Maybe if the government created a special tax break for scuba-diving equipment, Republicans might be convinced to give a shit about this.

“Since NOAA’s last report in 2005, the Caribbean region has lost at least 50 percent of its corals, largely because sea temperatures have risen, Keeney said.”

Read the article: it’s the first comprehensive study of it’s kind.

Because if I didn’t, I’d never put up this post. Via the increasingly essential Angry Black Woman, here’s a transcript of a video that YouTube has since pulled but that Evan caught just in time to watch at Alternet, and he notes that the DoD is taking it “seriously.” I know it means there will be another Blogger Ethics Panel because I’m putting this up, but I don’t forget Sy Hersh’s words, or that for the most part, we have yet to see the majority of the video information that he says Senators and other government officials have had under wraps for some time now:

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We Americans are so fat. So soft, so lazy, so pathetic. This isn’t meant to be a “we suck” post, but here in DC, as I run my ass up and down three flights of stairs six or sixteen times a day moving in, I can’t help but think of this woman. I have power, electricity, potable water, flushing toilets, an internet connection (dial up for a while), DVDs to entertain me as I load up the closets and put away my shoes, decor, food and drink in the fridge…the list of luxuries goes on and on.  Read more 

Somebody, somewhere, someday was going to be driven over the edge, unable to fight off the horror being done in our name with any other weapon. In retrospect I can’t think of anybody (in this country at least) who has earned the right but Juan Cole:

In the continuing Iraqi Horror Picture Show, police found 9 heads along a road at Hadid in Diyala on Tuesday, wrapped in plastic and stuffed in fruit cases.  Read more