EPA Listens To Lobbyists, Boots Expert

And then another set of decisions. Am I just one of the few that sees all this as one step forward, one step back, and we're all just doing the cha-cha?

clipped from www.ewg.org A toxicologist was removed from a panel researching a flame retardant. Critics cry double standard. Published February 29, 2008 Under pressure from the chemical industry, the Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed an outspoken scientist who chaired a federal panel responsible for helping the agency determine the dangers of a flame retardant widely used in electronic equipment. Toxicologist Deborah Rice was appointed chair of an EPA scientific panel reviewing the chemical a year ago. Federal records show she was removed from the panel in August after the American Chemistry Council, the lobbying group for chemical manufacturers, complained to a top-ranking EPA official that she was biased. The chemical, a brominated compound known as deca, is used in high volumes worldwide, largely in the plastic housings of television sets. EPA officials were not available for comment Thursday. unprecedented for the EPA to remove an expert for expressing concerns about the potential dangers

U.S. Moving Toward Ban on New Coal-Fired Power Plants

So now that we're opposed to coal - regardless of the technological evolution - what will happen to all the fly-ash? Fly-ash (as my previous post reviewed) is beginning to be used more and more in civic project instead of ending in landfills. Fly-ash makes for lighter, stronger, and more porous (benefiting drainage) pavement - whether sidewalk or street.

It feels like for every uprising and retaliation we have toward a polluting industry, we [humanity] shoot ourselves in the foot by our failures to act early enough but then by acting too late and dealing with a more modern concern with decade-old spectacles.

clipped from www.earthpolicy.org In a report compiled in early 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy listed 151 coal-fired power plants in the planning stages and talked about a resurgence in coal-fired electricity. But during 2007, 59 proposed U.S. coal-fired power plants were either refused licenses by state governments or quietly abandoned. In addition to the 59 plants that were dropped, close to 50 more coal plants are being contested in the courts, and the remaining plants will likely be challenged as they reach the permitting stage. What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power is quickly evolving into a national tidal wave of grassroots opposition from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations and a fast-growing number of state governments. The public at large is turning against coal. In a September 2007 national poll by the Opinion Research Corporation about which electricity source people would prefer, only 3 percent chose coal.

clipped from www.earthpolicy.org Since the budgets of international food aid agencies are set well in advance, a rise in food prices shrinks food assistance. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is now supplying emergency food aid to 37 countries, is cutting shipments as prices soar. The WFP reports that 18,000 children are dying each day from hunger and related illnesses. As grain prices climb, a politics of food scarcity is emerging as exporting countries restrict exports to limit the rise in domestic food prices. Rising food prices are translating into social unrest. The crop fuels program that currently satisfies scarcely 3 percent of U.S. gasoline needs is simply not worth the human suffering and political chaos it is causing. If the entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into ethanol, it would satisfy scarcely 18 percent of our automotive fuel needs. The irony is that U.S. taxpayers, by subsidizing the conversion of grain into ethanol, are in effect financing a rise in their own food prices.

[U.S.] Government adjusts prior complex wordy and generally unintelligible jargon down in and to [the] simple things previously seen, made and known to be unnecessarily complicated for the sake of addressing each minutia.

Does this mean that new styled writers will be employed? Because to write that way takes a certain skill. I can't even do it right. It's way over the top and completely ridiculous. I can't even pull off a straight pan even if money and beneficial odds pointing my way were on the line. (I'd slap myself and straighten my ass out for sure though.)

But seriously, I can't write like that. I thought the government prided itself on the jargon. Lawyers jerk off to sentences like that. There's a reason why it is that way. So that the secret code between two wink-winks of lawyers will be sustained.

Oct 1, 2007:
Referred to the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives.

clipped from www.govtrack.us

S. 2291: Plain Language in Government Communications Act of 2007

A bill to enhance citizen access to Government information and services by establishing plain language as the standard style of Government documents issued to the public, and for other purposes.

Nov 6, 2007:
Sponsor introductory remarks on measure. (CR S13985-13986)

clipped from www.govtrack.us

Congress is poised to pass good legislation to outlaw government gobbledygook.

will require government agencies to write many future documents in plain language: language that is clear, concise, and easy to understand

underway since the 1970’s

clipped from www.govtrack.us H.R. 3548: Plain Language in Government Communications Act of 2007 To enhance citizen access to Government information and services by establishing plain language as the standard style for Government documents issued to the public, and for other purposes.

Introduced

Sep 17, 2007

Introduced

Nov 1, 2007

AT&T and the Asterisk Culture* gone awry

Why don't we pay attention to the asterisk? Sometimes I see the asterisk and I don't see the footnote. I ask the sales person. They put on a dumbfounded face. I point to the asterisk. It's almost as if they are seeing it for the first time. I'm not sure if they are putting on a show or never really paid enough attention to the very thing they are trying to sell me. It's a wide range of gray area flanked by two extremes: pure evil and pure idiocy. Somewhere in the middle is moral laziness.

*Moral laziness is not just a character flaw that the salesperson has, but also that I have. Who wants to read the paragraph long legalese in small type that relates to whatever magic word followed by an asterisk that initially caught my attention that captivated me to walk into the store.

clipped from prairieweather.typepad.com BS:  ATT in the latter part of the last decade actually did market research to figure out how to design an envelope and a notice that consumers would discard!  They actually sent out samples to people.  They did a study.  They found that certain phrases or bolding certain words would convince people that they didn’t have to read the notice that was sent, so they’d throw it in the trash.  The act of throwing it in the trash was essentially legal consent to letting ATT remove consumers’ rights to sue them!  So it was a very momentous event for the consumer to discard your right to file a lawsuit against ATT.  TG:  So in order to retain the right to file a lawsuit, you had to actually read it, sign it, and return it.  BS:  You had to read it and object to it – and, of course, understand it!  But at the very top of the notice it said, “You do not have to do anything.”  Of course, everyone loves to hear that, so they threw the note out. TG:  So that particular contract was voided by a court.

LAIBACH / OPUS DEI / LIFE IS LIFE

Soap Suds Sellout to Conspiring Agents

Not that it ever mattered to me personally. Not that I'm the demographic for shampoo or conditioner commercials. I have very short hair and feel that - other than the ingredients in a bottle and some sort of fragrance issue - I am uninfluenced by the quantity or quality of suds or lather as I vigorously scratch through my scalp, letting foam build until I rinse.

So when I see a commercial of a woman seemingly naked mid-shower having some sort of erotic orgasmic gyration, I wonder: who does this appeal to?

It must appeal on some level to some percent of the population for the amount of money invested, not only in producing the commercial but also its airtime costs. The amount of thumbs-up (or a solemn nod or an excited grin) that a group of people in charge of a company's advertising campaign give prior to airing or producing any commercial seems to me to be the QA of the system.

So when I learn that 'sudsing agents' are added as a separate ingredient to detergents in order to make people feel better about their cleaning ritual, it makes me think. Not that I'm influenced or care. (As far as I'm concerned, there is little to save humanity other than just humanity itself...but anyway...)

Do we really need the perception? Really? Do women? Is this similar to bleaching flour or sugar because of a long-standing association (or tradition) being made (white = pure)? Is that all this boils down to?

I find it disturbing, intriguing and strange - all at the same time - so I'm a bit confused as well.

I'm trying to follow the flow. The only reason we have these additional sudsing agents added to detergent unnecessarily except for some traditional aesthetic that's propagated on our culture.

That means that someone, somewhere, at some point, decided that:

god said:

In the beginning...And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be suds; and there was suds.
And God saw the suds, that it was good: and God divided the clean from the dirty.

Well, not quite like that. But the standard seems to be just that. Unquestioned resolution that more suds mean a better clean.

(For all those that say: who didn't know that? Well! I didn't! So why is the hygiene industry booming, trusted, believed, unhindered by a mass consumer epiphany and forthcoming retaliation?)

But this is not my point. All this suds business: someone must've either determined this perceptual take based on a personal subjective qualifier or researched people's perception of the quantity of suds relation to the quality of cleanliness. (And what a great and wonderful sociological thesis project that must've been.) But still...

...after the research...after the tests...and after the creation of the sudsiest sudsing agent ever known, we still need the ability for the thumbs up people to say: yes, we should add this to our concoction prior to distribution in order to convince our consumers (based on the thesis study) that they'll experience a deeper level of clean then our competitors, solely because our competitors don't add (or have) the greatest sudsing agent on earth.

I wish I could've been there for that board meeting.

clipped from www.quickandsimple.com Less suds equals better cleaning. “There’s a common misconception that suds do the cleaning,” says Lucinda Ottusch, senior home economist for the Whirlpool Institute of Fabric Science. But excess suds actually inhibit proper cleaning because they hold the soil in the water and redeposit it on clothes, rather than help it rinse away. Don’t use more than soap manufacturers recommend, and if you have a lightly soiled load, use less. clipped from www.planetnatural.com Q: Do cleaning products that produce more suds do a better job? A: Sudsing has nothing to do with cleaning power. Mainstream marketing gurus have made believers out of the suds phenomenon -- that more suds means better performance. That just isn't true. We, at Restore, add far less sudsing agents to our Dish Detergent because it doesn't improve the product, it costs more money to make, and it irritates and dries our customers' hands. Yes, we know, suds are a powerful reassurance, but just try our products, they really work, without so much suds. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Blog Archive ▼  2008 (18) ▼  March (1) EPA Listens To Lobbyists, Boots Expert ►  February (1) ►  January (16)