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louisiana red dust


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According to Naman, poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from this toxic mix are making people sick. PAHs contain compounds that have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic.

Fisherman across the four states most heavily affected by the oil disaster - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida - have reported seeing BP spray dispersants from aircraft and boats offshore.

"The dispersants are being added to the water and are causing chemical compounds to become water soluble, which is then given off into the air, so it is coming down as rain, in addition to being in the water and beaches of these areas of the Gulf," Naman added.

"I’m scared of what I'm finding. These cyclic compounds intermingle with the Corexit [dispersants] and generate other cyclic compounds that aren’t good. Many have double bonds, and many are on the EPA's danger list. This is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe."

Commercial fisherman Donny Matsler also lives in Alabama.

"I was with my friend Albert, and we were both slammed with exposure," Matsler explained of his experience on August 5, referring to toxic chemicals he inhaled that he believes are associated with BP's dispersants. "We both saw the clumps of white bubbles on the surface that we know come from the dispersed oil."

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rothkobw


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granite vinalhaven picnic table


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in case youve been living under a rock, heres the cast of the simpsons (and their voices) on inside the actors studio, 1st aired 2/03. enjoy


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Before anyone gets the wrong idea, followed by writs from the mighty Apple Inc, no one is accusing Ive of copying Rams, although there is, quite clearly, a synergy between their work separated by several decades. Actually, Rams admires Apple, as he once did Sony, two corporations that have followed much the same design philosophy as Braun did from 1955 when Rams, then just 23 years old, joined its design team. Rams was head of design at Braun from 1961 until 1995; two years later, Ive was promoted to Apple's head of design; it was as if Rams' baton had been handed on to a younger talent, 45 years his junior, working for a different company in another country.

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5,000 dollars, peso neto, 200 yen, salt, milk, lead, asbestos, carbon, tar (and feathers), dextrose


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Call it what you like, Citybike, Vélib or StadtRAD. More than one hundred European cities have launched rent-a-bike projects allowing people to use pedal-power to whizz from Point A to Point B. But will the bike sharing fad last?

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gaudi door pulls, key holes, etc.


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thrillbillies 09 season


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cleveland art

via vz
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go glen cambell!


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grow indigo

madder


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A gunny sack holds approximately 100 pounds of potatoes. As a result, the modern measurement unit of potatoes is still the "sack."


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Beige, The People's Color. Er, white people that is.

beige phone we500
In 1954 the telephone statrted to become a decorative household item. Although some colored telephones were available much earlier, they did not gain widespread popularity until the advent of the "500" color series. The five basic colors currently available are white, beige, green, pink and blue.

So, why beige?

For probably the same reasons, the colour Beige also found it's way quickly into the various accessories and peripherals you'd be most likely to find around computers - keyboard, mice, speakers, printers, scanners - the list goes on... Like time, opinions and fashions inevitably move on, and black and silver became more synonymous with technology - it only made sense for computers to follow suit. Even more recently, pure white is becoming more and more commonplace - mainly in Apple manufactured devices, but it's a colour which is starting to appear more often from other manufacturers as well.

Another widely suggested reason for the choice of the colour beige was more psychologically driven. When PC's first started to rise in popularity and quantity, they were strange new technology, which frankly, scared and intimidated a lot of people who were less technologically comfortable/capable. Beige, being a soft, gentle colour which is easy on the eyes, may well have been an attempt to take away some of the fear the electronics inside the boxes instilled in these people. I find this easy to believe, and, like the default colour of technology mentioned above, it logically progresses forward into a time when more and more people were becoming more comfortable with technology. As it became less intimidating and more commonplace, there was less reason to try to hide it away in nondescript Beige boxes. With this reasoning in mind, the recent rapid transition to stark black and shining silver computers also makes reasonably good sense.

A third, more practical reason for beige is that it is relatively easy to keep clean. Marks don't show up on Beige quite as quickly or as obviously as they do on pure white or jet black. The use of Beige helped to maintain the clean, efficient image offices were supposed to project.

The fourth and final reason for the early predominance of Beige which I came across was cost. Beige may have been the colour that the pellets used in plastic mass-production came in originally. Keeping the same colour allowed for cost savings as there was no dye cost, and no real costs associated with quality-control having to ensure the same shade of plastic was being produced over and over again. Another likely cost issue was compatibility. An industry wide standard colour meant that externally visible component manufacturers - the people that made CD-Rom and Floppy drives and the peripheral manufacturers - could make one product, and sell it to several customers. Economies of scale would have encouraged system manufacturers to stick with the colour once it was in widespread use - buying off-the-shelf components and peripherals has to be cheaper than having them custom made just for a different colour. This probably made the Beige colour usage somewhat self-perpetuating. The parts were beige because the computers were, and the new computers were beige because the parts were, and the factories were already set up to produce the plastics in beige."
further reading: Beige box, priven's evil color, apple II, putty, desert sand
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18. One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is usually less satisfying.



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'65 IH scout


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THE GENIUS OF DESIGN


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Models of the Wright Brothers' Aircraft (1900-1903)

Wright Airplane Replicas

models and model kits


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the frankfurt kitchen


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The response by both BP and the federal government to the blowout made a bad situation exponentially worse. Inexplicably, despite causing the largest environmental disaster in the history of our nation, the government decided to let BP dictate how to deal with the situation. Every responsible federal agency including the Coast Guard, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of the Interior (DOI), and National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) was placed at BP's disposal and instructed to cooperate. On the few occasions where an agency director moved to rein BP in, such as Lisa Jackson's attempt to halt the use of the highly toxic Nalco Corexit dispersant, the Obama administration moved decisively to support BP without regard for the health and welfare of the American public or the environmental consequences. The Coast Guard, using C130s, deployed an unprecedented amount of Corexit over the Gulf, at least 1.8 million gallons. BP also deployed Corexit deep underwater at the Source, which had never been done before with entirely unknown impacts. Not a single NATO ally nation allows the use of dispersants (much less Corexit) in response to an oil spill except as a last resort and then exceptions are granted only after formal consideration.

The dispersant moved the oil below the surface and out of sight into the water column below, thereby presenting a more acceptable image for media consumption. Basically an industrial solvent, when combined with the crude oil creates a more potent toxic brew with greater potential for damage to biological organisms. Once the oil has been "dispersed," more accurately described as sunk in smaller balls, it became virtually impossible to collect by traditional cleanup methods such as skimming. The highly toxic Corexit 9527, which has approximately 60% 2-butoxyethanol by volume and is know to bioaccumulate and cause genetic damage, was admitted to being used initially. Authorities claimed those supplies were exhausted by mid-May. On the contrary, containers of 9527 were discovered as late as mid-August. BP and the government also claimed that all dispersant use was terminated in mid-July, aside from a very small amount. This too was not true. Corexit was being deployed on Dauphin Island as late as mid-September, and reports by locals continued though early October. Independent tests along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida continued in August and September to show markers for Corexit in both air and soil samples at dangerously high levels, including inland waterways, estuaries, and lagoons.

The actual loss of marine life due to the blowout will never be known due to a total lack of transparency on the part of BP, its subcontractors, and the government agencies involved. When the oil began moving in toward the coast and shortly after the first pictures of a dead sperm whale made international news, the FAA closed off the airspace over the Gulf to prevent media from acquiring images from planes. Also, marine traffic was severely restricted by the Coast Guard, and no non-essential personnel were allowed on the water near any cleanup operations. No cell phones, cameras or electronic devices were permitted on board any BP contracted boats in the Gulf during that time. Finally, new regulations were put in place that made it a class 3 felony punishable by a $40,000 fine and imprisonment to get closer than 60 feet of any cleanup operation. Cleanup workers were ordered not to talk to anyone about any aspect of the spill or face immediate termination. Surveillance cameras were placed along the beaches to monitor worker contact with media and the public.

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flight of the concorde

via things
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thfishslapfishslap








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