May 15, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) Here at NaturalNews, we normally report on Earthly events, but right now some rather grand events are taking place in our solar system that you may want to know about.
For starters, there's the odd fact that one of Jupiter's huge red stripes -- which is really a massive storm system many times larger than planet Earth -- has suddenly disappeared. Known as the "Southern Equatorial Belt", this storm system isn't exactly permanent: Jupiter's belts undergo striking transformations every 10 - 15 years, according to astronomers.
Far more bizarre and mysterious is something that NASA's Cassini spacecraft first noticed in 2007. There is a large rotating hexagon circling the north pole of Saturn.
This isn't some conspiracy theory. It's not some sort of far-fetched interpretation of random organic structure. It is quite clearly a massive hexagon, and it's circling the north pole of Saturn as we speak. And by "massive", I mean this hexagon is larger than the planet Earth.
Straight from the NASA website: "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."
The hexagon, according to NASA, is 60 miles thick (deep) and an astonishing 15,000 miles wide.
That means four Earths would fit inside it. Yes, it's really that big. And of course, it seems entirely unnatural. Clouds don't form hexagon shapes and then maintain those structures as the edges orbit the center. Looking at this shape, it is difficult to explain it as "natural."
But that's not all there is to see here.
The all-seeing eye pyramid inside the hexagon
As I was studying this animation from NASA, something struck me as particularly interesting. Inside the hexagon there's a three-sided pyramid shape. It appears quite clearly as a lighter-shade triangle set against the background of the hexagon. Imagine a pyramid placed on top of the hexagon and you'll see it.
There's even more: Inside the pyramid is the shape of the all-seeing eye. You can clearly see it in the center of the pyramid shape, which is inside the hexagon.
Here's a still image from the NASA animation:
http://www.naturalnews.com/images/Saturn-Hexagon1.jpg
In it, you can just barely make out the shape of an inverted pyramid, plus two concentric circles in the center. Here's an overlay of lines showing the structure of the pyramid, plus the all-seeing eye:
http://www.naturalnews.com/images/Saturn-Hexagon4.jpg
Now here's where this gets even more bizarre...
The all-seeing eye and the pyramid
Do you recognize this all-seeing eye with the pyramid? If not, just whip out a dollar bill from your pocket and glance at the back. There it is!
Yes, your U.S. currency contains the exact same image: An all-seeing eye, centered inside the top of the pyramid, looking over you from the back of a dollar bill.
Here's a zoomed-in image showing you this from the back of a U.S. dollar bill:
http://www.naturalnews.com/images/Dollar-Bill-Annuit-Coeptis.jpg
Reality check
Please note what you're thinking right now as you're reading this. So far, I have not presented anything other than what is evident. There is a spinning hexagon of clouds on Saturn's north pole. Inside the hexagon is a triangle (pyramid). Inside the triangle are two concentric circles that look a lot like a human eye.
This shape looks a whole lot like the pyramid with the all-seeing eye on the back of the U.S. dollar.
Notice I haven't mentioned anything about any conspiracy, or aliens, or anything of that kind. These are just observations of the world around us.
Granted, they are fascinating observations. In fact, if you told most people what I've printed here in this article so far, they would think you were absolutely nuts.
And yet all I've done so far is republished NASA photos from the Cassini spacecraft and shown pictures from the back of U.S. currency. I've also pointed out some eerie similarities between the two.
But anyone with half a brain, upon seeing these pictures, would begin to wonder: Is this just a coincidence? And why is there a 15,000-mile wide spinning hexagon on Saturn in the first place?
I've mentioned this to quite a few people, and no one I talked to was even aware of this. So what's it doing there?
Natural phenomenon or intelligent design?
There are really one two possibilities for explaining the giant hexagon on Saturn: It is either a natural phenomenon or it was intelligently designed. (Well, I suppose there's a third possibility: That the whole thing is some sort of grand NASA hoax and the pictures were faked... but to what end?)
I can't wait to see the debates about this on our Facebook page, by the way, because "intelligently designed" could include anything: God, an alien race, a supernatural being, a previous Earthly civilization, a civilization from a parallel universe... who knows?
"Intelligently designed" means some conscious, intelligent being (or group of beings) intentionally created it. If so, you'd have to wonder: For what purpose? What would a giant spinning hexagon on Saturn actually accomplish?
Cymatics and the physical structure of sound
The far more likely explanation for the giant hexagon on Saturn may be that it is a natural phenomenon. And the only phenomenon I'm familiar with that might explain this involves the field of cymatics.
Cymatics is the study of how sound can alter the physical structure of materials, creating interesting structural patterns. To see this for yourself, you can turn a stereo speaker on its edge (with the speaker facing up), then place a liquid pudding of corn starch and water on top of a layer of plastic wrap, on top of the speaker. When you crank up the music, the corn starch creates bizarre and fascinating shapes due to the expression of the structure of the sound.
See an example of this "DIY cymatics" on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaYvYysQvBU
I've been thinking that the giant hexagon on Saturn could theoretically be caused by very low-frequency sound waves emanating from some sort of geological action on the planet's surface. Perhaps these sound waves are being focused toward the north pole of the planet in much the same way that earthquake shockwaves can "bounce" off subterranean geological features. These sound waves could theoretically create a "cymatic" effect that we're seeing as a giant hexagon swirling around the pole.
It sounds far-fetched, I know. But not nearly as far-fetch as "aliens built it." When it comes to bizarre phenomena like this, all the explanations sound far-fetched.
You can come up with your own theory to explain all this, of course. But make no mistake: There is a giant hexagon of clouds 15,000 miles wide swirling around the north pole of Saturn, and even NASA has no idea why or how it got there. Who or what maintains the hexagon structure and keeps the clouds swirling in a six-sided geometric pattern?
Or is this a "natural" event taking place on a massive scale? If it's natural, it would demonstrate that nature can create some astonishingly complex (and large-scale) designs in the worlds around us. That's particularly interesting because the FDA believes nature is incapable of creating even a single plant-based nutrient that has any beneficial effect whatsoever on the human body.
There's a lot of denial in Washington about the power and "creativity" of nature. Maybe those folks should look toward the heavens and take note of what's really happening in our universe... because some of it is pretty darned spectacular.
Just ask NASA.
Please let us know YOUR thoughts on this giant hexagon on Saturn. Is it a NATURAL event? Was it created by MAN? Was it put there by GOD? Is it an elaborate NASA HOAX?
Chime in with your own thoughts at http://facebook.naturalnews.com where our readers love to discuss and debate fascinating ideas!
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. He has created over 100 CounterThink cartoons and produced several popular hip-hop songs on socially-conscious topics. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and pursues hobbies such as Pilates, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening.
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