God Realizes He Forgot To Put Souls In Humans Onion (David L)
What Is Your Dog Telling You? Wall Street Journal
Researchers unravel secrets of hidden waves MIT News (Chuck L)
Is IT Work Getting More Stressful, Or Is It the Millennials? Slashdot
Facebook thinks you’re too dumb to realize its scientific papers are really just PR Pando
After Nearly Claiming His Life, Ebola Lurked in a Doctor’s Eye New York Times (Chuck L)
Russia, China sign raft of economic deals, including loans Associated Press
UK Elections
EU demands clarity on UK’s renegotiation plans Financial Times
Triumph, Despair and Revenge at the British Ballot Box Wall Street Journal
Whose electoral system is less representative: Britain’s or ours? Washington Post
British Politics Could Get Very Nasty New Republic
US urges Athens to focus on TAP, not Turkish Stream ekathimerini. How about some money to encourage the resetting of priorities?
Grexit?
Syriza: Lies, Broken Promises and Prolonged Austerity Truthout. A must read.
Documents Distributed by Greece’s Yanis Varoufakis Baffle Eurozone Officials Wall Street Journal. Wow, if Varoufakis is this disconnected, is his assurance that Greece will make its payment to the IMF on May 12 as reliable as most observers (including moi) had assumed?
Eurogroup chair says more time needed for Greece deal Agence France-Presse. Consistent with earlier remarks.
Greece’s prime minister sees ‘happy ending’ for debt talks, but creditors less optimistic Financial Post
What Alberta’s shocking election results could mean for the oil sands Vox (furzy mouse)
Ukraine/Russia
Moscow prepares VE Day parade, despite snub by West DW
Syraqistan
Yemen: Saudi-Led Airstrikes Used Cluster Munitions Human Rights Watch (EM)
Amnesty International: Whitewashing Another Massacre Counterpunch
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Attorney: Spy chief had ‘forgotten’ about NSA program when he misled Congress The Hill
N.S.A. Court Ruling Jolts Defenders and Reformers New York Times
Amazon Wants Its Delivery Drones To Track Customers Down Wherever They Are Consumerist. Amazon seriously thinks that delivering goods gives them the right to surveil you all the time? This is evil.
Trade Traitors
How Nike came to embody the good and bad of Obama’s free-trade push Christian Science Monitor
Nike, Obama, and the Fiasco of the Trans Pacific Partnership Robert Reich
President Obama Is Badly Confused About the Trans-Pacific Partnership Dean Baker
Hillary Clinton search for donors focuses on Silicon Valley, not Hollywood Guardian
Republicans Aim to Preempt Local Democracy, Target Fracking Bans Truthout
Texas bristles at Obama’s ‘invasion’ Financial Times
Another Progressive Champion in the Senate? Alan Grayson Enters the Ring Alternet
DEA to traveler: Thanks, I’ll take that cash Albuquerque Journal News. Apparently it isn’t just driving while black that is hazardous.
Officer in Freddie Gray case demanded man’s arrest as part of personal dispute Guardian
Utah Public Pension Fund Audit Calls For Reconsidering Hedge Fund Investments International Business Times
Bank of America’s Relief for Mortgage Borrowers Is Questioned Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times. BofA cheats yet again.
Establishment +233K Jobs; Household +192K Employment, Part-Time Employment +198K, Labor Force +166K Michael Shedlock (furzy mouse)
Wall Street soars on hopes of Fed reprieve, yet sting in the tail Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Class Warfare
Why So Many Americans Are Trapped in ‘Deep Poverty’ Fiscal Times
The Cost of Child Poverty Jeff Madrick, New York Review of Books
Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers New York Times. The acetone in nail polish remover is a big nasty.
Discrimination and the power of role models Gillian Tett, Financial Times. I hate to be a nay-sayer re the notion of role models, in the traditional notion of them inspiring younger people who identify with them, due to my inability to relate to the concept, at least as far as “models” needing to be from your demographic. However, IMHO, the importance of role models is seriously underestimated in terms of their impact on organizations. The reason that McKinsey was early and aggressive in recruiting Indians for senior roles was that it had an early, very successful Indian partner, proving that that “type” worked. See here for more detail: Fit vs. Fitness
Shredding the rules: A striking number of innovative companies have business models that flout the law Economist. The article failed to mention mortgage servicers.
Antidote du jour. Philip P: “My honeybees, the one hive of three that made it through the winter.
This shows a nice large pattern of capped brood, the middle is where workers have already emerged. Queen not visible on this frame. Keep in mind the snow was at the top of this hive in mid-February, down to -7 temps at night (I dug them out after every storm). Very calm with the warm temps today.”
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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“…The world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.”
Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”
Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
Thanks for the quotes, aby!
Speaking of being (beeing?) kind to bees, my favorite new invention is the Flow Hive, made by a couple of guys in NZ. They recently destroyed IndieGogo’s previous crowdfunding record w/ $12.1M raised…their original goal was 70K! It’s a hive that allows you to harvest honey by simply turning on a tap. No muss, no fuss, no traumatized bees. It’s probably the coolest thing ever:
Flow Hive: Honey on Tap
But have you actually tried it? There are plenty of skeptics about this.
I haven’t heard any of the skeptics yet. Do you have any links? I’d love to see some reviews besides the ones in the fund-raising video.
http://fromfilmerstofarmers.com/blog/2015/april/dont-go-with-the-flow-go-with-the-wax/
Thanks for that. My initial thought was Wow, I could do that! One would hope that making bee-keeping easier would result in more people doing it…but it sounds like there’s plenty of reason why it just can’t be that easy.
Rarely (if ever..) is easy valuable…
Rarely (if ever..) is easy valuable…
SubGenius, Anything But ‘)
“Researchers unravel secrets of hidden waves”
Important work, and well done.
The mixing the waves do is a good thing, an aspect of entropy which keeps resources from sequestering out of local systems, and allows more life to flourish. It also dilutes and (uh-oh) distributes pollutants.
In the long run, we don’t have an energy problem so much as we have a cooling problem. Most conversations about the oceans absorbing heat have focused on surface temperatures. A deep simplifying assumption of many water models is of laminar flow, which decreases mixing. This research suggests to me (#confirmationbias) that the role of the oceans in damping climate change has been underestimated.
We could use some hidden waves to distribute human wealth, mimicking Nature.
Perhaps the roles of wealth tax and People’s fiat money in damping looting have been underestimated.
Time to act to reverse this man-made Global Burning of the Little People.
While the Texas-Walmart military invasion conspiracy tale seems a bit over the top, it IS reminiscent of police, in partnership with powerful financial entities, in combat gear and armed with heavy military equipment, massively overpowering citizens who voice their disapproval of government policies. Texas has liberal gun ownership and carry laws. Perhaps we’ll finally see how Second Amendment rights can protect against a tyrannical government…… /s
Imagine an omnipotent Sheriff of Nottingham, in post-Imperial Roman retreat England.
In all but PR appearances Varoufakis has abandoned the heterodox economics he taught only a short while ago and fully embraced the austerian, ricardian-equivalence schmutz Germany and the troika have lovingly money-shot across Europe’s face.
What a disappointment.
Syriza is a snake, and snakes bite.
Guess no police-gun-control in Greece then.
Abused turned abuser — an act of “foreign investment…Chinese-style labor conditions*,” an experience that has occurred in China many, many times.
And a missed opportunity for all of us to end that vicious cycle. “We will not do ‘foreign investment.’ Never.”
*Surprised, or perhaps not (shortage of cheap migrant laborers), it’s not Chinese workers themselves, and not just Chinese style labor conditions, who are being brought to Greece.
This article does not look very reliable to me: it is just a recast in negative terms of well known information plus a number of dubious memes. For example, the interview where Varoufakis says “squeeze cold blood”: if you listen to the segmen it is obvious that Varoufakis, while stressing that Greece wants to be a good citizen of the international scena, is at the same time stressing that the ECB money is not “sacred”, and will have to be negotiated. This is very old material, as most of the article.
First, NC readers reacted at the time to Varoufakis’ remarks after the February Eurogroup memo was signed, that it was all about working with his “partners” and not a word about securing a better deal for the Greek people and why that was important and valid.
Second. the IMF debt remark is accurate. Varoufakis stated flatly he’d squeeze the Greek public as hard as he had to to pay the IMF. And that is exactly what the government has done. And the article also points out that the measures Syriza has used to wring cash out of the citizens are the sort of measures it attacked the outgoing government for and effectively said it would not use. So this is another one of Syriza’s kolotumbas.
The ECB has rejected Varoufakis’ contention re its debt. That happens to be old news too.
And as we’ve stressed repeatedly, the ECB is the most powerful player here. They can crush the Greek banking system any time they want to by refusing to renew the ELA, which has to be reapproved every two weeks. They are now contemplating tightening collateral rules, which would also push the Greek banking system over the cliff. The Greek government would have to impose capital controls, nationalize the banks, and issue drachma to prevent a banking system collapse.
Varoufakis does not dare default on the ECB. Every European country has capitulated when presented with an ECB threat of canceling the ELA (Ireland, Cyprus, and Greece in 2012).
You are not able to argue against a single fact presented in the article. You don’t like where it goes so all you can do is say “old news”. Well, in fact, laying out the history in a dispassionate manner leads to conclusions different than the rosy image too many on the left still harbor for Syriza. So tell me again why an analysis based on existing, undisputed information is not worthy?
That’s one convert/apostate.
The Truthout on Syriza is finally catching up to the World Socialist Web Site that pegged it as an Obama regime bait-and-switch protégé early on. It seems the left is an easy mark for wolves in sheepskin peddling toxic hopium. As Obama with war, rigged trade, illegal detention, assassination and surveillance, cat food commissions, and biosphere destruction, only a faux left party could by stealth sell off the country’s commonwealth, steal citizens’ deposits, and compound the country’s debts virtually without resistence.
What a feat of treachery, and in record time. Has it really only been three months? It seems like this sellout’s been grinding for years.
Best quote: “Indisputably though, the master of governmental doublespeak is finance minister and celebrity economist Yanis Varoufakis, who excels in making “radical”-sounding statements regarding the horrors of austerity, and then doing the opposite in practice while contradicting his rhetoric with further statements to the contrary.” A shameless Obama protégé indeed.
I disagee. Varoufakis is a globalist. I’m put off by globalism because it requires unaccountable trade. And I believe trade is unnecessary. But anyway, If the EU can’t see the light here, it’s not my fault.
Regarding the Texas Jade Helm 15 , one question “conspiracy theorists” are asking is why the FBI and DEA would be taking part in a military training exercise:
http://memoryholeblog.com/2015/04/27/whither-posse-comitatus-special-forces-officer-on-jade-helm-15/
The fix is in:
Same procedure as Janet Reno refusing to investigate well-documented illegal campaign contributions from China in the 1996 Clinton campaign.
Given a green light for such abuses, the Clintons have extracted hundreds of millions of dirty money with them.
Grifters gonna grift.
Still, perhaps you would agree, the real scandal is, as the saying goes, what’s legal, not what’s illegal. The speaking fee gravy train should be brought to a halt.
As well it is overdue for the voting public to raise their game and push back on the fourth estate that has degenerated to being a monetized megaphone for purile campign propaganda. All that media buy money is corrupting. It’s pathetic reallythat people lap it up and pick sides based on BS
Clintons Above Review: Therefore Unaccountable
The Clintons failed to live up to their proactive commitment and legal obligation, thus there will be no retroactive review. Typical for the group that makes their own rules (like the Baron Class who wrote the Magna Carta).
Long ago I questioned the sources of Clinton Foundation cash. I renamed the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) as Conflicts of Global Interest. Once upon a time the Clinton Foundation released donor names.
Frankly, it’s difficult to comply with internal accounting controls and shovel fists full of cash to your friends. The Foundation itself confessed to operational problems and making mistakes. NYT reported:
The Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.
And concern was rising inside and outside the organization about Douglas J. Band, a onetime personal assistant to Mr. Clinton who had started a lucrative corporate consulting firm — which Mr. Clinton joined as a paid adviser — while overseeing the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation’s glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities.
As for how the Clintons play consider this statement:
And efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr. Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton’s political future, according to interviews with more than two dozen former and current foundation employees, donors and advisers to the family. Nearly all of them declined to speak for attribution, citing their unwillingness to alienate the Clinton family.
Friends won’t alienate and officials won’t review. Life as a Clinton means you write your own rules and can change them at a whim.
http://peureport.blogspot.com/2015/05/clintons-above-review-therefore.html
Reminds me of the quote from Harry Truman;
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, “You don’t want me. You want the office of the president, and that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.”
Philip P…as you obviously have some unoccupied bee equipment, early May is a good time to divide your hive and raise a new queen, as both divisions will have the whole summer to build to overwintering strength…one way to do this is to move the queen and several frames of brood above the inner cover, with the entrance to the inner cover facting up and in the opposite direction of the hive entrance. and at least one of your empty supers intervening…tack a small piece of screen on the inner cover so bees cannot move from one partition of the hive to the other..the lions share of the field bees will stay with the brood you leave on the botton hive, and raise a new queen, while those with the old queen on top will mark the inner cover entrance and start to use that….once both colonies are established, you would move the lower colony to a separate stand nearby, keeping the same entrance orientation so the field bees stay with the partition they were with…
obviously, you can divide your hive to separate stands as well, but the method ive described above takes advantage of the heat generated from the lower partition to allow the old queen to continue a large broodnest…
Thanks for the suggestion and instructions, rjs! I am still a newbee haha! I was going to manage this one for honey production (I got a small amount last year from one of the hives that died). I’ve already ordered a package this year, but maybe I’ll split this one too. This hive swarmed last spring, which was ok with me – it’s like letting your children go, and there should be more feral colonies. Though people tell me that wild colonies don’t typically last very long, with the mites and other diseases around. I haven’t seen any research on that though.
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how all nature managed a couple billion years before mankind.
Hubris…it’s the new black!
Back when Michael Jordan was promoting Nike shoes, he was making more than all of their overseas production workers combined, IIRC.
How we love our ‘conditioning.’
If it’s possible to be told what shoes to buy, it’s also easily possible to be told what music to listen to, and what to be for and against.
Just to be sure, fashion is changed annually, to see if the subjects are still compliant.
“This year’s top rock song (TV show) is….”
Evans-Pritchard, Wall Street Soars on Hopes of Fed Reprieve.”
“Thank God, our prayers have been answered, hopes realized. We are being invited to more soirees at the Versailles again!!! But we need to exact more rent to pay for fancier party dresses.”
I find TNR’s fear mongering about the “old SNP” quite distasteful, especially given how brazenly they defend a Democratic party that has drifted ever rightward over the years. My grandfather, the bastard, was a Scottish Nationalist, and yes, the nationalist party of his day were a bunch of twats. But this SNP clearly ain’t that. Labour, like its model in the Democratic party, is not really a leftist/trade unionist party anymore; it’s as neoliberal as they get. The SNP has understood that, in Scotland at least, they can occupy that left-leaning territory that Labour once held with an iron fist, and to great effect. What’s more, unlike the Democratic party here in the US, the SNP has actually done the things it’s promised in Scotland (moratorium on fracking, inclusivity of women and persons of color, suspension of the bedroom tax, etc.) instead of promising a raft of watered down liberalish promises which it reneges on the moment it gets into power.
Say what you will about Nicola Sturgeon’s salivating over a Tory victory, if the point of all this is to get people to realize just how appealing the very real alternative is, I say more power to her.
I got the same feeling too, so I did a search on his name; if I am not mistaken, the first link I got was likely to his blog. Reading a post or two, the dude comes off as a mild-Thatcherite. Sounded about right from what I read, unless I got it completely wrong.
re: Dean Baker, Obama, TPP
Baker does the liberal dance of not stating the obvious—that Obama is constantly lying about TPP,
Baker says “Obama is not aware” that “Obama doesn’t realize” , that “Obama is also mistaken”.
I thought Obama’s use of basic dishonesty reached its zenith in regards to Ukraine, but TPP shows he has found a new vehicle for displaying his contempt for facts. It’s obvious Obama enjoys the theater of lying, knowing most liberals will forever give him a pass.
Baker, Robert Parry, Englehardt and others have lost credibility by persistently excusing Obama’s calculated treachery as pardonable ignorance, incompetence, impotence, or cowardice. Such strategic blindness may be necessary to preserve one’s salary, but it is not objective, and after so many years it does get old.
I thought his weasel words were obviously sarcastic. I certainly hope so.
Perhaps you are right. I like Dean Baker generally.
Here’s a great Graduation day pic for any recent grads out there.
And here’s hoping the debt slaves don’t have to wait around for a blond with a dragon to free them….
Let’s just hope the loan isn’t with the Iron Bank of Braavos….
RE: ‘Shredding the rules’ from the Economist.
These neoliberal rags are good for a laugh now and again:
“But the strategy can be risky. Napster, an early music-sharing site, was crushed by lawsuits, even though its efforts paved the way for Apple’s legal downloading service, iTunes. It is particularly perilous in financial services, where regulators will crack down at the merest whiff of impropriety.”
Bwaaaahahahahahaha!
Re Amazon’s delivery drones idea, this kind of delivery/distribution system seems purpose-built for smuggling.
I thought the FAA had banned drones beyond line of sight. Is that simply a fig leaf that everyone knows will be stripped out once Amazon is ready?
And yet another article full of meaningless technowankery…
Drones are not a viable delivery service. Look at what it takes to lift a 5d for 10-15 minutes (and this is under human control…no expensive power consuming pseudo ai bullshit to contend with)
http://aeronavics.com/products/showroom/sky-jib-series/skyjib-8/
And a 5d isnt very big…
So you might be able to deliver a few pounds of package someewhere say 6 minutes away…
Not very viable.
And you need human operators…
And it’s EXPENSIVE….
As I have stated elsewhere around here recently, there is a massive amount of breathless harping about our technically unfeasible ‘future’.
This is the result of having a population uneducated in realms of science math and engineering….and those that are seem mainly to find their way into banking/finance – where the $$$ are…
…and as U. Sinclair famously said…
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”
It never ceases to amaze me at how excited the top of the economic food chain gets about technological advances. You know what else can deliver a six pound box for distances over 6 miles? A vehicle. I’m pretty sure trucker or car driver works out to less cost in terms of training too. I guess they figure with drone operator they can get around those pesky road rules that require breaks in service. Personally, I would not want to work for Amazon with their very sketchy employment record.
Feet work pretty well for a 12 mile round trip too…
Plus a decent daily 12 mile walk tends to overcome diabetes and a host of other modern illnesses…
Well, it might work, say, to carry a really expensive antique German made hand blown glass Christmass tree decoration for a short distance. Then, to avoid getting the chopper blade in the customers eyes, as the drone flails around in the backwash, the antique would have to be dropped from a few feet above the customer’s head. At that point, I guess, Amazon’s responsibility is done and one can only imagine the customer diving frantically and futilely for the glass as it shatters on the ground into a million pieces.
Just heard from my son in Seattle, recently moved to millennial mecca. He’s been working for a Chinese owned firm there. Paid monthly he found out. Payday was last week, no pay for most of the workers, an entire month. Several promises to pay by time certain…deadline passed still no pay. Walk out on Friday by unpaid workers. He is steamed, to say the least. I’m trying to get him to tell me the name of the firm.
This is what we can expect with TTP?
Wage theft is a time-tested business strategy–stealing from poor people is generally pretty easy. I hope the workers get their due, eventually, but it wouldn’t be the first time that a company just stopped paying wages and then closed up shop suddenly, never to be seen again.
One solution hit upon by workers in South America and Europe has been to occupy and “recover” businesses where the owners have engaged in these types of shenanigans. The justification is look, we’re owed wages that we’re not getting, so we’re going to take the physical capital in lieu. So the workers occupy the factory and start it up again as best they can, organizing as a worker cooperative. We’ve already had one such case in the US, in Chicago, at New Era Windows. Here’s a profile from GRITtv:
http://www.geo.coop/story/new-era-windows-cooperative
And here’s a short documentary about a recovered factory in Italy:
http://www.geo.coop/story/occupy-resist-produce-rimaflo
As for the TPP, I can see the ISDS cases now: Hey! We were planning on making a lot of money by not paying our employees. Violating contracts with the peons in an integral part of our business model–if you want us to pay them, you’ll have to pay us!
Even the idea of paying workers suggests lost profits and that’s all it takes for arbitration by foxes in the hen house. So, get the target country to pay for the wages and then pocket them anyway and tell the workers to go take a hike – maybe you’ll get a rice grain tomorrow.
(Admin/designer: Love the inline highlighting of identity errors (name and email)!!! – much better than getting shuffled off to a an error page.)
And I should add that this model has been successful not just for manufacturing facilities. The most recent report on recovered businesses in Argentina lists recovered worker co-ops in pretty much every sector and industry you can name (over 300 co-ops have been started in this manner in Argentina since 2001). You can download the report for free here:
https://payhip.com/b/V0IK
Skip to the appendix to see the list of businesses and what they do–it’s very impressive. Best of luck to your son and his co-workers.
Looting banks Moldovian style:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/07/news/economy/moldova-stolen-billion/index.html
A new poll suggests that support for Syriza remains relatively strong in Greece. Palmos Analysis found that Syriza would garner 36.7% of Greek votes compared to 16.5% for New Democracy (ND) and that 57% of Greek voters support Alexis Tsipras compared to 18% for Antonis Samaras (ND). For 52% (only 35% of Syriza supporters) of those surveyed, the government’s main priority should be to remain in the Euro while 44% (61% of Syriza supporters) would like the government to extricate itself from the memoranda. 77% reject changes to the national pension system and 63% want collective bargaining rights protected.
http://www.balkaneu.com/poll-syriza-20-point-lead/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/upshot/unless-you-are-spock-irrelevant-things-matter-in-economic-behavior.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&abt=0002&abg=0
I chose 137 as a maximum score for two reasons. First, it produced an average well into the 90s, and some students scored above 100, generating a reaction approaching ecstasy. Second, because dividing by 137 is not easy to do in your head, I figured that most students wouldn’t convert their scores into percentages.
Striving for full disclosure, in subsequent years I included this statement in my course syllabus: “Exams will have a total of 137 points rather than the usual 100. This scoring system has no effect on the grade you get in the course, but it seems to make you happier.” And, indeed, after I made that change, I never got a complaint that my exams were too hard.
In the eyes of an economist, my students were “misbehaving.” By that I mean that their behavior was inconsistent with the idealized model at the heart of much of economics. Rationally, no one should be happier about a score of 96 out of 137 (70 percent) than 72 out of 100, but my students were. And by realizing this, I was able to set the kind of exam I wanted but still keep the students from grumbling.
===========================================================
Spock: fascinating….
The Guardian article (not in links, but linked below) on Barack ‘They’re making stuff up’ Obama on the TPP
t–raid deal, which he says is the, ‘most progressive trade deal in history’, could probably be used as a case study of a sociopathic liar. This is the exact stuff All Capone and Lucky Luciano are made of.http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/08/barack-obama-free-trade-tpp-democrats-nike
Illinois Supreme Court throws out state pension law that cut benefits.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-pension-law-court-ruling-20150508-story.html#page=1
On the CEPR article, as well as other MSM articles on the currency issue… ever notice how quick they all are regarding how many would be on board if “they would just address the currency and currency manipulation facet of TPP”, yet no one quotes anyone on how many would be on board if they would just address the ISDS issue? Probably very few, but that’s not the point.
The point is no one will address it at the level that counts.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30670-republicans-aim-to-preempt-local-democracy-targeting-fracking-bans
Republicans aren’t the only ones. Fracking isn’t an issue in Oregon, except for transport, but GMO’s are, and the state government, entirely controlled by Dems, passed a law preempting local laws against them – a couple of which had already passed. (TBF – those are grandfathered.)
My own county is this moment voting on an initiative defying that ban on the basis of “local rights”. I expect it to pass, leading to some interesting legal maneuvering. It also defies corporate rights. Part of an ongoing local rebellion.
“Keep in mind the snow was at the top of this hive in mid-February, down to -7 temps at night (I dug them out after every storm).”
and
” the one hive of three that made it through the winter.”
I wince for the bees that these two points are related. A snow cap is relative insulation against the ambient temperature and wind chill for what lies beneath (think Eskimo). If you want to keep water out, throw a plastic sheet over the top & cut slits in the sides near the top for flow through venting.
I don’t know what techniques Eskimos use to build igloos, but I understand the R-value of snow is pretty low. I used to bank the house with it, on general principle, and it never did any good, so far as I could tell. Good point in the plastic, and especially the air slits.
I don’t know about a house, but snow is definitely protective for plants. Every once in a while we have a heavy snow and a below-normal freeze. When it melts, you can see the snowline on certain plants because above it they’re dead. (We push our luck a lot here.)
I suspect it was a mistake to remove the snow. The bees won’t want to get out unless it warms up.
Might want to make sure they get air, though.
The acetone in nail polish remover is a big nasty.
It’s been a few decades since I was a practicing chemist, but compared to other organic solvents like toluene or benzene (also used in nail products), acetone is pretty weak tea. It’s volatile and extremely flammable (I’ve seen two in-lab explosions from carelessly handled acetone), and it will dry your skin like nobody’s business. You should avoid inhaling it, but it’s nowhere near as toxic as aromatic solvents.
i’m not sure but it seems to me that digging out your bees after a storm might not be the best option, the snow will act as an insulator keeping the hive warmer then the colder air temps.