Possibly due to there not being so many people around at the moment. Summer may not have been great shakes across much of n. europe, but an awful lot of people seem to have gone awol and we just don't have too many voices on the board. So those of us left are getting a bit bored and fractious. A couple of saturdays ago I was apparently the only person logged in for about 5 hours.

And of course, there's actually not been much politics going on, that doesn't help. Thank god for Sakashvilli going nuts else all we'd have had to talk about would have been the American election.

So !!! Any bets about what's gonna happen in the next couple of months that gonna get us jumping ? Aside from some election of little consequence.

My bet is that the Pakistan/Afghanistan thing is gonna get real hot before the end of September. The Taleban have turned a corner and seem to feel they're gonna win. They're established in the towns, setting up parallel administrations all around Kabul. Meanwhile there's a surge (remember them) in Helmland province at the moment, but it's only for a couple more weeks. Then, all bets are off.

After all.... well the politics are getting tasty. Karzai is having genuine problems. The pakistani govt is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea over who they support and who they suppress. The russians are cutting NATO's throat regards supplies. And NATO still doesn't really know what it's supposed to do or how best to go about it, so it's just killing anybody who might be a bad guy and blowing stuff up without regard as to any strategy and just pissing off every Afghani in the whole beknighted country.

This is gonna be where the shit will go down and long before november. I hope Obama has a cunning response cos otherwise McCain is gonna have cakewalk.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Bats are at risk from wind turbines, researchers have found, because the rotating blades produce a change in air pressure that can kill the mammals.

Canadian scientists examined bats found dead at a wind farm, and concluded that most had internal injuries consistent with sudden loss of air pressure.

Bats use echo-location to avoid hitting the blades but cannot detect the sharp pressure changes around the turbine.

The scientists say wind farms are more of an issue for bats than for birds.

"An atmospheric pressure drop at wind turbine blades is an undetectable - and potentially unforseeable - hazard for bats, thus partially explaining the large number of bat fatalities at these specific structures," said Erin Baerwald, who led the research team at the University of Calgary.

(...)

The Calgary team collected carcasses of hoary and silver-haired bats killed at a wind farm in south-western Alberta.

Examinations showed that fewer than half had external injuries that could have been caused by collision.

But about 90% had internal haemorrhaging, most notably in the chest cavity, a condition that puts pressure on the lung and can be fatal.

The idea is that the pressure around a rotating turbine blade is lower than in the surrounding air. A bat flying into the low-pressure zone finds its lungs suddenly expanding, bursting capillaries in the surrounding tissue which then becomes flooded with blood.

Birds, which have more rigid and robust lungs, do not undergo the same trauma from a sudden drop in pressure.

"Given that bats are far more susceptible to barotrauma than birds, and that bat fatalities at wind turbines far outnumber bird fatalities at most sites, wildlife fatalities at wind turbines are now a bat issue, not a bird issue," said Ms Baerwald.

Bats!  Look, bats are not birds, ok.  And they are NOT rodents.  Bats are mammals.  Flying mammals.  They're practically primates.  They play a vital ecological role, like bees.   They're sometimes even vampires.  Of all the animals, they are the coolest.  We cannot tolerate bat-i-cide!  

Jerome, you are hereby charged with the task of inventing bat-safe windmills!

This is unacceptable.

Save The Bats!



"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

In it he argues with one of his "guests" in a way that I find hard to watch. He simply never lets him get a word in, ending up swearing at him. I've seen him do this to Rachel Maddow and just thought he was a bullying putz, but if he's like this on his show all the time, how does he keep his job ? Seriously, how is this the behaviour of a professional broadcaster on any other channel apart from Faux Billo ? To my eyes, it's unbelieveable. You'd be off-air before the first commercial in the UK.

keep to the Fen Causeway

http://www.berkana.org/articles/lifecycle.htm

Awesome.

"Is there a master key?"

"No."

"So how the fuck could they have gotten in?"

"Well, the locks are old.  They could've opened them with a credit card or something."

"(silence)"

I'm about thisclose to beating someone fucking senseless.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

I've made nice in my opinions on Hillary, at least for now, and I kinda think she's going to give a barnburner, or at least a very solid, speech tonight.

But Bill needs to be placed in a rocket and fired out to deep space.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.