Saturday, Jul 06th
Last update06:04:07 AM GMT
The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.
Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, who turns 80 next week, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him.
It all started with Mike Partain, a.k.a. Number One. A barrel-chested father of four with a goatee and a predilection for aviator sunglasses, Partain was born at Camp Lejeune, the North Carolina base where his father, a first lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, was stationed in the late 1960s. Now he lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he makes his living as an insurance claims adjuster.
Five years ago Partain's wife noticed a grape-size bump next to his right nipple. "I thought it was from an ingrown hair or something. I blew it off," he recalls. But a couple of weeks later he decided to get it checked out.
Never in the history of humankind has the planet been confronted with such a grave set of circumstances. Fukushima represents all that can go wrong when scientific applications and technological advancement within a crude industrial context have gone awry. Unfortunately, given the many trajectories that numerous fields of technological innovation are currently on, Fukushima and the BP Gulf oil spill of 2012 may only be the beginning of an accelerating period of technospheric breakdown which will plague the Earth.
“Quite purposefully, no one ever stopped to consider the obvious and far-reaching ramifications of constructing 55 nuclear reactors on the most seismically active piece of property on planet Earth! And, that doesn’t count another 12 reactors in various stages of planning or development.”
Japan has clearly shown that this disaster is way beyond their ability to manage and capacity to address in any meaningful way. Their entire culture seems to ensure that the real problems will be constantly swept under the rug. The problem this time around is that there may be no rug soon to sweep it under.
No farmer in their right mind wants to poison pollinators. When I spoke with one Iowa corn farmer in January and told him about the upcoming release of a Purdue study confirming corn as a major pesticide exposure route for bees, his face dropped with worn exasperation. He looked down for a moment, sighed and said, "You know, I held out for years on buying them GE [genetically modified or engineered] seeds, but now I can't get conventional seeds anymore. They just don't carry 'em."
Expressing disgust at a fall in journalistic standards that he said Murdoch helped stoke by fostering a culture of trifling scandal, Evans said reporters needed principles to prevent them getting too close to the powerful.
"It's a Faustian bargain when you get too intimate with politicians, it serves neither the politicians or the press well for the relationship to get to be one of complicity," Evans, 83, told the inquiry in the High Court.
The last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according to a new report by scientists that supports the case for a reduction in manmade carbon emissions.
In the first major study of its kind in the region, scientists at the University of Melbourne used natural data from 27 climate indicators, including tree rings, corals and ice cores to map temperature trends over the past 1,000 years.
This case could have been a slam dunk for the NYPD, had it not been for one thing: the video showing police claims of disorderly conduct during an OWS protest to be completely untrue.
The NYPD has been caught repeatedly lying about the reasons for arresting and assaulting Occupy Wall Street protestors as well as violating numerous constitutional rights.
A Daily KOs article reveals that Wall Street banks have used private equity firms to acquire and launch a massive stealth takeover of private security firms, US ammo and gun manufacturers, uniforms, silencers and an army of mercenaries to build what amounts to the world’s largest private army.
At the same time the private mercenary companies they now control, which include the likes of Dynacorp and the notorious name changing Blackwater/Xe Services/Academi, have been authorized under Department of Defense DIRECTIVE NUMBER 3025.18 to actually conduct policing operations inside the United States.
A woman who lost the use of her limbs after a devastating stroke nearly 15 years ago has taken a sip of coffee by guiding a robotic arm with her thoughts.
The 58-year-old used a brain implant to control the robot and bring a flask of the coffee to her lips, the first time she had picked up anything since she was paralysed and left unable to speak by a catastrophic brain stem stroke.
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