Morning No: No Democracy

by: Natasha Chart

Fri Aug 21, 2009 at 06:00

- NOAA is now measuring the highest ever ocean temperatures. (Go here for a small, handy map of global temperature anomalies in July, 2009.) This isn't just bad as a sign of climate destabilization, it means that ocean water will hold less dissolved oxygen and will therefore begin to impact regional distribution of marine life as the warmest waters come to support fewer fish and more jellyfish.

- The Whole Foods boycott has gotten their attention.

- Maybe the White House would take this great health care discussion advice if only being clear about why we need to reform the health system in this country didn't involve saying so many unpleasantly true things about insurance companies.

- WTF is with all the tasering?

- The wild success of the prematurely closing cash for clunkers program was a brilliant demonstration of how it's possible to benefit the environment and the economy at the very same time.

- If health insurance reform fails, it's the conservative Democrats who'll lose their seats, and I can't say I'll miss them.

- Taibbi says the media elite are doing their best to prove Noam Chomsky right in the healthcare debate. I'm torn between thinking this NYT article on the foundation of seniors' Medicare fears an okay case in point or a good one, depending on how much weight gets allocated to the title.

- USGS has found mercury in every fish, in every watershed that they tested, courtesy in large part of our friendly, neighborhood coal plants. Jeremy Piven has totally sworn off the stuff after getting severe mercury poisoning from his sushi habit. I wonder when they'll start checking for plastic breakdown products in ocean fish, too, love that bisphenol A!

- Iran may be getting as many as three female cabinet ministers and may ban the stoning of adultresses. That last sentence is sort of painful, looking at it there.

- The Afghan elections seem to be proceeding both violently and fraudulently.

- A team of researchers have taken an important step in efforts to create synthetic cells.

- Yes, I would like a crazypedia, but worry that it would just be so funny that it made me sad.