Friday Hope Blogging

The EU is tightening export restrictions on materials used for capital punishment and torture:

As Catherine Ashton, High Representative for the Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the Commission stated:

“[T]he European Union opposes the death penalty under all circumstances. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union states that no one shall be condemned to the death penalty, or executed. In this regard, the decision today contributes to the wider EU efforts to abolish the death penalty worldwide.”

Sodium thiopental, a chemical commonly used in the three-drug cocktail used in American lethal injection, can now only be exported from E.U. countries with prior authorization by national authorities. The decision will likely increase the difficulty faced by states of procuring the already scarce drug for use in their executions. In addition, the Commission announced that the import and export of electric shock sleeves and cuffs, instrumental in the use of the electric chair, are now wholly prohibited from import and export.

A federal judge has blocked several provisions of South Carolina's anti-immigrant law:

District Judge Richard Mark Gergel blocked three parts of the law, known both as SB20 and Act 69.

The first section blocked makes it a felony to transport or conceal a person "with intent to further that person's unlawful entry into the United States" or to help that person avoid apprehension.

A second section makes it unlawful for an adult to "fail to carry" an alien registration card or receipt.

And the final section blocked would have allowed local law enforcement with "reasonable suspicion" to detain any person the officers believe is in the United States illegally.

A U.S. appeals court has ruled that retaliation against whistleblowers is a RICO violation:

The court's opinion gives life to a provision in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) that makes it a felony to retaliate against whistleblowers who provide information about corporate fraud to law enforcement officers.

The European Court of Justice has upheld the EU Aviation Directive:

The EU Aviation Directive, the world's only mandatory program to address emissions from aviation, will take effect in January 2012. Today’s decision is the suit’s final ruling in the Court of Justice, and the case will now return to the UK High Court, where airlines had originally brought the suit challenging UK regulations implementing the law . The UK High Court will implement the recommendations of the Court of Justice ruling.

Bank of America has generously agreed to pay out some money for something or other:

Hundreds of thousands of Black and Hispanic homeowners...were saddled with higher mortgage fees and interest rates during the housing boom than White borrowers, federal officials say.

Now, those borrowers may have a chance to get a part of that money back.

A $335 million settlement with Bank of America announced Wednesday is the largest fair-lending settlement in history.

Now let's never speak of it again.

The Kroger grocery chain claims that it will no longer carry Asia Pulp & Paper products:

"After an independent review, The Kroger Co. and its family of stores have decided to discontinue the sourcing of products from Asia Pulp & Paper," said a statement posted on the retailer's web site. "Kroger has informed APP of our concerns about the impact of their business operations on deforestation."

Behold the post-apocalyptic hellscape that is São Paulo, Brazil, five years after it defied God and Nature by banning advertising signage:

Within months, city authorities had removed tens of thousands of ads both big and small—much to the dismay of business owners, who said the ban would surely ruin them. Five years later, have all the businesses in São Paulo gone under? Hardly. In fact, most citizens and some advertising entities report being quite pleased with the now billboard-less city. A survey this year found that a 70 percent of residents say the Clean City Law has been "beneficial."

An Indian inventor has designed a new sanitary napkin for rural women:

When Arunachalam Muruganantham hit a wall in his research on creating a sanitary napkin for poor women, he decided to do what most men typically wouldn’t dream of. He wore one himself--for a whole week. Fashioning his own menstruating uterus by filling a bladder with goat’s blood, Muruganantham went about his life while wearing women’s underwear, occasionally squeezing the contraption to test out his latest iteration. It resulted in endless derision and almost destroyed his family. But no one is laughing at him anymore, as the sanitary napkin-making machine he went on to create is transforming the lives of rural women across India.

It's a fascinating story, so read the whole thing. (h/t: Peacay.)

Food aid organizations are increasingly sourcing local ingredients:

Andrew Young, co-founder of One Acre Fund, drives home the importance of this shift toward local ingredients, and of ultimately building agricultural capacity in regions facing food insecurity. For those who don't know it, One Acre Fund is working to create agricultural markets in Africa and in doing so, to develop a more sustainable solution to some of the problems that create the need for food aid in the first place. Here's what he tells the Guardian:

"Famine is preventable," said Young. "Every famine should be a blaring red siren, reminding us that we could prevent the next one. Africa has the capacity to be a food supplier to the rest of the world, if only we would invest in agriculture more."

The Madison, WI School Board has rejected a plan to start a sex-segregated charter school:

The proposal was defeated largely on grounds that the school was to use non-union teachers with little school board oversight. Although those issues predominated at the hearing, the ACLU of Wisconsin made sure that the school board could not ignore the gender equality issues.

Teh Gays have graciously apologized for ruining former Minnesota Senate majority leader Amy Koch's marriage by forcing her into an adulterous relationship:

We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an “illicit affair” with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.

Edward Wegman's plagiarism made it into The Scientist's list of 2011's top five science scandals:

A controversial climate change paper was retracted when it was found to contain passages lifted from other sources, including Wikipedia. The paper, published by climate change skeptic Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Computational Statistics and Data Analysis in 2008, showed that climatology is an inbred field where most researchers collaborate with and review each other’s work. But a resourceful blogger uncovered evidence of plagiarism, and the journal retracted the paper, which was cited 8 times, in May.

Wegman stands a very good chance of improving his showing in 2012:

From the 2006 Wegman report to Congress, up to this year’s “Colour Theory and Design”, so much of Wegman and Said’s recent work demonstrates extreme reliance on unattributed antecedents, as well as numerous errors and incompetent analysis.

2012 marks the 200th anniversary of the Luddite revolts. Luddites at 200 is planning appropriate celebrations:

[B]eing a luddite today means being a sceptic about the dogma of technology as progress, not about denying the real benefits of some technologies. It means insisting that the crucial decisions about which technologies are developed are made democratically, not just imposed by corporations and technocratic elites. And it means standing up for our own ideas of what progress really is.

I hereby endorse this event and/or product. Speaking of which, I complained some years ago about the common pejorative use of the term "Luddite" on the left; I included an 1819 quote from William Cobbett that bears repeating here:

Society ought not to exist, if not for the benefit of the whole. It is and must be against the law of nature, if it exists for the benefit of the few and for the misery of the many. I say, then, distinctly, that a society, in which the common labourer...cannot secure a sufficiency of food and raiment, is a society which ought not to exist; a society contrary to the law of nature; a society whose compact is dissolved.

Roll over Charles Fort, and tell William R. Corliss the news:

A large metallic ball fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia, prompting baffled authorities to contact NASA and the European space agency.

The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres (43 inches) was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres (480 miles) from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik.

Metal prices being what they are, it may be time to mine the Super-Sargasso.

A public service announcement: Please be aware, this holiday season, that It's a Wonderful Life has some plot holes:

Well I like the movie except the angel is shown as a namby pamby when in reality they are awesome powerful beings. Also in reality the Building and Loan should have turned the corner with its success and been much more profitable. Oh, the plot holes!

I look forward to John Aglialoro's remake, in which Clarence will incinerate that whore Violet Bick with divine laser beams that come shooting out of his eyes.

All I want for Christmas: Drawing and optical devices. The Arctic Soundscape Project. Something I didn't realize I was nostalgic for until now: 1970s Estes catalogs (via Coudal). A ball of confusion. Scenes from the life of the pygmy hippo. A hummingbird in the rain. Archie out of context. Racing numbers. The East German Cinema Blog. And images from the Beazley Archive.


(Painting at top: "Miner and Dog" by Sidney Nolan, 1973.)

The Next President of the United States

Roy Edroso recently made an offhand remark to the effect that if you want consistently conservative governance, a robot is your only man.

He's got a point. The problem is, robots come from Old Europe; they come from the pit of Hell. And while they may be a bit more gemütlich than Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann, they require expensive maintenance and they're not as adept with stairs. It's bad enough that Obama bows to foreign dignitaries; the last thing we need is a president whose clockwork runs down in the middle of singing "Les Oiseaux dans la Charmille" to Hu Jintao.

The Commodore PET is a safer choice. It's adorably retro, hearkening us back to that simpler, more innocent time before all of us hated everything. It was made down home in Pennsylvania by square-eyed, steely-jawed men, so you know Peggy Noonan's gonna get on board. You can have a beer with it, or at least near it. It can repeat the numerals "9-9-9" with all the hebephrenic fixity of Herman Cain and twice the conviction. It blows Rick Perry out of the water with a whopping 8K of RAM. You can easily store replacement units at Mount Weather. And its dependency on the extraction industries is no mere metaphor; if you want the President to boot up in time for World War III, drill baby drill!

And of course, it's ideologically consistent. Bedrock principles in, bedrock principles out:

10 PRINT "FUCK YOU, HIPPIES! TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

The only downside is, when it inevitably turns on humanity, no one will notice.

The Righteous and the Wicked

I've seen a number of obituaries for Christopher Hitchens today. They seem to alternate between two basic stances:

Yeah, he was an unrepentant warmonger and misogynist...but he sure did stick it to those goddamn Bible-thumpers and their invisible sky buddies!

Yeah, he was a hellbound atheist...but he sure did stick it to those goddamn peacenik hippies and their cult of diversity!

As you can see, things even out nicely. Granted, Hitchens' political miscalculations have a body count. But how about all those dragons he killed? (Or not actual dragons...but, y'know, the whole idea of dragons qua dragons, per se, in nuce, und so weiter. And not actually killed...but, y'know, personally disputed in some adamantine, ontically oppositional sense of not agreeing with 'em nohow, so there.)

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Who knows? Maybe angels don't even exist!

How many Iraqis died in the last nine years? Who knows? Let's look forward, not back!

When Hitchens called down brimstone and fire on Baghdad, that modern City of the Plain, at least it was based on tribalist hatred, gadfly posturing and preening first-world privilege rather than mere superstition. I mean, give the guy some credit. He may have been wrong — politically, historically, logically, scientifically and morally — but at least he wasn't stupid. And if you don't believe me, just look into this barrel full of invisible dead fish.

Anyway. Forgive me if I don't feel like eulogizing Hitchens, who shrugged off countless deaths with one laborious literary phrase after another. I would much prefer to praise good people like myself, who attempted to prevent countless deaths with one laborious literary phrase after another.

On second thought, let's change the subject. If we're talking about dancing angels, should thumbtacks count as pins?

(Image at top: "The Great Day of His Wrath" by John Martin, 1853.)

Friday Hope Blogging

The FBI will broaden its definition of rape:

FBI Director Robert Mueller confirmed Wednesday that the agency would expand its definition of “rape,” which has not been updated since 1929.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program currently defines rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” Rape without force is not included.

Home care workers will receive federal wage protections:

The Obama administration proposed regulations on Thursday to give the nation’s nearly two million home care workers minimum wage and overtime protections. Those workers have long been exempted from coverage.

Labor unions and advocates for low-wage workers have pushed for the changes, contending that the 37-year-old exemption improperly swept these workers, who care for many elderly and disabled Americans, into the same “companion” category as baby sitters. The administration’s move calls for home care aides to be protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the nation’s main wage and hour law.

The weed of crime bears bitter fruit:

Hours after the release of a Justice Department report that said that Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio fueled a culture of anti-Latino bias in his office, the Department of Homeland Security said it was kicking him out of an immigration enforcement program.

Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday the department is ending an agreement with the Maricopa County sheriff's office that allowed trained deputies to enforce immigration laws.

A district court has ruled that the Center for Reproductive Rights can sue Kathleen Sebelius for her antiscientific, tragically stupid and fundamentally immoral decision on over-the-counter sales of Plan B:

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of CRR, stated, "We intend to take every legal step necessary to hold the FDA and this administration accountable for its extraordinary actions to block women from safe, effective emergency contraception. It has been ten years of battling to bring emergency contraception out from behind the pharmacy counter. The FDA cannot simply continue moving the goal posts down the field for women's reproductive healthcare."

LOLOL, as we say on the Internets:

A 22-year-old man who shouted slurs at a lesbian couple before breaking the windshield of their car soon found himself in a vulnerable position – pinned to the ground by one of the targets of his vitriol.

The Institute of Medicine has called for an end to most medical experimentation on chimpanzees:

After nine months of deliberation, a panel of independent experts judged that most current experiments involving man's closest primate relative can safely be discontinued.

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, said he accepted the panel's recommendations and promised to name a working group to figure out how to implement them.

As part of its plot to impoverish and enslave us, the EPA has legalized the use of alternative refrigerants:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today issued a rule making greener refrigeration gases legal in household refrigerators and some commercial freezers.

The agency added three hydrocarbons as acceptable alternatives in household and small commercial refrigerators and freezers through EPA's Significant New Alternatives Policy program, SNAP, which evaluates substitute chemicals and technologies for ozone-depleting substances under the Clean Air Act.

Adding insult to injury, it also plans limit our access to the mercury our bodies need:

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to approve a tough new rule on Friday to limit emissions of mercury, arsenic and other toxins from the country’s power plants, according to people with knowledge of the new standard. Though mercury is a known neurotoxin profoundly harmful to children and pregnant women, the air toxins rule has been more than 20 years in the making, repeatedly stymied because of objections from coal-burning utilities about the cost of installing pollution control equipment.

New technologies may reduce noise pollution in the world's oceans:

Several new R&D projects are underway by providers of ocean technology, each of which either aims to reduce the harmful behavioral impacts on marine creatures, or may limit harmful impacts as a byproduct of their innovations.

Solar-powered drip irrigation is working well in Benin:

This technological innovation means the women’s collectives can keep producing crops during the region’s six-month dry season, provide greater food security to their families, and start thinking about sending their kids to school. It also could help communities survive and adapt to climate change. The project is now expanding: At least eight more villages in Benin will start using the solar irrigation systems.

In India, solar power is apparently cheaper than diesel generators:

Renewable Energy News reports that solar is becoming cheaper than diesel generators in India as French-company Solardirect has bid to supply the energy grid with solar power at a rate cheaper than the average for diesel generators:

Scientists have found the world's smallest frog in Papua New Guinea:

Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa attain a length of only 8 to 9 mm (0.31 inches), slightly longer than a tic-tac mint. The frogs are about 2 mm smaller than the previous record, which belonged to other members of the same genus.

The Los Angeles City Council has voted unanimously in favor of a constitutional amendment against corporate personhood:

Every struggle to amend the Constitution began as just a group of regular Americans who wanted to end slavery, who thought women should vote, who believed that if you're old enough the be drafted, you should be old enough to vote. ... We're very proud to come together and send a message but more than that, this becomes the official position of the City of Los Angeles, we will officially lobby for this.

Folies elastiques. Antarctica starts here. Audubon's aviary. The deep ocean wilderness. Fabelvæsener. Photographs of Copenhagen. Czech film posters, 1930-1989 (via Coudal). Ooh. Wee. Faces. Marbled paper. And scenes from Zhuravlyonok:


(Photo at top by Frederic Lezmi, from his series "Poor Politicians," 2011.)