Carefully Cleaning Up the Garbage at Los Alamos

No one knows for sure what is buried in the Manhattan Project-era dump here. At the very least, there is probably a truck down there that was contaminated in 1945 at the Trinity test site, where the world’s first nuclear explosion seared the sky and melted the desert sand 200 miles south of here during World War II. But now a team of workers is using $212 million in federal stimulus money to clean up the 65-year-old, six-acre dump, which was used by the scientists who built the world’s first atomic bomb. They are approaching the job like an archeological dig — only with even greater care, since some of the things they unearth are likely to be radioactive, while others may be explosive. The dump has become part of the $6 billion stimulus program to clean up the toxic legacy of the arms race, which is one of the biggest sources of direct federal contracts in the $787 billion stimulus act. They also noted that the money was only a down payment on what is still a staggering task: the Department of Energy is responsible for cleaning up 107 sites, with as much acreage as Delaware and Rhode Island combined, in work that could take decades and cost up to $260 billion to complete...read more

There are people who've been fined and spent time in jail because the feds have gone after them, and yet the feds are held harmless for not cleaning up their own environmental mess.

Bats beneficial to regional ranchers

The sun sinks behind the western horizon, an orange glow lingers behind the florescent lights of an oil station northwest of Carlsbad. The faint whirr of oil pumps and chirp of crickets are all that can be detected by the human ear — but on other frequencies, it is not so quiet. Sporting brown waders, a blue flannel shirt, and a headlamp, Dan Taylor, a biologist with Bat Conservation International, slips into a murky pond armed with long metal poles wrapped in netting, which he stretches across the water. Called a "mist net," it is the size of a volleyball net with mesh so fine it looks like smoke. Taylor is attempting to capture bats as they swoop down to the pond for a drink of water. A small yellow device with a red light is switched on. Called a bat detector, it picks up the sonic pulses used by bats for echolocation and translates them into clicking noises audible to the human ear. The Western Mastiff can have a wingspan of two feet, and eats larger insects such as beetles, he said. Mexican Free-tailed bats are common to the area and known for their large colony size. A colony of 1 million lives in the Carlsbad Caverns. Each Mexican Free-tailed bat can eat close to its own bodyweight in insects a night, Taylor said, many of which are considered pests to farmers. This means the Carlsbad Caverns colony alone could eat 32,250 pounds of insects a night. Bats are also responsible for pollinating many plants around the globe Taylor said. Many tropical fruits and the agave plant, which is used for tequila, are primarily pollinated by bats. Farmers and orchard growers, such as pecan growers, are turning to bats as a natural source of pest control with quite a bit of success, he said...read more

Back where virus started, new scrutiny of pig farming

Despite the buttoned-up methods of farmers such as Schott, many experts think pig farming presents a serious and overlooked risk to public health. Proof of that assertion -- indirect but indisputable, in the opinion of virologists -- is the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza. Little is known about the origin of the novel H1N1. But one thing is virtually certain: The bug now infecting the people of more than 190 countries began in a pig. Detecting such cross-species transfers quickly -- or, better yet, preventing them -- is an urgent priority in a field that has spent most of its energy in recent years worrying about the emergence of flu from birds in Asia. A major concern now is what might happen if the pandemic H1N1 virus spreads widely in pigs, and then out again into the human population. What worries virologists is the mixing of human and swine flu strains -- or, worse, human, swine and bird strains. That can lead to "reassortment," in which strands of genetic material are exchanged to yield a new virus, often with behavior not seen in its parents. Those features can include higher contagiousness, rapid growth, the ability to infect the lungs and, most important, an unfamiliar appearance to the immune system. Reassortment is rare, and it is even rarer when the product is a strain that can spread like wildfire. That is one reason influenza pandemics occur only a few times a century. (The last one was in 1968.)...read more

Legendary Indian Rodeo Cowboy Gunned Down In Grants

Fans across New Mexico are remembering a legendary Indian Rodeo Cowboy, who was one of two men gunned down in a double murder case outside of Grants. Detectives believe a fight over property lines started it. Rodeo star Sonny Jim and his friend, Wayne Johnson, both men in their 70s, died in that shooting. Deputies say they’ve arrested the gunman, but that’s little comfort to the fans of the legendary cowboy Sonny Jim. “He was up in age and he was still here steer wrestling and we're probably going to miss that part,” said fan John Boyd. Like other rodeo fans, John Boyd will miss Sonny Jim… a world champion cowboy in the 1980s from the Navajo nation. He was remembered Sunday at the International Indian Rodeo Finals in Farmington. Fellow athletes say Jim brought character and class to the sport for decades along with a toughness rarely seen...read more

Song Of The Day #164

This Monday am Ranch Radio will help you get your heart started by playing Sad Singin' And Slow Ridin' by Jean Shepard.

It's available on her 32 track CD Beautiful Lies: The Early Years

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Call of the wild

Julie Carter

There is something about the cool fall air that brings out the plaid jackets, crock pot recipes and the smell of cedar burning in a wood stove. It is also Mother Nature's call of the wild to the world of hunters.

The primal instinct to hunt and kill "a little winter meat" rises up like sap in a maple tree. It brings out in men the same stalk, kill and drag-it-home instinct as it did in the days of the cave men.

Die-hard hunters look offended if you should ask them, "You going hunting this year?" In their minds it is a national holiday and they really do believe that. Ask any crew boss with a few hunters in his employment.

Hunting season is marked on the calendar before anything else for the year. Vacation time is scheduled around the season's dates.

I've known men that actually would quit a job in order to be able to go hunting. And another who would injure himself just enough to qualify for some paid time off, which of course, he used to go hunting. Neanderthal instincts are alive and well.

I know. There was a time when hunting kept food on the table, whether the table was a rock in a cave or a crudely built slab table in a log cabin. Don't dare mention that the cost of the sport far outweighs any justification said hunter can ever give for the possibility of the meat he is promising for the freezer.

The sport remains a huge business in many states and is very big business in the mountain counties of New Mexico. I've never been able to put a solid dollar value on the business statewide or what it pours into the economy in Lincoln County alone, but it's huge.

Between the hunters who come on their own and the guides and outfitters who import a good number from faraway points on the map, hunting brings income to the coffers of the businesses in town. Just try elbowing your way through the camouflaged shoppers at Walmart prior to or during a hunt.

Signs announcing the sale of licenses, food and beer flash up and down the streets and often free meals are offered to the hunters by grateful merchants. One fella said he spent $200 in gas driving from burg to burg to take part in the meals. He wasn't a hunter, just an eater.

The motels and restaurants are a sea of camouflage with parking lots filled with pickups and trailers loaded to the brim with coolers, 4-wheelers and camping paraphernalia.

As one local commented when he went into the grocery store to get a loaf of bread, only to find an endless checkout line, "I decided it was faster to go home and make biscuits."

I grew up in a family of hunters. We lived in the mountains, so the hunters hunted early in the mornings, did a day's work, squeezed in some hunting before sundown, and slept in their own beds each night. Camping was for the out-of-staters.

For us, hunting was a generational skill passed on from the days of truly needing winter meat.

My grandmother would laugh at the hunters when they arrived home empty-handed and telling tales of the big tracks they saw, but never spotted an game animal. "Well. I guess we'll just cook up some track soup," she would say.

One of the best things that has evolved over the years in this hunting deal is that now, the women can and do say "you killed it, you clean it." No Wilma Flintstone dresses hanging around this outfit. But I do have some of her jewelry!

Song Of The Day #163

Today's Gospel tune is for me and a feller named Tick, and possibly for a few of you listeners. The song is Sinner by Wayne Scott and it's available on his 13 track CD This Weary Way.

Who's in Big Brother's Database?

On a remote edge of Utah's dry and arid high desert, where temperatures often zoom past 100 degrees, hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build what may become America's equivalent of Jorge Luis Borges's "Library of Babel," a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world's knowledge is stored, but not a single word is understood. At a million square feet, the mammoth $2 billion structure will be one-third larger than the US Capitol and will use the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined. Unlike Borges's "labyrinth of letters," this library expects few visitors. It's being built by the ultra-secret National Security Agency – which is primarily responsible for "signals intelligence," the collection and analysis of various forms of communication – to house trillions of phone calls, e-mail messages, and data trails: Web searches, parking receipts, bookstore visits, and other digital "pocket litter." Lacking adequate space and power at its city-sized Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters, the NSA is also completing work on another data archive, this one in San Antonio, Texas, which will be nearly the size of the Alamodome. Just how much information will be stored in these windowless cybertemples? A clue comes from a recent report prepared by the MITRE Corporation, a Pentagon think tank. "As the sensors associated with the various surveillance missions improve," says the report, referring to a variety of technical collection methods, "the data volumes are increasing with a projection that sensor data volume could potentially increase to the level of Yottabytes (10^24 Bytes) by 2015." Roughly equal to about a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text, numbers beyond Yottabytes haven't yet been named. Once vacuumed up and stored in these near-infinite "libraries," the data are then analyzed by powerful infoweapons, supercomputers running complex algorithmic programs, to determine who among us may be – or may one day become – a terrorist. In the NSA's world of automated surveillance on steroids, every bit has a history and every keystroke tells a story...read more

Judge rules FBI can continue to gag recipient of National Security Letter

A federal judge ruled late Tuesday that the government can continue to gag an internet servicer provider who received a National Security Letter from the FBI -- five years ago. Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can use such letters to demand personal records about customers from internet providers, financial institutions and credit card companies without a warrant, and then keep the companies from disclosing even that they'd received such a letter. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the ISP. The government maintains that revealing information about the letter could compromise ongoing investigations, even though the letter itself was sent five years ago and has been the subject of press accounts. The court also ruled that the FBI can continue to suppress an "attachment" to the NSL Doe received, the ACLU said. The ACLU "argued that the attachment, if disclosed, would show that the FBI tried to obtain records that it was not entitled to obtain under the NSL statute."...read more

FBI, ATF squabble over explosives investigations

Despite growing cooperation between U.S. law enforcement agencies since the September 11 attacks, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are still fighting over crimes involving explosives, said a new report released on Friday. The Justice Department's inspector general found that the ATF and the Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly fight over which agency will lead an investigation, have failed to meld information databases or coordinate training efforts. A 2004 memorandum by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was meant to clarify who was in charge for such cases, giving the ATF primary authority except in cases involving terrorism and those within the FBI's traditional jurisdiction. But that has caused confusion, giving each agency the ability to assert jurisdiction in almost every case, the report said, adding that a follow-up memorandum in 2008 also failed to sufficiently clarify the FBI and ATF roles. "Disputes between ATF and FBI personnel have affected working relationships and in some locations have resulted in their racing to crime scenes to determine which agency leads an investigation," the report said. It cited incidents as recent as last year when the FBI and ATF fought over who would investigate a suspect believed to have bombed the military recruiting station in Times Square in New York one early morning in March 2008. And in late 2007 the ATF said it was not notified about a pipe bomb found in a truck at a nuclear facility until hours after the FBI had already begun investigating, according to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine...read more

Bureacratic turf and appropriations are at stake, so to hell with public safety.

Hitachi Develops RFID Powder

RFID keeps getting smaller. On February 13, Hitachi unveiled a tiny, new “powder” type RFID chip measuring 0.05 x 0.05 mm — the smallest yet — which they aim to begin marketing in 2 to 3 years. By relying on semiconductor miniaturization technology and using electron beams to write data on the chip substrates, Hitachi was able to create RFID chips 64 times smaller than their currently available 0.4 x 0.4 mm mu-chips. Like mu-chips, which have been used as an anti-counterfeit measure in admission tickets, the new chips have a 128-bit ROM for storing a unique 38-digit ID number. The new chips are also 9 times smaller than the prototype chips Hitachi unveiled last year, which measure 0.15 x 0.15 mm. At 5 microns thick, the RFID chips can more easily be embedded in sheets of paper, meaning they can be used in paper currency, gift certificates and identification. But since existing tags are already small enough to embed in paper, it leads one to wonder what new applications the developers have in mind. Andrew Cheetham

Army Review Finds That Use of Troops in Alabama Town Broke the Law

An Army investigation found that soldiers should not have been sent to man traffic stops in a small Alabama town after 11 people were killed in March during a shooting spree. An Army report released to The Associated Press on Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request said the decision to dispatch military police to Samson from nearby Fort Rucker broke the law. But an Army spokesman said no charges have been filed following the Aug. 10 report. "As a result of the findings of the report, the Army took administrative action against at least one person," Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said. The action was less than a transfer or discharge but Garver would not elaborate. The report from the Department of Army Inspector General found the use of military personnel in Samson violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal troops from performing law enforcement actions...read more

Pentagon Researchers Unveil Blob-Like Robot

The Pentagon has unveiled a new "chemical robot" that's half liquid, half solid…and all weird. The new robot — which scientist are calling a ChemBot — moves by inflating and deflating parts of its body via a process called jamming. This causes its skin to change between semi-liquid and semi-solid states. Researchers say it could one day help save lives on the battle field. Foxnews.com spoke with Ward Carroll, the editor of military.com, about the chembot. "Jamming is simply introducing air into a membrane that's filled with particulate matter— BBs, if you will," he explained. "The plan is that this robot would go where other robots can't go, because it can change from a solid to a liquid-like state." By doing this, scientists are able to make the ChemBot get bigger or smaller, roll it around, and with more precise control, even manipulate it to pass through cracks in walls and reform on the other side...read more

Like other military equipment, soon to be used by federal law enforcement and your local police.

A Few Good Kids?

John Travers was striding purposefully into the Westfield mall in Wheaton, Maryland, for some back-to-school shopping before starting his junior year at Bowling Green State University. When I asked him whether he'd ever talked to a military recruiter, Travers, a 19-year-old African American with a buzz cut, a crisp white T-shirt, and a diamond stud in his left ear, smiled wryly. "To get to lunch in my high school, you had to pass recruiters," he said. "It was overwhelming." Then he added, "I thought the recruiters had too much information about me. They called me, but I never gave them my phone number." Nor did he give the recruiters his email address, Social Security number, or details about his ethnicity, shopping habits, or college plans. Yet they probably knew all that, too. In the past few years, the military has mounted a virtual invasion into the lives of young Americans. Using data mining, stealth websites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students' GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect like Travers, the soldier may know more about the kid's habits than do his own parents. Recruiters hit pay dirt in 2002, when then-Rep. (now Sen.) David Vitter (R-La.) slipped a provision into the No Child Left Behind Act that requires high schools to give recruiters the names and contact details of all juniors and seniors. Schools that fail to comply risk losing their NCLB funding. This little-known regulation effectively transformed President George W. Bush's signature education bill into the most aggressive military recruitment tool since the draft. Students may sign an opt-out form—but not all school districts let them know about it. Yet NCLB is just the tip of the data iceberg. In 2005, privacy advocates discovered that the Pentagon had spent the past two years quietly amassing records from Selective Service, state DMVs, and data brokers to create a database of tens of millions of young adults and teens, some as young as 15. The massive data-mining project is overseen by the Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies program, whose website has described the database, which now holds 34 million names, as "arguably the largest repository of 16-25-year-old youth data in the country."...read more

TSA Blog Responds to "TSA Agents Took My Son"

My original post is here and the TSA resonse is here.

It would appear from the video provided they never took the child away from the woman.

Their blog states:

After watching the video footage, you'll see the video clearly shows that this individual was never separated from her baby by TSA. You'll also see that a lot of the other claims are also unfounded.

I'm always happy to clear up any errors of mine, or of the sites I link to.

Justice Department Tells Prosecutors to Lay Off Medical Marijuana Users and Their Drugs

Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department. Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law. The guidelines issued by the department do, however, make it clear that federal agents will go after people whose marijuana distribution goes beyond what is permitted under state law or use medical marijuana as a cover for other crimes...read more

Woman, 70, kills intruder at motel

The 70-year-old woman who shot a would-be robber at a North Side motel last night is attending the All-American Quarter Horse Congress today and feels sick about the shooting, according to her son. Columbus police say the shooting occurred about 9:15 p.m. at the Continent Inn, 6225 Zumstein Dr., located at The Continent shopping center, off Rt. 161 near I-71. Sgt. Eric Pilya of the homicide squad said the woman was in a motel room with four or five others and they'd cracked open the door to get fresh air. Pilya said a man barged into the room, demanding money from those inside. Police said the woman, from southern Ohio, grabbed a gun that she had in the room and shot Wayne Winston, 25, of Columbus, who staggered into the parking lot of the motel and died. No charges had been filed. Pilya said it's likely that the case will be presented to a Franklin County grand jury to see whether the woman should be charged...read more

Gun-toting elderly woman scares off two home invaders

Bonnie woke up late Wednesday night when she heard a noise in her utility room. Two people had broken in the back door. But they were the ones spooked by Bonnie's quick thinking. "I live by myself, so I screamed my son's name: 'Charles, get the gun!'" Bonnie recalled. Charles wasn't there. But her gun, a loaded .38 revolver, was. She ran back to the bedroom to get it and call 911. The whole time, advice from her late husband was running through her mind. "My husband told me to pull the trigger and keep shooting," she said. "And if they'd have come toward me..." But they didn't. The screams, threats, and Bonnie's strong will drove them back out the door...read more

78 year old homeowner's one shot lands would-be burglar in ER

It took one shot for an East Texas senior to put an end to a would-be robber's crime spree. The story began around 2am Monday morning at Southside Bank in Hawkins. The branch is located inside Brookshire's, right off Highway 14. That is where police say 19-year-old David McWhorter was spotted, first. We spoke to the homeowner whose one shot landed the alleged burglar in the ER. "Just...put the gun up to the window, and he was standing there and I pulled the trigger," said the 78-year-old homeowner. One shot through the window was all it took. Our homeowner didn't mind an on camera interview, but asked his name not be released. He suffers from a hip injury and was sitting in his chair when the suspect broke into his screened porch. He says it is not the first time he has been broken into. Every window is now nailed shut and a baggie full of ammo for his 4-10 single-shot shotgun is always nearby. "Everything I worked hard for all my life...no one's just going to come in here and take it if I can help it," said the homeowner...read more

Be a Good Victim

In August, a man shot two people to death on a bridge near San Francisco. At the moment of the killings, two on-duty Marin County sheriff’s deputies were within 100 yards of the shooter. One was close enough to see the muzzle blast of the shotgun. The police officers, however, did not move against the culprit. One, stuck in traffic, called in a description of the killer’s vehicle as he fled. The other positioned her car to prevent traffic from entering the crime scene. These two law-enforcement officers did what police officers tell the public to do: Don’t intervene. Get a description of the offender. Call the police. Be a good witness. Much debate ensued about whether the officers’ behavior was appropriate, but the real tragedy is that the victims of this rampage did not have the legal opportunity to arm themselves. To them, the message was clear: Be a good victim. In Marin County, the jurisdiction where those two officers work, Sheriff Robert Doyle requires residents to demonstrate “extreme need” before they can get concealed-handgun permits. Among the few who have met this burden are private investigators, jewelry dealers, and a former district attorney. Ten states still use a system that subjects lawful self-defense to the whim of a functionary such as Sheriff Doyle, a practice known as a “may issue” policy...read more