Weapons of Mass Destruction

It's come to my attention that Atrios, Thers, and NYMary are trying to terrorize people with YouTube clips.

I'm in an indulgent mood tonight, so I'll let it pass...for now. However, let this serve as fair warning that I'm quite prepared to unsheathe my claws, if needs be.

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

This photo of Ceratosoma trilobatum was taken by Tanguero56; click the link to see more of his work.

Friday Hope Blogging

Peter Leyden has a prediction for 2007:

American politics is entering a transformative period that is roughly analogous to a handful of other periods in American history....What happened then, and is happening now, is that fundamental economic and social restructuring gets to the point where the old politics don’t work, particularly conservative formulas that look backward. The new world’s new challenges go unsolved, and problems build to the breaking point – then a new politics begins.

That's pretty accurate, it seems to me. I doubt the "new politics" will go quite as far in the direction of sanity or morality as I'd like, but our biggest hurdle has always been noticing - or admitting, I should say - that there's a problem. I think it's fair to say that 2006, we made some impressive progress in that regard.

I also think it’s going to be very hard to be a climate denialist in 2007, and that the collapse of this industry is going to have uncomfortable repercussions for free-market fanatics in general. These people are long overdue for the ash-heap, God knows, because…well, because they’re incredibly fucking stupid, basically. Our conservatarian overlords have held back progress for decades, largely out of ill will, but I don’t think they’re going to be able to manage it for much longer. Not because Americans are suddenly going to start hugging trees or worshipping dirt, but because we’ve reached a point where it’s become obvious even to the timid, stolid "visionaries" who make up corporate America that there’s at least as much money to be gained by solving problems as by pretending they don’t exist.

Apropos of which, the Bush administration is talking about listing the polar bear as a threatened species:

The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence.

I hesitate to speculate on the logic behind this proposal, or how it might play out in terms of policy. But if it goes through, I think it’s safe to say it’ll be an epochal decision.

The same goes for Wal-Mart’s tentative plan to install solar power in stores in five states:

Wal-Mart doesn't mention a specific purchase size, but my sources tell me that the company could put solar on as many as 340 stores in the next few years. Assuming that each store utilized about 300 kilowatts of solar panels (it could be as much as 500 kilowatts), we're talking roughly 100 megawatts of solar. To put that into perspective, the solar system currently being installed at Google headquarters in California -- the largest single corporate solar installation in history -- is 1.6 MW, about 1/60th the size.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have come up with a nice way to ring in the new year:

House Democrats in the first weeks of the new Congress plan to establish a dedicated fund to promote renewable energy and conservation, using money from oil companies. 

That's only one legislative hit the oil industry is expected to take next year as a Congress run by Democrats is likely to show little sympathy to the cash-rich, high-profile business.

Let’s hope they’re serious about it, and can actually pull it off. It probably wouldn’t hurt to ask your rep to support the plan.

A new study suggests that reducing infections in intensive care units is not all that hard to do:

Hospitals will quickly slash the rate of common, costly and potentially lethal catheter-related bloodstream infections in their intensive care units (ICUs) by using cheap, low-tech, common-sense measures like hand washing, timely removal of unneeded catheters, and use of sites other than the groin to place lines when possible, according to a report from safety experts at Johns Hopkins in the Dec. 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"There's just no reason any more not to do these relatively simple things," says Peter Pronovost, M.D., professor of medicine and medical director of Hopkins' Center for Innovation [!] in Quality Patient Care….

Amazing, eh? And remember: You heard it here first!

Wisconsin has had some luck with re-establishing the trumpeter swan:

Successful efforts to re-establish trumpeter swans in Wisconsin have resulted in a flock that last summer numbered more than 500 swans. Now these majestic, but still endangered, birds are expanding their range into the central and even southern parts of the state.

Numbers of whooping crane and ruffled grouse are also increasing.

In Washington, the Nature Conservancy sealed a deal with local farmers to flood fields for the benefit of waterfowl:

Each man has committed about 70 acres to this project, which is called Farming for Wildlife. A third of that land will be flooded with a few inches of fresh water in the spring, fall and winter. This will create shallow ponds to entice thousands of birds, some of them on their way to and from the Arctic, to stop and snack on tiny invertebrates and worms as they travel along the Pacific flyway.

The farmers see the Nature Conservancy’s willingness to pay them as an acknowledgment that they should not be expected to sacrifice their land or their living for wildlife. This approach effectively turns shorebirds into another crop to manage, instead of grounds for a lawsuit."

Also in Washington, the destruction of the Goldsborough Dam has done wonders for the salmon population:

Along the way, scientists are getting a glimpse of what can happen when a dam, albeit a small one, is demolished: As fish gradually reclaim their former habitat, Goldsborough Creek is becoming a more important source of salmon for the southern tip of Puget Sound.

Though small, this dam is a harbinger of things to come in the Northwest. Seven dams in Washington and Oregon, including two big dams on the Elwha River in Olympic National Park, are slated for demolition in the next five years.

A small village in Trinidad has managed to prevent Alcoa from siting a smelter on their farmland:

Bowing to a year of stormy protests, Prime Minister Patrick Manning said the government was scrapping plans to open an industrial park in Cap-de-Ville, in a sleepy, southeast farming region where the US$1.5 billion smelter was to have been located.

The new plan is to site the smelter offshore. But something tells me it may run into some snags:

"We have a consensus. We will protest," said Suresh Seepersad, a spokesman for the Otaheite Fishermen's Association. "As fishermen and residents of the area, we will be ready to die for this cause," he said.

Alcoa has also been obliged to shut down a polluting plant in Texas:

The consent decree stemming from the 2002 federal court lawsuit filed by Neighbors For Neighbors Inc., Environmental Defense and Public Citizen Inc. citing air pollution from Alcoa’s aging Sandow Power Plant, required Alcoa to upgrade the power plant, shut down the power plant or decommission the plant and rebuild - the option Alcoa chose....

Researchers in the UK are about to commence human testing of a universal flu vaccine. Caveat lector is my advice, but there’s no reason you can’t keep your fingers crossed. If all else fails, the town of Croydon is seeking alternative strategies for disposing of corpses:

BURIALS in unmarked graves with bio-degradable coffins may be the only way to beat pollution and a chronic lack of graveyard space in Croydon.

Southeast Asia is getting tough on wildlife poachers:

Long outgunned and outmaneuvered by smuggling gangs, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed last year to form the Wildlife Enforcement Network to combat a black-market trade in plants and animals that generates $10 billion in revenue each year -- third behind illicit dealings in weapons and drugs.

Apparently, the USA has contributed $2.7 million to anti-smuggling groups. That’s good, but more would be better. In addition to being reprehensible and stupid, this trade poses a serious public health risk.

Speaking of Southeast Asia, a plant native to Ambon may be a valuable weapon against diarrhea (which, as I always feel compelled to mention, kills 1.8 million children per year):

A unique Mayo Clinic collaboration has revived the healing wisdom of Pacific Island cultures by testing a therapeutic plant extract described in a 17th century Dutch herbal text for its anti-bacterial properties. Early results show that extracts from the Atun tree effectively control bacteria that can cause diarrhea, as claimed by naturalist Georg Eberhard Rumpf, circa 1650. He documented his traditional healing methods in the book Ambonese Herbal.

Rumphius is an endlessly fascinating character, by the way, and the story of how his work was written and published is truly harrowing:

After going blind in 1670, Rumphius continued work on his six-volume manuscript with the help of others….In 1687, with the project nearing completion, the illustrations were lost in a fire. Persevering, Rumphius and his helpers first completed the book in 1690, but the ship carrying the manuscript to the Netherlands was attacked by the French and sank, forcing them to start over from a copy that had fortunately been retained. The Herbarium Amboinensis finally arrived in the Netherlands in 1696. However, "the East India Company decided that it contained so much sensitive information that it would be better not to publish it." It finally appeared in 1741, thirty-nine years after Rumphius's death.

The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet is beautifully written and illustrated; it’s one of my favorite books of natural history.


You can get it cheap from Amazon sellers, or – sad to say – in bookstores that carry remaindered titles.

The picture at the top is titled "Solar Effect in the Clouds – Ocean" (1856). It's part of a glorious online exhibition of photographs by Gustave Le Grey. I was also very impressed, this week, with an exhibition called The Human Factor, which showcases "The Industrial Life Photograph Collection" at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library. Here's a 1934 photo of silverware being electroplated:


BibliOdyssey has made a last-minute bid for best post of the year with a collection of images of stilt walkers. Here’s an evocative sample:


Almost as remarkable as this illustration is the title of the book whence it came: Across the Great Saint Bernard: the Modes of Nature, and the Manners of Man (A.Sennett/H.Percival, 1904). That’s right up there with John Stewart’s Roll of a Tennis Ball Through the Moral World (1812).

Last, in administrative news, I've been trying to post more frequently at Injudicious Gardening, which is my online commonplace book. I've also created a blog called Dime Geography as a dumping-ground for photos I've taken while on my appointed rounds. Not much there at the moment, but I hope to do more with it in the coming year. Oh, and Abie will be glad to know that I intend to switch to the new Blogger over the weekend, which'll apparently allow me to use tags.

Stick Figures in Peril

This photo was taken by Uh...Bob. It's part of the Stick Figures in Peril Flickr pool.

"Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward."

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

The lovers of Glossodoris cruenta are
Happy, cheerful, well-fed;
As for me, my arms are broken
Through having hugged the clouds.

(Photo by Jun Imamoto.)

Friday Hope Blogging

San Francisco and Oakland are requiring restaurants to stop using styrofoam containers:

[T]he new laws not only ban the foam but also encourage food establishments to reduce their use of all plastic in favor of materials that are biodegradable or can be composted, such as SpudWare, the trademark for cutlery made of potato-starch.

Here's hoping they'll also require restaurants to capture and use waste heat:

Take a peek inside the kitchen of any busy restaurant and you'll quickly realize there's a lot of heat being produced, and wasted. Ovens are constantly on and being opened, grills sizzle with burgers and steaks, pots boil with soups, sauces and pastas, and hot water and steam wash dishes and cutlery. Where does all that heat go? Well, it usually gets sucked up an exhaust stack and released into the air.

Meanwhile, under a separate process, natural gas is typically used to heat up municipal water and, in the winter, the fresh air coming into a restaurant through an intake vent.

"Why buy gas to heat a restaurant when thousands of dollars of that heat is sent up an exhaust stack every month?" says Jeff Martin, president of Martin Air Systems.

The Burlington entrepreneur says there's no reason for such waste – and he's proving it. For the past three years his company has retrofitted a number of restaurants around the GTA with a system that captures otherwise wasted kitchen heat and uses it to pre-heat water and restaurant air.

The batfish has apparently changed its eating habits, which is good news for coral reefs:

Scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) who were studying how coral reefs are lost to weed were astonished when, after removing a cage from a particularly weedy bit of reef, the rare batfishes emerged out of the blue and cleaned up most of the weed.

Most people would rather save coral reefs than parasitic flies, but the latter - amazingly enough - have their uses:

A parasitic fly may revolutionize hearing aid technology. Cornell's Chronicle reports how researchers there and elsewhere have found the Ormia ochracea fly has amazingly acute hearing, able to detect the location of a sound within two degrees. Heretofore such acuity was thought possible only in large creatures like humans, whose ears can be placed many centimeters apart, but these flies' entire bodies are smaller than the smallest hearing aids today.

The Coast Guard's plan to shoot millions of rounds of lead ammo into the Great Lakes is dead. (That'll learn 'em to go up against Interrobang.) And Boston is requiring all new large buildings to meet green building standards.

The bushmen of Botswana have won a landmark case against the Botswanan government:

Judges in Botswana ruled two-to-one that the country's government removal of thousands of bush people from their ancestral lands was illegal and unconstitutional. The government moved the bush people to another settlement, which the bush people argue was a "poverty trap"...

The ruling is seen as a wider test of whether governments can legally move people from their tribal and ancestral lands."

Inhabitat reports on FuseProject's XO computer, which is designed for technologically underprivileged children:

The device boasts a slew of streamlined features, from its Wi-Fi antenna “rabbit ears” and energy-efficient LCD to the digital writing tablet and integrated video camera. Networking capabilities allow children to connect to each other, their school, their teacher, and the Web. And if that weren’t enough, the machine runs off of power from a variety of sources- from rechargeable batteries to hand cranks, and eventually solar energy. When closed, the laptop features an integrated handle and is completely protected from dust and dirt, allowing each student to transport their laptop to and from school. Aesthetically, the XO is simple yet kid-friendly, engaging, tactile, and even anthropomorphic.

The Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit group "committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource," has launched a new open-access site:

PLoS ONE will accelerate the pace of scientific research because publication is faster and more interactive than ever before. No longer need there be months of delay between submission and publication. Now there is a way to share not only the results of research but also the responses, ideas, and opinions of fellow researchers as well.

And in a rather lovely confluence of religion and reason, synagogues are using Hanukkah as a example of making the most of one's energy resources:

The central tale of the holiday involves a lamp in a liberated temple burning for eight days when the Jews had enough oil for only one day. As a result, Jews light a nine-armed candelabra, often called a hannukiah or menorah. Eight arms represent the days, and the ninth is for a symbolic candle used to light the others....

But synagogues this Hanukkah are celebrating the light-oriented holiday by launching energy audits, giving out CFL bulbs to congregants and chanting a newly written "installation prayer" for the changing of the bulbs.

Flickeur (via Coudal) is an amazing site created by Mario Klingemann, which randomly assembles "films" from images on Flickr.

Flickeur works like a looped magnetic tape where incoming images will merge with older materials and be influenced by the older recordings' magnetic memory. The virtual tape will also play and record forward and backward to create another layer of randomness. This principle will create its own sometimes very suggestive or scary story.

American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850 – 1920 comprises 2,800 magic-lantern slides featuring “views of cities, specific buildings, parks, estates and gardens," including the Winsor McCay-esque view of San Francisco at top. Not sure how I missed this site, but I’ve been making up for lost time all week!

Vilar allows you to search a huge database of of architectural and landscape features, by century, country, and typology. If you’re looking for pictures of 16th-century French archways, this is the site for you! Unless, that is, you're bothered by high-maintenance interface and confusing navigation, in which case you should proceed directly - without passing "Go" or collecting $200 - to this gallery of postcards from the Detroit Publishing Company:

I also recommend Jim Reed's photos of "severe and unusual weather." And, via Things, this gallery of photos from the drowned village of Lago di Vagli.

Huh?

While it's not as damning as Bill Bennett's observation that people like Al Gore are complaining about global warming while it's snowing (in the Northern hemisphere, at least), Iain Murray has detected a fairly lurid example of climate-alarmist hypocrisy:

When the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, we heard repeatedly that Congress was blocking urgent action on global warming and that something had to be done NOW before it was too late. Now, with people who have argued that hearings on the matter were a waste of time in charge, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change simply states:

[W]e are optimistic that enactment of mandatory US climate action is plausible by 2008 and likely by 2010.

Huh? Where are the demands for action now? What can have changed to calm them down so much? It's almost as if this is merely a political issue to leverage for further electoral gain, not the crisis they've been banging on about.

One can be forgiven for assuming that "them" refers to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which generally takes a business-friendly, market-based approach to emissions reduction. Here's president Ellen Claussen speaking at Yale in March of 2006:

[W]e’ve seen an up-tick in Congressional interest in this issue. Granted, these proposals may not become law right away, probably not before 2008, but I believe it is only a matter of time before limits on greenhouse gas emissions are in place.

And here she is in 2004:

The United Kingdom...has set 2 goals, a near term goal of a 12.5-percent greenhouse gas emission reduction by 2012 and a longer term one for a 60-percent reduction within 50 years. The United States needs to adopt something similar....

I'm nitpicking, of course. The larger question is, if climate change alarmism truly provides effective "leverage for further electorial gain," then why on earth would these wild-eyed one-worlders ever stop "banging on about" it? You'd think they'd be emboldened to ramp up the rhetoric in hopes of bigger and better victories.

In Murray's defense, it's quite possible that he's stupid enough to be arguing in good faith. The denialists I find really disturbing are the ones who choose to present themselves to the world as blithering nitwits.

Blood and Bravery

Jack Valenti, that rather…excitable gentleman who formerly headed the Motion Picture Association of America, explains how he taught his son about the importance of military sacrifice. He took the lad to Omaha Beach, and delivered himself of this speech:

"John, I want you to know why I brought you here." He looked puzzled. I said, "I wanted you to understand that these boys, who never knew you, nonetheless gave you the greatest gift one human can give another. They gave you the gift of freedom. They bought and paid for that gift in blood and bravery. They made it possible for you and millions like you to never have to test your own courage to see how you would react when the dagger is at the nation's belly and death stares you right in the face. You owe them a debt you will never be able to repay."

You might think that this story would end with the fruit of Valenti’s loins joining the service and going boldly forth to fight the Hun. But the reality’s a bit more drab:

We never spoke about this again until one day years later, he phoned me. "Dad, last night I saw Saving Private Ryan. You were right. They never turned back, not a one. They kept coming." His voice trembled as he spoke.

Somehow, my own voice cracked a bit with gratitude. My son remembered.

In other words, Valenti went to all the trouble and expense of traveling to Normandy in order to give his kid a deeper appreciation of a Spielberg movie.

Having demonstrated these bona fides, Valenti asks, "Does the next generation value the sacrifice of war?"

I guess we'll have to wait and see how choked up they get during Live Free or Die Hard.

Incidentally, John Valenti had a brief career as an actor. His most notable accomplishment was playing his father in the film Path to War, which was about the Johnson administration’s decision to escalate the Vietnam War.

The Best and the Brightest

In a mid-year budget review, Australia’s treasurer announces that his drought-stricken country’s economy will thrive next year, as long as it rains:

The new spending included $300 million for projects which Mr Costello refused to reveal, and more than $1 billion for drought relief. He warned that this figure would balloon if the drought continued.

Canada’s public safety minister has been instructed to remove comments from his website that made fun of the science behind global warming:

The controversy coincides with new signals from Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the government plans to boost its environmental policies and overall plan to fight climate change and air pollution. Harper has spent the past few days insisting in a series of interviews he believes it's time to act to stop global warming because of mounting evidence that the climate is changing.

Meanwhile, two of India’s islands seem to be missing:

Official records list 102 islands in Indian Territory, but scientists examining satellite imagery now say two have disappeared and a dozen more could go under. The Sunderbans are a natural buffer shielding millions from storms and tidal waves whipped up in the Bay of Bengal.

In the South Pacific, the Carteret Islands are facing the same fate:

“We have no cars and no factories and no aeroplanes,” says Bernard Tubin, a leader on the island of Piul. “We are the victims of this greenhouse-gas emission and we are totally innocent. America sends someone to the Moon, wars are being fought and millions are being spent on warheads and ammunition. So why is it that Russia and the US and Japan and Australia cannot do anything to help us?”

In China, officials have been colluding with mine bosses to overlook safety violations:

Investigations of the deadliest mine accidents last year found that many were due to the failure of officials to enforce safety standards, Li said. He said some took bribes or illegally owned shares in mines they were supposed to regulate.

And in South Korea, official have been colluding with developers to falsify water-safety reports:

Water quality test labs and underground water developers stand accused of conspiring to fake test results and providing polluted water to 1,410 nurseries and schools nationwide.

In India, children’s toys are manufactured with scrap plastic containing high levels of lead and cadmium:

India does not have any enforceable standards for lead, cadmium and other toxic materials in toys and hitherto soft PVC toys have not been investigated as one of the possible sources of these metals’ exposure to children. These soft toys, the study says, account for 35 per cent of the total production of India’s toys.

U.S. policies ostensibly intended to help family farms are helping to destroy them:

[O]wners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out.

Furthermore, the FDA intends to close laboratories charged with protecting the public against intentional and accidental food contamination:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to close as many as half of its laboratories across the country, despite pending appropriation increases to expand this lab network to fight bio-terrorist attacks on our food supplies, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

In other news, shocking new photos indicate another Miss USA contestant may be a drunken whore. The question now raging is whether America can stand the strain of ongoing suggestive behavior among its sexually commodified young women.

Also, President Bush would like you to go shopping more.

Stabbed in the Back!

As you can see, PZ Myers has let the cat out of the bag.

Granted, he didn't plot the sparse matrices of Levinasian/Derridean Otherness, or situate this inscription properly on the Body Without Organs, but the damage is done.

Obviously, we're going to have to move to Plan B (and I'm not talking about the drug we use to murder babies and encourage worry-free sexual experimentation among teenagers).

In the meantime, let's hope Comrade Myers is working diligently on his self-criticism.

The Flea's Waltz

From the anti-Parnassus of his padded cell at WND headquarters, Bob Unruh is proposing that “separation of church and state” should be reinterpreted to mean that federal courts can't rule on cases relating to the separation of church and state. This is in support of a bit of grandstanding by the Louisiana state legislature, which recently issued this toothless challenge to federal lawmakers:

Whereas, the Louisiana Legislature recognizes that this is the season to give gifts and be charitable and an integral part of the season is the inclusion and acknowledgment of Jesus Christ, therefore, be it resolved that the Legislature of Louisiana memorializes the Congress of the United States to adopt the Constitution Restoration Act, thereby reducing the caseload of our federal courts by removing from their jurisdiction any and all cases involving the acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government as authorized by Article III, Section 2, of the United States Constitution.

Aficionados of nightmare illogic, preening pharisaism, and low-grade delirium may want to read the full document. Here’s my favorite part:

WHEREAS, Chief Justice Rehnquist in the Texas case referred to the duplicity of the United States Supreme Court in telling local governments in America that they may not display the Ten Commandments in public buildings in their communities while at the same time allowing these same Ten Commandments to be presented on these specific places on the building housing the United States Supreme Court stating, "Since 1935, Moses has stood holding two tablets that reveal portions of the Ten Commandments written in Hebrew, among other lawgivers in the south frieze.

The “other lawgivers” on the south frieze include heathens like Confucius, Solon, and Draco, all of whom are wailing in Hell as we speak. And the north frieze includes – wait for it – the archfiend Mohammed. If any state courthouses want to follow the Supreme Court’s lead in this regard, it's no skin off my nose.

Most of Unruh's article simply transcribes a somniloquy by retired judge Darrell White, which climaxes in this rapturous kerygma:

"Wouldn't it be like God for Hillary Clinton to grab onto this and say, 'I can get some mileage out of this,' or have Obama whatever-his-name-is say, 'I'm going to do this,'" White told WND.

Yes, that’s just what we're missing in this country: a truly bipartisan commitment to idolatry, cynicism, narcissism, and faux-spiritual busywork. (Well, that and a return to sensible names for colored folk, like "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown.")

Now, let's put aside all this foolishness, and consider the delicate science of flea-training, as set forth by a nineteenth-century adept:

They are placed in a reversed position to each other - one looking one way, the other another way. Thus tied, they are placed in a sort of arena on the top of the musical box; at one end of the box sits an orchestra composed of fleas, each tied to its seat, and having the resemblance of some musical instrument tied on the foremost of their legs.

The box is made to play, the exhibitor touches each of the musicians with a bit of stick, and they all begin waving their hands about, as performing an elaborate piece of music. The fleas tied to the gold paper feel the jarring of the box below them, and begin to run round and round as fast as their little legs will carry them.

This is called the Flea's Waltz.

My Appointed Rounds

Arms Control Wonk demolishes the DSB Task Force report on nuclear capabilities, and erects a veritable palace of snark in its place:

Concerned citizens should be aware, the authors warn, of “an entrenched set of views held by an influential segment of the U.S. population” ... crazy views like …

• smaller, less alert forces would be good;
  
• US emphasis on nuclear weapons might encourage proliferation;
  
• nonproliferation is more important than deterrence after the end of the Cold War;
  
• nuclear weapons should only be used to deter other nuclear threats; and
  
• that new nuclear weapons might just generally be a bad idea.

At WhirledView, Cheryl Rofer dissects the “existential threat” of nuclear terrorism:

Al-Qaeda and similar organizations have the motivation, but they have so far not managed to motivate weapons designers, experienced or incipient. Some may be disaffected, but those who have worked on nuclear weapons understand well the gravity of their special knowledge. Those who have this kind of expertise outside the weapons community are able to hold good jobs, integrated into their societies. There are always a small number of criminals and sociopaths, and recent unhappiness at the weapons labs suggests that some susceptible people might be turned. Recruitment would have to be underground, through contacts that al-Qaeda probably doesn’t have.

Effect Measure discusses the death sentence in the case of the Tripoli Six:

Science and justice have been on trial in Libya and both have lost. Today a Libyan court again condemned five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad after a retrial widely seen as unfair because it excluded exculpatory scientific evidence….

If I were to say that this Libyan court comprises subhuman vermin who ought to be boiled in their own fat, I probably wouldn’t get many complaints from the guardians of our discourse. But when David Roberts suggests a Nuremberg-style trial for climate denialists – who also have a certain hostility to science, and a certain disregard for human life - it’s an intolerable breach of civility. Thers explains why:

To grasp the full meaning of a particular "bad" expression in a particular utterance of same, what matters is the position of the speaker within the wider linguistic marketplace, a space of competing interests and valences. Which I know sounds like dirty water being squirted from an old rubber ball. But still.

[…]

Pierre Bourdieu argues that the struggle within any specific social field is to establish the dominant definition of legitimate discourse. And he's right, motherfuckers.

Speaking of competing interests and valences, Subtopia’s discussion of “Baghdad’s guillotined real estate” includes a map that has to be seen to be believed.

And with that in mind, here’s Echidne on valuing human life:

[O]ur willingness to spend money to prevent deaths is much greater when we have some knowledge of the person or persons saved. This knowledge makes the case real and the urgency greater. A similar thing happens with those who are dying in Iraq. As long as they are just numbers the deaths don't really hit us deeply. But once we are given names and other details (an old man, a child, a pregnant woman) we become more concerned.

Though all this may be natural, it can mean bad ways of spending our prevention dollars. But then it is linked to another silly thing we humans do: Not giving much credit to those who prevented catastrophes from happening while praising and adulating those who make a mess of the prevention but manage to control the catastrophe at the last minute.

(Photo at top depicts Bolivia's North Yungas Road - one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Via Things.)

A Cascade of Consequences

A fascinating article on Chinese cashmere convincingly portrays U.S./China trade as a dance of death:

[B]ehind the inexpensive Made in China tag is something Americans rarely see: the cascade of consequences around the world when the full might of Chinese production and U.S. consumption converge on a scarce natural resource….

The country's enormous herds of cashmere-producing goats have slashed the price of sweaters. But they also have helped graze Chinese grasslands down to a moonscape, unleashing some of the worst dust storms on record. This in turn fuels a plume of pollution heavy enough to reach the skies over North America.

Goats aren’t the only thing turning China into a moonscape, as I discussed in this post on the facai trade. The cashmere boom stems from increased availability at lower prices, while the facai trade is based on limited availability at higher prices. Either way, though, the result is the same: desertification.

Shatar called his goats once more, and the animals trudged into view. Their wispy coats fluttered in the wind. They limped up a hill and slumped to the ground around him. They were starving.

In addition to a shortage of grass, there's a shortage of water; this is a region that gets six to twelve inches of rain per year. "And yet," as an anonymous Mancunian once said to Friedrich Engels, "there is a great deal of money made here."

With U.S. demand at an all-time high, companies continue to build new factories and buy more expensive equipment--putting themselves deeper in debt. That glut of production, in turn, pushes prices ever lower.

Behold the awesome power of market forces! And while you're at it, behold the awesome power of global air circulation:

"We had one storm in East Asia which we called the perfect dust storm," said Barry Huebert, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii. "There are good images of it following over the Pacific as a yellow plume. When it got to Colorado, it reduced visibility enough to make the national news.

As gruesome as this story is, it’s gratifying to see such a thoughtful, thorough article in a major American paper. Plenty of journalists would feel they’d been sufficiently hard-hitting once they’d discussed the social ramifications of cashmere losing its snob appeal.

I'll come back to this issue in a moment, but first, let's look at a similar problem a bit closer to home.

To paraphrase William Blake, “If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become a proponent of mitigation banking.” I said farewell some time ago to the few illusions I had about this “market-based solution” to the destruction of wetlands. But for some strange reason, my loud-thundering disapproval seems not to have impressed anyone.

Perhaps people will listen to the St. Petersburg Times, which has an excellent special report on this appalling shell game. It's worth reading in full, but this anecdote will suffice for now:

On a broiling August morning, two would-be developers, D. Miller McCarthy and Alan Fickett, turned themselves in at the Polk County Jail. Deputies took their fingerprints and snapped their mug shots.

The state of Florida had charged the pair and their corporation with seven felonies and nine misdemeanors for allegedly building unauthorized roads that destroyed wetlands at the edge of the Green Swamp, the headwaters of most of the major rivers in Central Florida....But a judge ruled officers had bungled a search of the company's offices and excluded the evidence. Prosecutors dropped all charges.

McCarthy and Fickett reinvented themselves. They launched a company called Ecobank and became the kings of a fledgling industry called wetland mitigation banking, which makes it easier for developers to wipe out swamps and marshes.

Their biggest customer? You, the taxpayer.

What's the connection between Florida's woes and China's? Well...mitigation banking, basically:

[A] decision in Beijing in 1994 to require that all cropland used for construction be offset by land reclaimed elsewhere has helped create the ecological disaster that is now unfolding. In an article in Land Use Policy, Chinese geographers Hong Yang and Xiubein Li describe the environmental effects of this offset policy. The fast-growing coastal provinces, such as Guandong, Shandong, Xheijiang, and Jiangsu, which are losing cropland to urban expansion and industrial construction, are paying other provinces to plow new land to offset their losses. This provided an initial economic windfall for provinces in the northwest, such as Inner Mongolia (which led the way with a 22 percent cropland expansion), Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang.

An initial economic windfall. This is the same blind urge that leads bees into soda bottles and rats into traps, and yet we're supposed to worship it as the perfection of thought, and call anyone who questions it a fool or worse.

If foreign investors want to build office blocks on our coastal wetlands, we can simply flood a small meadow upstate. If the Chinese need to destroy their farmland in order to build factories that manufacture magnetic ribbons for our SUVs, they can simply shift their agricultural sector to the high Mongolian desert. Problem solved, and with no net environmental loss...at least on paper.

Words fail me, really, so I'll wrap things up with this quote from Adam Smith:

[W]hat is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others?....It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration.

Psychological Science

A new study indicates that women who describe themselves as happily married enjoy certain benefits of being in a happy marriage:

A University of Virginia neuroscientist has found that women under stress who hold their husbands' hands show signs of immediate relief, which can clearly be seen on their brain scans. "This is the first study of the neurological reactions to human touch in a threatening situation, and the first study to measure how the brain facilitates the health-enhancing properties of close social relationships," says Dr. James A. Coan, author of the study, which is published in the December 2006 issue of the journal Psychological Science....

Coan and colleagues designed a functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) study in which 16 married women were subjected to the threat of a very mild electric shock while they by turns held their husband's hand, the hand of a stranger (male) or no hand at all. The MRI was able to show how these women's brains responded to this handholding while in a threatening situation.

I haven't read the study in question, so I don't want to read too much into what appears, at first glance, to be a rather troubling methodology. However, I will take issue with the press release I'm quoting, which is titled "High-quality marriages help to calm nerves." A more reasonable conclusion would be that high-quality relationships help to calm nerves (as Dr. Coan himself implies). I suppose it's possible that further testing will show that women with a marriage certificate are more comforted by handholding than those without, but I suspect that'd have more to do with our cultural biases than anything else.

Interestingly enough, this research was undertaken at the University of Virginia. Given that state's rabid anti-gay hysteria, I can't help wondering whether the arguably transgressive act of holding hands in a clinical setting might lessen the comforting effect of contact with a same-sex partner.

Just speculation, of course...but I'm always a bit worried about the potential for "objective" tools like MRI to naturalize oppressive social structures.

Hold my hand, won't you?

Well-Intentioned Foreigners

In 1975, not long after the fall of Saigon, the Washington Post explained patiently that bad things sometimes happen to good people:

[I]t was right to hope that the people of South Vietnam would be able to decide on their own form of government and social order. The American public is entitled, indeed obligated, to explore how good impulses came to be transmuted into bad policy, but we cannot afford to cast out all remembrance of that earlier impulse.

Translation: We were nuts to think that the gooks could be civilized, but wasn't it swell of us to give them the benefit of the doubt?

In today's WaPo, Lawrence E. Harrison strikes up a variant of this tune:

The war in Iraq has produced many casualties. One lesser-noticed one may be the death of an idea -- the idea that the culture of a nation or region can be transformed quickly by well-intentioned foreigners.

Much as I admire the pitiless rigor of his analysis, Mr. Harrison worries himself unnecessarily. "Well-intentioned foreigners" will always try to spread democracy by means of airstrikes and massacres, and thoughtful commentators like Harrison will always give them an "A" for effort while reminding them that some people simply aren't up to the burdensome responsibilities of civilization. One must be realistic, after all: Not everyone can be as good and caring and honest as we are.

For the past half-century, politicians and experts in rich countries have tried to improve living standards and build democracy in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Early on, they, too, were convinced that tyranny and poverty could be defeated....

It's odd to read this at the end of a week consecrated by the Right to masturbating earnestly over Pinochet's corpse. But that's by the by. Harrison's point, stripped of (reduced to?) its liberal-humanist boilerplate, is that the goddamn darkies ain't right in the head:

[A]s I encountered daily the intractability of Latin America's problems, it became clear to me that poverty and injustice were rooted in the region's values.

And since that's the case, Alcoa may as well cash in! That way, we get to impose or exacerbate poverty and injustice for the sake of the corporate bottom line, and display our exquisite sensitivity by weeping over the inability of the Inferior Races to become civilized. And if all else fails, we can always install or support a dictator, like Pinochet, whose ideological commitment to the free market can be measured, reassuringly, in acre-feet of blood.

Lest you think I'm being too hard on Harrison, get a load of his explanation for the troubles in Haiti:

The dominant religion in Haiti is voodoo, which nurtures mistrust and irrationality. Its roots are in the Dahomey region of West Africa -- what is today Benin. The levels of income, child malnutrition, child mortality, life expectancy and literacy are virtually identical today in Haiti and Benin.

The roots of Haitian voodoo "are in the Dahomey region of West Africa," eh? I wonder why that might be.

Besides, Harrison has no reason to claim that voodoo is the dominant religion in Haiti. That distinction goes to Catholicism, which some observers - including Harrison, as we'll soon see - have found to be less than rational itself, on occasion.

But let's not split hairs. The important thing is, we've ascertained that the Haitians are painting themselves with mud and beating on their goatskin drums; their yellow eyes are rolled back in their heads, and their breasts and penises are swaying hypnotically in the Plumeria-scented breeze of a tropical midnight. Clearly, there's no point looking for civilized values there.

The situation is much the same in Latin America, sad to say. An eternal peonage ideally suits the impressionable natives of those lands; in many respects, they are little more than disobedient, lazy children, and are prone to all sorts of dangerous mischief unless kept busy. In Asia, meanwhile, the queer superstition of "Buddhism" inculcates the fatalism for which its inhabitants are famous; if life is an illusion, civilization is doubly so, and it may even be that certain of these races have sought out political tyranny, the better to transcend it by means of that unmanly quietism propounded by Siddhartha Gautama.

Where then may we find true civilization?

Some religions and cultures do better than others at promoting personal responsibility, education, entrepreneurship and trust -- all values that shape political and economic development. Protestant societies -- above all, the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden -- have generally done better than Catholic nations, particularly those of Latin America. Confucian societies such as Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and now China have produced transforming economic growth. Islamic countries, even those with oil, have not.

Well, except for Malaysia and Qatar. And maybe a couple of others.

To his credit, Harrison understands that even some non-Muslim religions have an anti-progress streak:

Catholic ambivalence about free markets has contributed to Latin America's costly dalliances with socialism....Orthodox Christianity's similar ambivalence has contributed to anti-capitalist currents in Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Support of democratic capitalism by both religions, coupled with their concern about injustice, corruption and crime, could play a key role in progressive cultural change.

In other words, these religions need to drop all their otherworldly mumbo-jumbo, and start preaching the Gospel According to Milton Friedman. That way, we well-intentioned foreigners can gradually homogenize nonconforming cultures, in part by convincing the poor that despite any appearance to the contrary, their lack of clean water and adequate medical care amounts to a failure of personal initiative.

If we're going to remake the world in our image, we also need to weed out dishonesty and petty scheming:

Costa Rican psychiatrist Luis Diego Herrera argues that child rearing in his country typically upholds shrewdness over honesty. "Children are taught contradictory standards of behavior," he said. "They are supposed to abide by the rules, but if they break them, the important thing is to get away with it."

I'm as shocked as you by what they've been getting away with down Costa Rica way, and I think we can both agree that there's no better remedy for this cynical outlook than a stern dose of free-market dogma.

Harrison is a Serious Person, so he knows that "ambivalence about free markets," like other forms of third-world "mistrust," is a sort of mental illness. Granted, our attempts to raise these backwards people out of the muck may have led to the occasional anti-labor bloodbath, or worse. Regardless, we perceive that our good intentions outweigh - or even ennoble - these little missteps, and so should everyone else. To do anything less is to block the path of Civilization.

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

This gorgeous photo of Chromodoris kuniei (rear) and Phyllidia ocellata was taken by Erwin Kodiat at Tulamben, Bali.

Click the link to see his other photos.

Friday Hope Blogging

Iraq's marshes continue to recover from the damage Saddam did to them in the aftermath of the first Gulf War:

A restoration project has revived nearly half Iraq's marshlands, which were drained by Saddam Hussein to punish the country's restive Shiite Muslim majority, the United Nations has said....The project has brought safe drinking water to some 22,000 people, according to the U.N. agency.

The project is funded by the Japanese and Italians, and managed by the UN Environment Program. For their next trick, maybe they could work on reviving the wetlands our government has vindictively drained.

The Chinese government is going to start buying green products:

China's Ministry of Finance and the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) have announced that starting in 2007, the nation’s central and provincial governments will prioritize their purchasing of environmentally friendly products and services.

Sounds like a fairly big market, for companies that are interested in that sort of thing.

California will be allowed to impose air-quality restrictions on small engines:

Engines under 50 horsepower account for 7 percent of smog emissions in California from mobile sources - the equivalent of about three million cars. The engines also power pressure washers and small generators but most are on lawnmowers.

Senator Kit Bond (R-Obviously) has been blocking this legislation for years because a powerful manufacturer in his state couldn't be bothered to add catalytic converters to its small engines, even though the rewards would include excellent PR, consumer goodwill, maintaining its status as the industry leader, and boosting its sales in the fifth-largest economy on earth. Clearly, someone at Briggs & Stratton Corp. needs to bone up on the difference between positions and interests.

Come to think of it, there are plenty of American manufacturers who'd better re-read that paradigm-shattering utopian tract Who Moved My Cheese?, now that the EU's REACH program has finally been signed into law:

"REACH does not limit its provisions to trade in chemicals but also [affects] trade in products, from airplanes to adhesive tape. It applies equally to products made in Europe and products made outside Europe."

Nevertheless, Russell said, "the U.S. chemical industry is going to focus quickly and smartly on getting the job done. Our customers need our products and we have a strong motivation to continue to supply them."

Remaining competitive by adapting to market conditions? That's thinking "out of the box," alright.

Another prospective piece of legislation would block California utilities from buying coal-generated energy produced in other states:

Under the rules, the state's investor-owned utilities would not be allowed to buy power from any source that spews more carbon dioxide than does a modern natural gas power plant. Specifically, the source could not emit more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide for every megawatt hour of electricity produced. That's enough energy to light 750 homes for one hour.

Speaking of California, did I mention that Richard Pombo (R-Gehenna) is no longer a member of the United States Congress?

Among his top goals, Rahall listed reform or repeal of Republican legislation and Bush administration policies giving oil and gas companies breaks on royalty payments. He wants to rewrite the Mining Law of 1872 to put environmental controls on gold, silver and other hard-rock mining, and extract royalty payments from mining companies.

Rahall said there would be no more attempts to rewrite the Endangered Species Act to give more rights to property owners — a priority of Pombo’s — and said he supports maintaining existing bans on offshore drilling, and would lean toward making them permanent.

Union Pacific is testing a new scrubber for locomotive exhaust:

HUG Engineering, one of the world's top makers of pollution control devices for older rail and marine engines, made the scrubber and is testing it on six other locomotives in its home country of Switzerland.

Five oil companies will start paying royalties on oil and gas they extract from the Gulf of Mexico:

According to Interior Department, the overall loss to the government has been about $900 million, which should have been paid by 49 companies holding the leases.

There's also a long-overdue criminal investigation of the government agency charged with collecting these royalties:

That investigation is being run by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which examines suspected criminal violations by federal employees. The focus of the second investigation is unclear, but it is being conducted by the inspector general with help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Outrage is mounting over the Coast Guard's insane plan to turn the Great Lakes into a shooting gallery:

[O]pposition to the proposal is formidable and growing, led by an alliance of 80 mayors from eight states and Canada who called on the Coast Guard last month to drop the plan. More than a dozen environmental groups have asked for changes in the project and a deeper study of the effect on the ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of lead bullets.

The DoE makes a bold claim:

If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department of Energy finds that "off-peak" electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent of the country's 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in hybrid electrics.

Triple Pundit describes an interesting development underway in a disadvantaged area of Chicago:

A greenhouse is the air intake site for the ventilation system. A retention pond located on the premises can handle a 100 year storm event for the entire plot. Rainwater is collected from the roof and put on trucks to be used by the landscaping company. The building makes good use of a solar thermal system that works in partnership with the geothermal systems and provides heat, shades the entryway, and heats water. As you might expect in the windy city, a 67’ wind tower will be constructed to house two 2 kW wind turbines. A green roof will be planted that will feature trees, serving both as insulation and to reduce the heat island effect.

I suspect the building will be finished long before we see solar panels made from blueberries, but one never knows. The problems with, and promise of, organic (i.e., silicon-free) photovoltaics are described in more detail here. Meanwhile, a new solar cell has set a light-to-energy conversion record:

"This is the photovoltaic equivalent of the four-minute mile," affirms Larry Kazmerski, director of the Department of Energy's National Center for Photovoltaics in Colorado. "This is a disruptive technology that eventually could provide us, at least in the Southwest, with cost-competitive electricity fairly quickly."

In other solar news, an SF-based nonprofit has devised a brilliant plan to make solar power affordable for people in low-income neighborhoods:

Here’s a quick breakdown of what they do: They provide free design and free installation services – all the homeowner is responsible for is the cost of the equipment. The solar panels and inverters (usually obtained with discounts) are paid for with PG&E rebates and low/no interest loans (all of which they help apply for). The labor is provided by professional installers that donate their time and volunteers that they train (I’ve sat in on the training, but have yet to be volunteer labor). And homeowners participate in the installation, gaining potentially valuable job skills.

Once the systems are installed, these families stand to save money each month because the loan payment is less than their reduction in energy costs.

Aren't you grateful you're not a witless conservatarian hack like Debra J. Saunders, and can appreciate the beauty of this idea?

"Squid-inspired design" sounds like a reference to PZ Myers' wardrobe. But it's actually a new example of biomimesis:

Inspired by the sleek and efficient propulsion of squid, jellyfish and other cephalopods, a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher has designed a new generation of compact vortex generators that could make it easier for scientists to maneuver and dock underwater vehicles at low speeds and with greater precision.

In addition, the technology - seemingly inspired by the plots of two classic sci-fi films - may soon allow doctors to guide tiny capsules with jet thrusters through the human digestive tract, enabling them to diagnose disease and dispense medications.

The Popuplady offers animated demonstrations of Lothar Meggendorfer's pop-ups, including the Beetle, the Hedghog, the Snail, and these ill-mannered monkeys:


If that whets your appetite for movable paper images, proceed directly to this exhibit of Pop-Up and Movable Books, which also includes some nice animations.

You can also visit Pop Goes the Page, which has some lovely specimens once you get past the site's hideous design and shoddy interface. Or you can skip it, and spend the rest of the day at Molecular Expressions, whence comes this photomicrograph of tonic water:


I enjoyed Apiculture and Culture, especially the section on bee metaphors. However, it's not nearly as stunning as Herbals and Insects. You might also have a look at this exhibition of engravings by Abraham Bosse, and this collection of Australian ephemera from Monash University.

I'm also taken with this history of pantomime, both for its amazing stage sets:


And its rather sad photographs of animal impersonators:


I have no idea what this site is all about, but it's got some great graphics, as thus:


Last, if you weren't living in Dayton, Nevada in the seventies, here's your chance to see what you missed.

A Moral Choice

On most days, Jonah Goldberg is simply The Corner's equivalent of a garden gnome. But every once in a while, he manages to transcend his status as a tacky, useless eyesore and reveal himself as a truly horrifying sociopath.

One such occasion, as Atrios reminds us, was his argument with Juan Cole over which of them was more knowledgeable about Iraq. Goldberg threw down this gauntlet almost two years ago:

I do think my judgment is superior to his when it comes to the big picture. So, I have an idea: Since he doesn't want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now). This way neither of us can hide behind clever word play or CV reading. If there's another reasonable wager Cole wants to offer which would measure our judgment, I'm all ears. Money where your mouth is, doc.

Superficially, it seemed easy to take sides. Cole is a world-renowned expert on Middle East and South Asian history; he speaks and reads Arabic fluently. Goldberg, by contrast, is a barely sentient oaf whose idea of intellectual striving amounts to little more than humping abjectly at John Derbyshire’s leg. And he writes like a solvent-huffing hybrid of Midge Decter and Erma Bombeck.

Still, Jonah’s giddy claim to a superior grasp of “the big picture” remains compelling - in a sense - and I suppose it’s not completely impossible that in the next couple of months, he’ll be able to crow that he was right. Since Professor Cole felt that Goldberg’s jocular invitation to wager on the loss of life in Iraq was even more slovenly and sickening than his usual burblings, no money would actually change hands. It’d simply be another moral victory for Jonah, like his sweaty labors “in the trenches of Clinton's trousers.”

Earler today, Goldberg claimed that although the late, unlamented General Pinochet was “accountable for real crimes… the case for Pinochet over Castro is a no-brainer, both as an instrument of foreign policy and as a moral choice between the two…."

I’d argue that Pinochet’s taste for the most garish species of mutilation and torture made him particularly loathsome, but chacun à son goût, as the saying is. The easiest way for any American with a conscience to decide which of these dictators was more deplorable and demoralizing is to think about which one our country aided and abetted during his killing spree. Those, after all, are the crimes in which we’re collectively implicated, and which undermine our claim to be a civilized nation.

All of this is a preamble to the news that in his latest column, Goldberg has finally hit rock bottom:

I THINK ALL intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet.

This, I guess, is what freedom looks like when it's on the march. Almost two years ago, Goldberg predicted that Iraq would be a democracy by now, and that a majority of Iraqis would be happy about the invasion and occupation. Now, he’s slavering after a new Pinochet. And he doesn't even present it as some sad necessity. It'd simply be "great," like if they made an ice cream that had cookie dough and Oreos.

I hope my sincerity will make up for my lack of eloquence when I say that I really, really hate these fucking people.

Increased Destruction

There’s a scientific consensus - for whatever that's worth - that wetlands mitigate the effects of hurricanes. In an eerily prophetic 2001 article on New Orleans’ vulnerability to hurricanes, Scientific American emphasized the needs to restore coastal marshes:

A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh--an area the size of Manhattan--will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes.

After Katrina hit, calls for restoration grew more strident:

"We should not countenance another acre of coastal wetlands loss anywhere," said Jim Tripp, an environmental activist who serves on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's Advisory Commission on Coastal Restoration and Conservation. "It's foolhardy."

None of this impressed the Bush Administration, which reacts to common sense and scientific evidence in pretty much the same way that the average warblogger reacts to the sight of a military recruiting center.

Needless to say, they have a better idea:

The latest plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) would allow increased destruction of wetlands in the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. Under this new plan, developers would be able to destroy five acres of wetland per project without public input, thus threatening flood storage capacity, drinking water quality and aquatic ecosystems....

In an effort to promote re-construction, the Corps would let developers self-certify their compliance, as well as make decisions as to whether a wetland is “low quality,” meriting even less protection. Additionally, the limited safeguards that the Corps proposes in the plan are unenforceable.

In other news, thousands of the poorest refugees are still stuck in FEMA trailers, and hundreds of accused criminals find themselves in a situation that sounds rather...familiar:

In October 2005, less than two months after Hurricane Katrina struck, Pedro Parra-Sanchez was arrested for allegedly stabbing a man with a broken bottle during a fight. With the city's prison damaged by flooding, he was taken to a makeshift jail at the Greyhound bus station, then transferred to a correctional facility about 70 miles away, and later to a prison in southwest Louisiana.

That's where Parra-Sanchez sat for more than a year — never seeing a lawyer or setting foot in a courtroom. At the time of the fight, he had been in New Orleans only six days: He'd left his family in Bakersfield, Calif., and come to help with the storm cleanup effort.

By law, the district attorney should have brought Parra-Sanchez to court to formally charge him within 60 days. Instead, "he disappeared," said Pamela R. Metzger, director of Tulane University's Criminal Law Clinic.

All of which serves as a reminder that Katrina's real death toll will never be known:

"I'm telling you, all the way, it was Katrina. It just broke his heart," said Joann Bowers, a social worker at the Grace Living Centers nursing home. "You really can die of a broken heart. I don't care what anyone says."

A Highly Lucrative Target

On Wednesday, Undersecretary of State Robert G. Joseph announced that the terrorists hate our commercial and military satellites. It was good timing, given the advent of an awe-inspiring geomagnetic storm that’s expected to cause problems for our satellites and communication infrastructure.

Apparently, the threat of an Al-Qaeda strike against U.S. satellites – perhaps using an array of migratory birds like the one that, in more innocent times, carried Francis Godwin’s Domingo Gonsales to the moon – is serious enough to scuttle any talk of signing a treaty to restrict the militarization of space:

He…said terrorists "understand our vulnerabilities and have targeted our economy in the past, as they did on 9/11." He said terrorists and enemy states might view the U.S. space program as "a highly lucrative target," while sophisticated technologies could improve their ability to interfere with U.S. space systems and services.

Joseph did not identify terror groups or nations that might have such motives. An aide to Joseph, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said that information was classified.

There you have it. Try to remain calm, if you can.

Anyway, the current geomagnetic storm is expected to produce aurorae at unusually low latitudes. (FYI, a solar storm in 1859 resulted in aurorae in Rome and Hawaii, and caused telegraph wires in the United States to burst into flame.) You can check Space Weather for updates.

The Goddess of the Yangtze

The baiji, a rare species of freshwater dolphin, has been declared extinct:

The baiji dates back 20 million years. Chinese called it the "goddess of the Yangtze." For China, its disappearance symbolizes how unbridled economic growth is changing the country's environment irreparably....

Around 400 baiji were believed to be living in the Yangtze in the early 1980s, when China was just launching the free-market reforms that have transformed its economy. The last full-fledged search, in 1997, yielded 13 confirmed sightings, and a fisherman claimed to have seen a baiji in 2004.

On the bright side, it's been immortalized on this bottlecap:


Clearly, the baiji failed to adapt. Only a lunatic would suggest that we've failed to adapt to the world that sustained it for 20 million years. The baiji was unfit, but we're not. That's obvious, isn't it?

Here's Matthew Scully in Dominion:

In a strange way the more insistent human beings are of our singularity among creatures, the more aggressive and vocal in denigrating animals, the more indistinct and small we ourselves come to seem. And somehow the more humble we are in outlook, the more attentive and appreciative of the life around us, the more acutely we will feel our uniqueness and the special calling it brings.

UPDATE: You can listen to baiji sounds here. Bookmark it for your kids, so that they'll know what "the first large mammal brought to extinction as a result of human destruction to their natural habitat" sounded like. (Via Baiji.org.)

Reclaiming Christmas

Well, the War on Christmas has rolled around again, and this time, it’s personal.

Peace on earth? Not ‘til our nation’s enemies are reduced to heaps of glowing ashes. Joy to the world? Only when liberal lunatics like Nancy Pelosi are dragged from the halls of power, pickled in formaldehyde, and put on display in a cautionary freakshow. Goodwill towards men? Not until those Jew bastards get with the program and stop raining on our parade. Hell, it’s only thanks to the USA that those whiners aren’t celebrating Habakkuk - or whatever the damn thing’s called – in a concentration camp.

We’ve outgrown those fairy-tales where Christmas makes the miser irresponsible, and turns the stony-hearted industrialist into a socialistic do-gooder. 9/11 changed all that. What’s important at Christmas is the same thing that’s important the rest of the year: Trampling anyone who gets in your way, whether by failing to pledge allegience to the Savior who wisely made us the Kings of the World, or by trying to snatch the last copy of Left Behind: Eternal Forces from the local Wal-Mart.

The real Christmas is about unbending pride, unblushing self-interest, and – above all - settling scores. Sure, Christmas is about being caring and generous...to those who deserve it. But it’s also about finding out who’s "naughty," and putting lumps of coal in their stockings. That could mean a firebomb for the local abortion clinic, or a couple of nukes for downtown Teheran. Either way, the idea is to let the evildoers dip their toes in the lake of fire, and see how they like the temperature. You hear that, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? We’re making a list, and checking it twice!

A big part of reclaiming Christmas is desissifying it. Like everything else in America, it’s been neutered and muzzled by castrating feminists, multiculti America-haters, and their Big Media enablers. The real Christmas is a Doberman with a God-given thirst for heathen blood, but these traitors have changed it into a quivering little lapdog.

Take How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I don’t think I need to tell you that every Who down in Who-ville was a liberal appeaser of the worst sort. But in case you don’t remember, let’s review the facts. Because they’re weak on defense, and have made an idol of "tolerance," all their stuff gets stolen by a Grinch. On their walls, he leaves nothing but hooks and some wire. It’s a day of horror like no other.

So what do they do? Do they form a posse, hunt down the Grinch, and string him up? Do they lob a few thermobaric shells into his cave, and turn him into Roast Beast? Nope. They join hands and they sing. What kind of message does that send? Not just to the Grinch and his sympathizers, but to our children?

You know as well as I do that there are some Grinches over in Iran and Syria who’d like to steal our Christmas this year. And let me tell you, their hearts aren’t going to grow three sizes when they hear us singing “Kumbaya” in the smoking ruins of our cities and towns. On the contrary, they’re going to come in and finish the job. They’re going to give us one chance to renounce Jesus and embrace their mongrel religion. And when we refuse, they’re going to lop our heads off one by one…starting with the Jews who made such a fuss about refusing to acknowledge the Reason for the Season.

That’s what’s at stake at Christmas this year - and every year to come for the foreseeable future - and that’s why the best way you can celebrate it is to be vigilant. Santa Claus isn’t the only one who can climb down chimneys, and brightly colored packages are the perfect disguise for enough high explosives to take out most of your block. The carolers outside your house may be singing about “the little Lord Jesus,” but doesn’t mean they’re not ready to die for Allah.

Beyond that, you need to draw a line in the sand, and let everyone you meet know that Christmas isn’t about tinsel and toys and everyone living happily every after in some socialist wonderland. No, Christmas is about YOU standing up for YOUR beliefs – or God’s beliefs, more accurately – and telling the pagans, the perverts, the postmodernists, the Jews, the atheists, and the Muslims that in America, Jesus is Lord and all shall bow before him. Period, end of story.

In my opinion, there’s no better way to do this than to pay $14.95 for these politically incorrect magnetic bumperstickers. Buy ‘em for everyone on your list, even the liberals. Because in these dangerous times, it often happens that the most generous gift you can give is a piece of your mind. As Jesus himself said, “I do not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Merry Christmas!

Dunce Party USA

Just in case you haven’t gotten your fill of denialist delirium over the last couple of days, I’ll lock horns – briefly - with third-string conservatarian chatterbox Debra J. Saunders. (And yes, since you asked, I do enjoy shooting fish in barrels and taking candy from babies).

If there is a consensus, there should be no deniers.

Case closed. And if you’re some kinda fancy-pants elitist who imagines that consensus and unanimity are two different things, all I have to say to you is, this is why you keep losing elections.

Furthermore, and notwithstanding:

I marvel at those who consider themselves to be in sync with the sage voices of science when it comes to global warming, then argue that America can reduce greenhouse gases with better light bulbs and hydrogen fuel cells.

Indeed. How could using 60% less energy possibly reduce greenhouse gases? No one believes in pipe dreams like that, except for dirty fucking hippies and commie dead-enders.

In other news, soy products will turn your kids queer. I advise you to give 'em plenty of these, instead.

UPDATE: The Boston Herald reports on Iran's Holocaust Denial Hootenanny:

The Tehran conference was touted by participants and organizers as an exercise in academic freedom and a chance to openly consider whether 6 million Jews really died in the Holocaust, away from Western taboos.... It gathered 67 writers and researchers from 30 countries, most of whom argue that either the Holocaust did not happen or that it was vastly exaggerated.

If there are deniers, then there's no consensus on the Holocaust. Right, Debra?

An Undeniable Hypothesis

After completing the post below, I stumbled on an equally daft denialist rant by Professor Mike Jackson, emeritus professor of environmental health at the University of Strathclyde. His arguments are worth looking at in some detail.

The predictions by media commentators are becoming more numerous and more strident as each new piece of evidence appears to support their case.

Those...fiends.

It's true that journalism is prone to sensationalism. But it's also prone to downplaying serious problems in order to avoid inconveniencing government and business. Both tendencies distort science reporting, and this is exacerbated by the fact that science, as Pierre Bourdieu says, is "subject to structural pressure from the journalistic field."

It's interesting to think about these issues, and to try to figure out the extent to which coverage has been warped by sensationalism versus the ironclad economic logic of denialism. One thing I do know is that in 1991, an NAS panel said:

The panel finds that...greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses....Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises.

LexisNexis shows that newspaper articles referencing this study were anything but alarmist. Instead, they were careful to emphasize the "uncertainty" of climate science. Also, the WaPo and NYT gave denialists and free marketeers space to questions the panel's findings and suggestions. That's a better way to promote complacency than hysteria, it seems to me.

Global warming is a hypothesis, not fact.

A bold statement. But there's some doubt as to whether Jackson himself actually believes it:

That average temperatures have risen over recent decades - globally and here in the UK - is undeniable.

So it's an undeniable hypothesis? Fair enough.

Clues as to what the weather was like at particular times in history are provided by evidence from tree rings, from core samples of ice and from written material, but these must be read with caution.

Yes, and peer reviewed, too. Jackson seems to be implying that this isn’t happening, but evidence of impetuous or headstrong ice-core reading is scanty, as far as I can tell. Given the political implications of climate change, climate research is subject to an incredible amount of scrutiny. If it’s true that there’s an alarmist faction, it’s also true that it’s balanced by ordinary scientific and economic inertia (to say nothing of the immortal army of strawmen mobilized by the Denial Industry).

On the other hand, some politicians, some journalists and some who have a vested interest seem intent on talking up the possible occurrence and the worst consequences of an increase in global temperatures.

Of course, people who shill for Big Oil have vested interests of their own. People on both sides of every argument have vested interests, though you wouldn't always know it from reading the newspaper. Professor Jackson, in writing his op-ed, probably hopes to attain or continue enjoying certain powers and privileges. An elaborate pretense to objectivity is one of the tactics appropriate to this game, not least because it facilitates an emotional conjugation wherein the good people are scientific, and the bad people have vested interests. (Science, as everyone knows, has a vested interest in nothing but Objective Knowledge).

The only thing we seem able to say about the future with any degree of confidence is that it is unpredictable.

The future is unpredictable. However, some predictions about it are more likely to come true than others; this explains things like the insurance industry, and also lends a certain gravitas to vulgar materialism.

From here, Jackson jumps headlong into the association fallacy. The Club of Rome predicted global disaster, but they were wrong! Therefore, it’s quite likely that climatologists’ dire warnings are wrong, too.

See how hard it is to predict the future?

You have to admire a man who piles up a bunch of case histories in order to make an inductive argument against predicting the future, especially when those histories are incommensurable (e.g., the Club of Rome’s evidentiary standards, versus those of the NOAA). Also, many scientific theories have turned out to be correct, but I doubt Jackson would be impressed if I said that the confirmation of some unrelated theory made global warming more likely to be true.

Next up, Jackson offers the evergreen slur that Rachel Carson murdered millions of Africans. Tim Lambert has dealt with that issue thoroughly, thank heavens, so I'll leave it alone. One day, though, I'll get around to detailing the eerie similarities between denialist boilerplate and conspiracy-fringe rhetoric about the New World Order's plan to exterminate the "useless eaters."

Like a lot of denialists, Professor Jackson seems not to understand the difference between climate and weather:

At the moment we can be reasonably sure of the weather forecast up to about 24 hours ahead. After that the predictions become much more imprecise and much less reliable. Yet the whole basis of the global warming debate on the "pro" side is that the weather is destined to change throughout the world.

Let’s look at it this way: Suppose you’re in a casino, playing a slot machine. You can’t predict what you’ll get with each pull of the lever. However, you can expect that whatever the short-term fluctuations may be, the long-term patterns will pretty well match the house odds. Similarly, predicting the weather five days out is a separate problem from predicting climate, which comprises weather averaged over time and space. To put it another way, predicting that the climate will get wetter overall is different from predicting that it will rain at a given place on a certain day. I’m not sure how you get to be a professor of environmental health without knowing this.

Jackson ends by worrying that environmentalists wants us to “turn our backs…on so much of modern technology.” I know not what others may choose, but I’d simply like to improve modern technology. If this means casting out the normative biases currently embodied in system and product design, and creating a world whose values are alien to the people whose harebrained delusions got us into our current state of affairs, so be it.

It used to be called progess.

(Photo by DJDelmonico.)

Anchoress Awry!

Thers links to a daft denialist outburst by the Anchoress. I was steeling myself to rebut her nonsense, when I realized that I'd have to log in to leave a comment. That gave me time to remind myself that with conservatarians, it's not the quality of the argument that matters, but the stance the argument is meant to uphold. As I said chez Thers:

[S]he'd sound just as smug and haughty if she were arguing that global warming is "hoo-hah" because Piltdown Man was a hoax; or because it snowed last week in Flin Flon, Manitoba; or because Dempsey beat Firpo in '23.

Essentially, her rule of thumb is that if terrible people like Al Gore and Bill Clinton believe in climate change, it must be false:

The Global Warming Hysteria Movement, complete with Media overhype, is not real. The proof is in the politics of it.

Besides which, all sensible people understand that climate alarmism is simply a cover for the international Islamosocialist plot to enslave the world and make homosexuality and abortion compulsory. And when you face a threat that deadly, it's important not to fall prey to hysteria.

Actually, if the American media have overhyped anything in regards to climate change, it's the scientific stature of denialists and the validity of their claims. And the primary reason for this is not exactly a mystery:

It has long been known that [ExxonMobil], which in 2005 recorded an all-time record for quarterly income, has spent millions of dollars to fund climate sceptics [including Steven Milloy, who's the source of at least some of the Anchoress's misinformation--P]. Exactly how much is unknown but some estimates suggest $19m (£9.7m) since 1998.

Despite ExxonMobil's efforts, and similar ones, only about seven percent of Americans believe global warming is a hoax. I'm reminded of Melmoth the Wanderer, who Poe said "labors indefatigably...to accomplish the destruction of two or three souls, where any common devil would have demolished one or two thousand." And that, I guess, is why despite what I said above, I feel like I do have to rebut the Anchoress. Like ExxonMobil, my eye is on the sparrow.

To work, then:

Well, if you’re looking for degrees in Earth Science, then I can’t speak credibly on Global Warming. Then again, Al Gore has no degree in Earth Science, either, and he seems to have plenty of credibility on this issue for some...

This is actually very easy to explain. Suppose that I don't have a degree in astrophysics, and neither does the Anchoress. Suppose further that my review of the scientific literature leads me to accept that the sun has a diameter of 1.392×10⁶ km, and is 149.6×10⁶ km from the earth, while the Anchoress agrees with Heraclitus that the sun is the size of a man's foot and forms anew daily. According to generally accepted standards, I'm closer to the truth than she is, because there's plenty of scientific evidence for my claim and there's little or none for hers.

She goes on to say that once the press "goes orthodox" on an issue, she gets skeptical about it. I'll take her word for it, even though I haven't seen her attacking the proposition that HIV causes AIDS, or that dinosaurs formerly roamed the earth, or that it's healthier to drink water than antifreeze.

Next, she quotes someone named "Fausta," who claims that "there is no consensus on global warming." You might as well argue that since the Flat Earth Society is still accepting membership fees, there's no consensus on the shape of the earth.

You can find data to support any theory you want to - which is why 3o years ago, there was all that staggering, scary data about the coming Ice Age.

Those "data" about the coming ice age may have been scary, but they were hardly staggering and they led to no consensus at all. By contrast, anthropogenic climate change is accepted by the relevant scientific bodies of every major country on earth, including the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Meteorological Society. That doesn't make it absolutely true, of course, but it does indicate a consensus.

Having convinced herself that it's impossible for denialists to be scientifically incorrect - and isn't it funny how often conservative postmodernism-bashers find themselves espousing a vulgar antifoundationalism? - the Anchoress assumes that denialists are getting jeered at for being politically incorrect. She sheds hot salt tears over the plight of "former-media darling" Michael Crichton, whose heterodox views were suppressed so brutally that despite having no relevent credentials, he was called to testify as an expert witness before the Senate. The Establishment also scuttled his denialist novel State of Fear, limiting it to an initial printing of 1.5 million copies and relegating it to the backwater of Amazon's #1 bestseller list. As a final blow, Crichton was banned from all major media outlets, except for the ones that invited him on to discuss his work.

The truth is, out of 100 scientists, only 19 will tell you Global Warming is real....

This is an odd claim. I'm guessing that she got carried away by an apocryphal AP survey in which only 19 out of 100 scientists contacted thought An Inconvenient Truth deserved "five stars for accuracy" (as I understand it, the other scientists either hadn't seen the film at the time, or were otherwise unwilling to comment).

Also, it's interesting that the Anchoress says global warming isn't happening, period, given that she describes Bjorn Lomborg as "persuasive" (according to Lomborg, "global warming is real, and it is caused by CO2").

She also knows that global warming is a hoax because people are talking about it:

[W]hich is why Oprah needs to discuss it with Leonardo DiCaprio - that’s what you do when all you have is an idea you want to promote - you market it.

The problem is, if climate change is real, one would expect Oprah and Leonardo DiCaprio to talk about it. The Anchoress seems to have set up a rather paradoxical standard of proof: She'll believe that disruptive climate change is a real threat only if celebrities don't talk about it, or try to do anything about it. It's a bit like refusing to believe your neighbor's claim that your house is on fire, because you don't like her politics.

I possess recent memory and it serves me well. My recent memory can look back at a summer ten years ago wherein the horrific heat was finally broken with an 8 day deluge that had mothers everywhere beating their kids because they couldn’t take another day of indoors shenanigans.

Yep. Global warming is a hoax because ten years ago, there was a heatwave, and then it rained for eight days. You can't pull the wool over the Anchoress's eyes, no siree, not with that "recent memory" of hers.

Like most lay denialism, this boils down to an inability to grasp two facts:

1. Climate and weather are two different things.

2. Heat is a form of energy, and earth's oceans and atmosphere essentially comprise a heat engine.

If you don't understand this, you'll probably find even the most basic claims about climate change unintelligible. As thus:

[T]here are lots and lots of natural phenomena, btw - the earth is always cooling and heating, but I digress.

Got that? Global warming is a fraud, because we experience weather and other natural phenomena.

The Anchoress's mistake is twofold. First, she thinks that because climate change has happened naturally in the past, it must be happening naturally now. Second, she thinks that local weather and global climate are the same thing. Again, they're not.

My third and most emphatic reason for disbelieving all the Global Warming hoo-hah is a simple one that lots of true believers probably won’t understand. If the people promoting the hysteria on warming were serious - if the issue were a real one and not simply a political tool, then the hyper-concerned folks would be welcoming and heralding thoughtful environmental programs and helpful policies from any-and-all quarters, even - gasp - from the right.

Well, yes. They would. And as a matter of fact, they have. Some "hyper-concerned folks," for instance, have jumped on the nuclear bandwagon (James Lovelock being the most notable). And as I discussed here, others have praised, at least tentatively, Bush's Methane to Markets plan. Others support voluntary reductions (e.g., those pursued by Wal-Mart), as well as carbon trading and other market-based approaches. Still others are intrigued by geoengineering.

The Right hasn't actually suggested very many solutions, since it tends to agree with the Anchoress that there's no problem to solve. And those it has suggested haven't been terribly thoughtful (unless business as usual strikes you as a visionary concept). But to say that environmentalists reflexively reject any policy proposed by the Right is very easily debunked nonsense.

The only really interesting question is what happens to the world if the Anchoress is wrong, versus what happens if climatologists are wrong. Granting that I may be a bit soft on socialism, I do think most people would find mass extinctions, pandemic disease, and global starvation more frightening (and at least as likely to lead to political tyranny, for that matter).

A while back, David Roberts made an excellent point:

The arguments conservatives use for inaction on global warming seem sharply at odds with their arguments about terrorism. Consider Dick Cheney's celebrated One Percent Doctrine, which says that even a 1% chance of catastrophic terrorist attack should prompt us to respond as though it were a certainty.

Well, the chances of catastrophic damage from global warming are a hell of a lot higher than 1%. So ...

The Anchoress would deny that last point, I'm sure. But then, the Anchoress doesn't even understand that climate and weather are two different things.

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

This, I'm pretty certain, is Hypselodoris infucata, which "hath a form as a ruby mixed with crystal in one substance, or as yellow, white, red and blue mingled in a dark water; where it is as blue in green, yet each has its lustre, and shines. And the water checks the fire, so that there is no consuming there, but an eternal essence or substance in two mysteries united in one another, and yet the distinction of two principles as two kinds of life. "

(Photo by Image-Oasis.)

Friday Hope Blogging

Elliot Spitzer has closed a deal to stop sewage dumping in the Bronx River:

Four Westchester municipalities - Scarsdale, White Plains, Mount Vernon and Greenburgh - agreed to stop discharging sewage into the Bronx River by May 1, 2007, under a Nov. 28 agreement reached with the attorney general and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Better late than never, though I can't help speculating on how quickly the problem would've been solved if the effluent had been traveling from the South Bronx to Scarsdale.

Scrubbers will be installed at the Keystone Power Plant in Pennsylvania, which is one of the dirtiest in the country:

After the scrubbers are installed the plant is expected to cut 170,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 1,600 tons of particulate matter from its emissions annually. The numbers represent about 98 percent of the plant's emissions.

Brazil has protected a large chunk of the Amazon rain forest:

"If any tropical rain forest on Earth remains intact a century from now, it will be this portion of northern Amazonia," Conservation International President Russell Mittermeier said.

Ummm...hooray, I guess.

You'll also be excited to know that SUV sales are down by 15 percent in the UK. And that you may soon be able to buy a computer that's powered by a methanol fuel cell.

I'm given to understand that trees have an economic value as lumber. That being the case, you might imagine that before governments drown landscapes to create reservoirs, they'd cut down the trees. They generally don't, though, which is one reason why - as Inhabitat notes - there are "over 5 billion linear board feet of usable timber submerged in the forests of British Columbia’s lakes and reservoirs." A remotely controlled underwater robot called the Sawfish allows these underwater forests to be harvested. I think this illustration communicates the process pretty well:

Just for fun, you might want to look at this list of drowned towns. I'm also fascinated to learn that the phenomenon has generated its own subgenre of crime fiction, called reservoir noir. The author of one such book claims that there are still pecan orchards under Austin's Lake Travis.

In a tangentially related story, BushCo's demented oil-exploration policies have led to myriad archaeological discoveries in the Western states:

Wyoming State Historic Preservation Officer Sara Needles said her 13-person office can barely fathom the wealth of the archeological findings.

The office doesn't even have the time to nominate the most significant sites for the National Register, said Needles and her deputy, Mary Hopkins. Still, the very act of designating them historic or prehistoric provides legal protection, they said.

In other archaeological news, the UN has approved a draft resolution requiring the repatriation of antiquities:

“The illegal trade of antiquities is in the same category as the illegal trade of weapons, narcotics and people. It amounts to a form of organized crime that is directly related to mobsters and money laundering,” the minister said while addressing a plenary session of the UN General Assembly in New York.

A Canadian firm is apparently doing wonders with e-waste:

At the 24,600 square-metre plant owned by Noranda Recycling, much of the raw material is salvaged onsite. Even the dust produced by ground-up gadgets is sucked up and repurposed.

The company bills itself the country's most advanced e-waste recycler. It claims not to ship scraps offshore or to landfills. When Noranda hires subcontractors to dispose of hazardous parts, it monitors their practices and attempts to track the raw materials to their final resting places. "I've physically audited every one of our recyclers," says Cindy Thomas Coutts, who directs Noranda's Brampton operation.

Read the article in full; it does a good job of describing business as usual in the e-waste trade.

British researchers are working on a Malaria Atlas Project:

Simon Hay and Robert Snow (Kenya Medical Research Institute and University of Oxford), say that it has been almost 40 years since the last global map of malaria endemicity was constructed, and that "there have been no recent efforts to construct a credible evidence-based global malaria map."

Pruned discusses biocidal buildings:

As interesting as the image of viruses getting speared and eviscerated may sound, what is even more interesting is the fact that this “experimental substance, which can be applied like paint, might complement other germ control methods used in public spaces such as hospitals and airplanes.” So if the oft-forecasted influenza pandemic should come, those same public spaces will function more as biohazard filters instead of as urban vectors for the virus.

Low doses of RU-486 seem to shrink uterine fibroids:

Leiomyoma, the medical term for uterine fibroids, affects roughly half of all women aged 35 to 49. The non-cancerous tumors cause iron-deficiency anemia due to excessive menstrual bleeding, and deeply impact the quality of life for women who have this condition. Thousands of women annually opt for hysterectomies or have the tumors removed surgically because no other medical treatment has been proven effective, the study said.

“With no approved treatment for symptomatic fibroids, this study and its findings are very significant,” said corresponding author Kevin Fiscella, M.D., M.P.H., of the Department of Family Medicine Research Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “Interestingly, this is the same drug that was recently shown to prevent breast cancer in a rat model. Federal funding for research related to mifepristone should be given a high priority.”

The photo at top is from the private collection of Angela at (what is this?). I hereby command you to check out the other photos she's posted.

Afterwards, you can take a brief video tour of the Plzen Historical Underground. I also recommend A I R 33's photosets on Flickr (especially HDR and her night views of Toronto and environs).


Coudal links to a collection of Strange Soviet Buildings. And BibliOdyssey almost made me start hyperventilating with its latest grab-bag of illustrations, which includes this remarkable surrealist artifact:


Last, click here to view work by the Swiss cartographer Eduard Imhof, including this glorious 1929 image of the Aletsch Glacier, which I could stare at all day (click to enlarge):

@*%#$?!??

I'm rarely shocked by stories about environmental malfeasance. But in this case, my jaw has crashed through the floor, and is well on its way to the earth's core:

The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Honestly, I'm speechless. This scheme has no chance of succeeding, no public support, and no conceivable scientific rationale. And that's the best you can say about it. I can't even begin to imagine the thought processes at work here.

There's also some fairly astonishing news about the EPA's ongoing war on its own libraries:

EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of its shuttered libraries, including the hurried auctioning off of expensive bookcases, cabinets, microfiche readers and other equipment for less than a penny on the dollar....

In its Chicago office, which formerly hosted one of the largest regional libraries, EPA ordered that all furniture and furnishings (down to the staplers and pencil sharpeners) be sold immediately. Despite an acquisition cost of $40,000 for the furniture and equipment, a woman bought the entire lot for $350. The buyer also estimates that she will re-sell the merchandise for $80,000.

In case you missed it, EPA claims to have shut down these libraries because it's strapped for cash.

One can only hope that Henry Waxman will make good use of his subpoena power.

UPDATE: Via Political Animal:

Important Bush Administration officials are ready to leave the government rather than undergo two years of hell from Democratic committee chairmen in Congress. Leading the exodus are officials of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), fearing investigation by two chairmen, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and John Dingell (D-MI).

Serious Thinking on Iraq

This is a very tough time to be an Iraqi. They're already dealing with an incompetent occupation and a civil war, and now John Gibson is mad at them:

Whose fault is the trouble in Iraq? Bush's fault? No, it's the Iraqis' fault. They're the ones who are committing sectarian violence, not American troops. They're the ones who are using their freedom from Saddam [Hussein] to kill their neighbors instead of trying to get the power running or pump the oil or pave the streets or fix the schools or repair the hospitals.

Hmm. Just over a year ago, the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (I bet you'd forgotten it existed until now!) called for the United States to "restore Iraq’s neglected infrastructure so it can meet increasing demand and the needs of a growing economy." It's really too bad those goddamn Iraqis ruined things for everyone.

But then, that's what always happens when big-hearted dreamers like us try to lend a helping hand to conniving ingrates like the Iraqis. Gibson's quite right: we're the victims here. We may have murdered their sons and daughters, but they murdered our innocence. Sure, it grows back, like a teenage chastity-pledger's virginity, but that's not the point. The point is, we dared to envision a better world. It may not have worked out, but at least we only experimented with the Middle East, instead of something really dangerous, like socialized medicine or the Kyoto Protocol.

Which is not to say that one isn't occasionally troubled by the corpses piling up at our feet. Even Bush concedes that it's no picnic:

Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die.

And a very great comfort it is to them, I'm sure.

Something calling itself Jed Babbin claims that the Iraq Study Group report is unsatisfactory because it was cobbled together by a bunch of high-falutin' eggheads:

[T]he ISG report has all the attributes -- and all of the failings -- of an academic study. It is both theoretically sound and thoroughly inapplicable outside the laboratories of the schools of diplomacy.

You're probably thinking that this criticism could apply just as easily to the theories of people like Perle, Wolfowitz, and Kristol. But I'm confident that I speak for Jed Babbin when I tell you that you're wrong.

Meanwhile, over at Gates of Vienna, a small but valiant band of warriors is girding its loins for the coming battle against Islamofascism. They're just waiting for the right moment, you understand: They'll fight the terrorists then, so they don't have to fight them now. (And you never know...someone else may exterminate the brutes in the meantime.)

Anyway, there's one thing we can be fairly sure of: By tomorrow morning, more people will have died in Iraq. And the Defenders of Civilization will not let these deaths disturb what they imagine is their steely resolve. They're committed to this war, and if that means failing to recognize themselves as fools or frauds for another dozen years, they're willing to make that sacrifice.

By tomorrow morning, more people will have died so that our parasitic gaggle of political "experts" won't have to give up their bogus glamor, their televised moral calisthenics and silly self-approbation. They'll die so that David Brooks can pretend to be clever, and Charles Krauthammer can pretend to be civilized, and John Gibson can pretend to be sane. They'll die so that the scuttling cockroach colony that comprises American punditry can continue to enjoy the quasi-sexual thrill that comes with clipping on the tie mic, getting patted with the make-up artist's powderpuff, and knowing that in a few short moments, they'll get to impose whatever fever dream currently represents Serious Thought on viewers from coast to coast.

At the risk of seeming shrill, I suppose I may as well reiterate something I said earlier about our fearless watchdog media:

Perhaps they were as naive as they claim. If so, they ought not to be allowed out of the house without a guardian, because they're a danger to themselves and others. More likely, though, they're bought-and-paid-for cowards whose solipsistic vanity is more discomfited by looking foolish than by being an accessory to mass murder.

The Cult of Diversity

John Derbyshire explains why American dinner parties are traditionally less playful and jolly than British ones:

A lot of the fun of British life used to consist of scoffing at foreigners, whom we all understood to be comical half-wits.... Now of course you can't do that, at any rate in public.

It's a shame, isn't it? There are few better ways to liven up a stuffy party than to break out one's 78rpm copy of Uncle Josh at a Chinese Laundry (in which Punkin Centre's ambassador of goateed goodwill recounts his epic battle against "a critter with his head and tail on the same end").

But now, thanks to the Cult of Diversity, such harmless entertainments are frowned upon...in public, anyway. And honestly, where's the pleasure in laborious racialist axe-grinding if one must fear remonstrance, or - worse yet - the medusa gaze of the humorless woman? I mean to say, dash it all...it's enough to give a chap the blue devils.

As you've probably gathered, I'm fatally afflicted with the "plonking earnestness" that makes Americans such unsatisfactory company for live wires like Derbyshire. So I don't think I'll risk losing an invitation to dine chez Derb by arguing that there seems to be a link between his belief that scoffing at wogs, darkies, and spics is harmless fun, and his belief that slaughtering 'em by the million is a sovereign remedy for existential dread.

I wouldn't expect him to disagree, nor to care. But I do find it interesting that his loud-thundering lust for "punitive ruthlessness" in Iraq led him to support a war he now deplores. I wonder if it's possible that unblushing racism is as poor a foundation for political analysis as it is for dinner-party etiquette?

State-Sponsored Terrorists

Suppose you’re the leader of a Western country, and you face an existential threat from nomadic, widely dispersed terrorists waging asymmetrical warfare. What’s one of the most vital items on your military wishlist going to be?

Nuclear submarines, natch:

Prime Minister Tony Blair launched plans Monday for a new multibillion-dollar submarine-based nuclear missile defense system, warning lawmakers the future may hold perilous threats from rogue regimes and state-sponsored terrorists.

Those al-Qaeda frogmen better think twice about launching scuba attacks on the West. And that goes double for terrorist-fanciers like Alain Badiou, with all his defeatist talk about the “disjunctive synthesis of two nihilisms.”

Given the extent to which a quasi-religious faith in the problem-solving capability of nukes has been conflated with First Principles and Right Reason, you might suppose that the people who built and tended these weapons would enjoy special treatment after retirement, like Vestals or neokoroi. You'd be wrong, needless to say:

The Bush administration repeatedly sought ways to limit payouts to nuclear weapons workers sickened by radiation and toxic material, according to a memo written by congressional investigators and obtained by USA TODAY.

In unrelated news, two percent of the world’s population owns more than half of its wealth.

UPDATE: Putting aside the ambiguities in Blair's evocation of "state-sponsored terrorism" as something requiring a nuclear deterrent, WhirledView discusses the actual proposal in more detail.

Lunar Architecture and Earthquake Arrays

Arms Control Wonk speculates on a prospective moonbase that may or may not have a military component.

NASA’s Lunar Architecture Team, chartered in May 2006, concluded that the most advantageous approach is to develop a solar-powered lunar base and to locate it near one of the poles of the moon. With such an outpost, NASA can learn to use the moon’s natural resources to live off the land, make preparations for a journey to Mars, conduct a wide range of scientific investigations and encourage international participation.

"Lunar Architecture Team" - words to conjure with!

Dr. Lewis also links to a survey of military moonbase ideas from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. It includes Project Horizon, a pipe-dream concocted by good ol' Werner von Braun, which "argued that a lunar outpost was 'required to develop and protect potential United States interests on the moon'."

Chief among which, I'd say, is advertising. As a logical extension of the late nineteenth century's flirtation with "celestial advertising," by means of which the clouds would "be turned into hideous and gigantic hoardings," a visionary named Hawkins proposed to advertise on the moon's surface by means of a giant reflector, so that "every man, woman, and child in all the world could read its messages."

We've come a long way since those quaint days, and you can't deny that a lunar Coca-Cola logo would do a great deal to offset the costs of installing a moonbase (and to check the rampages of foreign pretenders like Sockerdricka and Doogh). Decrepit old men and spectral rabbits are well and good, up to a point, but their branding potential is limited, to say the least. I say it's time to make the moon earn its keep. This idea for turning the moon into a high-definition television could be just the ticket.

Lunar television would be a boon for America's Most Wanted, which could hang a different mugshot in the heavens each week. Better yet, it could be used to implement Defense Tech's brilliant idea for testing the active-denial system, which incapacitates "evildoers" with excruciatingly painful millimeter-wave beams:

So why not turn the ADS testing into a live show? That way millions of people could see for themselves exactly what the pain beam does. Familiarity would dispel all the myths about it, and thorough medical examinations (and perhaps the odd lawsuit) would settle any questions its safety once and for all. Even better, because it's a matter of the nation's defence, we can rope in anyone we want from the worlds of sport, entertainment and politics to ensure we get the ratings....

We'll have to screen these contestants carefully - much as we currently test athletes for steroids - to make sure they're not protecting themselves with shields made of Inertron or Adamantium.

If you're thinking that this would be a good time to move below ground - to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, for instance - think again. BLDGBLOG discusses the earthquake array, a fascinating desideratum of the Air Force:

Intriguingly, the shockwave will cause all regional tunnels, bunkers, mines, sewers, nightclubs, basement TV rooms, commercial show caves, etc., to collapse – which means that the bomb is actually a kind of landscape weapon, de-caving the earth from within.

Thank goodness the innocent have nothing to fear!

(Image via Dreams of Space, which has compiled an incredible collection of space art in children's books from 1883 to 1970.)

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

I cannot reach Roboastra gracilis; and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity.

Friday Hope Blogging

For years, I have told the almost unbelievable, related the unreal, and shown it to be more than a fact. Now, I tell a tale of the threshold people, so astounding that some of you may faint!

Patrols in the Serengeti have reduced poaching:

"The Hilborn team has shown that protection of wildlife by active enforcement of laws and regulations remains an essential tool for conserving biological diversity," Hobbs says. "This sounds so simple, but it has been controversial."

Odd, isn't it? Meanwhile, Kenya is phasing out methyl bromide:

The alternatives, the researchers say, include using an underlying layer of pumice and coco peat, which are locally available.

This sounds so simple, but it has been controversial!

A startling new study indicates that contraception is a better way to prevent pregnancy – and abortion – than abstinence:

Eighty-six percent of the recent decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of improved contraceptive use, while a small proportion of the decline (14%) can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex, according to a report by John Santelli, MD, MPH, department chair and professor of Clinical Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health and published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

In related news, a vaginal microbicide could thwart God’s loving plan for mankind by protecting users from herpes and AIDS:

[T]he gel would be an important weapon in the fight against HIV because it would allow women to protect themselves from infection rather than relying on their partners to use condoms.

Protecting human beings from disease? It sounds so simple, but it has been controversial.

A rare spice found only in West African swamps may be a powerful anti-inflammatory:

The compound works in a similar way to the well-known anti-inflammatory drugs Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra but, it is hoped, without their side effects, said Raskin and other scientists.

In Baltimore, developers are turning economic logic on its head by replacing the asphalt around schools with grass:

For decades, all of Franklin Square's 2-acre playground was asphalt - much of it cracked, covered in broken glass and weeds. The children were forbidden to run on it, and when they did, they often ended up in the nurse's office with scrapes and bruises. But under a partnership with the city, the Parks and People Foundation and various developers, the pavement at Franklin Square and nine other schools has been transformed into green space. The city is using storm water requirements to encourage some developers who are building in Baltimore to compensate for their paving by removing impervious surfaces somewhere else.

Trees in many cities produce tons of fruit that never gets eaten. In a reckless assault on this fundamental principle of human society, an activist has mapped Tucson's trees in order to make collecting and distributing fruit easier:

After watching elderly and low-income community members in Tucson suffer the consequences of being unable to access or afford fresh foods, she decided to put her skills to use mapping the available fruits and vegetables growing around town and redistributing the goods to those in need.

A firm called Greendimes claims it’ll do the hard work of getting your name off junk-mail lists, and plant trees in your name, all for the low, low cost of $3 a month:

So not only will you be putting a dent in the estimated 100 million trees chopped down every year to generate junkmail, you will become the proud parent of 12 saplings for each year you subscribe to Greendimes.

Worth a look, possibly.

An Indian firm is making edible chopsticks and cutlery:

Entrepreneur Narayana Peesapaty has the solution to the problem of billions of pieces of disposable plastic cutlery being discarded in India: he makes them edible. So after people have eaten their soup, they can chew and swallow the spoon.

Betcha can't eat just one! Researchers have devised an ultrasound-based stethoscope:

A new type of stethoscope enables doctors to hear the sounds of the body in extremely loud situations, such as during the transportation of wounded soldiers in Blackhawk helicopters.

And there's apparently been yet another breakthrough in hydrogen fuel-cell technology.

In a promising development for industrial hydrogenation and the storage and production of hydrogen for fuel cells, researchers have synthesized a lightweight, nonmetal compound that readily breaks apart and recombines H2 molecules.

The kids are also talking about a genetically engineered molecule derived from human blood, which “can use energy from the sun to create hydrogen gas, providing an alternative to electrolysis.” A few thousand more "promising developments" like these, and we should be doing pretty well.

Personally, I'm more impressed with Engineer-Poet's epic biomass-to-charcoal proposal, which is worth reading in full (bring a compass, and pack a lunch). There’s some fairly staggering proof-of-concept info here.

New York City has installed solar-parking meters:

The parking meters don't need direct sunlight. They are designed to operate with ambient light only recharging an internal Sealed Lead Acid battery capable of powering the meter completely. Designed from scratch with solar power in mind, many of the efficient and durable internal components were specifically designed for the meters.

New German research underscores the benefits of concentrated solar power:

There are different forms of CSP but all share in common the use of mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays on a pipe or vessel containing some sort of gas or liquid that heats up to around 400C (752F) and is used to power conventional steam turbines.

The mirrors are very large and create shaded areas underneath which can be used for horticulture irrigated by desalinated water generated by the plants. The cold water that can also be produced for air conditioning means there are three benefits.

Inhabitat describes a strange sort-of biomimetic building under consideration in Rotterdam. Behold:


In legal news, San Diego has banned Wal-Mart. The EPA has scaled back its plans to ease pollution controls. The owner of an asbestos testing lab that falsified results was sentenced two over two years in prison. And a federal judge has ordered deadbeat insurance companies to pay Katrina victims what they’re owed:

If upheld, the ruling late Monday by Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of Federal District Court in New Orleans could cost the insurers billions of dollars more than the $41 billion they have already paid to storm victims.

A big if, of course, but one can always hope.

Subtopia describes an innovative (i.e., sensible and humane) response to natural disaster in other countries:

After consulting survivors and enabling them to take direct responsibility for the distribution of funds and reconstruction materials, the program has resulted in a coordinated community activism to help survivors build shelters themselves out of local materials…. Nothing like seeing communities take charge of their destiny, even in the face of the most grim circumstances. In fact, that is where community is capable of functioning at its best.

I was also interested by this article on the ecology of coupled oscillations, and the presence of “coordinated chaos” in ecosystems.

The photo at top is from Signage and Type, a beautiful Flickr set by sgoralnick. You may also enjoy these lenticulations (via Coudal), and this survey of Dekotora (via Things).


If you want to express your gratitude, I recommend that you learn to do it in Solresol, “a universal language, translatable to colour, melody, writing, touch, hand signals, and endless strings of numbers.”

Nemo Me Impune Lacessit

How do you solve a problem like Ann Altmouse?

I'm drawn to her frothy girlishness, and that lunatic impersonation of joie de vivre with which she tries to submerge her sour disposition. I admire her understanding of the Law, which is so profound that she has no need to demonstrate it, and can, as it were, “waste the jury’s time by rating the Superhunks.”

I marvel at the suppleness of her mind, which allows her to complain about manipulative editing on television, while not only deleting reader comments, but paraphrasing and mocking them, so that the whole gogglin' world can see just how misguided her enemies are. I quail before the moral ferocity of a “conservative blogress diva” who shares with the Black Watch the chilling motto Nemo me impune lacessit.

And above all, at the risk of sinking into an erotic reverie from which I may never recover, I must admit that her lips have much the same effect on me that shaved, baby-oiled goats had on the late William Rehnquist.

And yet, in the end, I can’t quite approve of her. Perhaps it’s the fact that she’s the leader of a criminal syndicate in Kowloon, which smuggles defective and dangerous bootleg toys into American stores. Perhaps it’s her probable involvement in the mysterious disappearance of a group of “hippies” camped at the Stonehenge monument in 1971. Perhaps it’s the grey-green nimbus of barnyard stench that plays about her like corpusants about the yard-arms of the Pequod. Or perhaps it’s merely her robotic, dead-hearted partisanship.

Whatever the cause, I think it’s best that I refrain from linking to her blog, now or ever. Not so much for my own sake, mind you, as for the sake of blogger ethics, and those feckless, impressionable readers whom fate has put in my charge. I hope Ms. Altmouse will understand that it's nothing personal.