For the eighth day of Hanukkah, the Miami Dolphins continued their most improbable season ever and beat the New York Jets, finishing the regular season at 11-5 following last year's horrendous 1-15 disaster (which nobody will remember now that the Detroit Lions have "improved" on that by becoming the first team to lose sixteen games in a season), eliminating both the Jets and the Patriots from the playoffs, and going to the playoffs themselves as the AFC East's number 3 seed. That's a run-on sentence. It keeps going long after you expected it to end. Like the Dolphins' season.
The United States faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.
What may be the nation’s largest spill of coal ash lay thick and largely untouched over hundreds of acres of land and waterways Wednesday after a dam broke this week, as officials and environmentalists argued over its potential toxicity.
“You’re not going to be endangered by touching the ash material,” said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the T.V.A. “You’d have to eat it. You have to get it in your body.”
Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste.
At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.
Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.
With the earlier news about Katon Dawson and his whites only country club and today's revelations about Chip Saltsman, it really does seem like the RNC chairmanship race is down to a straight-up match between the black candidates and the racist candidates.
Formal votes were cast today for President. Across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, electors cast their votes in the Electoral College. Votes will be tallied on January 6, 2009, when Barack Obama will officially become the President-elect under the U.S. Constitution.As pro football legend, Franco Harris signs his autograph countless thousands of times. But the signature he made as one of 21 Pennsylvania electors
for Obama was the one the Pittsburgh Steelers great running back won't ever forget.
"That was special," the Pro Football Hall of Famer said. "This was the most valuable thing I've ever signed my name to."
I should say that if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go ahead. Feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly and notoriously. And those who feel like they want to sneakily and wear a taping devices, I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate.
A couple of days after Hurricane Katrina mercilessly barged through New Orleans, as the consequences of FEMA's catastrophically inept response were becoming critically apparent to a stunned nation, George Bush scouted the destruction through a foot-long window in Air Force One.
the Bush presidency will be the elimination of water regulations for the toxin percholorate, a chemical found in jet fuel that, among other things, can pass to infants through breast milk and retard neurological development; opening up of public lands for dirty oil shale development; allowing power plants to operate next to national parks; eliminating the scrubbing requirements that clean emissions from coal-fired power plants; and compounding the damage from mountain-top removal mining operations by permitting dumping into streams and rivers.Rabbi, is there a proper blessing for George W. Bush?
A blessing for George Bush? Of course! May God bless and keep George Bush ... far away from us!
When Salman Rushdie wrote, in The Moor's Last Sigh in 1995, that "those who hated India, those who sought to ruin it, would need to ruin Bombay," he was alluding to the Hindu chauvinists who had tried to exert their own monopoly in the city and who had forcibly renamed it—after a Hindu goddess—Mumbai. We all now collude with this, in the same way that most newspapers and TV stations do the Burmese junta's work for it by using the fake name Myanmar. (Bombay's hospital and stock exchange, both targets of terrorists, are still called by their right name by most people, just as Bollywood retains its "B.")
This may seem like a detail, but it isn't, because what's at stake is the whole concept of a cosmopolitan city open to its own citizens and to the world—a city on the model of Sarajevo or London or Beirut or Manhattan. There is, of course, a reason they attract the ire and loathing of the religious fanatics. To the pure and godly, the very existence of such places is a profanity. In a smaller way, the same is true of the Islamabad Marriott hotel, where I also used to stay. It was a meeting point and crossroads for foreigners. It had a bar where the Pakistani prohibition rules did not apply. Its dining rooms and public spaces featured stylish Asian women who showed their faces. And so it had to be immolated, like any other Sodom or Gomorrah.
Shiv Sena's leadership pushed for the name change for many years prior to 1995. They argued that "Bombay" was a corrupted English version of "Mumbai" and an unwanted legacy of British colonial rule.
The name change didn't impact all of Mumbai's residents. Speakers of Marathi and Gujarati, the local languages, have always called the city Mumbai. "Bombay" is an anglicization of the Portuguese name "Bombaim," which is believed to derive from the phrase "Bom Bahia," or "Good Bay." (Portugal held territories in western India until 1961.)
Hitch informs me that the change in name to Mumbai is a function of Hindu chauvinism...I wasn't aware of this but now that I am, the Dish will refer to Mumbai by its previous name.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — the younger brother of the president — is weighing a run for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Mel Martinez.
