Now for Something Completely Different
Eric Whitacre: A choir as big as the Internet
185 voices from 12 countries join a choir that spans the globe: "Lux Aurumque," composed and conducted by Eric Whitacre, merges hundreds of tracks individually recorded and posted to YouTube. It's an astonishing illustration of how technology can connect us.
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James Randi's fiery takedown of psychic fraud
Legendary skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing 18-minute indictment of irrational beliefs. He throws out a challenge to the world's psychics: Prove what you do is real, and I'll give you a million dollars. (No takers yet.)
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Visible from space, deadly on Earth: the gas flares of Nigeria
Shell's activities in the West African country are under scrutiny
There is an ominous new arrival in the tropical forest outside Yenagoa in the southern Nigerian state of Bayelsa. It travels on black metal stilts above the green canopy before sinking into a concrete bunker where, when the bulldozers and cranes have finished work, millions of cubic feet of natural gas will be pumped before going up in smoke.
Shell's Opolo-Epie facility is the newest gas flare in the Niger Delta. And it gives the lie to claims from oil multinationals and the Nigerian government that they are close to bringing an end to the destructive and wasteful practice of gas flaring.
"This is environmental racism," said Alagoa Morris, an investigator with a local group, Environmental Rights Action, who regularly risks arrest to monitor activities at the heavily guarded oil and gas installations. "What we are asking for is that oil companies should have to meet the same standards in Nigeria that they do operating in their own countries."
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NOAA official: Gulf oil spill a 'grave concern'
A top NOAA official says the Gulf Coast oil spill is a major blow to the U.S. economy and the environment. David Kennedy is the acting administrator for the National Ocean Service, a branch of NOAA that manages coastal and marine resources. (April 29)
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Risks in 2010: Crumbling Infrastructure
Few investments have as far-reaching effects as spending on infrastructure projects. Transport systems, health care, food production, and energy supplies need regular cash, but the money is running out.
When a road bridge over the Mississippi river collapsed in 2007, the images of the disaster reminded a shocked nation of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. Segments of the interstate were lying in the waters, dozens of cars had been hurdled into the river, a freight train lay crushed under tons of concrete and steel.
But rescue workers soon realized that neither a natural disaster nor a terrorist attack had caused the catastrophe. The 40-year-old bridge had simply collapsed, becoming another example of America's crumbling public infrastructure.
The warning went unheeded. In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers still rated critical infrastructure in the United States as a lowly “D”. About 2.2 trillion dollars would be necessary over the next five years to upgrade key infrastructure, the engineers estimated.
The U.S. is not alone. Worldwide, some 35 trillion dollars will have to be spent over the next 20 years to meet infrastructure needs, estimates the World Bank.
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Unnamed Physicist Sponsors Global Warming Denial Video Targeting High Schoolers
Providing high quality educational resources to science classrooms is a noble task, but when those resources include deeply flawed global warming denial material, produced with funding from an anonymous source, red flags ought to go up. That is the scenario with The Cassiopeia Project's video suggesting that climate change is bunk.
Cassiopeia was previously known for producing excellent videos exploring complex scientific concepts, but now all of its good work is being compromised by an unscientific and dishonest attack on global warming research.
That has fans of Cassiopeia's more well-regarded videos flummoxed.
Incredibly, three of the twelve sources cited in the global warming video credits are the exact same press release posted in diferent locations and written by Marc Morano while he still worked for Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Other sources of information used in the video include the widely-discredited Oregon Petition Project and the Heartland Institute.
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