BEIRUT — The toppling of the presidents in Tunisia and Egypt precipitated a tumult of revolutionary fervor that promises to transform the Middle East, but the potential collapse of the Syrian regime could wreak havoc of a very different kind. Tweet It's long, no doubt. But after the 2 months of pot-shots and doomsday scenarios hanging around Lyles and Oregon, it's worth the listen being that he has finally spoken. Apparently he wasn't banging 'Strunks mom, so that's cool. I guess? Can I just say that I love the sneaky backhanded comments towards Tejas at [...] Jennifer Egan's novel takes the fiction category and Michael Lewis' saga of the financial meltdown gets the non-fiction nod. Children's author Beverly Cleary is given the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement. Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer-winning novel "A Visit From the Goon Squad" and Michael Lewis' "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine," which tells the story of savvy investors who foresaw the financial meltdown and cashed in on it, were among the winners Friday at the 31st annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The untimely activation of the doomsday machine forces the Fringe team to make life changing choices. The United States has never defaulted on its debt and Democrats and Republicans say they don't want it to happen now. But with partisan acrimony running at fever pitch, and Democrats and Republicans so far apart on how to tame the deficit, the unthinkable is suddenly being pondered. WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States has never defaulted on its debt and Democrats and Republicans say they don't want it to happen now. But with partisan acrimony running at fever pitch, and Democrats and Republicans so far apart on how to tame the deficit, the unthinkable is suddenly being pondered.... share: digg facebook twitter WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, some experts are pondering the next doomsday scenario — a massive oil well blowout in the icy waters off Alaska's northern coast. With no roads connecting remote coastal towns, storms and fog that can ground aircraft, no deep-water ports for ships and the nearest Coast Guard station about 1,000 miles away — it would be nearly impossible to respond on the scale that was needed last year to stop a runaway oil well and clean up the mess. Unlike the Gulf, where tens of thousands of oil wells and runoff have tainted the waters for decades, a spill in the Arctic risks tainting a pristine and sensitive landscape, one that has not been as well studied and where drilling in federal waters is limited. In the aftermath, experts such as Thad Allen — the government's point person on the Gulf spill — and the presidential oil spill commission have questioned whether companies and the government are adequately prepared to overcome the challenges of responding to an Arctic spill. "We ought to be extremely careful about the Arctic, ... share: digg facebook twitter WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, some experts are pondering the next doomsday scenario — a massive oil well blowout in the icy waters off Alaska's northern coast. With no roads connecting remote coastal towns, storms and fog that can ground aircraft, no deep-water ports for ships and the nearest Coast Guard station about 1,000 miles away — it would be nearly impossible to respond on the scale that was needed last year to stop a runaway oil well and clean up the mess. Unlike the Gulf, where tens of thousands of oil wells and runoff have tainted the waters for decades, a spill in the Arctic risks tainting a pristine and sensitive landscape, one that has not been as well studied and where drilling in federal waters is limited. In the aftermath, experts such as Thad Allen — the government's point person on the Gulf spill — and the presidential oil spill commission have questioned whether companies and the government are adequately prepared to overcome the challenges of responding to an Arctic spill. "We ought to be extremely careful about the Arctic, ... The six senators -- three Democrats, three Republicans -- working behind closed doors to deal with the nation's debt crisis have put aside the hyper- partisanship of today's Washington and are engaging in the give-and-take necessary to craft an agreement. For months, as a group of senators known as the "Gang of Six" secretively holed up in the Capitol, their unusual, bipartisan meetings frequently included some version of the doomsday speech. Even though it was only last week that news came out that Windows 7 has finally eclipsed Windows XP in market share, there are still a lot of people out there running Windows XP. That hasn't stopped Microsoft from setting up a doomsday clock for those users, letting them know that Windows XP will no [...] Marcus Wohlsen has covered startup culture, the maker scene, and the marijuana industry as a reporter in the San Francisco bureau of The Associated Press. His first book, Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life, was published this week by Current. I asked him to contribute a few pieces about the biotech underground to run on Boing Boing. Here's the second one. (Read the first one.) SAFETY/RISK: The "great and terrible power" of indie biotech? Anxiety about scientists "playing god" crops up in two main contexts: apocalypse and genesis. Robert Oppenheimer famously sensed this when he recalled the Bhagavad Gita upon the detonation of the first atomic bomb: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." At the dawn of the genetic engineering era in the 1970s, some saw the end of the world in manipulating life's origin. "Biologists have become, without wanting it, the custodians of great and terrible power," Caltech biology chairman Robert Sinsheimer is quoted as saying in a 1977 Time magazine article headlined "Doomsday: Tinkering with Life." "It is idle to pretend otherwise." Though the U.S. landscape now teems with genetically engineered crops and genetically engineered cancer drugs extend life ... If at least one bright spot emanated from the financial crisis, it's that the economic despair washed away, for a short time, endless talk of an Internet investment bubble. PRYPYAT, Ukraine (Reuters) - Only a Hollywood doomsday movie can prepare a visitor for Prypyat, the ghost town at the epicenter of the world's worst nuclear disaster. Is there a solution to antibiotic-resistant bacteria?
Key Words: doomsday
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Friday, May 6, 2011
‘Doomsday scenario’ if Syria fails The Sports Brewery Willie Lyles speaks! chats with Jason Whitlock 'Goon Squad' and 'The Big Short' win L.A. Times Book Prizes TV Review Fringe 602 a.m. EST U.S. default could be doomsday for economy US option Gulf disaster renews debate over Arctic oil spill anniversary on drilling Gang of Six gives oldtime politics a try Microsoft is counting the days until Windows XP dies S&P's $5 trillion bank tab Biopunk great terrible power indie biotech Four More Years Blowing Venture Bubbles Postcard from Chernobyl vision Apocalypse Doomsday bugs
