Expect a rush to use tools like the Torpark web browser as thugs like this increasingly get their way:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has voiced support for data retention laws that would require ISPs to keep information about what consumers are doing on the Internet.
Unfortunately, Tor is not up to the task of handling much of a load at this time.
Related: A Leash That Tightens Slowly via Gjoblaag.
It’s Wordless Wednesday at PJ’s place.
The sculptor calls the piece Hope and Renewal
and says:
“In Cambodia, the idea of planting a flower signifies hope and renewal and the flower is a symbol of growth and opportunity,” Garber explained. “So I thought in that area where there are a lot of immigrants and a lot of refugees that it would be appropriate to design something that gives some sense of optimism, of growth or hope, to kind of uplift the community without being too literal.”
Some of the fine citizens of Chicago apparently think it is more phallic than plantlike. Laura at The Sarchasm opines:
I’m not sure I know what the sculpture is supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure it does not remotely resemble any part of the external human anatomy. I think abstinence only education is having an adverse effect on our society, don’t you? What are they teaching kids these days? If you have sex before marriage, your willy will end up looking like THIS!
Yep!
To me it looks like a couple abstract cobra headed golf drivers or croquet mallets and it certainly could be a couple germinating seeds.
What does it look like to you?
Grand Rounds, Volume 2, Number 52 is up at Tundra Medicine Dreams.
Grand Rounds is
…the medical blogosphere’s weekly carnival of the best writing and thinking on topics related to health and healthcare. This week’s edition comes to you from the beautiful state of Alaska.
Grand Rounds and the Friday Ark appear to share a close birthday. This is GR’s 104th issue and last Friday was the Ark’s 104th boarding! Tundra Dreams has decked out this issue of the Rounds with some great animal pictures so I plan to board them this Friday.
Recent research suggests that only one of the 5 major mass extinctions was caused by meteor impact. The rest were more likely caused by deep-sea anaerobic bacteria:
In their models, if the deepwater H2S concentrations were to increase beyond a critical threshold during such an interval of oceanic anoxia, then the chemocline separating the H2S-rich deepwater from oxygenated surface water could have floated up to the top abruptly. The horrific result would be great bubbles of toxic H2S gas erupting into the atmosphere.
Warm things up a bit via volcanic sourced high CO2 and you create the making of massive bacterial farts of deadly gas.
The author of the article says that conditions for these bubbly killers occur in a massive scale when CO2 levels reach around 1000 parts per million. Current levels are at 385 and rising 2-3 ppm per year. Assuming the rate of increase does not go above 3 ppm/year then expect next mass extinctions to begin in at most 200 years.
Yep, your great-great grand children might be around, briefly, to see it.