Category Archives: Environment

Helping the People of Oklahoma, While Not Forgetting the Kind of Leaders They Elected

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Oklahoma isn’t a place. It’s something in your blood. It’s something that you do. It’s the shirt off your back and a tear in your eye and the giddyup in your soul.
Nicole Hill

Moore_Oklahoma_Tornado_DamageThe comments regarding yesterday’s deadly tornado in Oklahoma seem to range from unconditional pleas for help on the one hand, to “political cheap shots” against the people who elected Senators Tom Coburn and James Inhofe on the other. The need for help, and the obligation for us to provide whatever help we can, however much or little, both individually and as a society, should be without question. We are all Americans, we are all humans, and we are all in this together. I disagree, however, with those who say that now is not the time for politics. We are capable enough of multitasking that we can give aid while remembering what the elected leaders of Oklahoma have said in the past. (Coburn and Inhofe stand out right now because they have been so outspoken in the past about these types of issues. I know less about, say, Governor Mary Fallin or the local authorities in Moore, who appear to be doing a stellar job.)

First off, here’s what any of us can do to help. Senator Coburn actually has a good list of aid resources on his Senate website, including the Red Cross, Food Bank, and United Way. The Red Cross operates a service called “Safe and Well” that allows people in the affected areas to report that they are okay, and lets others check on their status. Red Cross Oklahoma tweeted information on how to contribute yesterday:

The tornado left many animals stranded and lost, and the Central Oklahoma Humane Society has information on how to help, both with financial and in-kind donations.

Donate money, blood, supplies, time, or whatever you can. Just do something.

Once we have helped, I believe it is important to note that the senators from Oklahoma might not offer the rest of us help in similar circumstances. They both opposed federal aid to the region affected by Hurricane Sandy, and have generally sought to reduce funding for disaster relief. I have to give Senator Coburn credit for sticking to his principles, as he has stated that he will oppose disaster relief for his own state without corresponding spending cuts. Still, I have to wonder what Ralph Waldo Emerson might have said about Coburn’s style of consistency.

As for Senator Inhofe, the notorious climate change denier seems to be playing dumb. He has his reasons for wanting disaster relief aid for his state, and whether it is genuine concern for his constituents or rank political self-preservation doesn’t even interest me right now. He has to fold himself into pretzels, though, to account for his change of tune.

If we don’t talk about this now, then when? When the incident is receding from the memories of all but those directly affected? No. If Senators Coburn and Inhofe are the kind of people who will stand on principle by refusing to support disaster relief for the rest of the country but humbly request it for their own constituents, they deserve to be called out on it every second of every day, and they should be reminded constantly that they owe thanks to the taxpayers from the other 49 states. Oklahoma is one of those red states, by the way, that receive more federal money than they pay in taxes, around $1.01-$1.50 for every dollar paid.

The voters of Oklahoma that put these clowns in office should be reminded that the people they elected would deny to other states the aid they are receiving, until they either vote Coburn and Inhofe out of office or admit that the majority of the state’s voters does not have the nation’s back. My heart goes out to the people of Oklahoma who have suffered and lost, and my money is going to the Red Cross or whomever is making a difference up there, but I will not neglect to point out the shame that is the Oklahoma Congressional delegation. This is not mockery. Call it judgment if you must. I won’t poke fun at people in Oklahoma, but I do expect them to live with the leaders they have chosen, just as we Texans may have to atone for Senators Cornyn and Cruz.

(NOTE: The inspiration/impetus for this post came from Julie Gillis, whom I love and admire, and with whom I hope I can amicably disagree now and then.)

Photo credit: By National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Weather Service staff. (PHOTOS OF DESTRUCTION) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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“The Wild West approach to protecting public health and safety”

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It is unsurprising, while still disappointing, that Texas lawmakers, along with many citizens, seem to have learned nothing at all from the disaster in West, Texas a few weeks ago. Many have used it as an opportunity to rail against government regulation.

Even in West, last month’s devastating blast did little to shake local skepticism of government regulations. Tommy Muska, the mayor, echoed Governor Perry in the view that tougher zoning or fire safety rules would not have saved his town. “Monday morning quarterbacking,” he said.

Raymond J. Snokhous, a retired lawyer in West who lost two cousins — brothers who were volunteer firefighters — in the explosion, said, “There has been nobody saying anything about more regulations.”

Texas has always prided itself on its free-market posture. It is the only state that does not require companies to contribute to workers’ compensation coverage. It boasts the largest city in the country, Houston, with no zoning laws. It does not have a state fire code, and it prohibits smaller counties from having such codes. Some Texas counties even cite the lack of local fire codes as a reason for companies to move there.

***

As federal investigators sift through the rubble at the West Fertilizer Company plant seeking clues about the April 17 blast that killed at least 14 people and injured roughly 200 others, some here argue that Texas’ culture itself contributed to the calamity.

I actually am sympathetic to the argument that additional regulations would not have prevented the explosion, but not in a way that reflects favorably on Governor Perry or anyone else who sides with him. The problem is not a lack of regulations. The problem is that our “business-friendly” culture in Texas has no intention of enforcing the regulations we already have. Spare us the bullshit about not needing more regulations until you have at least tried to do your damn job.

The New York Times quoted my torts professor from UT Law, Thomas McGarity, who sums it up far better than I ever could:

The Wild West approach to protecting public health and safety is what you get when you give companies too much economic freedom and not enough responsibility and accountability.

The greatest irony of West, perhaps, is that the fertilizer involved in the explosion is regulated by the Department of Homeland Security, because it is explosive. If someone had stolen fertilizer from the plant and blown it up somewhere else, these anti-regulation types might be singing a very different tune. Why is an explosion allegedly caused by greed and incompetence that much different from one allegedly caused by terroristic intent?

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Big, Mysterious Things in the Desert II

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The Garabogazköl Basin is a large body of water in Turkmenistan that connects to the Caspian Sea via a small strait. It is very shallow and, according to Wikipedia, ridiculously salty, with a salinity level of 35%, compared to 1.2% in the Caspian Sea and 3.5% in the overall ocean. This makes it the second-saltiest body of water in the world outside of Antarctica (saltier than the Dead Sea). While Turkmenistan harvests salt from the area (obviously), it sounds like a place that is not terribly interesting.

Except for what I will call the Rectangle. On Google Maps, what would otherwise be an unassuming, albeit huge, lagoon, with a total area of about 6,900 square miles, has a large rectangular area that is either much more shallow than the rest of the lagoon, is somehow obscured, or is just not photographed as well.

Screen Shot 2013-03-07 at 10.56.50 AM

Via Google Maps

There is a very large, probably 40 mile by 50 mile, rectangular area in the lagoon, with an odd shadow in the top right corner. This time, my attempts to Google my way to an answer only yielded confirmation that this is, in fact, a mysteriously obscured or incomplete area. In all likelihood, the area looks different because there is no point in going to a lot of trouble to take satellite photos of the middle of a lagoon filled with water that is too salty even for sore throat sufferers.

Still, maybe something unusual is going on. Google Maps has been known to obscure areas for security purposes.

For my part, I still hold out hope it is a breeding and training area for a new race to inhabit the oceans, sort of like Sea-Monkeys but more science-fiction-y.

Monkey_Sea__Monkey_Do_by_AbandonedUntilDeath

No, not *that* kind of sea monkey! (via jaxgraphix.deviantart.com)

Photo credit: “Monkey Sea, Monkey Do” by *JaxGraphix [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0], via deviantart.com.

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Big, Mysterious Things in the Desert

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588px-Lop_Nur,_Xinjiang,_China

An ironman triathlon swim would not make it halfway across the *width* of this thing.

About a year ago, Gizmodo had an article entitled “Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?” I only noticed the article a few weeks ago, but it piqued my curiosity and provided a much-needed distraction from inarguably-more-important work. In addition to a variety of giant complexes of lines on the ground in the desert of western China (sort of like non-artistic Nazca lines, but not really), there is what appears to be a giant pool next to a complex of industrial buildings. By giant, I really do mean ginormous. This thing is probably 8 miles long by 5 miles wide.

The imaginative possibilities are nearly endless. The thing is located in the Lop Nur basin, a dried-up salt lake and nuclear test site in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of western China. It doesn’t seem to be near much of anything, except for one road. Several straight lines, which appear to be canals, extend north out of the pools for miles. In the industrial complex, which is probably huge but seems tiny compared to the gigantic pools, are two large cooling towers, often seen in nuclear power plants.


View Larger Map
What could it be? I admit, I was kind of hoping for an underwater ghost city.

Somewhat disappointingly, the actual answer was not that hard to find. Even more disappointing was that I partly found it on Wikipedia.

Well, I found the publicly available answer, anyway. If the history of government subterfuge has taught us anything, it’s that the truth usually isn’t any more interesting than the cover story. I can’t say that this is a “cover story,” but let’s cling to what little intrigue we can.

I’ll spare you any further dramatic tension: it’s a fertilizer plant. Yes, this giant complex of pools in the middle of a vast desert is there to exploit sylvite resources in the area to extract potassium chloride to make potash fertilizers. I had hoped that it was a training ground for human-fish hybrids, in preparation for colonization of the Pacific floor, but really, a fertilizer plant covering around forty square miles of desert is pretty impressive, too. NASA describes the site as follows:

Located in China’s resource-rich but moisture-poor Xinjiang autonomous region, Lop Nur is an uninviting location for any kind of agriculture. It sits at the eastern end of the Taklimakan Desert, where marching sand dunes can reach heights of 200 meters (650 feet), and dust storms rage across the landscape.

Yet for all it lacks in agricultural appeal, Lop Nur offers something valuable to farmers the world over: potash. This potassium salt provides a major nutrient required for plant growth, making it a key ingredient in fertilizer.

The discovery of potash at Lop Nur in the mid-1990s turned the area into a large-scale mining operation. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image of Lop Nur on May 17, 2011. The rectangular shapes in this image show the bright colors characteristic of solar evaporation ponds. Around the evaporation ponds are the earth tones typical of sandy desert.

386px-Kaliumchlorid-Feld_in_der_Wüste_Lop_NorAn earlier picture of the site appears on the German-language Wikipedia page, with this somewhat-broken-English description:

The world’s largest potash fertilizer production base in the size 10 to 21 km is built in the former Lake Lop Nur, Xinjiang, China. The first phase of the project which has an annual capacity of 1.2 million tons was put into operation on Dec.18, 2008. The second phase with an annual capacity of 1.7 million tons has been launched 2009 and will be operational in 2014. The 3 million program will make Lop Nor the largest potash fertilizer production base in the world. The Project of Development and Utilization of Sylvite Resources in Lop Nur region employs the technique of producing potassium sulphate through magnesium sulfate subtype brine, which filled a technological gas of this kind and made China among the fewer countries that could produce potassium sulphate from brine directly taken from salt lake. The satellite picture is taken 2009-10-12.

800px-Lop_Nur_and_the_potash_fertilizer_production_plant_2009

I guess it’s hard to keep big things secret anymore, although I’m still not sure if this was ever meant to be secret. I found another picture of what appears to be a separate site in the area, described as a “salt field”:

Salt_field_in_the_Lop_Nur_Desert

China, Xinjiang, desert Lop Nur. Satellite picture of the Lop Desert with the Basin of the formerly sea Lop Nur. You see the Salt field by the Lop Nur Sylvite Science and Technology Development Co. Ltd.

Based on some archived articles, China began the process of extracting sylvite from the region in 2001, expecting to find reserves of up to 250 million tons. The country made a “major breakthrough” in techniques to extract at use the mineral in 2004, and it began setting up the facility around the same time. The first phase of the facility became operational on December 18, 2008, with a capacity of producing 1.2 million tons of fertilizer per year. The second phase, which will produce 1.7 million tons annually, is supposed to go online this year.

On the other hand, it could be a prototype for China’s first ringworld, to test out ocean structures…

Photo credits: “Lop Nur, Xinjiang, China” by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon (NASA Earth Observatory) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; “Kaliumchlorid-Feld in der Wüste Lop Nor” by NASA. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; “Lop Nur and the potash fertilizer production plant 2009” by NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; “Salt field in the Lop Nur Desert” by NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Barack Obama Thinks He Can Win Your Vote by Exhibiting Leadership During a Time of Crisis, but He Did Not Count on the Awesome Power of Michael Brown

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800px-Brownies_stacked_on_a_plate

Mmmmmmm, brownies…. What were we talking about?

You might call President Obama’s handling of Hurricane Sandy many things, but don’t be fooled: he is only demonstrating superb leadership because he wants your votes. How do I know this? Well, the paragon of crisis management, Bush-era FEMA head Michael “heckuva job, Brownie” Brown, says so. Specifically, he said that Obama’s warnings about the storm were “premature”:

Brown, now a talk radio host in Colorado, said Obama was likely trying to get ahead of the storm politically.

“[He] doesn’t want anybody to accuse him of not being on top of it or not paying attention or playing politics in the middle of it,” Brown said. “He probably figured Sunday was a good day to do a press conference.”

As we now know, the storm was pretty bad, in the sense of being the largest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history. Some people known to be partisan hacks had nothing but praise for how the president handled it. By “partisan hack,” I am referring to the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, who explicitly refused to say anything mean about the president on Fox News. This is, of course, the news network that amended its bylaws in 2009 to require all on-screen presenters to say at least one bad thing about the president every 47 seconds. [Ed. note: that last sentence is not actually true, but dammit, it feels true to me.] Continue reading →

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This Week in WTF, October 26, 2012

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Beemobile

To the Beemobile!

– Bees in northeastern France have been producing honey in odd shades of blue and green lately. This stumped the beeologists at first (auto-correct really wanted to change that made-up word to “biologists,” but I showed it who’s boss!!!)

On the hunt for answers (which is what scientists do, and it’s awesome), they discovered a biogas plant about two-and-a-half miles upstream that processes waste from a plant operated by the candy company Mars about 62 miles away. Among the products made at the Mars plant are M&Ms, including the blue and green varieties. Coincidence? Mars isn’t commenting, so I’m going to speculate that it is not coincidence, but rather conspiracy!!! Of course, I can’t back that up with anything.

tumblr_lo520xVHaw1qdtw84o1_500

“I wore a five pound beard of bees for that woman.”

– From Australia, we have the Babes & Boars calendar, which contains, not surprisingly, pictures of babes with the boars they presumably just bagged. This is part of a publication by Sporting Shooter magazine known as Bacon Busters. I’m still trying to confirm if this is satire or not.

If you like pictures of babes and are indifferent to the presence of dead boars, this may be a good publication for you. If you like pictures of dead boars, please reevaluate the course of your life so far.

– Doctors saved a toddler’s life by performing a Fecal Microbiota Transplantation with the child’s mother as the donor. It’s a very touching story, if you can get past the fact that Mom donated poo to her son.

– Sometimes an awesome Halloween costume crosses paths with a profoundly mistaken individual, and tragedy results. A man in western Pennsylvania who, police say, was not drunk somehow, decided to shoot at a skunk with a shotgun. Upon hitting the stinky passerby, he learned that it was not actually a skunk, but a nine year-old girl in a skunk costume. Also, the two are related somehow. The girl was flown to a Pittsburgh hospital and was reportedly doing well. Police aren’t sure what to do with the guy. Until that gets sorted out, I guess kudos are due to whomever made the costume, because it was obviously good enough to fool a totally-not-drunk guy. Seriously, though, I hope the kid is okay.

Photo credits: “To the Beemobile!” via evergreenterrace.com.au; “I wore a five pound beard of bees for that woman,” via mmmsimpsons.tumblr.com.

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An Open Letter to Cicurina venii, the $15 Million Spider

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391px-Nycticebus_coucang_003

Because I find spiders terrifying, here’s an adorable slow loris

Dear Cicurina venii,

May I call you by your scientific name, or do you prefer your more common name, the Braken Bat Cave meshweaver?

At any rate, I have never made a secret of the fact that I do not much like your kind (meaning spiders), as I tend to find you creepy. I know that you and most of your cousins here in Texas mean us no harm, and that it’s just the black widows and brown recluses that pose any real danger to us humans. You spiders have just always rubbed me the wrong way. I suppose it is because of that time in kindergarten when I reached out my hand to lean on a wall at recess and felt something soft and furry, only to discover a large (relative to my 6 year-old size) wolf spider at my fingertip. I know that’s not your fault, and I know it’s not fair to blame an entire order of arachnids for a mild youthful scare, so I apologize for the aspersions I have cast on your kind over the years.

I write to you now, in fact, to welcome you back to the public eye. I read that you recently reappeared after an absence of more than a decade, showing up at a construction site in San Antonio. In fact, no one even knew you existed until 1980, and no one saw you again until a few weeks ago. You’ve been on the endangered species list since 2000. This means that your sudden and unexpected appearance stopped a highway construction project in its tracks. It sounds like you’ve got quite a home for yourself there in northwest San Antonio, with a whole network of caves. The news says that you’re blind, so I suppose you can’t quite appreciate how much the city has changed around you since the last time people saw you.

I hope that we can find a way to live together. You should know that you’ve made a lot of people angry. They’re really angry with the government for enforcing the laws protecting you as an endangered species, but you get caught in the crossfire, and that’s too bad. I know you just want to live down there in your cave, scurrying around doing spider stuff. You didn’t ask for this kind of attention, but unfortunately, you’ve got it.

For my part, I want to thank you for reminding us all that protecting endangered species isn’t just about protecting cute pandas and majestic eagles. It is also about protecting blind, cave-dwelling, eight-legged beasts like you. You may terrify me, even if you are less than an inch long, but you ought to have a chance to use this planet along with the rest of us.

Photo credit: ‘Nycticebus coucang 003’ by David Haring / Duke Lemur Center (email) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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This Week in WTF, September 7, 2012

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360px-Schneekranich_Grus_leucogeranus_090501_We_147– Only about twenty Siberian white cranes remain in the wild. If they don’t migrate soon, it could be bad for them. To encourage them to migrate to their winter habitat, Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to lead them in a hang glider. This is not an Onion headline.

The stunt-prone Russian president will personally pilot a motorized hang glider during a stopover in the far north of the country this week on his way to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in Vladivostok.

There are only 20 Siberian white cranes left in the world. Putin will lead a group of the birds on the first leg of their 5,000-kilometer migration, and, if all goes to plan, they will spend the winter in central Asia.

– The FBI has accused a clerk for a federal district court of leaking sealed indictment information to Armenian street gangs.

– Proving the adage that there can be too much of a good thing, a nurse in England suffered an injury in a fall eleven years ago that caused “a medical condition in which she is constantly aroused.” As it turns out, having more than one hundred orgasms a day for more than a decade can be quite debilitating:

Even the slightest pelvic movement – on a train, in a car, doing domestic chores – can trigger a climax, but the sheer volume has left her tired, in pain and unable to have a normal relationship.

That sounds very bad.

– A college sophomore in Ohio allegedly threatened to slap a cop “across the face with his penis” when the cop confronted him about suspected public urination. He was reportedly drunk which, at least when I was in college, seemed to excuse nearly any sort of boorish behavior (at least in the mind of the drunk person.) (h/t to Bob for this one)

Photo credit: ‘Schneekranich Grus leucogeranus 090501 We 147’ by BS Thurner Hof (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Weather Puns = Fun

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Tropical Storm Kirk was kind of a bust, only briefly achieving hurricane status before wandering north up the Atlantic and into a footnote in the history of meteorology. About the only interesting thing to come of it was a rare moment of levity from the National Weather Service:

TROPICAL STORM KIRK DISCUSSION NUMBER 20
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL112012
1100 AM AST SUN SEP 02 2012

KIRK IS NOT EXPECTED TO LIVE LONG AND PROSPER. VISIBLE SATELLITE IMAGES AND A 1214 UTC ASCAT PASS INDICATE THAT THE SYSTEM STILL HAS A CLOSED CIRCULATION BUT IT IS BECOMING ELONGATED. MAXIMUM RELIABLE WINDS IN THE ASCAT PASS WERE AROUND 45 KT SO THE INITIAL WIND SPEED IS HELD AT THAT VALUE. KIRK WILL LIKELY BECOME POST-TROPICAL LATER TODAY OR DISSIPATE JUST BEFORE IT MERGES WITH A FRONT THAT IS CURRENTLY LOCATED ABOUT 200 N MI TO ITS WEST.

(Emphasis added)

I could point out that “Live long and prosper” is Spock’s line, not Kirk’s, but there’s a more obvious joke here: since the storm initially talked big but proved to be nothing but a mass of hot air destined for obscurity, it had much more in common with Kirk Cameron than with Captain James T. Kirk. I couldn’t find any appropriate Kirk Cameron memes, though, so here are a few riffs on Captain Kirk instead.

kirk1

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In today’s America, coal-mining activism has more porn than actual porn

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An activist attempts to demonstrate the effects of pollution on her coal-mining community, and gets accused of possessing and displaying child porn.

A 17 year-old famous for being really creepy launches a website with provocative pictures of herself, and people snicker.

Marc Randazza describes what happened to West Virginia activist Maria Gunnoe:

A West Virginia coal activist hoped that she would be able to improve the environmental conditions for her neighbors by attending a house committee meeting in Washington, D.C. to present the story of her community. Instead, she was accused of attempting to show pornographic pictures of children.

The water on Maria Gunnoe’s property is not potable. Because of her community’s proximity to a coal-mining source, the water has been contaminated by the coal industry’s retrieval process. To illustrate this point, Gunnoe wanted to present a series of photos, one of which included a toddler taking a bath in a pool of orange-colored water. The politicians present decided it was inappropriate and would not allow her to make her presentation, as the child was naked. Police pulled her aside and apparently questioned her about child pornography.

You can view the photo here. Is this really what passes for child porn these days? A photo of a toddler taking a bath? The most disturbing aspect of this photo is the water she’s bathing in, not that she’s unclothed.

The War on Child Porn has gone so overboard that even the most innocent of photos — whose mom doesn’t have a photo like that of them lying around? — is considered “child porn.” Anyone who calls that photo child porn is either just trying to underhandedly shut down Gunnoe’s speech, or they’re sick fucks who fap to kids themselves — or both.

Compare that to the website of allegedly-17 year-old Courtney Stodden, who married some 50-something actor famous for marrying Courtney Stodden (no, I am not linking to it, and you may go and compare at your own risk.)

On the one hand, you have a photo of a child taking a bath, something every parent probably has (yes, there are bathtub photos of me out there, none of which have ever been digitized.) On the other hand, you have a teenager who will turn 18 sometime this year, posting naughty (but not nude) photos of herself.

The latter set of pictures gets splashed all over tabloids and the news, despite having no news value whatsoever. The former gets suppressed out of sudden concern for the welfare of a child forced to bathe in orange-colored coal-water.

One set of photos is meant to educate people about a serious problem, and serve an advocacy function. The other set is showing off a minor’s goodies. Since part of the definition of “pornography” involves an appeal to “prurient” interests, it ought to be clear which one is the real porn here. Courtney Stodden might not actually be showing any specific naughty bits, but it’s hard to call the site anything but “prurient.”

Here’s the thing, though. I don’t really care. I have no interest in Stodden’s website, and it honestly causes me pain to devote this much attention to her. Her parents seem to approve of everything that she has done up to now, and she is close enough to age 18 that she can’t exactly be called a “child.” It’s really none of my business what she does. My point is about consistency. I wholeheartedly agree with Marc Randazza that concern over alleged child porn, while it is a problem, has reached an unsustainable level of insanity. These laws are applied where convenient, where politically expedient, or where they can most effectively distract the discussion from something like, say, coal pollution.

We now live in a world where a teenager who takes a picture of him- or herself (usually her, though) can be charged with possession of child pornography. Fotunately, at least one federal appeals court refused to go along with that.

The rationale of the police who handled that case is rather remarkable:

“It was a self portrait taken of a juvenile female taking pictures of her body, nude,” said Capt. George Seranko of the Greensburg Police Department.

Police said school officials learned of the photos in October. That’s when a student was seen using a cell phone during school hours, which violates school rules. The phone was seized, and the photos were found on it, police said. When police investigated, other phones with more pictures were seized.

“Taking nude pictures of yourself, nothing good can come out of it,” said Seranko.

***

Police said the girls are being charged with manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys face charges of possession.

“It’s very dangerous,” said Seranko. “Once it’s on a cell phone, that cell phone can be put on the Internet where everyone in the world can get access to that juvenile picture. You don’t realize what you are doing until it’s already done.”

And of course, the way to deal with the threat is to put the girls–who let us not forget, are supposed to be the victims here–in a position where they could spend the rest of their lives on a sex offender registry. For their own protection, I guess. Bravo to the Third Circuit for not going along with this. Education, and maybe more adult supervision, sure. What kind of twisted mind thinks throwing teenagers in jail for this is an appropriate response?

Meanwhile, Maria Gunnoe cannot present her case before Congress.

And Courtney Stodden, after inventing “floor flashing,” gets a reality show.

And a group of teenagers nearly had their lives ruined because they made some bad decisions with cell phones that only hurt themselves (and the cops wanted to send them to prison for an act of which they were the only victims, if you even want to call them “victims.”)

Blogger Aaron Brady, who first reported Gunnoe’s story, knows what this is all really about:

Coalfield activists like Maria face threats, intimidation, and vandalism regularly; she’s received verbal threats to her life, her children have been harassed at school, “wanted” posters of Gunnoe have appeared in local convenience stores, and so forth. This is a strong lady, and I suspect I’m not wrong to say that it’s far from the worst of the shit she’s faced for daring to be strong in a part of the country where Coal is King. It was just the kind of insulting humiliation that it was meant to be. Coal-friendly congresspeople were using the resources at their disposal to harass someone who had the nerve to speak out against the industry they shill for, to try to intimidate someone like Maria who speaks for (and is) one of the people that industry poisons.

But it’s pretty clarifying, don’t you think? The real obscenity is that people drink that water, that they have no choice but to bathe in it, and to bathe their children in it. You know that, and I know that. But if a massive surface mining operation in the vicinity of your house poisons your water table, and if your well water runs brown with coal sludge and heavy metal particulate, well, that’s just the cost of doing business in America, a cost that will be paid by the Appalachians who only live there. It’s regrettable, at best. You can’t call the police and the state doesn’t want to know. And if you dare to take a picture of child’s exposure to that poison, if you have the nerve to walk into the halls of Congress and show them the obscenity that is a child that must wash herself with poison every day, they will call you a child pornographer. They will call the police.

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