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OMB wrote a new diary post: A new pledge for a Tea Bagging Nation
I had a couple of “discussions” with Libertarians and Tea Baggers today on f.b. It inspired me to re-write the pledge of allegiance. I think my version is a bit more realistic and up-to-date. Waddya think? “I pledge allegiance to The Firm of the United Corporations of America. And to The Limited Liability Entity [...]
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OMB wrote a new diary post: TransCanada XL pipeline…. again…. still
Ok, I’m back to this topic, mostly because it’s starting to heat up again here in the Great Plains. The Nebraska legislature is about to go into special session to “discuss” siting issues regarding the TransCanada XL tar sands pipeline. Our “governor” (and I use this term VERY loosely!) finally pulled his head out of his [...] -
OMB and
Kelly Canfield are now friends
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OMB commented on the diary post From a scientist’s perspective…. by OMB.
“… if you’re wrong about your hunch and you make an important decision based upon it, you may produce disastrous results.”
Yeah, like if you have a “hunch” that Sadam has WMDs and is in cahoots with al Qaeda, you cause a disaster by acting on it, untested!
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OMB commented on the diary post From a scientist’s perspective…. by OMB.
It’s not my field, but it may be much more prevalent in medical journals than in other branches of science. A much higher fraction of medical research is funded privately (i.e. from pharmaceutical or other companies) than other disciplines.
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OMB commented on the diary post From a scientist’s perspective…. by OMB.
Love the quote! I gotta remember that one.
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OMB commented on the diary post From a scientist’s perspective…. by OMB.
Amen to that!
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OMB commented on the diary post From a scientist’s perspective…. by OMB.
@Margaret: I didn’t mean to demean clinical research. It isn’t the kind of work that I do, so I necessarily had to use a big broad brush, but I wanted to make the point that perhaps “mailing in toe nail clippings” was an innovative, effective, and cost-saving research method, and may have been peripheral to the [...]
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OMB commented on the diary post A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills…. by OMB.
You’re right, we can agree that rerouting the pipeline would be a good thing. A chemist eh? Well, that’s almost a physicist 8-) I figured that you had a science background. You sound like an intelligent and thoughtful person, and I respect that. At first I was a little put off by the statement: “I [...]
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OMB commented on the diary post From a scientists perspective…. by OMB.
SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS ME!!!!! Yeeeeaaahhh! Thanks for the rec.
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OMB commented on the diary post A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills…. by OMB.
Actually wubbelsg, I am an active researcher in the SandHills and have been for the last 10 years. My background is in physics, but for the last 20 or so years I’ve been doing ecosystem science, mostly atmospheric trace gas fluxes (includes CH4, CO2, and H2O among others). I’m pretty familiar with the literature about [...]
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OMB wrote a new diary post: From a scientist’s perspective….
Ok, there are a couple of things that crop up in the “main-stream” media that have just rubbed me the wrong way for quite a while, so I’m gonna take this opportunity to sound off a bit…. from a working scientists perspective. First thing is all of the news stories that we hear about this [...] -
OMB commented on the diary post A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills…. by OMB.
Just for reference, the High Plains aquifer (at least bits of it) underlie SD, NE, WY, KS, CO, NM, OK, and TX. However in most of those states, it’s only a little bit. Nebraska and Kansas overlie the lions share. Poor Texas (besides having Bushes and Perrys) has overdrawn their part of aquifer badly, and [...]
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OMB commented on the diary post A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills…. by OMB.
No arguments there…. the main products that would make it to the water table are hexane, heptane, benzene, toluene (and many more)…. most all are known carcinogens.
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OMB commented on the diary post A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills…. by OMB.
Nope, the Black Blizzard of Apr. 14, 1935 (that fortuitously blew through an open capitol building window, as Harold Hammond testified before a congressional committee in support of new federal soil conservation measures) was dust mostly from Oklahoma and Kansas. Oddly enough, the SandHills weathered the droughts of the 1930s and 1950s relatively intact. This [...]
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OMB commented on the diary post A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills…. by OMB.
Tanks a bunch!
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OMB commented on the diary post A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills…. by OMB.
While a lot of people do get their drinking water from the Ogallala, probably its greatest value in as a provider of irrigation water. 30% of all the irrigation water used in the U.S. comes from the Ogallala.
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OMB commented on the diary post A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills…. by OMB.
The cranes wouldn’t be affected all that much. They are here very temporarily, usually between March and May. They almost exclusively cluster in a 60 or 70 mile East-West corridor between about Grand Island and Lexington, and only a few miles North or South of the Platte River. That’s pretty far from the proposed XL [...]
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OMB commented on the diary post Water Cooler – Gov. Rick Perry Tries to Walk Away From His Own Book by Bill Egnor.
What a bad slope the Texicans are on when you consider that their string of Gov’s reads like Ann Richards, Shrub Bush, and now Gov. GoodHair. (We miss you and need you more than ever Molly!) From Good to Bad to down right Butt Ugly! No wonder it’s the “Lone Star State” The other 49 [...]
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OMB wrote a new diary post: Kind of off topic a little, but still relevant to the Keystone XL pipeline….
Well, I’m going to pay off an old debt (to Kelly) and type a little bit about carbon dioxide and climate change. He’s been after me to do this for a while, and maybe if I do, he’ll bake me another “big ass apple pie”! First off, I refuse to use the term “Global Warming”! [...]
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