Ending illegal e-waste dumping

I just found out about the Basel Action Network, http://www.ban.org which is an organization in Seattle doing great work. I have an old keyboard to dispose of, and though I take it to my City e-waste Recycling Center in Durham, NC, I don't really know where it will end up. Hopefully not creating toxic fumes or land poisoning in Africa or Asia.
Here is some e-waste in Nigeria in 2005

NPR has a show about this issue:

After Dump, What Happens To Electronic Waste?

Say NO to Fracked Gas Plant at Duke University

There was a public hearing last night (Mar 27) at Duke for community stakeholders to weigh in on Duke's plan to partner with Duke Energy to build a new power plant on campus. It is called a CHP plant (Combined Heat & Power) and will run on fracked gas.

 Not many people at this last minute hearing. Duke has an alliance with nearby neighborhoods, but I guess they *forgot* to alert them about this to avoid negative press. Most of the affected community in Durham has no idea that Duke has plans to pollute our neighborhoods with toxic fracked gas emissions.

Please check the talking points at NC Warn.  and contact Duke immediately. 
There is an advisory subcommittee that is making recommendations on Friday, Mar 31.
Here is where you can submit comments:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeJ7LnzcRXsVrHSofYWjH09WkvJOcqUGespOzdxhHsc3-yXMw/viewform?c=0&w=1

If you can do this before Friday, we might get them to reconsider, and  e-mail  your message directly to President Brodhead also. President@duke.edu.

Duke claims it will reduce their carbon footprint, but it seems that they have some tricky way of calculating that, ignoring some types of emissions, and that in actuality, it will increase air pollution. There was a representative from NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) there who said they had offered to help evaluate the project repeatedly over the last 7 months and that Duke has not cooperated. Jim Warren and others from NC Warn spoke about the harm this plant will cause and the secrecy in the way it has been planned.

It is not a done deal yet, so you can help stop it by contacting Duke's President Brodhead at President@duke.edu. Duke prides itself on its efforts to be a leader in climate protection, but this is really a major step backwards, that will cost $55,000,000 dollars, largely paid by Duke Power customers throughout NC for the next 35 years.

Duke has been considering a project to capture methane from hog farms and use that as a bio fuel instead of the fracked gas. That would be awesome, but they should not build the plant first before making sure the captured methane supply will be reliable. There is a lot of room for more solar power at Duke also.

The Nightmare of Trump's America

"Alternative" Facts?

 
"President" followed by "Trump" seems like an oxymoron to me. No one is more the antithesis of Presidential, so I will refer to him as T.

Everything he does seems Orwellian. His dark vision of America in carnage, people jobless, beset by gangs, murderers and rapists who invaded our formerly safe, wonderful and wealthy home is a trope that his supporters lap up and believe. He talks in doublespeak, as does Fox News.
In his essay "Politics and the English Language", George Orwell said,

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible … Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness … the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms

T has gaslighted his way into the most powerful position in the world... which matches his narcissistic view of himself as the great savior. As he said, "Only I can fix this."

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target's belief.

T said he would release his taxes as soon as the audit is done. Another lie! Perhaps a judge can order the release of his taxes, but before that happens T and the Republican congress will appoint conservative judges to hundreds of court vacancies that they refused to fill throughout President Obama's tenure.

  A Fox for Every Henhouse

His cabinet picks at best have little to no experience or training for the departments they are going to lead. At worst they have promised to dismantle the very agencies they will now lead (to ruin?), as in Rick Perry wanting to eliminate the Department of Energy. Or take Betsy DeVoss who has never attended public schools, did not send her children to public schools, and is an activist for privatizing schools, now is in the most powerful position to supposedly protect our system of free public education?
As Michael Moore tweeted,
If you're still trying to convince yourself that a 21st century coup is not underway, please, please snap out of it.

Sister March in Raleigh

It's come to this. With Trump's win, I will have to take the time to start blogging again. I was heartened to take part in the Sister march in Raleigh, NC, where 17,000 worried and angry women and their allies marched on January 21st, the first day after that Gloom and Doom inauguration.

Watch Out for Nuclear Dust

oops, you can't watch them because they are nano-particles we can ingest in our air and food. Detected in the West Coast, by a scientist Marco Kaltofen's monitoring stations, this could be a hazard throughout the Northern Hemisphere. gee, some of the produce I buy is grown in California.

Where is all that Fukushima radiation going, and why does it matter? from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Action item this video suggests: pester your congress people and safety regulators to start monitoring for small radioactive dust particles. This is different from an x-ray or a plane flight... they last for a short time. In contrast, an ingested radioactive particle can continue to emit radiation to your body for the rest of your life.
I checked on google maps, and I am sorry to say that my nearest nuke is only 23.5 miles away:

This nuke, Shearon Harris, has a terrible safety record.

" Harris has been in violation of federal fire regulations since at 

least 1992, and ranks worst in the nation in at least two critical fire safety criteria. "

Zoom in, Durham, and wake up and smell the steaming potentially radioactive coffee:

The irony is that we wouldn't need the nukes if we went ahead with energy conservation and solar and  wind power generation, according to NC Warn.

Radiation Danger from Japan

I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop in Fukushima Daiichi, worrying about what is too frightening to tell the public, and Arnie Gundersen just dropped it for me. He is a nuclear engineer who had worked at Three Mile Island, and is clearly explaining the science of the leakage of radiation in Japan.
http://www.fairewinds.com/

Astounding Stats on how few Americans are Rich

Mother Jones magazine/website has created these 11 charts that explain the gross inequality in the United States today, a big shift from how things were 30 years ago.

It's the Inequality, Stupid

Eleven charts that explain everything that's wrong with America.
In Colombia, it was obvious that the vast majority of people are poor, and a small percentage of wealthy people run the show.  In America, it is far less obvious, because so many people have homes. But we work all the time to keep them. I was really shocked to see that 1% of Americans own over one third of our country's wealth, and that the next 9% of the richest people own another third, with the rest of us 90% owning the last third, and these 90% have an average income of $31,244.
So I checked the GINI index at the CIA World Factbook. The GINI index measures how evenly the GNP is distributed among the population of each country. The higher the number, the more concentrated the wealth is, in the hands of a few.

Yes, Colombia has an even more unequal income distribution than the USA. But geez,  a few of the countries with a more equitable distribution than us are Cameroon, Iran, Nigeria, Kenya, Guyana, Thailand, Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia, Ghana, Burkina Faso...not just the obvious like Sweden and Norway.
So what income qualifies you as part of the middle class? It seems that America will soon have only the upper classes, and the working class and poverty levels left. A sure sign of a decaying economy.

In Colombia, a sugar cane cutter's house

abandoned home in Detroit, USA