Texans have egos that size of their state, unfortunately their brains aren't. I apologize to China for the moronic display of ego the world has ever seen.

Texans are wackos. There is no other description of a Texan. They believe they are the most power people in the world. Needless to say they have never seen the world in which they exist.

In a military confrontation (click here) between China and Taiwan who would emerge as being least devastation.

See that map. There's China and very little Taiwan, there is North and South Korea and Japan. 

Yep.

January 1, 2019
By Li Haidong

...Trump and his team (click here) will realize that the biggest potential flashpoint in the Asian-Pacific region is "Taiwan independence."...

State-run Chinese (click here) tabloid Global times warned President-elect Donald Trump that China would "take revenge" if he rolls back the one-China policy, after Taiwan's president Tsai-Ing Wen made a controversial stop in Houston, 

It has become a general consensus among the international community that there is only one China in the world; Taiwan is a part of China; and the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legitimate government representing China.

However, the Taiwan independence secessionist forces have gained an upper hand on the island in recent years. Taiwan leader Tsai, who refuses to acknowledge the "1992 Consensus" and has taken steps in furthering the pursuit of de jure Taiwan independence, has become the source of disturbance in the regional order. If the Trump government supports Tsai's secessionist ideas, the Asia-Pacific region will, no doubt, become turbulent, which will set back Trump's goal of "making America great again."

Trump said earlier that he would reevaluate the one-China principle, which revealed his superficial understanding of Taiwan's sensitive and critical role in the Sino-US relationship....

There can never be a war over Taiwan REGARDLESS of their politics. There is a one China policy. If the USA ever posed a threat by actions with Taiwan and that threat was more and more real, China would be a first strike country. The USA's west coast would be in their sites along with other places in the USA.

North Korea would launch in combination with China. The West would have it's hands full immediately as deadly attacks would reach Japan and Taiwan long before any retaliatory strikes would reach China.

I personally feel uncomfortable even having this as a top of discussion. It is a hideously stupid idea and any shadow of a threat and China would take action. The entire idea is nonsense. The entire idea is a threat to The West. The entire idea is a humiliating assault on the lives of those in Taiwan. 

You want to know something, China is correct. A USA occupied Taiwan is a direct threat to China and it's people. This is the same dynamic we experienced with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Same thing. 

The Texans, including Cruz, needs to put their egos away and live in the same world everyone else does. Texans should get out once in awhile. The reason they don't become more worldly is because "There ain't no other place in the world besides Texas." The global community should breath a sigh of relief at that ideology. I mean what cultural iconography can they bring to any meeting or party? Think about it.

I haven't apologized for this country for the past nine years !!!!!!!

The USA has finally reached the bottom of the barrel in leadership.

This is about money. Guns have nothing to do with the safety of Americans, it is always about money. This is just the next new thing to satisfy the greed of the gun industry.

I want to know how much "Jr." is being paid to lobby for gun silencers?

January 7, 2017

By Michael S. Rowenwald

The federal government (click here) has strictly limited the sale of firearm silencers for as long as James Bond and big-screen gangsters have used them to discreetly shoot enemies between the eyes.

Now the gun industry, which for decades has complained about the restrictions, is pursuing new legislation to make silencers easier to buy, and a key backer is Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter and the oldest son of the president-elect, who campaigned as a friend of the gun industry.

The legislation stalled in Congress last year. But with Republicans in charge of the House and Senate and the elder Trump moving into the White House, gun rights advocates are excited about its prospects this year.

They hope to position the bill the same way this time — not as a Second Amendment issue, but as a public-health effort to safeguard the eardrums of the nation’s 55 million gun owners. They even named it the Hearing Protection Act. It would end treating silencers as the same category as machine guns and grenades, thus eliminating a $200 tax and a nine-month approval process.

“It’s about safety,” Trump Jr. explained in a September video interview with the founder of SilencerCo, a Utah silencer manufacturer. “It’s a health issue, frankly.”...

"Morning Papers"

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

January 8, 2017

...Singaporean President Tony Tan Keng Yam (click here) attended the ceremony and lighted up the lanterns on stage, marking the start of the seven-week celebrations.

Designed by 14 students from Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), the street light-up illustrates the life of a rooster as it grows from a tiny hatchling to a mighty creature.

It culminates in a centerpiece, a giant rooster lantern measuring 13 meters in height, perching proudly at the junction of Eu Tong Sen Street and Upper Cross Street.

Kenneth Lim, director of Cultural Precincts, Singapore Tourism Board, noted that the Chinese New Year Celebrations at Chinatown has always been an excellent showcase of the precinct's mix of heritage and dynamism, delighting locals and visitors alike with an extravaganza of lights and sounds....

January 7, 2017

...5,500 handcrafted lanterns, (click here) along with a 13m-tall rooster with outspread wings, have been installed in Chinatown to welcome the coming Year of the Rooster. The construction of the intricate lanterns took 1½ months, involving 40 craftsmen specially flown in from Sichuan province in China. The light up ends on Feb 25.

"Good Night, Moon"

The waxing gibbous

10.8 days old

82.9 percent lit

January 3, 2017
By Paul D. Spudis

At the end of 2016, (click here) China released a paper describing the nation’s very successful year in space, including an outline of their upcoming and future plans and intentions. Though well underway, China’s space accomplishments and stated plans continue to fly over the heads of many who continue to dismissively call Chinese lunar efforts “pointless.” While China continues to collect data from their 2013 Chang’E 3 lunar lander, this new report discusses two new Chang’E missions to the Moon—a lander/rover to be sent to the far side and another lander to collect samples of the lunar surface’s near side....

The Chang’E-3 lander spacecraft on the Moon. The two upcoming lunar missions will probably use landers similar to this one.

...Why does China see value in a mission to the far side of the Moon? And why seek and return lunar samples when there are already ~380 kilograms of lunar material returned by the Apollo and Luna missions (not to mention an additional ~140 kg of meteorites of lunar origin)? China’s lunar exploration program serves many objectives—only some are scientific. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) runs China’s space program and science is secondary to other goals of their missions. So a better question to ask is, what purpose do these missions serve from a national strategic perspective?...

The future is already here.

The entire idea the Republican Party could eliminate and destroy environmental protections as some kind of opportunity for the growth of business is pure unadulterated nonsense. 

The EPA is vital to the quality of life of the American people. There is no removing the EPA. I can understand how the petroleum industry is frustrated with the entire FUTURE movement within the USA; they are no longer wanted in the American landscape. Do you know ethanol is less expensive than regular unleaded in the Midwest? Where are all the "Flex Fuel" vehicles?

E85 is $1.80 per gallon (click here)

E15 is $2.17 per gallon

E10 is $2.27 per gallon

No ethanol is $2.64 a gallon of 87 octane (regular unleaded)

There is no reason to have the President of Exxon Mobile as a Secretary of State. There is no need for any heavy polluting industry, including and especially greenhouse gases, to be given a leg up to plow through some kind of idea that they are still needed. They aren't. 

The USA is coming of age. All the gamesmanship of political hacks, including Donald Trump, is laughable. The USA has accepted the challenge of the future and is getting the job done. It is time for the "The Very Old Guard" to fade into the sunset and soon.

Many leaders over the years, including President Obama, have stated there is an economy in the ways of the future, including green chemistry. It is the truth and leaders from every walk of life, except politics, have accepted that.

It is time to ride into the sunset. Bye, bye. Everyone say bye, bye to the old order. Bye. Bye, bye.

April 27, 2012

By Scott Learn

Gov. John Kitzhaber (click here) signed an executive order today designed to boost the prospects for "green chemistry" in Oregon, including requirements to have state agencies favor the least-toxic products in purchasing.

The order -- backed by the Oregon Environmental Council and green chemistry leaders in business and academia -- requires state agencies to begin a pilot program for purchasing less toxic cleaning products by the end of this year.

It also calls for the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Administrative Services to complete a plan by July 1, 2013, for revising state purchasing guidelines on other products, such as electronics, furniture and building materials. The order does not specify a timeline for implementing the new guidelines....

pHurity green (click here)

Store Locator (click here)

December 27, 2010

Michigan-based company (click here) formulates and sells green cleaning and personal care products.

The first-ever Michigan Green Chemistry Governor’s Award for small business has been presented to pHurity, Inc., which is woman-owned and operated by Barbara Kovach of Franklin, Michigan. Kovach accepted the award this week during the second annual Michigan Green Chemistry Conference in Lansing.

Founded in 2007, pHurity, Inc. is a formulator of plant-based, renewable and biodegradable green cleaning and personal care products that are manufactured in Auburn Hills and currently sold in more than 75 specialty grocery and health stores throughout Michigan.

“Our first several months were spent in intensive research and product formulation to ensure that every ingredient was analyzed and verified before we introduced pHurity products to the market in late 2008,” said Kovach, an intellectual property attorney who founded the company with partner Tim Darwish....

So, what is "Green Chemistry?" What are the products. "Make this real, right?"

Making "Green Chemistry" real is less about the very product on the shelf for consumers, but, the practice of manufacturing that provides an environmentally cleaner, higher morality and future centric industry. The best news is it works.

There are many interpretations of green manufacturing (click here) and all convey similar meaning. According to Melnyk and Smith, it is a system that integrates product and process design issues with issues of manufacturing, planning and control in such a manner as to identify, quantify, assess, and manage the flow of environmental waste with the goal of reducing and ultimately minimizing environmental impact while also trying to maximize resource efficiency.

Green Manufacturing is also known by plethora of different names: Clean Gmanufacturing, environmentally conscious manufacturing, environmentally benign manufacturing, environmentally responsible manufacturing and Sustainable manufacturing. Irrespective of the various acronyms, the primary goal remains the same - designing and delivering products that minimize negative effects on the environment through their production, use, and disposal....

"Green Chemistry" has participants from across the spectrum; from private entrepreneurs to universities and industry.

Mission (click here)

The mission of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute^® (ACS GCI) is to catalyze and enable the implementation of green chemistry and engineering throughout the global chemical enterprise....

...The ACS GCI Governing Board is comprised of members from government, industry, and academia to reflect a broad set of environmental interests and capabilities. The board convenes biannually and assists the Institute in accomplishing its strategic goals....

It's Governing Board (click here)

Dr. Kent Voorhees, Chair 
Professor, Department of Chemistry and Geochemistry, Colorado School of Mines

Dr. William CarrolVice President for Industry Issues
Occidental Chemical Corporation

Dr. Pat ConfaloneACS Board of Directors
Vice President, DuPont Global R&D

Dr. Thomas M. Connelly, Jr.
CEO
American Chemical Society

Dr. David Constable
Director, ACS Green Chemistry Institute^®
American Chemical Society

Dr. Concepcíon Jiménez-González
Head of Engagement, Planning, Environment, Health & Safety
Analysis and Reporting
GlaxoSmithKline

Dr. Lauren Heine
Executive Director
Northwest Green Chemistry

Dr. Philip Jessop
Professor, Department of Chemistry
Queen’s University

Mr. Micheal Kirschner
President
Design Chain Associates, LLC

Mr. David C. Long
Environmental Sustainability Solutions, LLC

Mr. John Frazier, Advisor
Sr. Technical Director
Hohenstein Institute America

Dr. James E. Hutchison, Advisor 
Lokey-Harrington Chair in Chemistry
University of Oregon

Dr. Nina I. McClelland, Advisor
Provost
The University of Toledo

Anthony M. Noce, Advisor
Principal Consultant
Operations Risk & Compliance

Dr. Martyn Poliakoff, Advisor
Research Professor of Chemistry
University of Nottingham

Dr. Anne P. Wallin, Advisor
Retired
The Dow Chemical Company

This is an article written by Joseph A. Miller, Jr. for the American Chemical Society (ACS) appearing in "Chemical Innovation," Vol. 30, No. 9, September 30, 2000.

What I find so interesting about this article is the way the ACS self monitors and polices it's direction.

I found this timeline more than interesting. It shows an industry that developed out of necessity in national defense and otherwise to an industry on the verge of improving lives to the point of carefree living.

The ACS sees the birth of Green Chemistry and it's continued growth to bring about a culture of concern for the well being of Earth and it's people.

...Biotechnology—past and futuren (click here)

Using this definition, we have seen glimpses of biotechnology-based products going back to the 19th century. The archetype of such a scientific contribution was Louis Pasteur’s novel insistence that each fermentation process can be traced to a specific living microorganism. This inspired changes in brewing practices to ensure healthy conditions for the growth of these microorganisms—practices that are used to this day.

The biotechnology industry is unusual in that it is defined, not by a set of products, but by a set of enabling technologies, which are used by a broad array of companies. The thrust of this collection of technologies is to apply DNA sequencing data to engineer the metabolism of microorganisms or green plants to create new products or processes.

The growth of this industry is a unique story, yet it rests on foundations common to other segments of American industry. Years of research continue to provide a knowledge base unequaled in the world, and the domestic capital market provides the ability to transform this knowledge into unique products and processes for markets around the world.

The future, however, holds many competitive challenges for this industry. In the quarter century since the development of recombinant DNA technologies, thousands of new biotechnology firms have emerged in the United States. Dozens of new products have reached the medical market, and several hundred are in human clinical trials. The market for such products is expected to grow from $7.6 billion in 1996 to more than $24 billion by 2006. Similarly, the market for agriculture biotech products is expected to increase from $300 million to $1.8 billion in the same period. All of this growth is driven by R&D spending of more than $10 billion per year....

Agricultural practices have evolved over the decades to end phosphorus.

There are always competing interests in the USA by the simple fact this is an economy established with Wall Street capitalism. What is necessary in the 21st Century is clearer and more moral goals that satisfy the USA economic dynamics, but, removes cost of pollution and danger to lives.

Lake Erie and eutrophication is a story that covers four decades of time. The phosphorus from agricultural runoff took some time to reach tolerable levels. 


Slide presentation that includes Lake Erie (click here). 

The point to this is to reassure the need for a better method of providing products to the American consumer and to international markets.

Green Chemistry does that. Decades have gone by since the words of Rachel Carson captured the American conscience. It is time to realize these new ideas make a great deal of sense. Below is the 2016 Presidential Green Energy Challenge. It was not won by a single scientist in a university that Senator John McCain might call "Pork Barrel Spending" (click here); it was a Wall Street company that took the award.

"Dow Agrosciences LLC" (click here)

Summary of Technology: 

The demand for higher crop yields and agricultural productivity is ever increasing, and so are concerns for the negative impacts on the environment caused by agricultural activities. Human activities related to farming account for a significant percentage of nitrate in ground and surface waters as well as nitrous oxide emissions. An estimated 75 percent of all nitrous oxide emissions, for example, come from agricultural activities such as applied nitrogen fertilizers and manures.

Crop genetics and precision application methods have improved the efficiency of applied nitrogen fertilizers, but losses to the environment are still significant after soil bacteria quickly convert nitrogen from the applied urea or ammoniacal form to nitrate. In the nitrate form, nitrogen fertilizer is susceptible to losses through leaching or as emissions in the form of nitrous oxide. Furthermore, nitrate fertilizer that leaches out of a plant’s root zone is no longer available to provide nutrients to the crop.

Scientists at The Dow Chemical Company discovered a powerful nitrification inhibitor that can inhibit soil bacteria from rapidly converting nitrogen in the ammoniacal form to nitrate, thereby retaining more nitrogen in the more stable ammoniacal form. By keeping nitrogen in the root zone for a longer period during the season, Dow’s nitrogen stabilizers improve Nitrogen Use Efficiency and reduce nitrogen loss through leaching and nitrous oxide emissions. N-Serve® was the first commercial product introduced by Dow in 1974, but it is only suitable for use with anhydrous ammonia fertilizer applications due to the limitations of its physical-chemical properties....

Pollution is a very expensive problem for any country. Decades and the river now has a restoration society.

June 22, 2014
By Jonathan H. Alder

On the morning of June 22, 1969, (click here) oil and debris that had collected on the surface of the Cuyahoga River as wound its way through Cleveland caught fire.  The story attracted national attention, and was featured in a report on the nation’s environmental problems in the August 1 Time magazine. The fire illustrated just how bad the nation’s environmental problems had become by 1969.  As then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson commented in 2011, the fire was evidence of “the almost unimaginable health and environmental threats” from water pollution of the time. After all, as one environmental activist put it, “when rivers are on fire, you know things are bad.”...

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),(click here) an international body of over 30 industrialized countries, held meetings through the 1980s addressing environmental concerns. They made a series of international recommendations which focused on a co-operative change in existing chemical processes and pollution prevention.

The OECD has it's roots as early as 1960. It is primarily a Western Culture organization. The idea pollution was something that drained a country's resources rather than grew an economy was always a focus to their work. There are currently 35 countries that have ratified the organization as part of their government infrastructure.

This international measure and other US Government agencies such as the EPA started to appear with government infrastructure. There were profound reasons for their beginnings:

The Cuyahoga River is a primary example of what occurs with industry when it is unregulated.

     

Green Chemistry has been growing out of necessity since the 1960s.

Our environmental legacy in the USA may have started with Rachel Carson, but, was also reinforced by tragedy along the way.

Love Canal is an aborted canal project (click here) branching off of the Niagara River about four miles south of Niagara Falls.  It is also the name of a fifteen-acre, working-class neighborhood of around 800 single-family homes built directly adjacent to the canal.  From 1942 to 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, with government sanction, began using the partially dug canal as a chemical waste dump.  At the end of this period, the contents of the canal consisted of around 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals, including at least twelve that are known carcinogens (halogenated organics, chlorobenzenes, and dioxin among them). Hooker capped the 16-acre hazardous waste landfill in clay and sold the land to the Niagara Falls School Board, attempting to absolve itself of any future liability by including a warning in the property deed. 

Public awareness of the disaster unfolded in the late 1970s when investigative newspaper coverage and grassroots door-to-door health surveys began to reveal a series of inexplicable illnesses—epilepsy, asthma, migraines, and nephrosis—and abnormally high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the Love Canal neighborhood.  As it turns out, consecutive wet winters in the late 1970s raised the water table and caused the chemicals to leach (via underground swales and a sewer system that drained into nearby creeks) into the basements and yards of neighborhood residents, as well as into the playground of the elementary school built directly over the canal.  After a series of frustrating encounters with apathetic NYS officials, who were slow to act but quick to dismiss the activists (most of whom were working-class women who lived in the neighborhood) as a collection of hysterical housewives, President Jimmy Carter declared a state of emergency in 1978 and had the federal government relocate 239 families.  This left 700 families who federal officials viewed as being at insufficient risk to warrant relocation, even though tests conducted by the NYS Department of Health revealed that toxic substances were leaching into their homes.  After another hard battle, activists forced Carter to declare a second state of emergency in 1981, during which the remaining families were relocated.  The total cost for relocation of all the families was $17 million....

The NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) (click here) grew out of the deadly and debilitating tragedy of the Love Canal.

Where does someone become educated to Green Chemistry?

Green Chemistry programs have been instituted in nearly half of the USA's universities and colleges.

Alabama (click here)

• University of Alabama; Center for Green Manufacturing
  Research center focused on ionic liquids, biorenewables, novel separation strategies and more.

Arkansas

• Hendrix College; Toad Suck Institute for Green Organic Chemistry
  Green chemistry incorporated into bachelor's curriculum

California

• University of California, Berkeley; The Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry
  Innovative courses for chemistry and engineering majors and nonmajors, green labs, and applied research
• California Institute of Technology
  Courses focusing on global environmental issues and solutions and biocatalysis research...

Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

Green chemistry:

• Prevents pollution at the molecular level
• Is a philosophy that applies to all areas of chemistry, not a single discipline of chemistry
• Applies innovative scientific solutions to real-world environmental problems
• Results in source reduction because it prevents the generation of pollution
• Reduces the negative impacts of chemical products and processes on human health and the environment
• Lessens and sometimes eliminates hazard from existing products and processes
• Designs chemical products and processes to reduce their intrinsic hazards

The fact that some universities have not applied "Green Chemistry" to their curriculum doesn't mean they won't in the future. 

"Green Chemistry" is a revolution within the USA's demand for better products.

Green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the generation of hazardous substances. EPA's efforts to speed the adoption of this revolutionary and diverse discipline have led to significant environmental benefits, innovation and a strengthened economy.

It is Sunday Night

"Little Green" written and performed by Joni Mitchell

Born with the moon in Cancer
Choose her a name she'll answer too
Call her green and the winters can not fade her
Call her green for the children who have made her little, green
Be a gypsy dancer

He went to California
Hearing that everything's warmer there
So you write him a letter, say, "her eyes are blue"
He sends you a poem and she's lost to you
Little, green, he's a non-comformer

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There'll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the night's when the Northern lights perform
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes and sometimes
There'll be sorrow

Child with a child pretending
Weary of lies you're sending home
So you sign all the papers in the family name
You're sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed,  little green
Have a happy ending

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There'll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the night's when the Northern lights perform
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes

The problem with conservative as it always has been is it's willingness to see life in little contrast.

Conservatism has brought 3 strikes and in laws, mandatory sentencing and most of all a minority with higher incarceration rates than any other in the world. 

January 8, 2016
By Matt Appuzo

Mr. Sessions said that police officers (click here) faced unfair criticism for their use of force. He believes that legal action by the Justice Department has discouraged officers from doing their jobs....

The conservatism of 2001 removed compassion from legislative measures. It is not about people anymore, it is about crony politics and Wall Street. The conservatism of the 21st Century is ineffective and regressive.

The Democrats rebuilt the USA after 2008 and now the Republicans are going to remove regulations and send the economy into a negative spiral with mounting national debt because of increased deficits. 

The only way of stabilizing the USA is to demand freedom of local governance and protection of local economies. Right wing extremism in the Attorney General's office won't accomplish that.

It would not surprise me if the USA is brought up on human rights violations.