Vladurday

I thought the title of this Pundit Kitchen Post was pretty witty too. So I swiped it.
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Turtle?

LORI TOBIAS/The Oregonian
Scientists think a fossilized tortoise found along the beach in Lincoln County may be 20 million years old. The domed back of the stone, which measures roughly 30 inches long by 24 inches wide, suggests it was a land turtle.

If I had seen the above, I would have simply dismissed it as a very large concretion. Even looking at the full size image (click to double the size), I'm not seeing any features that jump out and say "fossil." But I'm not a paleo guy, even less of a vertebrate paleo guy, and know absolutely nothing about chelonian paleo. So I'm willing to assume that Hanschumaker and Orr know what they're talking about.

Very Cool!

Poor Adolph

Heeeeeee's baaa-aack!

Feakin' brilliant!

An Interesting Problem

with, very likely, no happy solution.Under nearly any circumstances, my response would be "close it down." Even under the circumstances we face, that's likely to be my final position, unless there's some practical way to remove mercury from the emissions.

But here's the problem: Oregon is an overwhelmingly volcanic state; we have very little in the way of outcropping limestone. There's a small amount in the Klamath-Siskyou province in the SW, and a larger amount in the Blue Mountain province in the NE. Many are in tectonically-shattered small pods that wouldn't really be economic to develop, and many have too high a proportion of clastic material (sand and clay, for example) to be useful for cement making. I was on a field trip in, I think, spring of 1988, and we stopped to look at the outcrop near the Durkee plant. At the time, and as best as I can tell from a quick web search, to this day, it's the only cement manufacturer in Oregon.

I have commented before that construction materials such as sand, gravel tend to have local sources, since the cost of transporting them in the quantities in which they're used is high. The same holds true for cement. It would not make economic sense to bring in all our concrete (or limestone) from neighboring states; on the other hand, it does not make sense to keep emitting these shocking amounts of mercury into the air. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out; the factors at work here are powerful.

Perhaps Idaho, directly downwind, and presumably the prime recipient of Oregon's Hg emissions, could help subsidize some of the transportation costs? Perhaps the Durkee plant situation will inspire someone to develop more effective Hg capture technology? I dunno, but it should be pretty clear that the levels being emitted are untenable.

Followup: A few articles later, I found an op-ed on the same issue.

The biggest mercury polluter in the entire United States is a cement factory in eastern Oregon. This fact has not escaped notice of the state's environmental watchdog, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The very day the federal government released its disturbing report on mercury's widespread threat, DEQ officials announced that the agency would work hard to make sure that the cement company could continue to release mercury at a level 60 times greater than new federal emissions limits.

Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Border Man...

Medium Large

There's a blogger I've read from time to time who deals with the shear hell transgendered people have to go through dealing with today's identity requirements. Not pretty. Peppermint Patty would be pretty much restricted to the US and grounded. And if she managed to travel to another country, there's a good chance she'd spend months or years trying to gain re-admittance to the US.

Mad as Hell Doctors!

Aren't going to take it any more!

There's no nice way to say it. The financial cost of health care is killing our citizens, hobbling our economy, crushing small business, and threatening the solvency of our government. In the meantime, the Health Care Industry is spending almost two million dollars a day lobbying Congress and manipulating public opinion to accept “reform” legislation that leaves a vicious, for-profit system intact. The "public option" is a trap. We need real reform that finds immediate savings, controls costs, and accomplishes the moral imperative of true Universal Access. A Single Payer plan is the only real path to a Health Care System that is socially, ethically and fiscally responsible. And yet, our elected officials refuse to even discuss the possibility of a Single Payer plan!

If that doesn't make you mad, we recommend checking your pulse.

I think this is a Quixotic effort, but I'd donate if I could. The doctors and patients are the ones who should be at the forefront of media coverage, not the frontal lobotomies of pundits and right-wing legislators.

Elijah pointed this out to me. I sort of promised myself earlier, no more health rants today. Yeah, I lie to myself, just like everyone else.

I Hate It When That Happens

It drives me crazy when my browsing interferes with loading and running animated gif advertisements on dating services, travel services and how to fit into a bikini by Christmas, among the countless other purchasing opportunities available to me. Sometimes I'm just so goddamn thoughtless...