Category: things getting worse

“Bat Jungle” Costa Rica

On By Rick McIn bad news, things getting worse, travelLeave a comment

The BatJungle.com opened 2006. It’s one of the BEST tourist attractions in the Monteverde area.

Guided tour takes about 45 minutes

90 live bats of 8 species in an enclosure 17m (57ft) in length

Exhibit features a special ultrasonic microphone that allows visitors to hear bats echolocating (biosonar) and socializing in real time …

bat
photo via Artifacts and Insects at Costa Rica’s 10 Best Museums

Bats are very cool animals, the only mammal with excellent flying ability. They can dodge thin filaments that birds cannot avoid.

Bats are the second largest order of mammals (after the rodents), representing about 20% of all classified mammal species worldwide, with about 1,240 bat species divided into two suborders: the less specialized and largely fruit-eating megabats, or flying foxes, and the highly specialized and echolocating microbats.

About 70% of bat species are insectivores. Most of the rest are frugivores, or fruit eaters. …

… vital ecological roles of pollinating flowers and dispersing fruit seeds …

… economically important, as they consume insect pests, reducing the need for pesticides …

orange-nectar-bat-pollinates-832x560

Here’s the really, really BAD news. 😦

White nose syndrome is a condition associated with the deaths of millions of bats in the Eastern United States and Canada. …

The fungus was first discovered in central New York State in 2006 and spread quickly to the entire Eastern US north of Florida; mortality rates of 90–100% have been observed in most caves …

… the lack of bug-eating bats in summer could cause severe problems in the ecosystem of the Eastern forests and on farmland and beyond: nearly all of the bats Continental US and Canada are insectivores …

white nose bats
White-nose syndrome map

hateful fear mongers

On By Rick McIn bad news, economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, product complaints, things getting worseLeave a comment

hateful fear mongers

FOX National News is the worst.

They care only for ratings. If you don’t like FOX News (unfair and unbalanced), boycott.

anti-vaxers are wrong, wrong, wrong

On By Rick McIn bad news, education, government, health & fitness, product endorsements, things getting worseLeave a comment

The New Jersey Governor, normally a smart guy, bungled this one. It seemed to me he was pandering to the anti-Obama, lowest common denominator base of the Republican Party.

Now he’s trying to back-pedal.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Holds News Conference To Address Traffic Scandal

Chris Christie’s Terrible Vaccine Advice

Watch A Discredited Vaccine Study’s Continuing Impact on Public Health on the NY Times.

It’s not uneducated people, but rather wealthy L.A. and San Francisco area parents. Jenny McCarthy fans, I wildly speculate.

If you don’t want to wade through the specifics of why anti-vaxers are wrong, Penn and Teller will give you a graphic explanation.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

That all said, I agree that we should be researching vaccines. Finding the best. Looking for side effects.

But to not vaccinate your kids for measles is near criminal parenting behaviour.

NRA’s Wayne LaPierre – CHICKENS are coming for your guns!!!

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, firearms, GOP USA, government, things getting worse5 Comments

Wayne LaPierre is an extremist.

I’m pissed when he says things like this:

We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping-mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all. …

He lies. He exaggerates. 

He lies exaggerates I assume, to help increase sales of firearms. He exaggerates for money.

I can’t imagine any other reason to overstate the way he does.

Wayne LaPierre

LaPierre’s central message: Owning a gun is the solution. The world is a scary place. There are bad guys everywhere threatening you and your family, and the only thing they’re afraid of is a gun in your hands.

Tragically, a record number of Americans subscribe to some version of this mythology, with 63 percent (67 percent of men polled and 58 percent of women) believing that guns truly do make them safer. The public’s confidence in firearms, however, is woefully misguided: The evidence overwhelmingly shows that guns leave everybody less safe, including their owners. …

The Myth of the Good Guy With a Gun

Politico – The Myth Behind Defensive Gun Ownership

The NRA is wrong: Owning a gun is far more likely to harm you than protect you.

I agree with LaPierre on a couple of things. He supports:

• Increasing funds for a stricter and more efficient mental health system, and reform of civil commitment laws to facilitate institutionalization of the mentally ill when necessary.

• Creating a computerized universal mental health registry of those adjudicated to be incompetent to help limit gun sales to the mentally ill.

It’s deflection, I’m assuming. Taking those positions makes no sense relative to his other positions.

He’s totally against the government regulating firearms, even though they are dangerous. (More Americans American children and youth are now killed by weapons than motor vehicle accidents.) … But totally for the government regulating mental health. Because the mentally ill are dangerous. 🙂

related

• Two Decades of Paranoid Pronouncements by the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre

• Gun Deaths Versus Car Deaths

• American Gun Deaths to Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 2015

Citizens United should be overruled

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, product complaints, things getting worseLeave a comment

Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays … far from what our democracy is supposed to be. …

New Republic

Ginsburg

Citizens United was a terrible ruling. Most people asked to think about the issue for 10 seconds conclude that it’s a bad idea.

An ABC–Washington Post poll conducted February 4–8, 2010, showed that 80% of those surveyed opposed (and 65% strongly opposed) the Citizens United ruling, which the poll described as saying “corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections“.

Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission_Poll_1

wikipedia – criticisms of Citizen’s United

So why do so many politicians, especially Republicans, support Citizens United?

Because they can only get elected with money handed them by corporate lobbyists.

I don’t see how U.S. politicians can get out of this trap. They must sell their souls to corporations in order to get elected. 😦

Presidents Koch are pissed

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, things getting worseLeave a comment

David and Charles Koch are pissed. They orchestrated the spending of a lot of money to influence the American government. Yet Romney lost.

charles_and_david_koch-620x412

Americans for Prosperity, the most prominent arm of the Koch brothers’ organization, put Republican lawmakers on notice …

Tim Phillips, president of AFP, said at a Washington press conference that congressional Republicans “failed miserably” a decade ago, especially on cutting the federal budget. “They’ve been given a second chance by the American people,” he said, “and we’re going to hold them accountable. …

NPR – Conservative Koch Brothers’ Group Puts Congressional GOP On Notice

The Presidents Koch agenda covers three areas:

1. taxes including repeal of the estate or death tax

2. energy headlined by a call to build the Keystone XL pipeline

3. health care, which includes repealing the Affordable Care Act

I’m slightly in favour of Keystone. But I’m against unelected rich guys having so much influence on legislation. In backrooms I have no doubt they discuss which politicians can be bought. And which are a bad investment.

That’s what the term “accountable” means. 😦

The Koch brothers invested $400 million because they expected to get far more than $400 million back. You cannot trust them.

___

The Koch’s “labyrinthine network of political groups — none of which reveal the names of their donors — showed that the coalition raised more than $400 million during the 2012 election.”

terrorism rarely works

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, government, Islam, things getting worseLeave a comment

The right wing media in 2015 is demonizing all Muslims. Rupert #RupertsFault Murdoch, FOX News boss, for example.

It reminds me of the days when Americans demonized the Ruskies. All Russians were evil in the 1970s, you may recall. But I was a gymnast. Russian gymnasts and coaches were my heroes.

Today Muslims are the Ruskies. A few fanatics were furious with a French satirical paper. And lashed out.

How did that work out for the terrorist cause?

Huge demand for new Charlie Hebdo edition one week after attack

Here’s the cover of the next edition.

cover

I’d never heard of Charlie Hebdo. Now almost everyone has heard of the stupid publication. 😦

Muslims around the world are worse off, not better.

why the USA must QUIT the Middle East

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, Islam, things getting worseLeave a comment

President Barack Obama said on Sunday the longest war in American history was coming to a responsible conclusion.

Obama was welcoming the end of US combat operations in Afghanistan, which was marked with a ceremony in Kabul. …

Obama honored the more than 2,200 Americans who have died in Afghanistan since the war started 13 years ago. Obama said those years had tested the US and its military. From a peak 140,000 troops in 2010, the US and Nato plan to leave just 13,500 behind. …

Obama heralds formal end of war in Afghanistan after 13 years

The Taliban immediately declared they’d ‘defeated’ Nato:

A Taliban statement said the US-led force had “rolled up its flag” without having achieved “anything substantial”. …

Like every other Afghan invader, the costs NATO paid far outweighed anything gained. 😦

Afghanis must decide their own fate.
___

On December 12th, 2013 a wedding convoy, outside the town of Radda in the al-Baydah province of Yemen, was struck by a US drone.

Following the attack, Yemeni officials claimed that around ‘14 innocent civilians were killed, 22 injured and 9 were in critical condition.’

According to the US government, the attack had intended to strike a known AQ militant Shawqi Ali Ahmad al Badani. The US government denied the deaths of civilians, claiming that they had killed militants associated with al Badani.

3. The Wedding Convoy – Yemeni

drone strike

The U.S. government lied, as they do often.

Most of those killed were innocent.

This is an example of why so many people distrust and fear the U.S. military overseas. This is an example of an incident which inspires and motivates terrorists. Ultimately making the USA and the world less safe.

If the U.S., which claims the strike was clean and justified, didn’t pony up the $800,000 in cash and guns as reparations, then who did?

Nothing Says “Sorry Our Drones Hit Your Wedding Party” Like $800,000 And Some Guns

Update Dec 2014 – The Unspoken Truth Of The US War Against Terrorism in Yemen

Officially, the money awarded in Yemen came from the Yemeni government. But the human rights group Reprieve says the funds must have come from Washington …

Families of Victims of One Drone Strike in Yemen Paid more than an Entire Year’s Worth of Victims in Afghanistan

Rex Murphy on the Ottawa shooting

On By Rick McIn dead to me, ethics, government, things getting worseLeave a comment

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

From here on in I will support and campaign for the Canadian political Party that vows to withdraw military from the Middle East.

Harper’s Conservatives are dead to me.

Canadians are today less safe at home, not more.

still a Global Warming skeptic

On By Rick McIn climate change, economics, ethics, government, things getting worseLeave a comment

I have no idea whether or not YOU are destroying the Earth as claimed by Obama at the United Nations climate change summit. But arguments and statistics like the ones presented below, keep me skeptical

Doug L. Hoffman, author of the book The Resilient Earth (2009) …

  • Earth’s temperature is always changing.

  • Over time there have been periods when it has been colder than it is today.

  • For most of the Phanerozoic it has been much warmer than it is today.

  • Life has persisted during periods both hot and cold.

  • There is no one “right” temperature.

  • Carbon dioxide has always been present in Earth’s atmosphere.

  • Over time there have been periods when CO2 has increased and decreased naturally.

  • For most of the Phanerozoic it has been much higher than it is today.

  • Life has persisted during periods with high CO2 and low CO2.

  • CO2 levels will change with or without human contributions.

  • Over time there have been a number of ice ages—Life has endured multiple ice ages.

  • For most of the Phanerozoic there have been no persistent polar ice caps.

Those who say CO2 is the most important factor in climate change, that human GHG emissions will cause runaway global warming, have no historical basis for such claims. …

Given 4 billion years of Earth history and 542 million years of complex life, blaming mankind for 9,000 years of global warming seems rather silly. …

Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. …

read more …

ice age