ISSN 1534-0236
Technology and ideology alike are exercises in applied imagination.
Why would Home Depot
refuse
to do business with a large customer, even if the transaction is in cash? Corporate HQ
has sent out a memo telling all stores to refuse to accept government credit cards or
GAO purchase orders, and not to accept any transaction if the customer asks for delivery
to a military base or federal government address.
All the managers contacted declined to be quoted, but most said they didn't know what was behind the company's refusal to sell to the federal government.The memo from HQ, which doesn't give any reasons, also says thatSome, especially those near military bases and large federal complexes, said the policy would cost Home Depot a significant amount of money, but they would make no estimates of how much.
One Home Depot associate at a store in San Diego said, "It feels weird telling some kid in uniform that I can't sell him 10 gallons of paint because we don't do business with the government."
commercial credit-card customers will receive a notice with their June bill that purchases could not be made "that would cause the company to be covered by or responsible in any way for compliance with" three federal laws or executive orders:
-Executive Order 11246 of 1965, which bans discrimination against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
- Section 503 and Section 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which requires affirmative action and prohibits employment discrimination by federal government contractors and subcontractors.
- The Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974
They may have the right to do that. But I have the right to continue to do my shopping elsewhere. [via Medley, which describes it as "just weird."]
In
Alaska,
global warming means tilting houses, vanishing coastline, and the loss
of entire forests, eaten by beetles that enjoy the warmer weather and
longer breeding season.
Other forests, farther north, appear to be sinking or drowning as melting permafrost forces water up. Alaskans have taken to calling the phenomenon "drunken trees."Lots of Alaskan infrastructure rests on permafrost--which is suddenly less permanent. Houses and telephone poles are tilting, and the engineers on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline are adding new supports, some anchored 70 feet underground.For villages that hug the shores of the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, melting ice is the enemy. Sea ice off the Alaskan coast has retreated by 14 percent since 1978, and thinned by 40 percent since the mid-1960's, the federal report says. Climate models predict that Alaska temperatures will continue to rise over this century, by up to 18 degrees....
"We've had so many strange events, things are so different than they used to be, that I think most Alaskans now believe something profound is going on," said Dr. Glenn Juday, an authority on climate change at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "We're experiencing indisputable climate warming. The positive changes from this take a long time, but the negative changes are happening real fast."
It's hard for me to sympathize with either side here: the governor of
South
Carolina has ordered state troopers to guard the borders to keep the
federal government from shipping plutonium into the state.
The plan is to send the plutonium from Rocky Flats, Colorado, to the Savannah
River Site, then reprocess it into fuel rods.
Governor Hodges is afraid the government will leave the plutonium in South Carolina indefinitely. He says that "The Department of Energy has broken promises, offered no assurances and left few options"; the only reassurance on offer is Dick Cheney's claim that "This administration is totally committed to helping pass legislation to guarantee that South Carolina does not become a permanent storage site for plutonium." Even if you have more faith in Mr. Cheney than I do--which would not be difficult--there is no such legislation yet. If you don't trust his promises, you might remember that the Shrub promised Nevada that he wouldn't store nuclear waste at Yucca Flats.
At the same time, we settled federal sovereignty in 1865. South Carolina was on the wrong side then. (Note to the BBC headline writers: state troopers aren't "troops", they're police.)
Coffee is self-pollinating--but
letting bees at the
flowers increases yield by 50%. Doing so generally means shade-grown
coffee, with a variety of plants growing nearby; shade-grown coffee, in addition
to being ecologically friendlier, tastes better.
In case you're now wondering why anyone does it the other way: that's yield per plant. In the short-term, all-coffee plantations produce higher yield per acre. That doesn't seem to last, but it's harder to restore the mixed plantation than to tear everything else out and plant coffee and more coffee.
Bill 84,
Quebec's
new civil union law, sets a precedent by extending full parental rights to same-sex
couples.
Justice Minister Paul Bégin said that, for the first time in Canada, gay and lesbian couples will be legally recognized as the legitimate parents of the children they raise. Both partners will have a legal responsibility in their upbringing, and both will be financially obligated to them in the case of divorce.The bill specifies that civil unions can be solemnized by a justice of the peace or in a religious ceremony.Mr. Bégin called the adoption of Bill 84 a major breakthrough for the children of homosexuals and an expression of the will of Quebec society to eliminate discrimination against same-sex couples....
Opposition Leader Jean Charest defended the need to offer the children of homosexual couples respect and dignity.
He said the bill asked the right question and answered it admirably: What has to be done in the interest of the children?
More reasons why proofreaders still earn their pay: the
Cupertino
effect. (Be sure to read the footnote.)
That giant sucking sound is
Ross Perot's
company teaching Enron and its ilk to rip off everyone in California. Perot Systems was
in the ideal position for this, because they designed the computer system they were
demonstrating how to abuse:
After Perot Systems Corp. helped develop the computer systems used to track California electricity trading, it peddled a detailed presentation to energy companies on ways to "game" the state's power market, newly released documents show. The blueprint outlined schemes similar to "Death Star" and others later used by Enron Corp. to inflate profits.[via Making Light]
For some value of "new":
"botanists discover new
conifer species", but it's new only in the sense that the locals hadn't
sent western science a note saying "we have this really cool tree."
The new species is distinctive in that it bears two different types of foliage (needles and scale leaves) on mature trees. It produces fine, yellowish-brown, hard, fragrant timber that is highly prized by local citizens.Gen. et sp. nov., and the Nootka cypress of the Pacific Northwest has been reclassified in the new genus Xanthocyparis.
"It's time to tell
the public" that many common pain-killers
delay bone healing.
Most non-steroidal anti-inflammatories--NSAIDs, including the common over-the-counter
pain-killers--slow healing, and some prevent it entirely in rats.
Traditional NSAIDs inhibit the enzymes cox-1 and cox-2. Cox-2 catalyses the production of hormone-like chemicals known as prostaglandins involved in inflammation, while cox-1 has a variety of roles not specific to the inflammatory response. Since the new generation of NSAIDs such as rofecoxib block cox-2 almost exclusively, it was hoped they would have fewer side effects.Fortunately, there is an NSAID that doesn't have this effect: aspirin.But it now seems that cox-2 may be crucial in helping bone-forming stem cells and growth factors do their work. This area now needs to be investigated urgently, says Jeremy Saklatvala of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London. "In the meantime, people with healing fractures should steer clear of these drugs."
Kangaroos, unlike sheep and cattle,
do
not produce methane. Australian researchers are trying to figure out what gut bacteria
they use to process grass, in the hope of transplanting them.
As well as being more climate-friendly, the kangaroo bacteria could be good news for farmers too by raising yields of wool, milk and meat.Along the way, they'd like to know what those bacteria do with the hydrogen that becomes methane in cattle.Kangaroo bacteria have evolved over millions of years to process Australian grasses, and so should be more efficient at it than sheep and cattle bacteria, which arrived from Europe during the last two centuries.
One sick
puppy.
Molly Ivins connects the dots between
criminal
behavior by businesses and their outside auditors and the effects on the American,
and probably world, economy. She quotes Bill Black, writing in the Texas
Observer:
People are very good at denial. In the criminal business, our jargon is 'neutralization techniques.' Rationalization is just one of those. For examples, the [Charles] Keatings of the world don't simply do the, 'Well, it's OK, everybody does it' type of rationalization. They have a much better variant. It's: 'We are geniuses. We are transcendent individuals, and we are dealing with stupid bureaucrats.'"You tell each of your people - and you've hired very callow folks with very little experience - they are geniuses. You fire anybody who asks questions. That was the central rule. Pretty soon, you have a group of yes-men who think they are really bright. And the next step is to say, 'Not only are the government regulators stupid, but they are out to get us.' It's Us against Them. ... What we seem unwilling in our business culture to admit is that it became a fraud a long time ago in a broad range of businesses."
Not having tried it, I can't actually
recommend Fibonacci Numbers with
Caramel Sauce. Warning: while the code includes "serves 1", the comments admit to making
"an awful lot of caramel sauce".
NASA has its eyes on
Mars:
"I ask what is the difference between what we are doing on Mars now and the preparation we would have to do for a manned Mars mission. The answer is nothing."
I'm just back from Wiscon, and catching up on sleep. Everyone is linking to
the evidence of
large
ice reserves on Mars,
so I thought I'd add some pictures of the
Ross Ice Shelf. (My
more linear readers may wish to come back in a day or two.)
Copyright 2002 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page or my online journal.