Never should foreign measures be used for unfamiliar items (3 liter bottle, fine) in U.S. media without U.S. measures being given as well. The CIA World Factbook, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, uses nothing but foreign measures. It should be defunded or FORCED to give all measures in U.S. terms -- FIRST, and only then, if at all, in foreign measures. Not 1 American in 100,000 knows how big 353,000 square kilometers is.

There is no purpose to these things. They just happen(ed). No "Divine Plan" lies behind them. There is no God, no purpose to life, or death, but what WE assign to it.
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There is no indication that the particular mass wildlife deaths that are the subject of this story had anything to do with human activity.
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Off-topic, as well as illegal. Advocating the overthrow of the Government is not protected free speech. I for one won't feel the slitest sorry if the FBI shows up at your door with a warrant for your arrest.
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We should all jump on reporters and media that try to force us to use the metric system. If people WANT to use metric measures on their own, fine, but Americans who don't want to should not be insulted by writers and editors who think they know better.
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Keep your vile, racist hate to yourself. [Re comment that we should sell rotting fish to Mexicans.]
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Liberals do not delite in other people's misery, unless they are guilty of serious misdeeds. Being stupid is not properly punishable. What would really happen in any environmental catastrophe is what always happens: Liberals help, Conservatives say "It's not my problem."
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The Bible, withcraft, voodoo -- always the same nonsense when people don't understand what's happening. They rush to assign some superstitious "explanation" that explains nothing. Grow up. This is 2011, not 1692 (the year of the Salem witch trials).
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Very cute: blame Iraq. What is wrong with you people?
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Seek professional help. There IS no God.
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The article certainly didn't blame anybody. Why do you insist on dragging in the concept of blame?
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Yes, you have definitely watched too much science fiction. Try sitcoms or documentaries for a while.
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If space aliens wanted us to know something, they would simply park on the White House lawn and tell us whatever it is they want us to know.
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The incidents in Arkansas were hundreds of miles inland. The incident in Maryland was something like 1,500 miles from the BP leak. The news coverage has said nothing about toxic chemicals being found.
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Which government are you accusing, the Arkansas State Government, the Louisiana State Government, the Maryland State Government, the local governments of the municipalities involved, the Federal Government? How about the United Nations? Your cynicism is irrational. Why would local, state, and Federal Government officials all suppress information about these events?
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The expression "Mother Nature" is, as these events show, insane -- unless the mother you have in mind is Medea.
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Pls cut the crap. If the people wanted Ron Paul to become President, they would elect him. Hasn't happened, and is not bloody likely ever TO happen. Remember that we had a black man elected President, and now former President Jimmy Carter says he thinks we're ready to elect a gay president. But we are not ready to elect a Radical Lbertarian President who advocates that everyone operate on the narrowest selfishness in all matters of public policy.
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The birds showed sign of blunt force, as from severe hail. No sign of disease or toxins, at least in initial investigations..
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Perhaps you believe in a Volcano-God version of God, but very few other people do. There is NO God. Try to understand the REAL world.
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You subvert what sense you make with lunatice assertions like Communist Chinese taking billions of gallons of water from the Great Lakes. Drivel.
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mortonrchrd, what conceivable reason could there be for local, state, and Federal authorities all refusing to tell us the truth? And how would such a secret be kept in the era of the Internet? Stop talking paranoid nonsense.
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The Mayan calendar merely reaches the end of a cycle, not the end of the world. But who cares what Mayans said about anything? They destroyed their civilization long before Columbus set foot in the New World.
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We cannot get back to "normal", whatever that is, until the planet's human population is REDUCED starkly to sustainable levels. There would be no deforestation or massive pollution if the planet had TWO billion or even 4 billion rather than 6.8 billion people, and rising.
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Tho fish are indeed cold-blooded, in the sense that they do not provide internal heat to keep them going, some fish are indeed temperature-sensitive. Tropical fish will die if the temperatures fall very far from tropical levels.
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Andy, political corruption is AT LEAST as commonly found among Republicans.
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None of that would explain local die-offs of selective species in a very small and limited area.
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No toxins were found. Get real. If "terrorists" wanted to make "trial runs", they would do so in ways that would kill AMERICANS, people not birds or fish.
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Please keep your insane religious fantasies to yourself. Rational people seek rational explanations. The Biblical conditions for "end of days" have not remotely been met. There has been no Antichrist, for instance. So just stop talking nonsense.
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No toxicology report thus far released supports that premise.
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No toxicology report supports any such premise, so far. And what conceivable reason would any government, at any level, have for suppressing such information? You conspiracy-theory types need to attempt to connect with reality.
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What climate change? This all occurred during periods of unusual COLD, and the "climate change" (new name) we are supposed to be worried about is global WARMING. You can't have "climate change" that makes things colder as well as hotter. That's all nonsense. Climate change, when it ac tually happens, affects extremely large areas, not one square mile in Arkansas or a few hundred square miles elsewhere.
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These fish kills are NOT happening all over the place but are isolated events.
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If you have nothing to contribute, contribute nothing. Why do you waste our time with nonsense?
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No theory of global warming explains COLDER temperatures. How credulous, calderasf, are you that you believe that colder temperatures are the result of global warming?
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Only draconian punishments will stop the litterers. Fine them $100 for a first offense, even if it's just a cigaret butt. For a second offense, arrest them, put them into orange jumpsuits, and make them clean up (without pay, of course) for 10 hours, with a sign imprinted on the jumpsuits ("Offender", so the jumpsuits could be used for various crimes). Any subsequent offense, multiply the hours by 10 for each offense. I suspect that if we did that, all of a sudden our streets, parks, etc., would become very clean indeed.
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A Congressman is elected by a district of 700,000. Scientists aren't elected by anybody. The typical scientist is no better at his or her job than is the typical file clerk or typist, and you don't get a degree in science unless you feed back what you were told. "Science" is a collective of fallible human beings in which dissent gets you punished. No grants, no media, no promotion. Toe the line or find your career shunted into a dead-end.
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Stop wasting our time on partisan anti-Obama attacks that have NO connection with this story but what you invent. No matter how distant the story from politics, some loon insists on dragging Obama into it. Kindly SHUT UP about Obama in stories about unexplained wildlife deaths.
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False. The Mayan calendar reaches the end of one cycle; then restarts.
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Fine, but not, apparently, relevant to these wildlife deaths. Warming trends are more localized than you may appreciate, the result of, for instance, deforestation.
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That is so exaggerated as to be untrue. Our forests are actually VERY healthy, in the U.S. Deforestation is a Third World catastrophe, not First World. Most states and the Federal Government require environmental-impact statements to clear a proposed development. Many landfills now have liners that prevent seepage of toxins into groundwater. What you say was more like true 30 years ago, but is now largely false. And, last I knew, nobody knows why the bees have vanished, and bees do survive, albeit in reduced numbers. It is not, in any case, the U.S. or First World that is producing the worst environmental devastation. That is all being done in the Third World, and mostly because of OVERPOPULATION. Nobody is talking about reducing the world's population. If we do NOT reduce planetary population, all talk of correcting environmental damage is pointless nonsense.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:54 PM