Conservationists sue to halt fracking in Ohio's only national forest

(Reuters) - Four conservation groups on Tuesday sued the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in an attempt to halt fracking plans in a portion of Ohio's only national forest.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Columbus, argues that the federal agencies failed to sufficiently analyze risks to watersheds, public health, climate and endangered species including Indiana bats, before auctioning 670 acres (270 hectares) in December of the Wayne National Forest in southeast Ohio for eventual hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of underground shale.

The groups are seeking an injunction to halt oil and gas leasing and development until a new assessment can be made. Fracking involves injecting water, sand and chemicals into wells to fracture shale and release natural gas and oil.

U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Babete Anderson declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Bureau of Land Management officials could not be reached immediately for comment.


More: http://whtc.com/news/articles/2017/may/02/conservationists-sue-to-halt-fracking-in-ohios-only-national-forest/

Metro: The horse that saved his own life by painting

He was once a champion racehorse, but it looked as though ill health would soon mean the end for Metro. Then his artist owner, Ron, had an unusual idea.

It's said that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. So when Ron Krajewski first introduced his horse, Metro, to an easel there was no guarantee he would paint.

After all, this horse had been struggling with health problems since he was adopted by Ron and his wife in 2009. Metro had once been a successful racehorse - as Metro Meteor, he won eight races and $300,000 (£234,000) prize money at the prestigious Belmont Stakes. However, he was retired by his stable after bone chips in his knees caused permanent damage.

"We were looking for a horse Wendy could ride and were probably quite naive," Ron says. "We soon discovered Metro had worse race injuries than we had bargained for," Ron says.

<snip>

He had noticed that his spirited horse liked to bob his head to get attention and pick things up in his mouth. A professional artist himself, Ron wondered if he could convince Metro to hold a paintbrush.


Much more: (includes video) http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39628629#






Metro tackles the canvas assisted by Ron. He paints from left to right



Ron sometimes set up an easel for Metro to paint outside

Senate advances bill to let FPL customers pay fracking costs

TALLAHASSEE
Florida Power & Light’s quest to have customers pay for natural gas fracking projects in other states overcame a key hurdle Tuesday as the Senate Rules Committee passed the controversial measure and overlooked opposition from residential and commercial customers.

The proposal, SB 1238 by Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, now goes to the Senate floor. A similar measure in the House, HB 1043, has made it through one of three committees in that chamber.

The goal of the legislation is to overturn a Florida Supreme Court ruling last year that found the Public Service Commission exceeded its authority when it gave FPL permission to charge customers up to $500 million for investing in an Oklahoma-based fracking company in 2015. Although the company predicted the project would save customers millions in fuel costs, it resulted in a loss of $5.6 million in the first year.

The Rules Committee adopted a series of amendments proposed by Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, who opposes the measure, and approved the modified bill on a bipartisan vote of 7-3.

<snip>

Consumer groups ranging from the state’s largest industrial users and the Florida Retail Federation to AARP opposed the measure, arguing the policy will cost FPL customers millions and lock the state’s largest utility into an increased reliance on fossil fuels for decades to come.


More: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article146750094.html

Don't forget President Carter! Then - and now:

Deepwater Horizon: Seven years after explosion and oil spill study finds clean-up workers got sicker

On the seventh anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the health impacts that the spewing oil had on the people who came into contact with it are still raising questions about how the cleanup was handled.

The latest studies by the National Institutes of Health found that the thousands of clean-up workers who came into contact with the oil that coated the coastlines of four states in 2010 were more susceptible to health woes during the cleanup, according to Dale Sandler, chief of the NIH's epidemiology branch.

"People who had the greatest exposure were more likely than other workers to report itchy eyes, burning throats, coughing, wheezing and skin irritations," she said.

Often those symptoms were initially blamed on heat exhaustion, she said. But the NIH has found that the workers in contact with the oil experienced those symptoms two to three times more than other workers who weren't in contact with the oil.

"We were seeing symptoms that were not part of the definition of heat stress," she said.

More: http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/deepwater-horizon-seven-years-after-explosion-and-oil-spill-study-finds/2320962



The Deepwater Horizon oil rig burns in the Gulf of Mexico on April 21, 2010, more than 50 miles southeast of Venice, La. BP and five Gulf states announced an $18.7 billion settlement Thursday, July 2, 2015, that resolves years of legal fighting over the environmental and economic damage done by the energy giant's oil spill in 2010. The settlement involves Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. (Associated Press)

Lewis Black Begins His Mornings With The News And Screaming - Late Show with Stephen Colbert 4/19/17

Bill O'Reilly Gets the Boot: The Daily Show - 4/19/2017

Would Trump really care??

I remember turning on Letterman's show a few years back and when I saw he had Donald Trump as his guest, I started to change the channel. But I underestimated Dave, he really took Trump to task. It was during the controversy about that Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque being built in New York in the vicinity of the World Trade Center. Trump went on about all his specious reasons why he was opposed to it. But Dave firmly reminded him of how and why this country started.

And I found the video!
Letterman and Donald Trump discuss Islamic Cultural Center

F*ck you, Geraldo: John Oliver torches Fox and Friends crew for their MOAB war-gasm

On this week’s “Last Week Tonight,” HBO’s John Oliver ripped into President Donald Trump’s bizarre flip-flops this week on foreign policy, but he reserved special scorn for the crew at “Fox and Friends” and their pie-eyed worship of Trump’s reckless, potentially nuclear war-provoking actions.

Oliver poked fun at the fact that Trump remembered to slip “a commercial for Mar-a-Lago’s chocolate cake” into his recollection of the night he fired Tomahawk missiles into Syria, but couldn’t remember whether it was Iraq or Syria he was raiding.

The past week has been a whip-saw for Trump supporters, the host said, who saw Trump going back on his international isolationist promises of the campaign and showed signs of softening toward China.

For those voters, Oliver said, “It’s like getting tickets for the ‘Vagina Monologues,’ but on the night you went it starred Brian Dennehy.”


More: (includes the video posted below) https://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/fck-you-geraldo-john-oliver-torches-fox-and-friends-crew-for-their-moab-war-gasm/


John Oliver Destroys Donald Trump and Sean Spicer on LastWeekTonight 4/16/17

The Crisis of Attention Theft - Ads That Steal Your Time for Nothing in Return

BY NOW, IT is pretty well understood that we regularly pay for things in ways other than using money. Sometimes we pay still with cash. But we also pay for things with data, and more often, with our time and attention. We effectively hand over access to our minds in exchange for something “free,” like email, Facebook, or football games on TV. As opposed to “paying” attention, we actually “spend attention,” agreeing to the view ads in exchange for something we really want.

The centrality of that deal in our lives makes it outrageous that there are companies who seize our time and attention for absolutely nothing in exchange, and indeed, without consent at all—otherwise known as “attention theft.” Consider, for example, the “innovation” known as Gas Station TV—that is, the televisions embedded in gasoline pumps that blast advertising and other pseudo-programming at the captive pumper. There is no escape: as the CEO of Gas Station TV puts it, “We like to say you’re tied to that screen with an 8-foot rubber hose for about five minutes.” It is an invention that singlehandedly may have created a new case for the electric car.

Attention theft happens anywhere you find your time and attention taken without consent. The most egregious examples are found where, like at the gas station, we are captive audiences. In that genre are things like the new, targeted advertising screens found in hospital waiting rooms (broadcasting things like “The Newborn Channel” for expecting parents); the airlines that play full-volume advertising from a screen right in front of your face; the advertising-screens in office elevators; or that universally unloved invention known as “Taxi TV.” These are just few examples in what is a growing category. Combined, they threaten to make us live life in a screen-lined cocoon, yet one that leaves us more like larva than butterflies, shrunken and incapable of independent thought.

What makes it “theft?” Advances in neuroscience over the last several decades make it clear that our brain’s resources are involuntarily triggered by sound and motion; hence the screens literally seize scarce mental resources. As neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Larry Rosen put it in their book, The Distracted Mind, humans have an “extreme sensitivity to goal interference from distractions by irrelevant information.” Meanwhile, in the law, theft or larceny is typically defined as the taking control of a resource “under such circumstances as to acquire the major portion of its economic value or benefit.” Given the established market value of time and attention, when taken without consent or compensation, it really is not much different from someone taking money out of your pocket. Hence, when the firms selling public-screen advertising to captive audiences brag of double-digit growth and billions in revenue, those are actually earnings derived by stealing from us.


More: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/forcing-ads-captive-audience-attention-theft-crime/