Fine atmospheric particles — smaller than one-thirtieth of the diameter of a human hair — were identified more than 20 years ago as the most lethal of the widely dispersed air pollutants in the United States. Linked to both heart and lung disease, they kill an estimated 50,000 Americans each year. But more recently, scientists have been puzzled to learn that a subset of these particles, called secondary organic aerosols, has a greater total mass, and is thus more dangerous, than previously understood. ...

The Irvine study of the formation of secondary compounds in the atmosphere, which will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, upends previous assumptions about the fate of the byproducts of the pollution from internal-combustion engines. These gaseous byproducts were thought to incorporate themselves into tiny airborne drops of liquid that would then dissipate quickly as the drops evaporated.

The new study finds instead that they attach themselves more tightly to airborne organic particles, creating tiny tar balls that evaporate more slowly and persist longer than anyone had thought. E.P.A. models built on these assumptions now appear to understate the total amount of fine particles, according to Barbara J. Finlayson-Pitts, a professor at Irvine and one of the study’s authors.

MSNBC just called Michigan for Romney.

Romney beats crap out of Santorum in Arizona.

THE DEVIL MADE HIM DO IT!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

As Occupy Wall Street spread across the nation last fall, sparking protests in more than 70 cities, the Department of Homeland Security began keeping tabs on the movement. An internal DHS report entitled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street," dated October of last year, opens with the observation that "mass gatherings associated with public protest movements can have disruptive effects on transportation, commercial, and government services, especially when staged in major metropolitan areas." While acknowledging the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of OWS, the report notes darkly that "large scale demonstrations also carry the potential for violence, presenting a significant challenge for law enforcement." 
 
The five-page report –  contained in 5 million newly leaked documents examined by Rolling Stone in an investigative partnership with WikiLeaks – goes on to sum up the history of Occupy Wall Street and assess its "impact" on everything from financial services to government facilities. Many of the observations are benign, and appear to have been culled from publicly available sources. ...
 
But the DHS also appears to have scoured OWS-related Twitter feeds for much of their information. The report includes a special feature on what it calls Occupy's "social media and IT usage," and provides an interactive map of protests and gatherings nationwide – borrowed, improbably enough, from the lefty blog Daily Kos. "Social media and the organic emergence of online communities," the report notes, "have driven the rapid expansion of the OWS movement." 

The most ominous aspect of the report, however, comes in its final paragraph:

"The growing support for the OWS movement has expanded the protests’ impact and increased the potential for violence. While the peaceful nature of the protests has served so far to mitigate their impact, larger numbers and support from groups such as Anonymous substantially increase the risk for potential incidents and enhance the potential security risk to critical infrastructure (CI). The continued expansion of these protests also places an increasingly heavy burden on law enforcement and movement organizers to control protesters. As the primary target of the demonstrations, financial services stands the sector most impacted by the OWS protests. Due to the location of the protests in major metropolitan areas, heightened and continuous situational awareness for security personnel across all CI sectors is encouraged."

Olympia Snow (I mean what a name!) is not running for office in Maine this year!

Wow!

She and her sister Senator were always held up in hope by the dems to attack GOP filibusters in the Senior House of Congress.

This is interesting to me.

Maybe the dems can pick one up here in order to hold their lead!

Who knows?

She would caucus with the repubs and stick with their 60 member rule (a filibuster that reflected nothing of the ridiculous film with Stewart!)

So in fact she gave her nation little over the last three years.

I am interested in seeing who prevails in this Senate Seat!

By Douglas Quenqua, New York Times/Science, Feb. 27/28, 2012

Researchers say young women deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends, including the latest, known as vocal fry.

By Dylan Byers, Politico.com Feb .26, 2012

WikiLeaks, Julian Assange's whistle-blowing organization, has announced that it is publishing a series of documents it is calling "The Global Intelligence Files," which includes over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor, according to a statement the organization made Sunday night.

The organization has partnered with 25 media organizations to publish the documents, two of which are based in the United States: McClatchy and Rolling Stone [....]

By Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, March 5, 2012

Gopnik reviews biblical scholar Pagels' new book, “Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation,” which makes a strong case that the Book of Revelation was mostly political,

that Revelation is essentially an anti-Christian polemic. That is, it was written by an expatriate follower of Jesus who wanted the movement to remain within an entirely Jewish context, as opposed to the “Christianity” just then being invented by St. Paul, who welcomed uncircumcised and trayf-eating Gentiles into the sect. At a time when no one quite called himself “Christian,” in the modern sense, John is prophesying what would happen if people did. That’s the forward-looking worry in the book....

This should scare everyone as TPM reports in body of report:

“In July 2010, we got a written letter from TransCanada, they told us if you don’t accept this within 30 days, we’re going to immediately start eminent domain proceedings against you,” Thompson said. “They didn’t say anything about a permit. I tried to contact the Governor’s office. All I got back was a form letter talking about the pipeline.”

It turns out TransCanada used the same approach with many other landowners — with some success. “It was pretty effective, it kinda scares the hell out of you,” Thompson said.

And the property owners are learning:

“I’m a little ashamed to say that maybe if it hadn’t come across our land, I wouldn’t have gotten involved,” he told me. “I’ve gained a great deal of respect for people who do care about our environment I’ve become much more aware of environmental issues. I have to admire them for being concerned about our environment.”

“Republicans,” he said, by contrast, “could give a rats ass about the people out here.”

By Evan Osnos, Letter from China @ newyorker.com, Feb. 24, 2012

[....]  I've heard of vote-buying in local Chinese elections, but this is an impressive new standard: nine thousand yuan—that’s more than fourteen hundred dollars—is several months’ salary for many Chinese workers. “Last fall,” Yang went on, “when we elected the Party secretary, I got enough out of it to buy an iPad.”

For an explainer, I turned to Mayling Birney, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, who spent years examining the halting development of China’s village-elections system [.....]

This contribution struck me after the 2nd day after it was first published.

I think this might bode good for the dems this year.

Maher, who has had no problem sticking it to Obama, is so disgusted by the repub field over the last year or so that he is putting his money where his soul lies.

Bill is not a billionaire and this is not that easy a check to write for him (a lot easier than moi of course).

This may bode well for 'us'.

The left might unite again and erase the debacle of 2010!

The Yahoo show sucks by the way. I would receive 30 seconds of commercial crap for 1 minute of Maher. But maybe he made a good part of this contribution from that show and so I forgive him!

Occupy Our Food Supply is bringing together the Occupy, sustainable farming, food justice, buy local, slow food, and environmental movements for a global day of action on February 27, 2012. Inspired by the theme of CREATE/RESIST, thousands will come together to creatively confront corporate control of our food supply and take action to build healthy, accessible food systems for all.

Industrial agribusiness corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, ADM and Dupont have gained runaway control of our food systems and to take them back, we'll need all the collective power we can manifest around the world. There are few things more personal than the food we put into our bodies every day. Let's ensure that we can stand by the food we eat from farm to fork.

Sign up to take action on February 27 to Occupy Our Food Supply!