It was a grim holiday weekend for some fishermen in Louisiana's Sportsman's Paradise. Fishermen returning to the Rigotlets Marina this morning brought back samples of tar balls they collected while out on Lake Pontchartrain according to the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation (ABC 26 Video Report).

Ann Rheams, Director of the Foundation, estimated to CNN that the amount of oil reaching the Eastern shore of Lake Pontchartrain near Slidell at under 100 barrels, with tar balls about the size of a silver dollar. Though hundreds of miles away, Hurricane Alex stalled Gulf Coast oil containment and the resulting storm systems have pushed the oil inwards.

Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham announced precautionary closures to fishing in parts of Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Tammany and Plaquemines parishes because reports of oil, easterly winds and high tides. Closures of recreational and commercial fishing are based on information from field biologists, staff and trajectory models from NOAA. Once reports of oil are received, the Department initiates a field survey and seafood testing. LDWLF updates maps of closed fishing areas daily as the oil pushes inward.

Coming during a popular holiday fishing weekend, today's closures are a gut punch to parishes fighting to keep the BP Oil Spill at bay.

In late May, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis asked the U.S. Coast Guard to approve the building a series of earthen berms and rock dikes in Lake Borgne from Alligator Bend to the East Pearl River. The Alligator Bend and Seven Lagoons Shoreline Projection Projects were originally developed to restore the coast as part of the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act, but can also prevent oil from encroaching into the marshland along Lake Borgne and can protect the lower Pontchartrain Basin.

“I was out at Fort Pike earlier this morning and can attest that our assets are in place and crews are picking up tar balls as quickly as the weather conditions permit,” Landrieu stated yesterday. “We have always asserted that this is going to be a long, tough slog, but I remain confident that every asset we have available is being deployed to protect the Lake.”

And finally, because 11 workers died in the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, it seems important to remember them on this weekend of national reflection.

Full Article and ABC 26 Video Clip Posted at NewOrleans.com.

Alabama officials today sent samples of fish, shrimp and oysters from the Mississippi Sound to a Pascagoula, Miss., lab for testing to determine whether the waters can be reopened for fishing, said Maj. Chris Blankenship with Alabama Marine Resources.

There, the fish will be subjected to sensory tests, which include smell tests. If they pass, be sent off to a federal Food and Drug Administration lab for chemical testing or for a newly approved method of testing with fluorescent light, Blankenship said.

If the fish pass that test next week, the waters could be reopened. 

State officials also put in requests today with the FDA to take similar samples from Gulf waters within three miles of the coast, and from Mobile Bay waters just north of the Fort Morgan peninsula, where oil had been spotted.

Those waters have been closed for months as a result of the oil leak from the exploded Deepwater Horizon oil rig, owned by BP PLC.

Earlier:
Oil spill seafood testers sniff out tainted shrimp, fish oysters at Pascagoula lab

ogrodzenia

The biggest astromech in the Universe lives in Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. Some crazy students decided to turn the Goodsell Observatory into RD-D2 using a temporary disguise. Simple, but effective. And as the video shows, it moves!

Now someone should do the same with the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile, the largest telescope in the world at 42m. [Facebook via Star Wars]

Science educators often skim off the top, as it were. They regale young minds with the marvels of science while remaining silent about the problems to which it has contributed.

When I was in grade school as a member of a different younger generation, we had routine drills in which we took cover under our desks. This was to prepare us to act quickly in case the Russians decided to nuke our playground. No one ever explained how this pathetic maneuver would save us, but it seemed to make the teachers feel better. Today's youngsters are treated to a different menu of menaces. Their nuclear hazard is more likely to come in the form of a dirty nuclear device detonated by a terrorist instead of from a Russian plane or missile. Then there is global warming, nuclear waste, environmental degradation, polluted air, water and soil. There are acidified oceans, melting polar ice, oceanic dead zones, dying coral reefs, vanishing species, on and on, all of which are due in some measure to the downside of science and technology. The mantra that only science can save us from these perils rings hollow to many youngsters, since it was largely science and technology that bequeathed them in the first place. As anthropologist and educator Loren Eiseley put it,

We have lived to see the technological progress that was hailed in one age as the savior of man become the horror of the next. We have observed that the same able and energetic minds which built lights, steamships and telephones turn with equal facility to the creation of what euphemistically is termed the “ultimate weapon.” It is in this reversal that the modern age comes off so badly.

The usual defense from the science community toward views such as Eiseley's is that it is technology, not science itself, that has made a mess of things. This is no doubt true to a certain extent. But scientists sometimes take risks in their research that appear breathtakingly irresponsible and reckless, which they usually justify in the name of pure or basic science. Some of these risks are so obvious they draw fire from scientists themselves. Consider a recent editorial in the respected British publication New Scientist titled “The Scary Business of Tinkering with Life”:

“By tinkering with the cell's natural machinery …[the research team] has found a way of making proteins with entirely new properties, opening up a future of exotic designer organisms…. This is a fundamental advance that could lead to new drugs, materials and energy sources. But tampering with life's operating system will inevitably raise safety concerns — and it's true that we have no way of predicting the fallout of this work. Synthetic biologists need to confront openly and honestly public fears that they are “playing God [emphasis added].”

Science boosters should wake up. Kids aren't dumb. To borrow novelist Ernest Hemingway's term, they have excellent “built-in bullshit detectors.” And nothing triggers the warning more than when those in charge present only one side of a story.

Must Science Be Depressing?

Why would anyone who is psychologically healthy pick a career that demands a view of the world that is morbid, pessimistic and depressing? That's precisely the worldview advocated by some of the most outstanding scientists of our day. This can be a turnoff to any optimistic, questing, curious, intelligent kid who stumbles onto it. Perhaps that is why the advocates of science education almost never acknowledge this prevailing view when promoting the wonders of science to youngsters.

Typical of the gloomy perspective is that of Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg in his 1977 book The First Three Minutes. In a now-famous passage, he writes,

It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning… It is hard to realize that this all [i.e., life on Earth] is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

By the time Weinberg unveiled his gloomy view, the notion of a purposeless, meaningless universe was already on a roll in science. One of the most influential supporters of this perspective was the Nobel molecular biologist Jacques Monod (1910-1976), whose 1972 book Chance and Necessity powerfully influenced a generation of scientists. For Monod, purpose and meaning in nature were outlaw concepts; for a scientist to believe in them was unbecoming at best and a moral failing at worst. As he confidently proclaimed, “The cornerstone of scientific method is the systematic denial that 'true' knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes–that is to say, of 'purpose.'”

Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University has joined the chorus of meaninglessness by dissing free will. “When we consider whether free will is an illusion or reality,” he says, “we are looking into an abyss. What seems to confront us is a plunge into nihilism and despair.”
Although prevalent, this depressing verdict on the status of meaning, direction and purpose in the world is not unanimous, and kids who intuitively reject this view have a few strong shoulders to stand on, as we'll see in the next blog.

References

Eiseley L. The Man Who Saw Through Time. New York, NY: Scribner; 1973: 106.
The scary business of tinkering with life. Unsigned editorial. New Scientist. February 20, 2010; 205(2748): 3.

Geddes L. Rewriting life in four-letter words. New Scientist. February 20, 2010; 205(2748): 14.
Hemingway E. Quoted in: Thinkexist.com. http://thinkexist.com/quotation/develop_a_built-in_bullshit_detector/204440.html. Accessed February 17, 2010.

Weinberg S. The First Three Minutes. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1993: 154.

Monod J. Chance and Necessity. New York, NY: Random House; 1972:21.

Dennett DC. Quoted in: “Overbye D. Free will: Now you have it, now you don't.” New York Times online. January 2, 2007.

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Lasagna is a wonderful meal to eat anytime of the year. It is what one would define as a comfort food. When this delectable treat hits your taste buds, you'll want more and more.

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef (at least 90% lean)
1 pound lasagna noodles
8 oz Monterey Jack Cheese
8 oz Muenster Cheese
16 oz sour cream
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
2 cans tomato soup
1 cup water
4 clove garlic (1 1/2 tsp)

4 tsp. oregano
4 tbs, vinegar
2 cups of chopped yellow onions (2 large onions)

Steps:
Cook meat and onions together until the meat is brown. Then drain and add tomato soup, tomato sauce, water, garlic, vinegar, and oregano. Bring the mixture to a simmer and let cook for 30 minutes uncovered. Cook lasagna noodles. Get a large baking dish (preferably glass) and cover the bottom with a layer of noodles (3 noodles). First cover with sour cream, then sauce, and then cheeses. Do this for each layer. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake for 30 minutes.

As reported by the Huffington Post last August, the sandwich was initially made available in two test markets — Rhode Island and Nebraska. KFC's Double Down gamble paid off, and they are rolling out the creation nationwide starting on April 12. Their decision was first announced on April 1, leading some to believe it was an April Fools' joke. Turns out, the only gag involved was the reaction of vegans.

If itchin' for this chicken, a countdown clock on KFC's website, along with some surprising nutritional news. The grilled version has “only” 460 calories and 23 grams of fat, while the original recipe version has 540 calories and 32 grams of fat. That is nowhere near some early speculation in the Vancouver Sun that one sandwich might set you back 1228 calories. Still, it might be wise to run a few extra laps before crossing the road for this chicken.

In a press release about their latest culinary achievement, KFC posed the “obvious” question: what happens to all the buns? Surely that was the first thing that crossed consumers' minds when they saw the Double Down. To satisfy your hunger for information, the chain states they will donate the “unneeded” bread, giving “both buns and funds to food banks across the country.” Ordering this sandwich could actually be good for somebody besides your local cardiologist.

It remains to be seen if Jim Gaffigan will incorporate the Double Down into a stand-up routine (see: Bacon, Hot Pockets, Cinnabon and Waffle House). [As funcrusherplus points out in the comments, Patton Oswalt might have some fun with this -- video contains NSFW expletives.]

Behold, the KFC Double Down sandwich. It is, if you really want to know, two slabs of fried chicken intersliced with two pieces of bacon, two slabs of cheese, and the Colonel's “special sauce.” It comes in the form of a sandwich, with the fried chicken where the bread used to be. It's sort of hilarious. It's sort of perfect. And then it'll probably make you vomit….

Did you notice? How in one pseudo-food item, you are consuming not one, not two, but the mutated, chemically injected flesh/byproducts of fully three different distended, liquefied, industrially tortured creatures? Feel the love, pitiable animal kingdom.

You got your chicken-like creature, your pig-like creature, your dairy cow-like creature, all wrapped in a $5 fistful of nausea, ready to strangle your heart and benumb your brain. God knows what is in the “special sauce.” Maybe some sort of fish byproduct, just to round it all out. It's like a wild kingdom in your mouth! It's like a toxic zoo in your colon! It's like a suicide note from what's left of your brain! “If you eat this, you are a complete and total idiot, and through. Signed, You.”

Let us now add a shred of wary perspective. For well do I know this horrible crapbucket of chyme joins a very long of fast-food nightmares you should never put anywhere near your mouth, unless you deeply hate yourself and don't give a damn anymore, and you want to die fat and stupid and smelling like that rotting thing you found in your rain gutter.

What's more, some fast food companies are trying, at least a little, to respond to the call for slightly healthier foods, adding salads and fruit and grilled chicken breasts to their menus, even though every single one of those items is just as jammed with chemicals, preservatives, synthetic flavorings and high-fructose corn syrup as the rest, and all the “healthy” meat products are still raised on the most execrable, environmentally rapacious industrial feedlots imaginable. But hey, it's something, right?

Further, some argue that it's a bit disingenuous to blame the junk food purveyors for all the obesity, cancer, impotence, bad skin and colonic pain in the land. After all, the undereducated masses love to eat this garbage, right? KFC test-marketed this Double Down death bomb for months, to (presumably) great effect.

Of course, it's sort of a foregone conclusion, a rigged game. This vile meatwich is crammed like a grenade with sodium, sugar, fat and chemicals. Ergo, the testers, presumably people with taste buds devastated by years of cramming similar compost into their guts, thought it was pure nirvana. And then their colons exploded.

Had KFC actually tested it on people who eat real food every day, folk who have not touched fast food in years, whose systems are strong and fully recovered and in whose bodies blood flows unobstructed, had KFC dared any genuinely healthy human to take a bite, you can bet they would have heard, and smelled, a slightly different reaction.

Maybe it's all a silly, futile argument, a fool's game to point up the obvious evil of such products. These items are legion. They just keep right on coming. more, it's just capitalism at work. It's about giving the people what they want, right?

And if they don't really want it — if, deep down, most humans sense this garbage is hugely unhealthy, that it's a form of slow poison and there are far better and wiser options out there — well, you do what companies like KFC, Coca-Cola, Kraft, McDonald's and all the rest have done since the dawn of the free market.

You convince the less educated and the gullible that they are wrong, that this crap is actually a good value for your family, nutritious and safe to feed to children, even as you manufacture all the flavors, smells and meat-like textures in a giant lab and sell truckloads of the crap to the poorer classes, until they get fat and sick and die. Meanwhile, you employ cartoon characters and bright, funny mascots to lure in the next generation, to keep the cycle going.

Do I have that about right, Mr. KFC exec? Did I miss anything? Can you hear me down there, what with all the flames and the screaming?

This piece was originally published at the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate, here.

Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest work for the SF Chronicle and SFGate. Get it at daringspectacle.com or Amazon. He recently wrote about the Texas Board of Education, sex rehab, and what it's like being part of the evil liberal conspiracy. His website is markmorford.com. Join him on Facebook, or email him. Not to mention…

Long term treasury yields are on the verge of breaking out. In the March 25 issue of Breakfast with Dave, Rosenberg mentions various factors in play.

Despite signs of economic cooling in Q1 (around 2.5% growth and half the Q4 pace) and lower inflation expectations, the 10-year Treasury note yield is ratcheting up (in a destabilizing fashion) and devoid of any bearish economic data (for a range of technical/fund flow reasons as was the case in the summer of 2007).

In technical lingo, it does look as though the yield is breaking out from a triangle since the December 31, 2009 yield peak —go back to that period in December and January, 3.85% on the 10-year Treasury-note served at least three times to be major technical support — a break of that this time around would mean some serious near-term trouble (the nearby high closing level was 3.98% back on June 10, 2009).

Rates may be rising because:

• Of added supply concerns from Obamacare;
• Sovereign credit quality;
• Heightened fears over a looming trade spat with China (if the Treasury accuses China of being a ‘currency manipulator’ next month);
• Hedging related to the most recent huge wave of corporate bond issuance;
• Swap rates have also become unhinged (they traded at an unprecedented 8bp discount to 10-year Treasuries yesterday) ….

… but yields are NOT rising from inflation (in fact deflation signs are re-appearing again). Hence, real yields are on the rise … not typically what an equity bull would like to see with real growth now softening. Rising real rates as real growth slows means it is time to get more defensive, not more cyclical (especially with small-cap stocks up nearly 10% year-to-date, doubling the performance of the large-caps. This will not be sustained as the global and domestic economies cool off through the balance of the year.)

Bottom line: Stronger U.S. dollar. Rising bond yields. Lower commodity prices. Slower growth. And the stock market is flirting at post-crisis highs. Bond yields are rising temporarily and this will very likely prove to be a good buying opportunity; however, over the near-term, higher yield activity may well persist and the question is how the equity market is going to handle this backup in market rates. Recall that the 10-year yield had a March to June 2007 spike of 90bps before the rate and credit collapse took hold in the back half of 2007! Could it be that history is rhyming again? The March-June period has been seasonally weak for the Treasury market in five of the past six years.

I concur with Rosenberg this is not an inflation related phenomenon. And with the economy slowing, fundamentally treasury yields ought to be dropping.

Then again most do not believe the economy is slowing. However, new home sales hit fresh record lows, state tax revenues that have collapsed, and the Chicago Fed National Activity Index dropped to –0.64 in February, down from –0.04 in January.

Bear in mind that new home sales typically lead every recovery. I am hard pressed to believe it's different this time.

Weekly claims were better than expected, but 442,000 new claims is not exactly an economy that is humming along.

Whatever the reason, most likely a combination of the 5 bullet points above plus seasonality, rates can easily run here. If they do, and the stock market breaks lower, 2010 might be the year where there are no hiding places at all except in the much despised US Dollar.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Bake Homemade Cheese Crackers (Fishy Smiles Not Included)

Everyone loves Goldfish crackers—it's just a fact of life—but if you'd like to look like you did more than just go to the grocery store (but actually do little else), try this recipe for light, delicious cheddar crackers.

Over at food blog Savory Seasonings, they've discovered and developed recipes for homemade versions of many popular snack foods, though possibly most tantalizing is the recipe for cheddar cheese crackers. It's actually a bit shocking how few ingredients and little effort these crackers take—it's just flour, cheddar cheese, butter and water, all food processed together (with a little salt and pepper). Roll out the dough, cut it up, and throw it into the oven—after 15-20 minutes, your party has gone from store-bought bar snacks to classy homemade appetizers. Hit the link for the (slightly) more detailed recipe.

Its nice to see that the first thing that people think of when it comes to something new you eat is cancer. Nobody trusts any corporation. Even Google, who's motto is “don't be evil” Is on the way to taking over the world. They control what you can search for, they are now starting to providing internet so they can control what sites you go to, they have just been issued rights by to government to supply power to us and everything (including your microwave) will be running Android. It sounds a little like Google is Moms Friendly Robot Company and if they ever want to take over the world they just need to push a button. Of course thats still a few years away, but in the mean time, the whole system is breaking down and frankly, I love it.

Fine isnt that ?

CheckSee|Look at} some house photos i like.

CheckSee|Look at} few house photos i found.