At first glance, it's a jaw-dropping shock -- and then, the longer you stare at it, trying to peer into its mysteries, it becomes even less real than that. Like poking smoke rings with a fork.
And, quite a lot like the wildly erroneous math used in recent years by the GOP to justify pet projects while pretending things really -- wink, nudge -- add up.
It appears some of that same logic is seeping into Europe: A woman in France received a telephone bill for almost 12 quadrillion euros -- about 9.25 quadrillion U.S. dollars.
Yes, of course, it's a goof -- one of the more spectacular ones, sure to join the ranks of other astonishing math blunders of its type, right up there with the more subtle, but equally eye-popping, misplaced-or-missing decimal point in the contract, or a spot where "or" should have been used versus "and," followed by billions in shaken foundations.
Alex Baer: Republican Math Invades Europe
Pinkwashing Fracking? How the Komen Board Is Cashing in on Shale Gas
The Wizard of Oz was spot on when he said to “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” That’s good life advice if you fall into the “Ignorance is bliss” camp. For a journalist though, it’s doing the exact opposite that’s a sin qua non for the job.
Kevin Begos of the Associated Press took the Wizard’s advice to heart in his July 22 story titled, “Experts: Some fracking critics use bad science.”
Citing “Gasland” director Josh Fox’s viral video “The Sky is Pink” as an example, Begos wrote, “Opponents of fracking say breast cancer rates have spiked exactly where intensive drilling is taking place — and nowhere else in the state…But researchers haven’t seen a spike in breast cancer rates in the area.”
Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one
Contrary to popular belief, the Cuban missile crisis did not end with the agreement between the US and Soviet Union in October, 1962. Unknown to the US at the time, there were 100 other nuclear weapons also in the hands of Cuba, sparking a frantic - and ingenious - Russian mission to recover them.
In November 2011, aware that the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous few weeks in history was less than a year away, my Russian colleague Pasha Shilov and I came across several new accounts that changed our perspective on the Cuban missile crisis and how much we thought we knew about it.
US prepares first-strike cyber-forces
Cyber-attacks could inflict as much damage on the US as the physical attacks on 11 September 2001, the US defence secretary has warned.
Leon Panetta said the country was preparing to take pre-emptive action if a serious cyber-attack was imminent.
He said US intelligence showed "foreign actors" were targeting control systems for utilities, industry and transport.Advanced tools were being created to subvert key computer control systems and wreak havoc, said Mr Panetta.
Alex Baer: Driving Reality and the Fireball Effect
There are moments in life that make us gasp and seem to stop time in its tracks, submersing us in clear Jell-O -- and then time starts up again, at 1/20th speed. All the while, at the restart, you know something is horribly wrong, and that you're in real trouble.
You've had those moments: The tick of the clock when you feel the pit of your stomach leaves and falls through the floor, the temperature instantly plummets to sub-zero. Yes, and the instant you're sure you're in a car wreck, already in motion, patiently waiting for final impact.
Veteran: Risks In 1950s Bomb Test 'A Disgrace'
In 1957, Joel Healy witnessed one of the largest nuclear tests ever conducted on U.S. soil. Healy was in the U.S. Army, stationed in the Nevada desert north of Las Vegas at Camp Desert Rock. He was 17 years old and a private first class at the time.
Healy drove dump trucks, moved materials, and built structures, like houses, that would be destroyed by the explosions so the Army could study the effects of a nuclear blast. He also helped build the towers where many of the bombs were detonated.
Chesapeake Pleads Guilty to Clean Water Act Violations Associated with Marcellus Shale Drilling
According to a Department of Justice press release, Chesapeake Appalachia pled guilty on Oct. 5 in federal court to three violations of the Clean Water Act related to natural gas drilling activity in northern West Virginia. The press release states:
Chesapeake pled guilty to three counts of “Unauthorized Discharge into a Water of the United States” in that it discharged sixty (60) tons of crushed stone and gravel into Blake Fork, a water of the United States, on at least three different occasions in December of 2008.
Chesapeake also admitted that after discharging the stone and gravel that it then spread the material in the stream to create a roadway for the purpose of improving access to a site associated with Marcellus Shale drilling activity in Wetzel County, West Virginia.
Alex Baer: Ancient History, Hot off the Presses
Anything that happened yesterday is still news, while last month's headlines get sifted into the heap of modern-day discards. If you want to reflect on the America of the 1940s -- or even the 1980s -- then you're obviously an archeologist on a mission.
Unless you're summarizing the most recent yak-fest -- the so-called presidential debates. You remember: The ones marketed by hucksters like cage matches from two new species only just now discovered in wildest Borneo.
You know: The Distracted Professor versus the Gish Galloper Extraordinaire!
Prairie2: The Conspiracy Widens
Initial unemployment claims dropped by 30,000 last week to a four and a half year low. That's a lot of out of work people participating in the Muslim-Kenyan-socialist-anti colonial-fascist-liberal plot to destroy America by not filing for benefits in order to rig the unemployment number.
Layoffs are of course the result of employer action (quitting your job doesn't count), the employers that are, according to Romney, either lacking confidence (despite record profits and $5 trillion cash on hand) or going broke.
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