The theory with this new process is that it will radically change the manufacturing process. It certainly sounds interesting but as a non-engineer, it's not possible to tell if it's hype or reality. Do the engineers out there agree with the comments that it's a radical new idea?
Made from nylon, the Airbike technology demonstrator was assembled using Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) at a centre located next to Airbus’s site at Filton.
The process allows complete sections to be built as one piece; the wheels, bearings and axle being incorporated within the ‘growing’ process and built at the same time.
Similar in concept to 3D printing, the bike design is perfected using computer-aided design and then constructed using a laser-sintering process that adds successive, thin layers of the chosen structural material until a solid, fully formed bike emerges.
Chinese blogger and activist Michael Anti wants to know why he is less worthy of a Facebook account than company founder Mark Zuckerberg's dog.
Anti, a popular online commentator whose legal name is Zhao Jing, said in an interview Tuesday that his Facebook account was suddenly canceled in January. Company officials told him by e-mail that Facebook has a strict policy against pseudonyms and that he must use the name issued on his government ID.
Anti argues that his professional identity as Michael Anti has been established for more than a decade, with published articles and essays.
Al Jazeera has numerous stories, all of them very creepy. It should not come as a surprise though because the mix of dispersants and oil have been known to cause problems. The chemicals used by BP are illegal in BP's home country but somehow were legal in the US. BP has done a poor job of paying claims and it will come as no surprise if these victims are ignored by BP. This is really scary stuff.
"I have terrible chest pain, at times I can’t seem to get enough oxygen, and I'm constantly tired with pains all over my body," Aguinaga explained, "At times I'm pissing blood, vomiting dark brown stuff, and every pore of my body is dispensing water."
And Aguinaga's friend Vallian is now dead.
"After we got back from our vacation in Florida, Merrick went to work for a company contracted by BP to clean up oil in Grand Isle, Louisiana," Aguinaga said of his 33-year-old physically fit friend.
"Aside from some gloves, BP provided no personal protection for them. He worked for them for two weeks and then died on August 23. He had just got his first paycheck, and it was in his wallet, uncashed, when he died."
After quitting her own governorship halfway through the first term, some might say Sarah Palin was in no position to be criticizing Democratic Wisconsin state senators for having "retreated" and “not doing their job” by leaving the state in protest of their governor's anti-union bill. But Fox News host Jeanine Pirro would not be one of those noting the irony of Palin's position.
More on the Scott Walker Coup in Wisconsin. Here is John Nichols, of The Nation magazine and a native of the state, talking with Ed Schultz about: (1) The deliberate effort to blindside the Dems with the latest, probably illegal legislative move; and (2) The Wisconsin Recall effort.
Our thoughts:
▪ Schultz: "This may be the template for the way Republicans want to handle state and local issues across this country in a very heavy-handed manner" (0:15 in the clip). Yes, more Gaddafi than Mubarak, if I may say so.
▪ The Repubs planned this surprise (1:25), a deliberate blindside effort, behind a cloud of obfuscation from the governor's office. As their ship goes down, they're playing every (bad) card in their hand.
▪ The Recall is "incredibly effective" (2:20 and forward). Note this from Ben Smith at Politico (my emphasis):
In the aftermath of Wisconsin Republicans using a procedural move to pass an anti-collective bargaining bill last night, two liberal groups reported a fundraising bump of $200,000 alone since the bill passed.
Combined with last night's take, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America have raised $750,000 since the standoff in Wisconsin began for a television campaign against GOP state senators facing recall elections.
PCCC and DFA are focusing their efforts against three state Senators in districts that President Obama carried in 2008 -- Sen. Randy Hopper, Alberta Darling and Dan Kapanke. ... The liberal group MoveOn raised an additional $350,000 overnight, bringing their fundraising total up to $825,000 to be put towards the recall campaigns.
I hope the deciders in this don't let anyone off the hook. Make them all feel vulnerable. Our Recall contrib link is below.
▪ Nichols: "Governor Walker is clearly running for the presidency" (5:05) Surprise, and great catch by Nichols. No wonder Walker was so subservient to fake-David Koch. Listen again to the phone call, where Walker is punked and tells all. How is this not a status report to the boss?
▪ The next battle in Wisconsin is the April 5 partisan battle for the Wisc. Supreme Court, with David Prosser (R) squaring off against JoAnn Kloppenberg (D). (Yes Virginia, in Wisconsin they run by party in these court races.) The court is currently 4-3 Republican, and Prosser holds the seat now. So the battle will be to flip the court — OR to get the "Did the Senate act illegally" decision before the court before the election.
Kloppenberg has declined to take campaign contributions of any kind (wow!). You can bet that won't be true in Koch-istan.
Sad, isn't it, when Justice slaves to Party and Party slaves to Money? On the other hand, Money can't buy Justice without slaves (er, political retainers).
Stay tuned, and watch that race. (If you're a Wisconsinite, you can volunteer to help out here.) Heady times, folks.
As a kid, I craved that cereal. For starters, it wasn't that bland puffed rice that we so often had around the house. The sugar probably didn't hurt either. (Did everyone else cringe when they saw that massive clear plastic bag emerge out of the grocery bags?) As an adult, I can't think of many foods that sound less appealing that this. Considering the severe child obesity problem in the US, ditching cereal like this for better choices makes perfect sense.
The Soggies have finally won: Cap'n Crunch is quietly sailing into retirement.
Long derided by health experts for its high sugar content – a single serving contains 12 grams – the cereal is no longer being actively marketed by Quaker, DailyFinance reports. It appears parent company PepsiCo is forcing the good Cap'n to walk the plank.
Cap'n Crunch was once the No. 1 breakfast cereal, but pressure from the White House and health activists is having an effect on how PepsiCo and other food companies peddle their products to kids. Sales of the cereal were down 6.8 percent in 2010.
NOTE FROM JOHN: Pepsi has 39g of sugar in one serving. That's 7.5 teaspoons of sugar in each can. Or 10 cubes of sugar.
That’s no surprise to most people who have watched this conflict from the start, but like any coup its ultimate outcome will depend on the public. If most citizens of Wisconsin are now convinced that Walker and his cohorts are extremists willing to go to any lengths for their big-business patrons (including the billionaire Koch brothers), those citizens will recall enough Republican senators to right this wrong.
But it’s critically important at this stage that Walker’s opponents maintain the self-discipline they have shown until this critical point. Walker would like nothing better than disorder to break out in Madison. Like the leader of any coup d’etat, he wants to show the public his strong-arm methods are made necessary by adversaries whose behavior can be characterized on the media as even more extreme.
Be measured. Stay cool.
Exactly right: "Be measured. Stay cool." But play to win. Force a recall no matter what they do. (Studs Terkel used to sign off, Take it easy, but take it. Yes.) Our ActBlue contrib link is below.
It really is up to the public to reject a coup; after all, if the Supreme Court Coup of 2000 hadn't been meekly accepted, we wouldn't be this far down this road. Let's not look back in 10 years not knowing what we could have done.
NPR's CEO just resigned following another Republican-created "scandal" intended to portray the entity as "liberal." NPR's excuse for letting their CEO go is priceless in its naivete:
The controversies in recent months that led to Schiller's departure have given NPR's critics opportunities to accuse it of liberal bias and to push for elimination of any federal funding for public broadcasting.
Did you catch that logic? You might recognize it from the Democratic playbook: They were mean to us because of what we did. So maybe if we cave to their demands they'll start being nice to us.
1) They weren't mean to you because of what you did. They were mean to you because they want to destroy you, and always have. They'd have been mean to you anyway.
2) Their plan for decades has been to destroy you. There is nothing you can do to make them play nice because they don't want to play nice. They want to destroy you. Caving to their demands only shows weakness, and motivates them to go after you even more harshly in the future.
It reminds me of a Senate Democrat, I can't recall which one, during the Bush years, who said the reason Dems were voting for some unconscionable Bush legislation was because if they didn't, the Republicans would accuse them of siding with Osama bin Laden. Of course, what the Democrats never understood was that the Republicans were going to accuse them of siding with Osama regardless of what the Democrats did or didn't do.
Republicans are ruthless, and Republicans lie. Until Democrats, and NPR, learn from history, they'll be destined to repeat it.
Read the rest of this post...
If this turns out to be true, book airline tickets to The Hague for serious crimes against humanity. This is disturbing.
"The material in this gas makes people convulse for hours. It paralyses them. They couldn't move at all. We tried to give them oxygen but it didn't work," said Amaar Nujaim, a field doctor who works for Islamic Relief.
"We are seeing symptoms in the patient's nerves, not in their respiratory systems. I'm 90 per cent sure its nerve gas and not tear gas that was used," said Sami Zaid, a doctor at the Science and Technology Hospital in Sanaa.
Mohammad Al-Sheikh, a pathologist at the same hospital, said that some of the victims had lost their muscular control and were forced to wear diapers.
And the majority of retiring five star generals and the defense contractors who give them high paying jobs want more defense spending. Guess who is going to win this debate? Reuters:
A majority of Americans prefer cutting defense spending to reduce the federal deficit rather than taking money from public retirement and health programs, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday showed.
The poll found 51 percent of Americans support reducing defense spending, and only 28 percent want to cut Medicare and Medicaid health programs for the elderly and poor. A mere 18 percent back cuts in the Social Security retirement program.
The Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs, known as entitlements, and defense spending together account for about two-thirds of the $3.7 trillion federal budget, but they are not a major part of the debate in Congress over spending cuts.
It's always interesting how we see drips of information about the failing war in Afghanistan like this. If I was more of a conspiracy theorist, I might even think that stories like this are planted to help stir up support for this highly unpopular and painfully expensive war. Hmmm, maybe I'm actually buying into the conspiracy theories. The Guardian:
British special forces in Afghanistan have intercepted an Iranian shipment of rockets to the Taliban that would have allowed them to double the range of their attacks, western diplomats have said.
The rockets were discovered after an intelligence tip-off on 5 February when British special forces and Afghan troops stopped a convoy in Nimruz province, in the south-west of Afghanistan bordering Iran and Pakistan, the officials said. A shoot-out involving the special forces left several Taliban fighters dead.
The vehicles were found to be carrying 48 122mm rockets, which western sources described as "substantial weapons" with a range of more than 12 miles. A diplomat with knowledge of the arms shipment said that was double the range of the usual Taliban weapons.
Isn't it curious how we're seeing similar attacks against the unions who are being scapegoated for the economic problems? The fact that bankers are also seeing a pretty consistent program of mollycoddling in most of the rich countries does make you wonder. Once again, why are unions being blamed for what we know was a Wall Street economic crisis? The attacks against the middle class are growing around the world.
Trade unions representing a million state employees are drawing up plans for strikes that could bring Britain's schools, universities, courts and Whitehall to a standstill as early as June in protest over government plans to end so-called "gold-plated" public sector pensions, the Guardian has learned.
Lord Hutton, the Labour former work and pensions secretary charged by the coalition with reviewing public sector pensions, will publish his final report on Thursday, and it now looks likely to act as a starting gun for extended industrial action against the government's austerity programme.
The report will recommend that 6 million nurses, teachers, local government and other public sector workers should pay more into their pension pots, retire later and receive less when they do. All state employees will be affected, and it will create the first legal basis for simultaneous strikes across the public service unions.
The pro-Mubarak team was able to get away with it and Gaddafi has been much more aggressive than Mubarak. If the reports are correct and he's already been targeting civilians for bombing raids, this will be the least of his worries. If he survives, he needs to be sent to The Hague. The Guardian:
Two journalists working for the BBC in Libya have been arrested, tortured and subjected to a mock execution by security forces of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
The shocking account of their experiences, including being held in a cage in a militia barracks while others were tortured around them, was made available to media colleagues in Tripoli after the men had been released and left the country.
At one point during their captivity the men say they had shots fired past their heads as they were led into a barracks.
One of the men was attacked repeatedly with fists, boots, rifle butts, a stick and piece of pipe. He also described trying to help other victims of torture whom they saw, some of whom had had their ribs broken during beatings.
AMERICAblog is my full-time job, and we were hit hard by the economic crisis. Please support independent media and help us keep running with a donation. Thanks so much, JOHN
I have Vonage phone service, they rock, and will give me a few free months for each new sign up via the link below. Highly recommend. Thanks, JOHN Buy Vonage, help AMERICAblog
About AMERICAblog
Why AMERICAblog?
Because a great nation deserves the truth.
What issues do you cover?
US politics overall with a particular focus on the Obama Administration, the radical right, and civil rights.
Include your pet's photo in our rotating archive by sending it to photos@americablog.com. Make sure you put "pet" in the subject line, and tell us something about your pet (goofy, touching, whatever you like), and we just might write a post about it too!
