Gulf spill

Lazy though I may be, I think the unfolding environmental disaster in the Gulf deserves a mention.

First, NPR has a story on a group of scientist and engineers who have calculated the daily output of the broken pipe and come up with an estimate that is dramatically higher than the official numbers. 

Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.


A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.


The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.

Wereley's calculations were backed up by scientists and engineers at other institutions. Needless to say, BP disputes these figures. But even at BP's absurdly low estimate - 5,000 barrels a day - this is shaping up to be even worse than the Exxon Valdez spill.

Deborah Blum over at ScienceBlogs has a post on the relative toxicity of the oil in the Gulf and the chemical dispersant being used to break it down. The standard toxicity test for chemical compounds is called the LD50. LD stands for Lethal Dose and 50 indicates 50 percent. So, LD50 means the lowest dose at which a material kills half of the test subjects. Blum did some digging on the LD50s for crude oil and the dispersant being used (Corexit 9500) and came up with some distressing results: turns out that pouring Corexit 9500 on crude oil actually makes the resulting mixture even more toxic.

The results differ by species and by time as well as by amount of poison, The EPA numbers for Corexit 9500 (the formula used most heavily by BP) show that at 2.62 ppm, the dispersant kills half the silver fish in 96 hours/ four days. At a slightly higher concentration - 3.4 ppm - the compound kills half the little shrimp in two days.


As for crude oils, a very decent analysis by the American Petroleum Institute shows that all are toxic, but their effects vary with thickness and with the different chemistry seen in say, oil from the Gulf of Mexico and oil from Kuwait. The best estimate I've seen for South Louisiana Crude - after hours of exasperated research - comes from thesis work done at Louisiana State University several years ago. For instance, the study found that Louisiana crude had an LC50 of 4250 ppm for the warm-water loving killifish.


This suggests that crude oil is less acutely poisonous than chemical dispersants. But here's the really interesting finding in that terrific little study. Adding a dispersant - specifically Corexit 9500 - made the oil more poisonous. A lot more poisonous.


The "dispersed" oil had an LC50 of 317.7 ppm, making it more than 11 times more lethal in its effects. The study found a similar worsening for white shrimp, although not quite as dramatic. "Dispersed oils were more toxic than crude oils," noted the report.

Finally, The Big Picture has a feature on the spill. I highly recommend it. Beautiful pictures of awful stuff.

Bottlenose dolphins swim through oily water

Home again

I'm back on the ancestral homeworld. For a while, at least. I don't know what I'm doing next, but I hope there will be adventures.

Done and done

I handed in my thesis yesterday and I am done. Nothing left to turn in... all I owe Columbia now is a few library books.

Now we wait for graduation. And try to drink everything that's still in the fridge.

This is beyond weird.

Cetacean news

Here's a site that compiles news about dolphins and whales. Updated (almost) daily. Enjoy.

 Also, some of my favorite dolphin desktop wallpapers.

Cetacean picspam after the jump!

The birds and the B's

Jarbas Agnelli saw a picture of some birds sitting on some telephone wires. Another person might have just seen birds. He saw notes.

Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn't the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Gray whale in the Med

A gray whale has been spotted... in the Mediterranean Sea.

 Here he is, off the coast of Israel

From the article:

A gray whale has appeared off the coast of Israel, shocking conservationists.


Gray whales are thought to be extinct across the Atlantic Ocean, so the appearance of an individual within the Mediterranean Sea is a major surprise.


The whale may have inadvertently travelled a huge distance from its natural habitat thousands of kilometres away in the Pacific Ocean.


However, it raises the possibility that gray whales have returned to former haunts in the western hemisphere.


"This discovery is truly amazing. Today, gray whales only inhabit the Pacific Ocean, so to find one in the North Atlantic, let alone the Mediterranean Sea, is bizarre in the extreme," says Nicola Hodgins of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), which has its headquarters in Wiltshire, UK.

Your average human next to your average gray whale (image from Wiki)

Another one bites the dust

Three papers (~25 pages last week) and one final down, one thesis to go, one week to finish it. It's going alright - 38 pages so far, and I'm shooting for 42 or so.

I'd be delighted if it ended up being exactly 42 pages long, because there's a distinct Douglas Adams theme running through it... I'm writing about dolphin intelligence and communication, so of course I had to cite him:

“Intelligence” is an ill-defined concept to begin with. Even among humans there is no universally agreed-upon definition, nor any meaningful measure of individual intelligence. As Darwin wrote in his discussion of intelligence, “no classification of the mental powers has been universally accepted.”And, as Douglas Adams wrote, “Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.”

(Full disclosure: I have this on a t-shirt.)

Good intentions

Two new ones.

 

Peppermint Narwhal

Good intentions

Last days

I'm up to my neck in writing, but there are just  a few days left. By my calculations, I've got about 15 pages left to go before Thursday.


Some recent additions to the wall:

Shitty white paint cracks when you apply it too thick. I thought that was cool.

My grandma's cat

22

It's my birthday!

I was feeling nostalgic for the Netherlands, so I made a little landscape with clouds, acrylic and enamel again. I think it's Delft, but you can pick your own city if you like.

Productive

Crunching away on the thesis, filling my walls with the artistic thoughtbunnies of an increasingly scrambled mind.

Penny

Untitled (suggestions?)

The Boy in sunglasses

Hertzsprung-Russell

Flux/Peak

Boobquake!

In a follow-up to last week's post on sluts and earthquakes, today is Boobquake: a day for women around the world to show off their cleavage in an attempt to debunk a fundamentalist Iranian cleric who blames natural seismic events on women dressing immodestly.

The Bad Astronomer has more:

"...last week an Islamic cleric in Iran said that all the earthquakes occurring in that country are caused by women dressing "immodestly". Yes, this same screwed-up thinking that brought us the Taliban and the idea that burning, throwing acid upon, and beheading women is all their own fault for being, y’know, women, gives us this:

"Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes… What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi [the cleric] asked during a prayer sermon Friday. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam’s moral codes."

I got news for you, Sedighi: if I were God, I’d be throwing more earthquakes your way for the way you treat women. In fact, I’d send a few thousand mini ones that open the Earth and just swallow up the twinkie clerics who say such profoundly horrid things.

Serious note: I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: not all cultures are created equal. Any culture that sweepingly and maniacally oppresses half their population is what I would call evil. Moral relativism be damned: that kind of crap is wrong, plain and simple.

So I stand with my XX-oriented friends against the neolithic thinking of gender-oppressing religions. As Ben Franklin would say were he here today:


We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang lifted and separated.

Now go out and flash your favorite intolerant bastard! I leave you with my favorite relevant lj icon.

The Beeb does whales

Two articles in the BBC this week:

• How to rescue a stranded whale (with video)

Each year anywhere between five and 50 whales, dolphins and porpoises are washed up on Britain's beaches. British Divers Marine Life Rescue, a volunteer charity, was set up in 1998 to rescue them.

To find out how it's done Nick Higham, and volunteers including a chef, a plumber, a man who runs boat trips and a woman who works in IT, encountered a two-tonne inflatable whale for a training course on a Kent beach.

• Whaling plan draws anger 

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has published draft proposals for regulating whaling for the next decade.

Japan's Antarctic whale hunt would fall in stages to less than a quarter of its current size. But hunting would continue on the endangered fin whale.


Key countries, including the US and Japan, have limited comments to saying they will consider the draft proposal carefully.


But some conservation and animal welfare groups have already indicated opposition.


"The fact that this proposal is even being discussed shows just how far out of touch the IWC is with modern values," said Claire Bass, manager of the Marine Mammal Programme at the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA).


"It is entirely missing the point that blasting conscious animals with exploding harpoons is grossly inhumane."


However, others argue that the aim of completely banning whaling is unrealistic, and that a major down-scaling, combined with bringing it under international oversight, is a worthwhile compromise.


But the inclusion of fin whales and the continuation of hunting in the Southern Ocean - which has been declared a whale sanctuary - are points of concern.

With regards to "completely banning whaling is unrealistic, and ... a major down-scaling...is a worthwhile compromise", I am reminded of this article from the Onion:

VATICAN CITY—Calling the behavior shameful, sinful, and much more frequent than the Vatican was comfortable with, Pope Benedict XVI vowed this week to bring the widespread pedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church down to a more manageable level.


Addressing thousands gathered at St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, the pontiff offered his "most humble apologies" to abuse victims, and pledged to reduce the total number of molestations by 60 percent over the next five years.


"This is absolutely unacceptable," Pope Benedict said. "It seems a weakening of faith in God has prevented our priests from exercising moderation when sexually abusing helpless minors."


"And let me remind our clergy of the holy vows they all took when they entered the priesthood," he continued. "They should know that they're only allowed one small child every other month."

Library thoughts

It's mindblowing how much you have to read just to avoid writing something barfingly stupid.

Sluts and earthquakes

Hojjat ol-eslam Kazem Sediqi, the acting Friday prayer leader in Tehran, delivered a televised sermon at the Tehran University campus mosque last week. Given the wretched den of sin and iniquity in which he was speaking (all institutions of higher learning are like this), it is perhaps unsurprising that he chose to sermonize on the "prevalence of degeneracy" in modern society. Every generation of hypocrites laments the lapsed morals of the generation following theirs, nothing new there. When the degenerate youth asks why they need to behave exactly as their parents claimed they did, the elder generation rarely has anything convincing to say. But last Friday Sediqi put his finger on the real reason that strict Islamic morality is necessary, at least for women:

"Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he explained.

Tens of thousands of people have died in Iran earthquakes in the last decade.

More than 25,000 people died when a powerful earthquake hit the ancient city of Bam in 2003.

You heard it here first: 25,000 people died because some hussy pushed her veil an inch back to feel the sun on her forehead.

This is hilarious, but the "Unveiled women cause adultery" argument makes me crazy.  Male arguments for the necessity of the veil always puzzle me, because they are an admission of profound moral weakness. The veil is actually an insult to men: the statement it makes is that men are so very fallible that the very hint of a strand of hair will inevitably drive them into a lustful frenzy, after which point they cannot be held responsible for their own actions. It ascribes less agency to members of the male sex than most people ascribe to small children. For one of the most patriarchal religions in the universe, that's just... weird.