Facebook's Lame Attempt To Force Its Email Service On You [Forbes]

Geckos have evolved sticky feet many times [Discover]

The 2010 Kalamazoo river oil spill two years later [Detroit Metro-Times]

U of Texas student team successfully hijacks a US gov drone in mid-air [Popular Science]
U of T Team exploited un-encrypted GPS signal, $1000 worth of gear to capture drone

Yesterday was Hagfish Day?

Who knew?

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Hear ye! Hear ye!

Obama administration wants to cut funding for lamprey control programs for Great Lakes (Detroit Free Press)
The feds caused this problem in the first damn place. Now they wanna cut back on fixing it?

Hutaree Militia case from 2010 will not go to trial until 2012 at the earliest (Ann Arbor.com)
No trial = no justice. Those defendants have been rotting in prison for going on two years now. If the evidence the government has is so overwhelming why not go to trial right away? I understand there is usually some pretrial jostling around by both the state and the defense lawyers but two fucking years?

Only 17% say U.S. government has consent of the governed (Rasmussen)
 No surprise to me.

Keep both eyes open when you shoot (The High Road)
Takes some practice if you're not used to doing so but it works better IMHO.

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Black bear sighting confirmed near Dexter! (Ben Freed, annarbor.com/)
I think this is good news. I hope it is anyway.

Peregrine falcon couple hatches a family atop University of Michigan Hospitals

That is just so cool. Showing my age here but I remember as a kid that the pesticide DDT (which we were solemnly told was safe enough to sprinkle over your breakfast cereal) was in wide use. And as a result the larger birds esp. raptors had problems with their eggs not hatching and so forth. And now few decades later after DDT's use was banned comes this! Cool. Nature can repair itself quite nicely if we but let it.

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Ann Arbor based-Borders Group bankruptcy filing "inevitable" says U of M biz prof - AnnArbor.com
I guess Borders Books isn't "too big to fail".

Jackson Cit-Pat columnist busted for bringing Mexican sea turtle skull into the to U.S. - MLive (Jackson)
Brad Flory must think he's living in a free country or something. Heh.

Low Sperm Count: Why Male Fertility is Falling - Daily Beast
"Last month, the European Science Foundation issued an ominous report warning that at least one in five men age 18 to 25 is "subfertile." The group of scientists asserted that sperm counts and sperm quality have been dropping consistently in the developed world for the last 50 years. Men just aren’t producing little swimmers like they used to."

The "global elites" are disconnected from today's world - The Atlantic (via iSteve)
"For the super-elite, a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire high self-regard, and that self-regard—especially when compounded by their isolation among like-minded peers—can lead to obliviousness and indifference to the suffering of others." After all, as this oligarch pointedly observed " 'If a man is not an oligarch, something is not right with him,' ... 'Everyone had the same starting conditions, everyone could have done it.' ”
The best thing would be to have 'em all shot. And like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch quoted above noted,  it's not like these guys are unique or indispensable, eh?

The American Conservative a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan sure does feature a lot of not-so-conservative writers. This may or may not be a good thing. Tom Engelhardt of Tomdispatch and the Nation Institute for example. Of course Ron Unz, considered by many to be a RINO, is the new owner/publisher of the magazine, so there's that.

Don Was on iTunes and the death of liner notes - Detroit Metro Times
"I’m at a loss to explain Apple’s ambivalence about upholding the quality and value of the product that has fueled the success of their hardware. For those of us who grew up in Detroit, this kind of corporate cockiness should have a certain ring of familiarity: It’s an early symptom of  the same shortsightedness that brought down the Big Three automakers and sent the city into an economic tailspin." Maybe it's a sign that we're becoming (have become?) a "post-literate" society?

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I'm from the government and I'm here to help you: U.S. government bombs Guam with frozen mice loaded up with tylenol to kill snakes. What could go wrong?

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Coyotes have come back to Michigan. Even downtown Ann Arbor has reported sightings. You just can't keep a good predator down, eh? Or not for long anyhow.

Michigan's next governor: Rick Snyder (R) doesn't want to debate Virg Bernero (D), period. Snyder is up in the polls with six weeks to go and probably figures "who needs it?" Bernero rightly and quite predictably goes ape shit nuts about it too. Sheesh.


FBI probe is sought by pissed and offended Muslims in East Lansing who found a trashed and burned Koran on the doorstep of their mosque. Say it might be a "hate crime".

Mexican gunmen are now regularly shooting at Border Patrol agents from the Mexican side of the border. Another warning of the coming race war? Stay tuned.

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Asian Carp infesting the Great Lakes? Nope, problem solved! Obama has appointed a "Carp Czar" to handle it. Hope & Change, motherfuckers!

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42 Mich. oil spill workers arrested over immigration concerns - Detroit Free Press
And freshman Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer is making an issue of this too. We have plenty of people who'd do that work right here already. While I doubt that Schauer's complaints will have much of impact before the election I have to wonder if he'd be bitching about it this loud were it not an election year? Somehow I doubt it. Schauer and the rest of the Dems usually see illegals as "undocumented Democrats" who need government help rather than Michigan job stealers. Except in election years of course.

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UM professors say Asian Carp crisis overblown, no threat to the Great Lakes - Ann Arbor Observer

I hope they're right, but I have my doubts.

Michigan Tea Party candidacy filings under suspicion - Detroit Free Press

It's looking more and more like the MTP is actually a false-flag operation of some Democratic Party activists.

Museum displays the 'bling bling' weaponry captured from Mexican crime cartels - Daily Mail Online

Union Boycotts LA Times Over Teacher Evaluation Disclosure - Slashdot

From the comments: "Teacher's Unions are the biggest problem with the US educational system. They are more concerned with teachers' benefits than they are about students. Of course, that is their job, but they give campaign contributions and students don't, they've become a bit too good at it."

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University experts weigh in on Kalamazoo River oil spill - The Michigan Daily

To wit: Wadda mess.

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Genetically Modified Canola Spreads To Wild Plants - via Slashdot.org

"...[T]he ease in which genetically modified canola has 'escaped' into the wild should be noted by seed makers like Monsanto because this is proof that it will happen."

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Bio-Bug, UK's First Sewage-Powered Car, Takes to the Streets - Popular Science

Runs on human shit. A victory for the environment? Perhaps. Wouldn't a horse or bicycle be better?

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"Where does the federal government get off spending the average person's tax dollars to help better-off-than-average Americans buy expensive new cars?" - Salon (Charles Lane)
New electric powered "green cars" have a starting price around $40,000. And the Obama administration will kick in $7,500 (as a tax credit) to help.

The dogma of globalization - iSteve (Steve Sailer)
"A few years ago, Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley asked one of Bush's Treasury Secretaries (not Henry Paulson) how America would earn its way in the world after our productive sector collapsed. The answer was that we (the U.S.) would act as 'capital allocator to the world.' Of course, this insane dialog attracted zero attention at the time or subsequently. The only good news is that U.S. credibility as a 'capital allocator' is within rounding error of zero."

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Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright - Daily Caller

More disinformation from the Journo-list cabal. This kinda scheming is why people don't trust the mainstream media any longer.

Overfished ecosystem held together by a single species - Ars Technica

The Bearded Goby.

Laughing at the lumpen: The Real Housewives of New Jersey - Businessweek

"This show makes the Sopranos look like English royalty." Satire.

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Antidepressants In the Water Are Making Shrimp Suicidal - Slashdot.org

Sign of the times...

Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin urges Obama to appoint a [sic] "carp czar" to oversee federal efforts to prevent the pestilential Asian Big-Head carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) from entering the Great Lakes from Illinois waterways. I'm sure Dick has a candidate in mind for the czar position already too, no doubt some Chicago/Cook county Democratic organization political hack, as I'm sure even Durbin must know this fool's errand is a dead end in that carp DNA has already been found past the electric fence meant to hold them back in the Calumet river. But it's a nice paycheck for somebody for a few years of minimal work though.

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Hutaree militia members indicted on new weapons charges - Detroit News
I guess the US Attorney's office figured out the sedition charges they've previously levied were bullshit and unlikely to stick and that the minor players in all this were not gonna plead-out and flip on their comrades. So new weapons charges have now been levied against the main players. The feds now need not worry about them getting out on bail too.
Why the US doesn't produce really great soccer players like the rest of the world - iSteve (Steve Sailer)
"The current American system largely reflects the values of white, middle class American parents. It's not designed to win World Cups, it's designed to get their kids some exercise and let them experience some level of success in a game that African-Americans aren't interested in."
Portrait of an environmental criminal - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
This asshole is sociopathic in his depraved indifference to the environmental damage he's done and continues to do.

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Bee colony die-offs linked to mobile phones? - U.K. Telegraph (via Slashdot.org/)
The last of the typewriter repairmen - Wired
Dissing Steve Jobs' sense of ergonomics & aesthetics in Apple products - Bloggingheads.tv (video)
Pundits Bob Wright & Harry McCracken discuss.
FCC urged to monitor airwaves, internet for "hate speech" - Ars Technica
Google's Chrome browser gains share at the expense of IE & Firefox - CNet
Chrome is awesome for web surfing. Other stuff, like blogging, not so much. I use FF & Chrome on my PC and FF & Safari on my MacBook.
Homeowners blowing off mortgage payments to save up money - NY Times
Evictions and foreclosures take a while, you see. Heh.
Producing MBA's with ethics and compassion - Washington Post
Heh. Yeah, right.