A group of Russian scientists plumbing the frozen Antarctic in search of a lake buried in ice for tens of millions of years have failed to respond to increasingly anxious U.S. colleagues -- and as the days creep by, the fate of the team remains unknown. We've all seen this movie.
"No word from the ice for 5 days," Dr. John Priscu -- professor of ecology at Montana State University and head of a similar Antarctic exploration program -- told FoxNews
The team from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) have been drilling for weeks in an effort to reach isolated Lake Vostok, a vast, dark body of water hidden 13,000 ft. below the ice sheet's surface. The lake hasn't been exposed to air in more than 20 million years. Today's Rantburg Survey:
You're a Russian scientist about to investigate a lake that's been buried under ice for 20 million years. The creature you least want to encounter is:
a. A grotesque Antarctic monster that sucks your brains out through a straw.
b. Donna Shalala.
c. Paul Krugman.
d. Janet Napolitano.
e. Other (please explain.)
Posted by: Matt ||
02/04/2012 10:15 ||
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#1
"No word from the ice for 5 days"
There's your problem, silly - ice can't talk (though sometimes it groans).
Posted by: Barbara ||
02/04/2012 12:04 Comments ||
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Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili ||
02/04/2012 12:57 Comments ||
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#4
I think what would be more likely is a geyser of water like when an oil field is sometimes first drilled into. This would be for a couple of reasons:
1. The great weight of the ice pushing down on that lake, it would act like a leak in a water balloon. It could be under such high pressure that the entire lake would squirt out before they could get it stopped.
2. Atmospheric pressure was likely higher when that water was last exposed to the atmosphere. That water might have a greater "charge" of various gases than the atmosphere has now and once that water starts up the borehole, the gas begins to separate from the water. Bubbles now filling the borehole and rising act is a part of a pump, pulling more stuff up behind them.
#5
crosspatch; ice is less dense than water, so if the ice is 'floating' on the water of the lake, a 'blowout' should not occur. However, if the water is under pressure beyond that of the weight of the ice (heated from below, for instance, or filled from inflow from an elevation higher than the ice surface) then the drillers will need a fluid density in the borehole that is greater than that of the lake water. To prevent freezing they have used kerosene as the base fluid (we use diesel in many oil wells, though not for anti freezing purposes), which is less than water density, but they will have added suspended clay or other solids to try to ensure a fluid density adequate to both hold the bore hole open and prevent the lake from blowing out. As I understand it, their biggest official concern is to prevent their drilling fluid from contaminating the lake..... but I watched X-Files, etc.
#8
Geothermal heating of the water is what keeps it water. So its pressurized. And guess what? Its thoerized there is a much higher oxygen content trapped in there due to heat and pressure. Adiabatic expansion will cause a blowout, and the drop in pressure will cause the oxygen to outgas. All the makings for an explosion.
The creature I would least want to encounter is an ancient fatal virus for which we have no resistance at all. Maybe this is how the zombie plague starts...
#10
Natural gas dissolved in oil or water is what generates the high borehole pressures in 'normal' oilfield wells, and we can routinely double the density of drilling fluid to keep the well under control (though we get it wrong sometimes). I can't imagine the lake has that much pressure, because I think the ice would fracture and release pressure before it got to that point. I am concerned with the drill crew though, it is a most challenging drilling environment, and then there's the ancient virus and bacteria that could be released and wipe out the planet....
#17
Leon Panetta: Large snot-locker, minuscule brain and a proven perfidious, traitorous consciousness. Leon sports a baggie-assed trouser attitude by having been kicked-upstairs so many times. His puss, again, looks like 40 miles of hard road. May Heaven Help us. Amen.
Dubais police busted a human trade ring involving an Arab man who brought three Latin American girls to the emirate through Facebook and forced them to practice prostitution in the first vice case involving a social networking site.
Units from the anti-organise crime division stormed an apartment in the emirate and seized the man and the three girls, who all confessed to the crime.
The girls told police they knew the man through Facebook and that he misled them into believing he wants to be their friends and would find jobs for them in Dubai.
Once they arrived, he took them to his flat and had sex with them before forcing them to indulge in vice by hunting for customers at nightclubs.
He received them at the airport, took them to his apartment and had sex with them he later forced them to go out and hunt for customers are night clubs he was beating them up if they return to the flat without money, said Major Wisam Al Darai, head of the anti-human trade unit.
He told 'Emarat Al Youm' daily that the defendant denied he was involved in human trade and that he beat them up because they came back to his apartment drunk and tried to make fool of him.
Oh goody, another domino fallen. Have fun with that, guys.
[Dawn] Kuwait's Islamist-led opposition has won a landslide majority in Kuwait's snap polls by securing 34 seats in the 50-member parliament, with women and liberals the big losers, results showed Friday.
That reads like a NYT headline...
Sunni Islamists, including Salafists, ...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them... took 23 seats compared with just nine in the dissolved parliament, while liberals claimed only two places against five previously, according the official results.
And no women were elected, with the four female MPs of the previous parliament all losing their seats.
Voters punished pro-government MPs during Thursday's parliamentary election, reducing them to a small minority, the results showed.
Only two of 13 former MPs who the public prosecutor questioned over corruption charges were re-elected, and the rest either lost or did not contest the poll.
Following the announcement of the results, hundreds of opposition supporters gathered at the campaign tents of candidates they backed to celebrate the outcome.
Speaking after his victory, new opposition MP Obaid al-Wasmi warned all "corruption files will be opened," including claims that hundreds of millions of public funds were stolen.
"I tell the decision-makers that the Kuwait of tomorrow will not be the same as of the Kuwait of yesterday," said the outspoken independent opposition figure.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/04/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Fortunately they still have an absolute monarch, so they might actually get something out of the deal, since Islamists at first sometimes do clean up a lot of institutional corruption, before putting in their own corruption. And the king can veto anything too egregious, if he is of a mind.
Dozens of U.S. Park Police descended on horseback and foot upon the Occupy D.C. camp in McPherson Square before dawn on Saturday to continue an enforcement of its ancient no-camping rules launched earlier this week.
U.S. Park Police Capt. Phil Beck said "We are not evicting people from the park, we are asking folks to come into compliance." How about that! PC works on the left, too!
"It's pretty excessive if all they wanted us to do was take down the tarp," said a protester. Besides, he added, they surprised us.
The U.S. Park Service announced a week ago that it would begin enforcing the longtime regulations that prohibit camping in federal parks. Protesters at both McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza were told they'd be arrested if they didn't remove all sleeping gear and other equipment. Oh. So they can still occupy the park, just no sleeping. "Yeah, we're in a sleeping bag, Officer, but does it look like we're sleeping?"
Campers were told they couldn't sleep at the park, prompting some to go on "sleep strikes." But while some campers complied with the rules and left the McPherson encampment over the past week, others remained.
At least three protestors who refused to leave the area around the statue of Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson were arrested.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/04/2012 09:05 ||
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#1
*snork*
Posted by: Barbara ||
02/04/2012 10:09 Comments ||
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#2
The 'Occupy Seattle' was going to have a march and protest at the local Wells Fargo in downtime Seattle last week. The media and city mad a big deal about it.
I work across the street from the Wells Fargo building they were going to protest. Now maybe I was a bit late; but when I went to look at what was happening there were perhaps a dozen people there and a couple of signs.
[Pak Daily Times] Yet another case of blasphemy was reported in Korangi Industrial Area cop shoppe, where a man was overpowered over the charge of using abusive language against Khulfa-e-Rashideen.
SHO Malik Ayub said the jugged person, Mujahid Ali, was tossed in the slammer when he was busy in using abusive language and also sending text messages to his colleagues' cell phones against those Islamic leaders, enraging other workers of factory. The SHO said factory workers beat up and tried to kill him, but police rushed to the scene and took the accused into custody. A case (79/12) was registered against him under section 298-A and 28 on the complaint of provision of Telegraph Act.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/04/2012 00:00 ||
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[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Pak Daily Times] The UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia ruled on Friday that the Khmer Rouge's prison chief should serve the rest of his life in jail, extending a 19-year sentence handed down in July 2010 that outraged survivors of the "killing fields" regime. The Supreme Court Chamber handling an appeal by Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, ruled that the former chief of the notorious Tuol Sleng Prison should take full responsibility for the estimated 14,000 people killed there during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 reign of terror. "The penalty must be harsh to prevent similar crimes, undoubtedly among the worst in human history," the president of the court, Kong Srim, said in reading the verdict.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/04/2012 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
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An unexpectedly rosy jobs report set off a chain reaction Friday, upending economists' gloomy predictions for the coming year, leading to a surge on Wall Street and potentially boggling the political calculus of the 2012 presidential campaigns. Boggling? In your dreams.
The surprise -- that the unemployment rate had dipped for the fifth straight month, to 8.3 percent -- was first reflected in the stock market, where the Dow Jones industrial average soared to its highest mark since the beginning of the financial crisis. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, hit an 11-year high.
"This morning we received more good news about our economy," Obama said during an appearance at an Arlington firehouse. "Still, far too many Americans need a job or need a job that pays better than the one they have now. But the economy is growing stronger." Our economy? He said "our". That means he agrees it is no longer "Bush's economy".
The report forced his presidential rivals to adjust their rhetoric about the economy, which has played a leading role in the Republican debates. But they appeared ever ready to remind listeners that the unemployment rate remains elevated. Ever ready. Evil Rethuglicans! Picking on The One, OUR President. No journalistic bias here!
"This is a game changer early in the thirteenth quarter," Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, said of Friday's employment figures. "The payroll numbers validate, in the market's eyes, what all the other data are saying."
The nation's economic forecasters, many of whom had predicted that the unemployment rate would remain stubbornly high this year, seemed to back off their gloomiest positions. Right. Eight percent is not high. Let's see what happens when the good news gets some folks back in the market.
The Congressional Budget Office has predicted 8.9 percent unemployment for the year; the Federal Reserve has predicted between 8.2 percent and 8.5 percent for the year. Likewise, Moody's Analytics had expected the unemployment rate to remain at 8.5 percent through the end of the year.
Moody's Analytics, for one, is now reconsidering its predictions."The collective psyche seems to be turning a bit more optimistic," said Marisa Di Natale, the firm's director of economic research. "We're certainly going to revise our forecast."
Here we go. On page 2 -
The unemployment figures were startling enough that some analysts wondered whether they were correct. Friday's figures from the household survey were the first to incorporate the new population numbers from the 2010 Census. But the new unemployment rate was unaffected by the change, the Labor Department said. The Obama Labor Department.
Obama's campaign team, and some political scientists, believe that voters are more likely to be swayed by the direction the unemployment rate is moving -- downward -- rather than its exact level. Quick! Find somebody who supports that theory! Call California! Start with UCLA.
Lynn Vavreck, an associate professor of political science and communications at UCLA, has studied the effect of gross domestic product and the unemployment rate on presidential campaigns going as far back as 1952. Her analysis shows that there appears to be little or no connection between an incumbent president's vote share and the unemployment rate.
But there is a clear connection between votes for the incumbent and the direction the unemployment rate is moving. Which way were the unemployment numbers moving when Carter ran for re-election?
On its Web site, the Obama campaign posted a chart that illustrated 23 consecutive months of private-sector job growth and encouraged supporters to e-mail it to friends "to make sure people know the good news about President Obama's record on jobs." I wonder who made that up? Valerie Jarrett?
The chart included a summary of White House initiatives since Obama took office, including the Recovery Act, which provided a $787 billion stimulus; a bailout loan to the auto industry; and the payroll tax cut.
The campaign official said the chart had already become one of the campaign's most popular social media items, having been e-mailed and posted on Facebook and Twitter hundreds of thousands of times by Friday afternoon. I wonder who made that up? Valerie Jarrett?
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/04/2012 08:48 ||
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#1
Crud. I intended to add a foto of the smug Obama and then submit.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/04/2012 9:03 Comments ||
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#2
I call BS on this
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
02/04/2012 9:15 Comments ||
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#3
Remember back in the day when a 4.5 unemployment rate during the Bush administration was widely derided as a "jobless recovery"?
#4
no mention of the 1.2 million that have left the workforce, giving up on finding a job. An honest media would note that's why the % went down. *spit*
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/04/2012 9:38 Comments ||
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#5
There were interesting graphs yesterday that showed that the employment rate (not unemployment) was going down also NOT because of retirees. This is simple game playing with the numbers and means nothing except that they are all liars.
#6
The news media in their cheering doesn't tell you is that there are still 5 million fewer employed than 5 years ago when Bush was president. They also don't tell you that ion the meantime there are 15 million more Americans in the time there are 5 million fewer jobs.
It's like the constant homeless features on the evening news during Reagan, Bush 1 and 2. When was the last homeless feature since Obama assumed office and millions of families really did lose their homes. Give me Pravda any day. At least I can see topless women on their pages.
#13
I'd like nothing more than to see a few million americans get back to work. But I'm skeptical that any new jobs have been regained recently. It's an old research trick from way back. If you torture your data enough, you can make it conform to any hypothesis. Well, almost any. Just because he brought unemployment down a couple % wouldn't make me a swing voter anyway, look at all the other despicable shit he and his Ohio Gang have done besides wrecking the recovery.
#14
Sorry Nimble, but Obama will fool a lot of people with those numbers. The real numbers will not make the MSM.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/04/2012 12:59 Comments ||
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#15
He may fool some about the unemployment rate. But he won't fool many about the economy because they have direct contact with it and they know it sux. People aren't getting raises, there is inflation at the grocery store and gas pump, People know there aren't enough jobs around to replace the one they hate. So he's going to have a hard time running on the economy. Fantasy numbers just don't square with actual experience.
#17
Nimble, high grocery prices are the fault of the evil Monsanto and high gas prices are the fault of the evil Exxon and Chevron. Obama is exceeding all metrics for what could possibly be expected of him in such a situation. Or so I am told...
#18
Remember all those 'press' briefing back during Vietnam. It didn't match up with what the troops were saying when they got home. At a certain point no matter how much you repeat the lie, the line is crossed and the messenger is treated with derision and contempt. #10 up there shows that even in the absolute state controlled media, at a certain point people don't buy it.
#21
That employment figure has a numerator and a denominator.
If you can't get the numerator to do what you want, fudge the denominator by not counting the people who dropped out of the workforce (i.e. fell off the end of their unemployment).
The only statistic that matters is what percent of the non-institutional persons are full time employed.
Also, you'll recollect that the stimulus made three years ago was inexplicably back-loaded. They just couldn't figure out how to spend it all at the time. Right.
This stuff is perfectly obvious, but people don't get it because they aren't told.
#22
If people see that their kids can't get jobs and that their own jobs continue to be insecure, and the same for just about everyone they know -- especially those working for the state and local government -- it won't matter what the official statistics are.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Dozens of U.S. Park Police descended on horseback and foot upon the Occupy D.C. camp in McPherson Square before dawn on Saturday to continue an enforcement of its 
Yet another case of blasphemy was reported in Korangi Industrial Area 
The UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia ruled on Friday that the Khmer Rouge's prison chief should serve the rest of his life in jail, extending a 19-year sentence handed down in July 2010 that outraged survivors of the "killing fields" regime. The Supreme Court Chamber handling an appeal by Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, ruled that the former chief of the notorious Tuol Sleng Prison should take full responsibility for the estimated 14,000 people killed there during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 reign of terror. "The penalty must be harsh to prevent similar crimes, undoubtedly among the worst in human history," the president of the court, Kong Srim, said in reading the verdict.
An unexpectedly rosy jobs report set off a chain reaction Friday, upending economists' gloomy predictions for the coming year, leading to a surge on Wall Street and potentially boggling the political calculus of the 2012 presidential campaigns.
