Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Chromodoris albopunctata's a Sphinx. And her ordeal
Is all the more destructive to mankind
Because, perhaps, she has no riddle.
Nor did she ever have one.

(Photo by Jun Imamoto.)

Friday Hope Blogging

This week's edition will be a bit shorter than usual because I'm a bit busier than usual. You can always read it twice!

Thailand has passed a law that criminalizes marital rape.

Gender rights activists Thursday hailed the legislature's approval of an anti-rape law that widens the definition of the crime and makes it illegal in Thailand for a husband to have sex with his wife without her consent.

Egypt has banned clitoridectomy:

On Thursday, Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali decided to ban every doctor and member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from carrying out a clitoridectomy, a ministry press official told AFP.

Any circumcision "will be viewed as a violation of the law and all contraventions will be punished," said the official, adding that it was a "permanent ban".

As recently as 2000, 97 percent of the country's women went through this procedure.

Three former members of Exodus International, a Christian group that calls on gays to convert to the One True Faith of heterosexuality, have apologized for their activities:

"Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families," the three said in a statement released outside the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center.

MInneapolis is considering restrictions on McMansions:

A City Council committee recommended Thursday that the full council approve limits on the height, bulk and lot coverage of new and existing homes. That vote is planned for June 29.

Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis (CA-32) has introduced a bill that would "fight pollution and poverty at the same time by creating federally-funded job training within the green economy."

On Wednesday, the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee passed her bill by a bipartisan vote of 26 to 18. This is the first step in the House toward providing job training every year for about 35,000 U.S. workers (and would-be workers) in green and clean industries.

There's talking of using mushroom spores as a building material:

Here's how it works: A mixture of water, mineral particles, starch and hydrogen peroxide are poured into 7-by-7-inch molds and then injected with living mushroom cells. The hydrogen peroxide is used to prevent the growth of other specimens within the material.

Placed in a dark environment, the cells start to grow, digesting the starch as food and sprouting thousands of root-like cellular strands. A week to two weeks later, a 1-inch-thick panel of insulation is fully grown. It's then dried to prevent fungal growth, making it unlikely to trigger mold and fungus allergies, according to Bayer. The finished product resembles a giant cracker in texture.

A woman from Perth has invented a useful new utility meter:

Ms Ewing...said she wanted to see at a glance how much water, gas and electricity was being consumed at any point in time, and how this related to her energy bills. The device will be designed to react each time a light, tap or TV is left on standby.

Toronto plans to install solar panels on the roofs of schools, and sell the electricity they generate to the power grid:

If everything goes smoothly, windmills and solar panels will cover the roofs of 10 schools across the city as early as next summer.

"Because schools are so strategically located throughout the city, we could create a perfect green grid," said Josh Matlow, a board trustee and a driving force behind the idea.

A new study shows that New England could cut its energy consumption by 18 percent by using current technology; the emotional anguish it'd cause Steven J. Milloy is an attractive fringe benefit.

Speaking of richly deserved suffering, a developer in Virginia has been fined $100,000 for damaging wetlands:

This wasn't an innocent mistake, but an intentional act. So $100,000 seems reasonable, maybe even lenient. It's also a creative solution to a problem that should be fixed. The maximum fine the commission can levy for a single violation of regulations that protect Virginia's wetlands is $10,000. So a plan was hatched to apply a multiplier to reflect that mowing went on over some time. The case was made that it should have been more like $370,000, or $10,000 for each day the equipment was on the property. In any event, it's fitting that the fine goes into a fund to preserve and improve marine habitats, including wetlands.

Spruce Hill, a vital archaeological site in Ohio, has been saved from being auctioned off to paper companies who were hoping to raid its forests:

In a heroic effort, four preservation groups joined together to purchase the land just one day before it was set to go to auction. Highlands Sanctuary led the Archaeological Conservancy, Wilderness East, and Ross County Park District in raising an astonishing $217,000 in cash and $150,000 in no-interest loans. To accomplish this feat, they contacted scores of archeological groups across the country, including the Archaeological Institute of America, all of which were overwhelmingly supportive. Jeffrey Wilson, a key player in the fundraising, stated, "I can't remember a single person that didn't say they wanted [Spruce Hill] preserved."

They need more money to seal the deal; you can donate by clicking here. Tell your friends!

Logging plans have also been thwarted in Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest:

Environmental groups appealed in May and asked for a fuller environmental impact test and more time for public input.

"While I still believe strongly that the project is valid ... I have elected to withdraw my decision," Forest Supervisor Jerome Perez said.

In Nepal, seven monuments have been removed from a list of threatened historical sites:

The seven ancient monuments removed by Unesco from the list of world heritage sites in danger include the Patan and the Bhaktapur Durbar Squares, two centuries-old Hindu temples and two Buddhist stupas....

The Unesco website says that the seven monuments now benefit from "increased resources allocated to the site's museums, improved management and reinforced staff".

Shipping lanes into Boston will be rerouted to protect whales:

Ships steaming into Boston harbor will soon shift course to avoid whales in the first change of U.S. shipping lanes to protect an endangered species.

Starting on Sunday, large vessels will travel roughly 4 miles north of their old path in new lanes, rerouted to avoid parts of the only whale feeding sanctuary in the United States, the Coast Guard and scientists said.

Also, 4th Amendment rights have been extended to e-mail. For now.

Next up, a gallery of green roofs, via Treehugger. Here's one from Iceland:


You probably don't know all you should about hobo nickels.



Or the 19th-century ledger art of the Plains Indians:


Coudal recommends an incredible Flickr set of Santa Monica apartment names. As do I.

Last, a charming home movie of Coney Island circa 1969:


(Photo at top: A NASA image of the moon "recorded through three spectral filters and combined in an exaggerated false-color scheme to explore the composition of the lunar surface as changes in mineral content produce subtle color differences in reflected light.")

From Negligible to Severe

At Planet Gore, a titanic battle is being waged between Jim Manzi and "sound science" advocate Steven Milloy.

Milloy shrieks that climate change is a fabrication of doomstruck lie-beral alarmists who will kill us all, and that climate feedback loops are completely hypothetical, and then spatters a photo of Ayn Rand with clumpy yellowish semen (I'm paraphrasing here).

Manzi accepts that some amount of anthropogenic climate change is happening, but feels that "its impact over the next century could plausibly range from negligible to severe." Therefore, addressing it is a good idea, but possibly not, and he's not being indecisive (splunge!).

In other words, Manzi favors pretty much the same approach the Right takes to the threat of nuclear terrorism. You don't want to be too hasty about changing laws around, and spending billions of dollars on prevention, and taking staggering geopolitical risks, when the catastrophe you're afraid of may not even happen.

Kidding aside, Manzi deserves plenty of credit for taking a flamethrower to Milloy's army of strawmen, and for making this simple but effective point to an audience who may well resent him for it:

Milloy doesn’t seem to get that “I don’t know” is not the same thing as “No reason to worry”.

I have some problems with Manzi, of course. For instance, he calls the threat of climate change to the United States "incalculably small," and insists on a market-based approach to mitigation, while arguing that "the process of science tends to be self-correcting, but like all markets, this can take a long time to work, and is imperfect." Still, I'd gladly buy him a drink.

That's more than I can say for Henry Payne, who calls Richard Lindzen "the Milton Friedman of atmospheric science," and claims that Lindzen's WSJ piece from a year ago remains "the most comprehensive, layman-accessible article written on GW science." That isn't quite as silly as calling Genesis the most comprehensive, layman-accessible article written on evolutionary biology. But it comes pretty fucking close.

In related news, Sir Oolius anatomizes Tom DeLay, with amusing results.

The Catechism of Conservatarian Cliché

I stumbled on this ancient draft post earlier today. It was apparently intended as a response to something Thers (above, seated) posted at Metacomments, which has since been lost along with the blog itself. It still seems timely, though, and it's also a heartwarming reminder of the high times we had in those dear dead days.

Recently, Thers had the idea of bringing the Myles na gCopaleen Catechism of Cliché (up to date), (little knowing) that Crooked Timber had (gamely) attempted it (some years ago).

Unfortunately, (much as I admire) the (good people) at CT, their effort was (woefully inadequate). Like most (human endeavor) in our cold age, it lacked grace, fecundity, and a certain greatness of spirit. Given the dearth of these commodities in (general society), and their superabundance in the warm wellsprings of my own person, it were (rank injustice) if (false modesty) prevented me from sharing my bounty with these (poor but worthy) intellectual starvelings.

Step right up: it's safe as houses and no electric shocks will be given.

Against what embracers of arboreal flora are we to inveigh?

Treehuggers.

Along with what idolators of the dear old sod?

Dirt-worshippers.

For what purpose?

To advance the principles of free enterprise and limited government.

What will happen if these principles are not advanced?

Economic collapse and socialist tyranny.

Who argues that climate change is real?

Global-warming devoteés.

Of what do their arguments consist?

Alarmist predictions.

Based on what?

Junk science.

What do they say is falling?

The sky.

To which avian Cassandra do they accordingly bear a resemblance?

Chicken Little.

What do they hope to destroy?

Capitalism.

All capitalism?

No, American Capitalism.

Who might unwittingly aid them in this endeavor?

The gullible masses.

What may I now be permitted to let rest?

This matter.

(Illustration: From "Hints for Sots," by Flann O'Brien.)

Bewitched

If you think that two disastrous wars, an executive branch that places itself outside the law, a warming climate, and the tireless mainstreaming of racism and misogyny collectively spell trouble for the US of A, I’m sorry to inform you that you’re living in a fool’s paradise.

For as a new article in WorldNetDaily makes clear, we face the frightening possibility of an unprecedented increase in the arguable likelihood of a potential explosion in the relative attractiveness of witchcraft.

A victory for Harry Potter means a victory for Wicca, a religion that practices various forms of witchcraft….

"In the midst of fun and fantasy, J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' novels make witchcraft look 'cool' and exciting," [Steve Wohlberg] told WND. "It doesn’t matter that these novels are only 'fictitious stories.' Stories are powerful."

On that last point, Wohlberg is quite right. There may not be any truth to the claim that there’s a leprosy epidemic in America, or that Rachel Carson has killed three billion and counting, or that the Iranians are plotting to annihilate us with an electromagnetic pulse attack, or that "Islamofascists" are plotting to outbreed the decadent West, or that 240,000 illegal immigrants are dangerous sex offenders, or – for that matter – that there’s been an increase in children who self-identify as Wiccans after reading Harry Potter.

But none of that matters, ultimately. Stories are powerful!

(Photo: "Two Witches" by Sean Duggan, 2005.)

Economy of Force

Those of us who are disturbed by the US policy of walling-off Iraqi neighborhoods have apparently failed to understand that the walls were built for a reason:

"The point of the walls was to structure the environment, to hold the city and keep it safe," [Retired Colonel David Kilcullen] tells DANGER ROOM. "It's like [keeping] guard inside a concrete building, instead of in the middle of a field... You don't need vast maneuver forces to do it... It's the principle of economy of force."

Thank heavens we didn't listen to the dirty fucking hippies who opposed the war. If we had, we might never have learned that partitioning urban neighborhoods is useful when you invade a country illegally - for no reason, at an incalculable expense – and find yourself facing a determined, creative insurgency.

Maybe I’m a sourpuss, but I see the construction of neighborhood walls – “necessary” or not – as symbolic of why the occupation is a failure (as well as a crime, and an act of elemental stupidity). Never mind the PR catastrophe of evoking the wall between Israel and Palestine, or the absurdity of trying to “break the cycle of sectarian violence” by setting sectarian divisions literally in stone; the simple fact is that building barriers on other people’s land makes them angry, and any security you earn with this strategy is likely to be fleeting at best.

Unfortunately, building barriers is a centerpiece of post-9/11 strategic thinking; it’s right up there with killing ‘em all, and ordering our womenfolk to ramp up production of white babies.

Barriers aren’t just defenses, of course; they’re also vulnerable infrastructure that must be defended, lest the evildoers blow them up, or tunnel under them, or assassinate the people guarding them, or what have you. That’s why Taser International’s Taser Remote Area Denial (TRAD) is such an exciting development. Basically, it’s a robotic taser that will patrol “high value facilities or operations such as checkpoints, command centers, depots, aircraft insertions, and spec ops, as well as fixed installations such as embassies, air fields, utility facilities, pipelines, etc."

Like all the best robots, TRADs can distinguish between friend and foe, and act accordingly:

Once an engagement decision is made (either by the operator or the system depending on user selected settings), the TASERNET program selects the specific TRAD units best suited for engagement and transmits fire authorization. The TRAD unit will then arrest the targeted individuals by providing complete incapacitation.

In other words, they've found an unmet need in their target market, and they intend to fulfill it.

A shrewd commenter at Danger Room thinks the TRAD could be knocked off its spindly little legs without much effort, or simply riddled with bullet holes from a safe distance. This is a serious concern, which is why I suggest that any TRADs deployed should be under constant surveillance by armed microdrones, and protected from enemy approach by automated kill zones.

Otherwise, we run the risk of wasting the taxpayers' money by having our robot guardians used for target practice.

(Illustration from the October 1948 issue of Popular Science, via Modern Mechanix.)

An Extraordinary Outburst

An article in the Belfast Telegraph is headlined Gore blames scientists for climate crisis.

This creates a reasonable expectation that Gore will be quoted saying that scientists are to blame for the climate crisis. But instead, reporter Jonathan Owen offers us a rather vague sentence from Gore’s new foreword to Earth in the Balance:

In a swipe at the scientific community, he says: “I wish that we could have had in the 1990s the deafening scientific consensus that has emerged in more recent years.”

Owen calls this “an extraordinary outburst.” He’s right, of course, and it’s shocking that Gore’s scurrilous attack on Science Itself hasn’t received more scrutiny since it was first published back in – let’s see - October of 2006. Hats off to Owen for defying the Emessem's blackout of this vitally important story!

If anyone needs further proof that Gore is a charlatan, the top-flight research team at Planet Gore has it in spades. They report that on June 19, Professor Scott Armstrong challenged Gore to a $20,000 bet on climate warming. Now it’s a week later, and Gore still hasn’t responded. Obviously, the old fraud is hiding in a broom closet, wolfing down éclairs spattered with tears of self-pity.

The rout is all the more devastating because, as Iain Murray notes, Gore “hasn't been challenged by any of the so-called skeptics, but by a world expert in long-range forecasting techniques.”

Hear that, Fatty? You're not dealing with some half-bright, ideology-addled stooge like Iain Murray this time around. Armstrong is an expert!

Incidentally, James Annan finds some problems with the terms of Armstrong’s wager. Armstrong hasn’t responded, even though six days have passed, so he clearly finds these objections unanswerable.

The Vast Availability of Land

Joel Kotkin announces that Houston, Texas is the pinnacle of modern civilization, and a beacon lighting our way into the future:

When speaking on urban issues, one reliable way to draw derisive comments is to mention Houston. Perhaps no major city in America has a worse reputation among planners, urban aesthetes and smart growth advocates.

Yet, to a remarkable extent, Houston may well defy its critics — not only by continuing to expand, but by constructing a new and dynamic model of American urbanism that transcends all the worn cliches about ''sprawl''....

Houston will defy its critics by continuing to grow. And what’s more, this process will be dynamic. There’s some paradigm-shattering wisdom for you!

In Kotkinland - a colonial outpost of Cockaigne - growth is unlimited and illimitable, thanks to “the vast availability of land” and the convenience of the automobile. Water availability, drainage, oil prices, and the cost and availability of raw materials don’t enter into his calculations; like Althusserian interpellation and triple-ribbed vibrating buttplugs, these are fashionable preoccupations of the “chattering classes.” Affluence breeds growth, and growth affluence; that’s all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Rather than impositions by government fiat, Houston's myriad master-planned communities are largely creations of the planners' nightmare — the marketplace. They reflect a typically pragmatic, market-oriented, Houston-style approach: building the kinds of housing that people demand….

Damn straight. To hell with urban planners and their pompous talk of “congestion” and “nonpermeable surfaces” and “fossil water.” It’s time to elbow these tweed-clad, chardonnay-addled academics aside and give the people what they want, like they’re doing in Galveston:

Leaders of this fast-eroding barrier island — the scene of the deadliest hurricane in American history — are about to approve nearly 4,000 new homes and two midrise hotels despite geologists' warnings that the massive development would sever a ridge that serves as the island's natural storm shield….

Scientists estimate that Galveston is moving about a quarter-inch closer to the water every year because of rising sea levels and a slow sinking of the surface caused by oil extraction.

Galveston’s quite correct to ignore these geologists; they may have memorized a few obscure facts about rocks and dirt, but that doesn’t make them experts on urban planning, let alone consumer empowerment.

In other news, the Eastern Garbage Patch is currently twice the size of Texas. Three cheers for consumer choice!

(Illustration: “The Land of Cockaigne” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1567.)

Thinking Fat Thoughts

You've probably heard of The Secret, which is an Australian TV producer's attempt to quantify the cosmic "law of attraction" that governs the allocation of consumer gee-gaws, rich husbands, anorexic-but-stacked mistresses, and other desiderata of the spiritually enlightened:

"The law of attraction says that like attracts like, and when you think and feel what you want to attract on the inside, the law will use people, circumstances and events to magnetize what you want to you, and magnetize you to it," Byrne said in an e-mail in response to several questions posed by The Associated Press.

The gist of this daring new philosophy seems to be that you get what you deserve; if Iraqis don't have clean water, perhaps they'd better put their thinking in order and stop conspiring against themselves. After all, the law of attraction is, as Ms. Byrne says, "impersonal, exact and precise."

Amazingly, there are people who object to this idea.

While "The Secret" has become a pop culture phenomenon, it also has drawn critics who are not quiet about labeling the movement a fad, embarrassingly materialistic or the latest example of an American propensity of wanting something for nothing.

How's that for razor-keen critique? It's a pop culture phenomenon, but some malcontents are calling it a fad. Others say it's too materialistic, which is - God knows - the last thing we want from batshit-crazy new age obscurantism. And finally, it's an example of Americans wanting something for nothing: even if "The Secret" worked like a charm (views differ!), the garish fripperies that designate success in our culture must only be obtained through hard work. Or failing that, the lottery. Or marrying someone rich, as long as you're not too fat.

Speaking of which, the amiable Ms. Byrne doesn't believe in metabolic or genetic causes for obesity; if you're overweight, it's because you're "thinking fat thoughts."

Theoretically, I suppose it'd be possible to use "The Secret" to attract men who don't require you to look like an undernourished 12-year-old with enormous breast implants.

But what if such men don't exist? One must be realistic, after all. The photo above depicts an "overweight woman" from a Brazilian ad for low-fat yogurt. The caption says, "Forget about it. Men's preference will never change." There are other laws of attraction, apparently, to which "The Secret" must eternally play second fiddle.

All of which reminds me of Adorno's complaint about astrology in The Stars Down to Earth:

It implies that all problems due to objective circumstances such as, above all, economic difficulties, can be solved in terms of private individual behavior or by psychological insight, particularly into oneself, but also into others.

He has a point, granted...but at the same time, isn't it precisely this sort of gloomy Jewish defeatism that made the Holocaust inevitable?

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Oh ! how can I
Enough admire Ceratosoma tenue, exprest
In new proportions, which doth give the Ly
To that Arithmetique which hath profest
All Numbers to be Hers ? thy Harmony
Comes from the Spheres, and there doth prove
Strange measures so well grac'd, as Majesty
It self, like thee would rest, like thee would move.

Photo by Jun Imamoto.

Friday Hope Blogging

Grist links to a fascinating study on The Policy Impact of the U.S. Environmental Movement, which has some important implications for other political struggles:

Protest is significantly more important than public opinion or institutional advocacy in influencing federal environmental law. Agnone found that each protest event increases the likelihood of pro-environmental legislation being passed by 1.2 percent, and moderate protest increases the annual rate of adoption by an astonishing 9.5 percent.

Public opinion on its own influences federal action (though less than protest), but is vastly strengthened by protest, which "amplifies" public support and, in Agnone's words, "raises the salience of public opinion for legislators." Protest and public opinion are synergistic, with a joint impact on federal policy far more dramatic than either factor alone.

Institutional advocacy has limited impact on federal environmental policy.

In related news, Media Matters explains Why Conservative America is a Myth.

Tyson Foods claims it will stop using antibiotics to raise chicken:

"We're providing mainstream consumers with products they want," Tyson Chief Executive Richard L. Bond said at a press conference.

A program in Michigan pays farmers to switch to no-till agriculture:

Linda and Wayne Pritchard...plan to enroll their 1,000 acres in Burlington this summer....

"My husband and Jake are both concerned about where our children and grandchildren will be when we're gone," Linda Pritchard said. "Neither one of them is a materialistic person; they're both concerned about the environment and the future."

The Senate has passed a bill that modestly raises mileage standards, and closes the loophole for SUVs.

The vote, 65 to 27, was a major defeat for car manufacturers, which had fought for a much smaller increase in fuel economy standards and is expected to keep fighting as the House takes up the issue.

The Senate has also rejected funding for coal to liquids:

Controversial proposals to boost the conversion of coal into liquid fuel were rejected in the U.S. Senate Tuesday, after lawmakers and groups that support the idea broke ranks on how to get the job done.

California is mandating cool paint for cars:

By blending in special pigments, car paint of any color can be made to reflect much of the sun's heat energy. That will keep the vehicle's interior cooler and reduce the demand on the air conditioner -- which in turn improves fuel efficiency and cuts carbon dioxide emissions a bit.

A judge has ruled that Inyo County, California must allow environmental groups to contest its plan to build two-lane highways through Death Valley:

“Inyo County’s land grab could undermine the very reasons Death Valley is such an iconic American landscape: its quiet, its beauty, its wildness,” said Ted Zukoski, attorney at Earthjustice. “The court understood that, and understood that those with the strongest interest in protecting Death Valley should have a seat at the table.”

The House has approved a bill that allows the US to donate birth control to foreign agencies:

The measure, approved 223-201, is intended by the new Democratic majority to crack open debate on a policy it says is failing. Initiated by President Reagan in 1984 at a population conference in Mexico City, the policy bars any assistance to organizations abroad that perform or promote abortion as a method of family planning.

For now, this is more symbolic than practical, but it's heartening all the same. The Senate has also cut funding for abstinence education by $28 million. Not quite as good as cutting it altogether, but better than nothing.

Portugal has finalized a new, less restrictive law on abortion.

Under the law, women seeking an abortion will meet first with doctors who are to warn them of possible dangers. After a three-day reflection period, women can obtain an abortion free at a public hospital or go to a licensed private clinic.

Previously, abortions were allowed only in cases of rape or life-threatening pregnancy.

Google is donating $10 million to vehicle-to-grid research:

The company is going to modify six cars, a mix of Toyota Priuses and Ford Escape hybrids, with batteries that can draw juice from the grid and feed juice back in. The promise of this technology is that if it spreads, it will enable distributed electricity storage that can smooth spikes in electricity demand without expensive new generation plants.

The UK is spending $1 billion "to supply renewable energy to 300 government departments and civil service bodies." For the company that won the contract, the devastating economic effects of addressing climate change will be somewhat mitigated. Perhaps some of this money will even "trickle down" to workers.

China has vowed not to use food crops like corn for biofuel:

"Such a decision by such an important world player as China is likely to accelerate the second-generation technology for production of ethanol fuel from non-food crops - through conversion of biomass," Abdolreza Abbassian, Commodity Analyst and Secretary of FAO's Intergovernmental Group for Grains, told China Daily.

Speaking of biomass, olive pressing residue is being used to generate electricity in Spain.

The plant turns olive residue into biomass — a type of fuel generated from animal waste and plant material such as wood and crops. This is then burnt to generate electricity and heat. The Palenciana plant currently produces enough green electricity for 27,000 households, and has since been joined by four others in the region.

Also, Inhabitat discusses a house powered by a protein derived from spinach:

The most intriguing aspect of the residence lies in the way that it works within a community. The excess energy developed by the spinach-based skin is sent back to the grid for the neighborhood to use. The grey and black water recycling systems have enough capacity to treat the effluent from the neighbors and the garden is designed to be used by the community.

There's interesting research being done on magnetic refrigeration:

Magnetic refrigeration is a clean technology that uses magnetic fields to manipulate the degree of ordering (or entropy) of electronic or nuclear magnetic dipoles in order to reduce a material's temperature and allow the material to serve as a refrigerant. New materials for refrigeration based on gadolinium-germanium-silicon alloys display a giant magnetocaloric effect due to unusual coupling between the material's magnetism and chemical structure.

Wal-Mart claims to have achieved great things by reducing the size of its outer packaging by one inch:

By cutting the size of the boxes used to package a line of popular children's toys, the world's largest retailer says it saved trees, greenhouse gas emissions and $3 million.

Imagine how much they'd save if they got rid of the packaging altogether!

Speaking of which, the UK is increasingly opposed to plastic bags, thanks in large part to a documentary by a young filmmaker named Rebecca Hosking:

"Sea turtles can't read Wal-mart or Tesco signs on plastic bags," fumes Ms. Hosking, who returned to Britain in March. "They will home in on it and feed on it. Dolphins mistake them for seaweed and quite often they'll eat them and it causes huge damage."

Within a few weeks of coming back, Hosking persuaded her hometown to ban plastic bags outright and found herself in the vanguard of a sudden British revulsion for that most disposable convenience of the throwaway society.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has unanimously voted to restrict bottom trawling in the Bering Sea:

Today's unanimous decision is a great victory for the whales, walrus, seabirds and other animals in the Bering Sea, and we are glad the Council voted to provide essential protections our oceans need in this age of global climate change and an exploding world population," said Jim Ayers, Vice President of Oceana, an international organization dedicated to protecting the world's oceans.

In related news, the NOAA has taken an important (and long overdue) stand against gillnetters:

NOAA has denied issuance of the special exempted fishing permit required for gillnet boats to operate in an area of coast stretching from central California to central Oregon, during the time critically endangered leatherback sea turtles are feeding there.

The Army has suspended shipments of VX nerve gas waste to Port Arthur, TX, pending review of the practice by a federal judge (there's some background here, for those who only visit this backwater once a week).

Grist has an interesting discussion of Swedish conservation practices. Here are the parts that jumped out at me:

When local politicians announced the phasing out in 1996 [?!], it was little more than a quaint curiosity. Oil prices were hovering around a manageable $US20 a barrel and global warming was still a hotly contested debate. Today, at least one international delegation a week -- mainly from China and Japan -- beats a path to Vaxjo to see how it's done.

The first step towards Vaxjo's -- and Sweden's -- success was the city power plant ...instead of dumping the cooling water, as most power stations do, it's pumped out scalding to the city's taps and to another vast network of pipes. The second delivery system of insulated pipes runs hot water continuously through heaters in homes and offices. The water leaves the plant at over 100 degrees, travels as far as 10 kilometres and comes back warm to be reheated, over and over again. An enormous municipal hot-water tank acts as back-up, so showers never go cold.

Impressive, in a sense. But what good are hot showers when you're writhing under the lash of socialist tyranny?

Tibet intends to ban "the mining of gold, mercury, arsenic and peat to preserve mineral resources and protect the environment." And the UN is placing restrictions on the coral trade.

Conservationists hailed the decision. "This is the best possible decision to start getting the trade in these corals under some form of international control," said Ernie Cooper, a coral trade expert from TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

A chart on water use from Good Magazine shows that "average daily water use per person in Mozambique is less than the water used to flush a low-flow toilet in the U.S." This isn't hope-inspiring news, exactly...but it's important for us to know. (Via AIDG Blog.)

The University of Nottingham is working to promote green chemistry in Ethiopia:

Much current research is focused on the search for renewable feedstocks and more environmentally acceptable solvents as replacements for petroleum-based products. This makes Green Chemistry particularly relevant to the needs of African countries such as Ethiopia, faced with an increasing demand for chemicals, little or no indigenous oil, and rapidly expanding populations.

Seed reports that India is shifting towards eco-friendly pyres for its open-air cremations.

This story on using buckyballs to prevent allergic reactions is the sort of thing that CKR will probably scold me for posting, but as a longtime allergy sufferer, I have to give it the benefit of the doubt:

According to Kepley, who is the principal author of the paper, the buckyballs are able to 'interrupt' the allergy/immune response by inhibiting a basic process in the cell that leads to the release of an allergic mediator. Essentially, the buckyballs are able to prevent mast cells from releasing histamine.

Apropos of CKR, Plep alerts me to a nice set of photos documenting the Seto people of Estonia.

You'll find some odd images in this Danish survey of mythological beasts.


There's a new issue of Polar Inertia. I also recommend Tales From the Vault: Canadian Pulp Fiction, 1940 - 1952. And this amazing gallery of covers for H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Here's one of my favorites:


The Forster Collection "is one of the world's great collections of eighteenth-century Pacific art and material culture." You might also have a look at Inscribing Meaning: Writing & Graphic Systems in African Art.


Via Coudal, a collection of 600 vintage slides from the 1950s and 1960s. (Did I mention that I got this link from Coudal? I'd feel terrible if I neglected to give credit where it was due.)

Last, photos of Trees in Snow by the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, via Moon River.


(Photo at top: "Man in Avenue" [1889], from an incredible exhibition of Early Kodak Camera Formats at Luminous Lint.)

History Comes Alive

They say it’s impossible to hate someone who makes you laugh. If this is true, Carol Iannone never need fear my enmity:

[I]n my view the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution arise from strains other than Roman Catholicism per se, more from the Reformation and the Enlightenment, although of course they build on the whole structure of European thought, including the Christian/Catholic Middle Ages. (They do also build to some extent on the ancient world as well, I think, particularly Rome.)

I really don’t know what I like best about this paragraph. Is it her scrupulous use of “in my view,” and “I think,” in order to ease the reader into her tentative divergence from a belief that no sane person holds? Is it her unexpected and oddly piquant distinction between “Roman Catholicism per se” (!) and the Reformation? Or is it the fact that her argument boils down to little more than the idea that the Founders were influenced by stuff about things?

It’s probably the latter, since it allows her to leap to the entertaining conclusion that if they’d they believed other stuff about different things, our nation would be unrecognizable today:

I believe Samuel Huntington is correct when he writes that the United States would not be the country it is today if it had been settled in the 17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestants, but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics. If that had been the case, it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.

Got that? If California had been settled by Spanish Catholics, it would’ve been Mexico. And if French Catholics had settled in Maine and Louisiana, and Dutch explorers who honored the Union of Utrecht had settled in New Netherland…well, you get the idea.

Given her all-but-omniscient historical perspective, you can’t really blame Iannone for getting a bit impatient with the dullards and ideologues who teach at America’s colleges.

(Illustration at top: New Amsterdam, 1640.)

Ghost Cities

Forbes speculates on which cities will be gone by 2100. Venice is sinking. Mexico City is sinking too, and doesn’t have enough drinking water. Naples will be destroyed by volcano, and San Francisco by earthquake. Detroit is doomed because it’s…well, because it’s Detroit. Timbuktu will be swallowed by the desert, and Banjul, Gambia by the sea. And so on.

Flagstaff, Arizona must be relieved that it’s not on this list, given that it's running out of water. Tokyo's not on the list either, even though it takes 45.2 million acres of habitable land - about 3.6 times more than Japan actually has - to sustain it in the style to which it's become accustomed.

Meanwhile, Robert Bruegmann boldly challenges the conventional wisdom with yet another paint-by-numbers pro-sprawl article. You get the feeling that he was paid not by the word, but by the fallacy.

If sprawl is the outward spread of settlement at constantly lower densities without any overall plan, then London in the 19th century sprawled outward at a rate not surpassed since then by any American city.

We did it before, and we can do it again! Never mind the difference between 19th-century sprawl in London, and 21st-century sprawl in the desert West. There was sprawl then, and there’s sprawl now. Sprawl was attacked by effete intellectual snobs then, and it’s attacked by effete intellectual snobs now.

See how much you learn when you’re willing to look at the Big Picture?

Bruegmann goes on to paint a pretty picture of low-density cities powered by renewable energy:

[I]t is quite possible, with wind, solar, biomass and geothermal energy, to imagine a world in which most people could simply decouple themselves from the expensive and polluting utilities that were necessary in the old high-density industrial city.

Does that mean that renewable energy could power high-density cities? Not on your life:

Even if all urban dwellers the world over were brought up to "ideal" urban consumption standards--say, that of a Parisian family living in a small apartment and using only public transportation--it would not reduce energy use and greenhouse emissions, since it would require such large increases in energy use by so many families who today are so poor they can't afford the benefits of carbon-based energy.

Heads he wins, tails you lose. And you better not argue, unless you want a knuckle sandwich from the Invisible Hand:

[T]he reason it has become the middle-class settlement pattern of choice is that it has given them much of the privacy, mobility and choice once enjoyed only by the wealthiest and most powerful.

This is exceedingly cute stuff. If we need to change our energy policy in order to create “sustainable” tract housing along freeway corridors, it’s a simple matter of waving a magic wand. But it’d be fruitless, and possibly dangerous, to go against the political, social, and economic forces that govern sprawl…even though they overlap in certain important respects with the ones that govern our energy policy.

Bruegmann is preferable to Joel Kotkin, because he admits - sort of - that sprawl is land-intensive. But he can’t quite grasp that this makes it an issue of local, national, and global resource management: we’re simply informed that there’s “plenty of land” to allow for everyone in the West to have a single-family home (and, presumably, to provide all the materials needed to build and maintain millions of new homes).

As for water…who cares? It falls from the sky, gratis and free of charge!

World without end, amen.

(Photo of Rice, California via Walking in LA.)

Desperate Measures

Danger Room reports that US troops will use biometrics to distinguish between terrorists and civilians in Iraq.

[T]he Americans intend to take fingerprints and other biometric data from every resident who seems to be a potential fighter after they and Iraqi forces have gained control of the western side of the city. The Americans will also test for the presence of explosive material on suspects’ hands."

Let's hope that very few innocent Iraqis take nitroglycerin for their hearts, or use ammonium nitrate on their farmland. And that the insurgents aren't sophisticated enough to contaminate, say, money with trace amounts of explosives in order to flood the system with false positives.

To me, this project sounds unreliable, alienating, and eminently exploitable. Regardless, "$320 million from the latest war-funding bill will go towards biometric programs." What it'll cost to address the insurgents' adaptational tactics remains to be seen.

Danger Room also reports on the US effort to thwart IED attacks, which costs about $4 billion per year (or roughly four times the amount Bush has allocated to alternative-energy research). The good news is, it works. The bad news is, it doesn't make any difference:

At the beginning of the Iraq war, an agency official tells DANGER ROOM, the ratio of bombs to coalition casualties was about 1-to-1. Today in Iraq, it's on the order of 6-to-1 -- meaning, it now takes more bombs to hurt or kill a servicemember. Unfortunately, the number of attacks has gone up six-fold, too. So the numbers of wounded and killed has stayed more or less constant.

The Pentagon says that this means insurgents have to work harder to inflict the same number of casualties. Which is probably true. But the thing is, that level of casualties is unsustainable for us, as is the $4 billion we spend per year to address this single tactic. With enough R&D, and enough money, we may come up with a technological fix that'll reduce IED attacks dramatically. But at that point, the insurgents will simply try a new approach. And if it's successful, we may well be right back where we started.

Apropos of which, an article in Time profiles an Iraqi bombmaker:

[H]is tools are primitive — soldering irons, old printed circuit boards, discarded TV remotes and other bits of electronic detritus. But he has a talent for fashioning instruments of death from such dreck, turning an old toy walkie-talkie into a trigger for an explosion 100 yards away or programming a washing-machine timer to set off an IED two hours later.

"They are not going to defeat me with technology," he says. "If they want to get rid of IEDs, they have to kill me and everyone like me."

In an uncharacteristically lucid moment, Deleuze and Guattari observed that "it is precisely its impotence that makes power so dangerous." It's not just that we can't defeat this sort of enemy with technology; the larger problem is that our reliance on technology is itself a vulnerability.

Speaking of vulnerability, an article in the LA Times portrays the US Embassy in Iraq (cost: $592 million) as essentially suburban:

This is not the architecture...of domination or empire. This is the architecture of manufactured, blast-resistant banality. What BDY is selling to its government client is a compound whose spaces are wide open enough to admit a quiet, essentially suburban kind of sprawl.

Where does one start? First, domination and empire are foundational concepts of suburbia, as its history of racially restrictive covenants and other exclusionary practices demonstrates. Second, imposing "manufactured banality" on a disintegrating city like Baghdad is domination par excellence. Putting aside the violence that makes its construction possible, the Embassy's design amounts to an expression of contempt and an act of provocation; it's architecture as the extension of war by other means. Which is why, to paraphrase W.G. Sebald, it casts the shadow of its own destruction before it.

Meanwhile, with only forty percent of Baghdad "under control" (whatever that means), we're escalating airstrikes on Iraqi neighborhoods and infrastructure. As William S. Lind says:

Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the "surge" is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: it isn't.

Maybe not, but it was worth a try, right? Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Or vice versa, if desperate measures happen to be your stock in trade.

The Punishment Fits the Crime

This is possibly the best example I've ever seen of conservatarian noblesse oblige:

Lawyers for former Interior Deputy Secretary Steven Griles are arguing that the convicted felon should not serve any prison time but instead be sentenced to perform community service for a program funded by The Walt Disney Company and recreational industry lobbyists....The industry consortium has already approved a slot for Griles in which he would fundraise, secure corporate partners and handle “communication…with government entities and the media.”

By the same logic, an official who illegally turned a public forest over to developers could perform community service by driving one of the firm's bulldozers.

I could almost bring myself to admire the sheer nerve it'd take to make this argument, if I didn't suspect that the people making it have no idea that there's anything outrageous about it. In Hell, some say, gluttons are forcefed; here on earth, teenagers caught sneaking cigarettes are sometimes made to smoke a whole pack of them. Maybe if Griles spends enough time toadying to industry, he'll weary of it. You never know 'til you try!

In unrelated news, the Farm Bill currently under debate in Congresss includes a section that would forbid state and local governments from restricting the planting of genetically modified crops.

It is unclear who inserted Section 123 into the federal legislation, but staffers working on the bill say they do not expect it to survive intact.

Shocking, isn't it? Whoever did this terrible thing should be forced to repay the community by distributing Monsanto-approved educational materials to public schools.

This, That, and the Other

A few random links, just so I can put off writing anything for a little while longer:

Congo Journey is a collection of "Photographs and Documents from Robert Hottot's Expedition to Central Africa, 1908-9."

Art That Heals: The Image as Medicine in Ethiopia is a fascinating site that discusses the role of medico-religious identities, secret names, and talismans in traditional medicine.

The Dawn of Colour commemorates the centennial of the autochrome. Here's one taken in 1913 by Mervyn Joseph Pius O'Gorman:


Tyren, Jomfruen og alle de andre comprises a collection of old star atlases (in Danish).

Teh Booxxor of Joob preachez teh LOLcat g05p3l 2 u nooblarz (via Pandagon).

Not Pop-Ups: The Other Illustrated Books, Ephemera, and Graphic Designs of Vojtech Kubašta was the source for the illustration at the top of this post.

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

This week's model is an unidentified species photographed in Papua New Guinea by Gil Williamson.

Friday Hope Blogging

The big story this week is that Massachusetts has slapped down a bid to end marriage equality. Pandagon compiles the responses of Freepers; some vow not to support Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, and others claim they’ll never set foot in Massachusetts again. One can only hope they really mean it.

Lindsey at Eschaton informs me that Asheville, North Carolina has banned gated communities.

The City Council voted Tuesday to forbid new gated communities, following through on concerns the developments make the city less of a community.

The ban passed by the council on a 5-2 vote applies to future developments, which would no longer be allowed to restrict access to only residents and their guests, done usually with gates or security workers.

It took me a couple of minutes to grasp what an incredible - and healthy - change in thinking this represents...particularly given the thinking of the last seven years.

Also in North Carolina, the state senate has passed a right-to-know bill that would improve residents’ access information about hazardous waste facilities in their neighborhoods.

The bill also closes a loophole that allows hazardous waste storehouses to operate outside of state regulation if they keep waste for less than 10 days.

In Brooklyn, meanwhile, parking spaces for cars are being eliminated to create parking spaces for bicycles. And Toronto is toying with the idea of banning leaf-blowers and gas mowers.

Praising Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’m having a hard time seeing the downside of his ongoing attacks on BushCo’s denialism:

On Monday, he teamed up with Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell, a fellow Republican, to chastise the folks on the Hill for "inaction and denial" on climate change in an open letter published in the Washington Post....

"It's bad enough that the federal government has yet to take the threat of global warming seriously," wrote the guvs, "but it borders on malfeasance for it to block the efforts of states such as California and Connecticut that are trying to protect the public's health and welfare."

John Warner’s bid to renew offshore drilling has failed in the Senate:

Five of Warner's fellow Republicans, all from coastal states, joined 37 Democrats and two independents in opposing the effort.

Opponents warned that the move could have a "domino effect" that could unravel the drilling ban inspired by a devastating 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara.

The coal industry has also suffered a dramatic legal defeat:

Coal operators cannot evade the Clean Water Act by building sediment-treatment ponds just downstream from strip mine valley fills, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers essentially outlawed the common coal industry practice of turning small stream segments downstream from fills into waste treatment systems.

Another federal judge has ruled against the BLM’s industry-friendly grazing rules:

The BLM violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in creating the rules, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled.

Winmill's 52-page ruling said the BLM's rule revisions would have loosened restrictions on grazing on millions of acres of public land nationwide, limited the amount of public comment the BLM had to consider and diluted the BLM's authority to sanction ranchers for grazing violations.

And yet another judge has ruled that growing fish in hatcheries isn’t a valid way of meeting the goals of the Endangered Species Act:

His decision flatly rejects the idea that if enough salmon can be produced in hatcheries, there is little need to protect wild stocks. It also strikes down what environmentalists widely viewed as a Bush administration policy to appease building and agriculture interests.

Triple Pundit has a fascinating post on the possibility of kite-powered irrigation:

[I]f you can engineer a kite to pull on a cord with some degree of consistency, then you can use that energy to pump irrigation water - a task that currently accounts for about 7% of worldwide energy use.

Speaking of irrigation, a new sensor could save water by allowing crops to tell farmers when and how much to water them:

The technology includes a tiny sensor that can be clipped to plant leaves charting their thickness, a key measure of water deficiency and accompanying stress, said Research Associate Hans-Dieter Seelig of CU-Boulder's BioServe Space Technology Center. Data from the leaves could be sent wirelessly over the Internet to computers linked to irrigation equipment, ensuring timely watering, cutting down on excessive water and energy use and potentially saving farmers in Colorado millions of dollars per year, he said.

Aerial surveys of the Sudan have revealed that animals thought to have been wiped out during decades of warfare have actually survived in staggering numbers.

“I have never seen wildlife like that, in such numbers, not even when flying over the mass migrations of the Serengeti,” said Fay. “This could represent the biggest migration of large mammals on earth.”

Fay, Elkan and Marjan also report an estimated 8,000 elephants, with concentrations mainly in the Sudd, the largest freshwater wetland in Africa. They also found evidence of even larger numbers of elephants in Boma and in the Jonglei landscape. According to the World Conservation Union’s African elephant database, there were no reliable records of elephants in Sudan.

India is on the verge of introducing air-powered cars:

The Air Car uses compressed air to push its engine's pistons. It is anticipated that approximately 6000 Air Cars will be cruising the streets of India by 2008. If the manufacturers have no surprises up their exhaust pipes the car will be practical and reasonably priced. The CityCat model will clock out at 68 mph with a driving range of 125 miles.

Refueling is simple and will only take a few minutes. That is, if you live nearby a gas station with custom air compressor units. The cost of a fill up is approximately $2.00. If a driver doesn't have access to a compressor station, they will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car's built-in compressor to refill the tank in about 4 hours.

In New York, the incidence of childhood lead poisoning has decreased substantially:

Although childhood lead poisoning remains a serious problem, the number of new cases identified in 2006 marks the lowest level in more than a decade. The number of new cases identified in 2006 – 2,310 among children ages 6 months to 6 years – marks a 13% decline from 2005 and an 88% decline since 1995, when nearly 20,000 children were newly identified with lead poisoning.

WorldChanging reports on Kenya’s Camel Library, “a mobile book-lending service that delivers books to 3,500 villagers and nomads around Garissa.”

They’re not going to save the world, but these staircase drawers are still pretty impressive:


Also via Inhabitat, solar cell phones from China:

The phone’s battery lasts 2.5 times longer than a traditional battery and can be recharged outdoors, indoors, even by candle light! Just one hour of direct sunlight will provide enough juice to power 40 minutes of talk-time.

2 Blowhards discusses Donald Evans’ beautiful handmade stamps for imaginary countries (link via Coudal.)


But as lovely as Evans' work is, it can't compete with the slightly less imaginary world of Manila Carnivals, 1908 - 1939:



At Opacity, you can take a virtual tour of The Fourth County Lunatic Asylum at Whittingham. Very...evocative. That goes double for their tour of the Mesa State Training School, which includes this wonderful picture of an indoor meadow:


The Australian War Memorial has an exhibition of the paintings of Stella Bowen. It’s kind of hit and miss, but still worth a look...even though it doesn’t include my favorite painting of hers:


Also: 1800’s Ephemera. And a small but poignant Flickr set of ephemera by pennynotes. Images from The Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Wild Sanctuary's WildBlog. An interesting paper on Meaningless artificial sound and its application in urban soundscape research. (See also Auditorium Mundi.) A map that shows US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs. The advent of powdered alcohol. MP3s of the Badger Theatre Movie Phone. And some astonishing photos of Iceland (via Dark Roasted Blend).


(Illustration at top: “Maligne Lake, Jasper Park” by Lawren Harris, 1924.)

The Civil Ways of Rome

It seems that some anti-immigration activists can’t tell the difference between citizens and noncitizens:

The publisher of a Spanish-language newspaper had to leave an immigration rally Sunday in Hazleton after a crowd surrounded him and began yelling for him to “get out of the country.”

Amilcar Arroyo, publisher of Hazleton-based El Mensajero, was covering the event when he was verbally attacked by a crowd who thought he was an illegal immigrant and a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit against Hazleton.

Arroyo is an American citizen and is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

In related news, there’s a new push to allow migrants - most of whom, as we all know, are either terrorists, rapists, drug dealers, leprosy carriers, or some overachieving combination thereof - to fight our illegal wars, in return for the privileges of official citizenship enjoyed by Mr. Arroyo:

A senior defense official expressed hope today that a provision in the stalled immigration bill that would have allowed some undocumented aliens to join the military won’t fall off the radar screen.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, provision in the immigration bill was expected to help boost military recruiting, Bill Carr, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, said today during a telephone conference with veterans’ group representatives.

In response to which, Wonkette draws an analogy that I find a bit...problematic:

You know, like when Rome couldn’t get enough Romans to serve in the legions because there were too many wars going on everywhere so they let barbarians join the legions in exchange for citizenship and then the Western Empire crumbled and the Dark Ages began?

Quite so. It was tolerable at the outset, when “those troops from the more barbarous subject states learned the civil ways of Rome.” But in the end, the influence of barbarian savagery can only have a corrupting effect on the civilized.

(Illustration: “Hanno Announcing to the Mercenaries the Emptiness of the Public Coffers,” by John Leech, 1852.)

Valuing and Conserving Time

We all know that environmentalists want to force us back into the Stone Age. The fact has been pointed out so many times, with such vehemence, that it’s almost lost its power to shock us.

That’s why we need gifted and inexhaustible writers like Donald J. Boudreaux to inspire us, like Poe’s Raven, to Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance.

When debunking environmentalism, one must always start by provisionally granting a theoretical validity to whatever facts can't be denied outright:

It might well be that humans' "footprint" on the Earth is larger than ever; it might even be true that this larger footprint creates some health risks for us modern humans that our pre-industrial ancestors never encountered.

Who can say? I suppose you could look at the change in world population between 1400 and today, and consider the health risks posed by modern technologies like oil refining, air travel, and synthetic pesticides…but that way lies madness. There are some things humanity was never meant to know.

In their lust to return to the days of cave-dwelling and trepanation, environmentalists have failed to recognize that modern life has certain advantages:

Our bodies are cleaner and more free of disease. Our homes are sanitary. We have indoor plumbing and anti-bacterial soap; our ancestors had outhouses. Our clothes are cleaner and, despite recent hysteria, our food supply is safer.

Cheers for anti-bacterial soap (despite its role in antibiotic resistance), and jeers for hysteria about multiple episodes of mass poisoning!

So far, this is garden-variety sophistry. But Boudreaux has far more deadly arrows in his quiver:

[T]oo many environmentalists condemn people who don't share their creed. For example, I don't recycle my trash because my time is too precious for me to spend it sorting such items into different containers.

If Boudreaux spent half an hour recycling conservatarian gibberish for this column, he spent roughly 27 more minutes than I spend sorting my recyclables in the average month. But who am I to judge how he spends his time?

In environmentalists' eyes, those who unquestioningly disregard the value of one resource (time) in order to spend it on the conservation of other resources (wood, plastic and glass) are righteous while those of us who value and conserve time are sinners.

Personally, I don’t think Boudreaux is a sinner so much as an insufferable asshole. But to the extent that the word “sinner” applies, it applies because conserving Boudreaux’s time benefits Boudreaux, while conserving wood, plastic, and glass benefits the society in which he lives and presumably thrives.

And as Adam Smith wisely observed, “when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration.”

(Illustration: "Vanitas Still Life: Sins of the Flesh" by Chris Peters, 2004.)

Mechanistic Products

Ben Shapiro says that liberals hate religion. This is a promising start, but it leaves him several hundred words shy of a column. Accordingly, he decides to explain why hating religion is a bad thing:

[A]theism precludes the human capability for free will -- without a soul, we are nothing but mechanistic products of genetics and environment -- yet it simultaneously insists on an infinite capability for individual and societal perfection.

Hark to his cold inexorable logic! If there's no soul, there can be no free will, just as surely as there can be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if there are no leprechauns.

It's hard to imagine this argument holding water even in the sea-monkey kingdom of Townhall.com. Why shouldn't "mechanistic products of genetics and environment" gradually become as "perfect," in their own little way, as snowflakes? For that matter, since perfection is in the eye of the beholder, why couldn't genetics and environment create human beings whose blind hatred of homosexuality would rival that of our most devout conservatives?

I'm able to respect the argument that only a sense of the divine could inspire Purcell's music or Bresson's films; the argument that only a sense of the divine could inspire Paul Cameron to hate teh gays is somewhat less compelling.

Along with "the problem of evil," free will is one of the least interesting topics in philosophy, so I won't bother myself with it...except to say that free will (whatever that is) and determinism (whatever that is) needn't be mutually exclusive, as St. Augustine notes:

By means of liberty it came to pass that man fell into sin; but now the penal depravity consequent on it, instead of liberty, has introduced necessity.

What makes Shapiro really unique - in my experience, anyway - is his apparent belief that the interplay of genetics and environment is simultaneously deterministic (or fatalistic, really) and static:

[Liberal atheism] champions the "natural," while maintaining that nature need not dictate social relations.

Putting aside the fact that he's painting with a brush that's almost as broad as his ignorance, it's odd that he views this is a contradiction. If you accept that nature need not dictate social relations - or more to the point, that nature doesn't forbid social relations from changing over time, deterministically or otherwise - then it's pretty reasonable to champion the "natural" as something evolving, if not malleable.

Whether this process can ever lead to a "utopia" - as Shapiro stupidly claims that all leftists expect it to - is less important than whether it can lead to improvement (e.g., a society that oppresses gays changing into a society that accepts them).

Shapiro also frets about "the substitution of enforced fairness [!] for individual freedom," which is apparently one of atheism's gaudier sins. If this is what liberal fag-coddlers are getting up to on God's good green earth, one can only imagine how they'd act in a world where "deterministic Darwinism" were true, and they were mere "mechanistic products of genetics and environment."

Perhaps his fear is not that a world without his version of God would be savage, but that it wouldn't be savage enough.

Sacred Principles

The robustly heterosexual David Limbaugh has had it up to the sigmoid colon with the pounding…I mean the licking…I mean the abuse that ordinary Americans have had to take from uppity queers:

Homosexual groups deny they are pressing for special rights and protection, but no one is shutting down their speech, branding them as hateful, bullying them with threats of firings, and publicly insulting the sacred principles in which they believe….

Indeed. No one is branding homosexuals as hateful; no one bullies them with threats of firing; and no one publicly insults them or their principles. If you’ve gotten the opposite impression, it’s probably because a cabal of dangerous, despicable homosexuals has exploited our belief in free speech and tolerance in order to promote their perverted lifestyle.

Homosexual groups maintain they are promoting diversity, but seek to suppress diverse viewpoints by labeling them "hateful" and "hurtful."

Yes, they do. Quite a paradox, eh? It’s kind of like how blacks claim to be in favor of equality, and then get angry when they’re called “dirty niggers.” It beats me why they can’t see the contradiction this entails, but I’m sure Charles Murray could give me a scientific explanation.

Anyway, Limbaugh’s claim that bigots like himself are oppressed is reasonably accurate. What he fails to mention is that they’re not oppressed enough.

Like Limbaugh, I view most social progress as an expression of intolerance. It’s not about leaning down from Parnassus in order to recognize the inconvenient moral claims of women or minorities; it’s about rejecting the immoral claims of bigots, now and forever, with the understanding that basing a civilized society on their ideas is not only unjust, but a logical impossibility.

It’s natural that bigots should feel diminished and discriminated against by laws that protect the targets of their hatred; if they don’t, it’s a sign that the laws don’t go far enough.

The Horrible Truth

Last night, for some odd reason, I felt like I'd rather bicker with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist on Eschaton than stain and seal my entryway floor.

As you might imagine, I was plied with a fairly stiff dose of snake oil. While suffering through a description of the laborious pre-positioning of Thermate-TH3 charges – an improbable scenario floated by Steven E. Jones from BYU - a thought struck me: Why would they bother?

If 9/11 was intended to serve as a new Pearl Harbor, then flying two planes into the WTC would’ve been more than sufficient to set BushCo’s hair-trigger war machine in motion. Why go to the trouble, expense, and risk of trying to cut dozens of structural columns with something as unreliable (and unproven for the purpose) as thermite or its analogs? Why use micronukes, for that matter, or any of the other demolition methods championed by 9/11 “truthseekers”? How many politicians or journalists were going to say, “We can’t invade Afghanistan…the towers are still standing! Get back to us when something dramatic happens.”

We justified Gulf War I on the grounds that Saddam’s soldiers had murdered Kuwaiti babies by tipping them out of incubators - an atrocity which never actually happened. Call me a Pollyanna if you like, but I think that live footage of flame-enveloped Americans leaping from the upper floors of the WTC made the Kuwaiti incubator story seem like an episode of Green Acres. The shock, the fear, the desire for revenge…all of this could be exploited just as easily whether or not the towers actually fell.

All of which reconfirms my belief that the “controlled demolition” scenario is an escapist fantasy for people who can’t face the truth, and that its overall effect is not to cast doubt on the Administration’s laughable narrative, but to make it seem comparatively plausible.

Systemic Failure and Pathology

A study on modern warfare from the University of Georgia has reached some interesting conclusions:

Despite overwhelming military superiority, the world’s most powerful nations failed to achieve their objectives in 39 percent of their military operations since World War II, according to a new University of Georgia study....

“If you know some key variables – like the major objective, the nature of the target, whether there’s going to be another strong state that will intervene on the side of the target and whether you’ll have an ally – you can get a sense of your probability of victory,” said [Patricia L.] Sullivan, whose study appears in the June issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

My first problem with this is the assumption that one can know the "major objective" of wars waged by superpowers against inherently weak - or intentionally weakened - states. I find it hard to imagine any justification for this beyond wishful thinking.

My second problem is that "victory" seems to be defined as achieving the "major objective" in question. Even if we accept that objective as rational (or at least sincere), achieving it could turn out to be disastrous down the road.

We don't really know why we've gone to war in Iraq, and we're not really sure what victory entails. Measuring the probability of "success" in this situation strikes me as a fool's game...but for whatever it's worth, Sullivan reckons that "the current war in Iraq has a probability of success of nearly 26 percent with an estimated duration of 10 years."

That seems pretty goddamn optimistic to me. But since I'm basing my assessment more on intuition and ill temper than statistical analysis, it's possible I'm missing something. Anyway, I do agree with Sullivan on one crucial point:

“We can try to use brute force to kill insurgents and terrorists, but what we really need is for the population to be supportive of the government and to stop supporting the insurgents,” Sullivan said. “Otherwise, every time we kill an insurgent or a terrorist, they’re going to be replaced by others.”

You can't really argue with that, unless you're one of those people who believes that "kill 'em all" is an actual strategy. Unfortunately, accepting this ideal doesn't bring us any closer to achieving it.

This brings me to a recent post at Defense Tech, which concerns a paper by Steven Metz of the U.S. Army War College. Metz claims that we should neither be battling insurgents, nor propping up the government:

[T]he U.S. goal should not automatically be the defeat of the insurgents by the regime (which may be impossible and which the regime may not even want), but the most rapid conflict resolution possible. In other words, a quick and sustainable resolution which integrates insurgents into the national power structure is less damaging to U.S. national interests than a protracted conflict which leads to the complete destruction of the insurgents. Protracted conflict, not insurgent victory, is the threat.

This doesn't address the possibility that protracted conflict is the goal (which I don't think we can rule out, whether we're talking about an escalating regional war, or BushCo "standing firm" until it can drop the problem in a new administration's lap and heckle them from the sidelines).

To be fair, Metz acknowledges the possibility of "systemic failure and pathology in which key elites and organizations develop a vested interest in sustaining the conflict." But he paints this as a dance of death between the Iraqi government and the insurgency, with the US as a hapless suitor who's trying to cut in:

[T]he most effective posture for outsiders is not to be an ally of the government and thus a sustainer of the flawed socio-political-economic system, but to be neutral mediators and peacekeepers (even when the outsiders have much more ideological affinity for the regime than for the insurgents). If this is true, the United States should only undertake counterinsurgency support in the most pressing instances and as part of an equitable, legitimate, and broad-based multinational coalition.

Putting aside the question of whether this strategy is likely to embraced by people who've launched a inequitable, illegitimate, unpopular, and unnecessary war, the idea of US forces being able to act as "neutral mediators and peacekeepers" is farfetched, partly because of the resentment we've generated through our minor missteps (e.g., sexually torturing and murdering Iraqis); and partly because "peacekeeping" in Iraq is going to involve killing and getting killed for the foreseeable future (which confirms Simone Weil's observation that "force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims").

And again, what if our intent actually is to be "a sustainer of the flawed socio-political-economic system"?

Stranger things have happened, God knows. But somehow, it's more "rational" - and comforting - to believe that our job in Iraq is to face down an existential threat posed by Radical Evil. As usual, we'd rather face Satan than ourselves.

Apropos of which, Robert M. Jeffers has a few choice words:

If only "they" are evil, then only "they" deserve to die, and "wiping them all out" to solve the problem becomes the only solution to every perceived international problem (and national; that same sentiment lies at the heart of the immigration debate today). But if we take evil back into ourselves, if we recognize our complicity in the violence of the world, if we stop thinking of ourselves as "innocent nation" in a "decadent world," perhaps we could start to make a change in the world.

Like a lot of other people, RMJ seems to forgotten all about our good intentions.

(Illustration by Janez Vaijkard Valvasor, from Theatrum Mortis Humanæ Tripartitum, 1682. Via Giornale Nuovo.)

Chemicals of Interest

If you’re like most people, you object to American colleges because they stuff students with postmodern relativism as brutally as foie gras manufacturers stuff geese with corn mash.

Sad to say, it now looks as though this is the least of our worries:

Unusual paranoia over chemical attack in the US takes many forms. It can be seen in a recent piece of trouble from the Department of Homeland Security, a long list of "chemicals of interest" it wishes to require all university settings to inventory.

"Academic institutions across the country claim they will have to spend countless hours and scarce resources on documenting very small amounts of chemicals in many different labs that are scattered across sometimes sprawling campuses," reported a recent Chemical & Engineering News, the publication of the American Chemical Society.

That’s a fair objection. The sensible way to answer it is to shriek ”9/11!” 'til your face turns as purple as an eggplant and your throat sprays a fine mist of blood.

The problem of mass shootings can be addressed by arming students, teachers, and janitors with semiautomatic weapons. But when terrorists and others malcontents equip themselves with chemical weapons, it’s a bit harder to fight fire with fire. The only possible solution – and I’m speaking as someone who has pondered this problem for at least ten minutes – is to purge our nation’s college labs of anything more dangerous than Rochelle salt.

And that definitely includes trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide:

"The manufacture of hydrogen sulfide is [simple]," writes Hutchkinson. "It is created by water coming into contact with phosphorus pentasulfide."

This is actually true, unlike many things in terrorist poison handbooks. On the DHS list, phosphorus pentasulfide is only of interest if a university has a ton of it. Hydrogen sulfide, any amount. Phosphorus pentasulfide, one ton.

While the DHS performs the important – and exciting! - work of rounding up every half-empty bottle of triethanolamine from here to West Quoddy Head, chemistry professors can concentrate on more wholesome experiments. Handled carefully, baking-soda-and-vinegar volcanoes will provoke considerable excitement - even among jaded modern students weaned on R-rated movies and “acid rock” - while teaching important lessons about fizzing, carbonation, and allied topics.

In unrelated news, there seems to be a small amount of chemical contamination in the environs of Hampton Roads, Virginia:

The military has polluted Peninsula creeks and ponds with cancer-causing chemicals and dangerous contaminants such as mercury and arsenic….At one base, an industrial solvent has been found flowing into the York River at levels almost 4,000 times the federal drinking-water limit. At another, fish skeletons have been deformed by military pollution.

And tests show elevated levels of nasty polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in fish, oysters and crabs in public waterways near three of the bases - particularly around Tabb Creek near Langley Air Force Base….

The estimates for cleanup costs range from $80 billion to $120 billion. The timeframe to finish the job is measured in multiple decades. In many cases, it takes a decade of studies before the military even begins a cleanup.

(Photo via Beaver County Militia.)

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Transgrounded by the void,
free of all
prayer,
fine-fugued, according to
the pre-script,
unpassable,

I take Hoplodoris estrelyado in,
instead of
peace.

(Photo by Erwin Kodiat.)

Friday Hope Blogging

GrrlScientist reports that the publishing behemoth Reed Elsevier has pulled out of the international arms trade:

Elsevier, which owns the medical journal The Lancet, had faced boycotts and continued protests for the past two years from authors, academics and medical professionals. Last year 13 authors, including Ian McEwan, A. S. Byatt and Nick Hornby, joined in by calling on the company to quit the arms trade market. Further, some investors have also pressured Elsevier about its arms exhibitions.

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that should aid Afghan women:

The US House of Representatives voted 406 to 10 yesterday to pass an omnibus bill that will provide security and economic assistance to Afghanistan and will limit funds given to warlords in high-level offices. The bill includes the major provisions of the Afghan Women's Empowerment Act, including the authorization for three years of $5 million for the Afghan Ministry for Women's Affairs, $10 million for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and $30 million for Afghan-led non-governmental organizations that are providing assistance to Afghan women and girls.

Norma Gattsek, director of government relations and global programs at the Feminist Majority, said of the House's vote, "This bill finally recognizes the dire conditions for Afghan women and girls, who are under constant attack by fundamentalists who want to deprive them of their rights.

Afghan women and girls aren’t the only ones “under constant attack by fundamentalists,” which is why the newly introduced Access to Birth Control (ABC) Act is absolutely necessary:

Bipartisan legislation guaranteeing a woman’s ability to access birth control - including over-the-counter emergency contraception - was introduced by U.S. Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-14) and Senator Frank Lautenberg (NJ) today at a Capitol Hill rally attended by several leading women’s organizations. The “Access to Birth Control (ABC) Act,” would make it illegal for a pharmacy to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and require pharmacies to help, not hinder a woman’s ability to access contraception.

My views on pharmacists whose “consciences” don’t allow them to dispense birth control are extremely negative, so I’m all in favor of taking legal action against them.

A new search engine claims to generate money for charity when people surf the Intertubes:

Users earn money for one of the four charitable causes simply by conducting their daily searches from the Ripple page (powered by Google) or by clicking on a ‘Give Panel’ located in the Ripple homepage.

In the first case, a portion of any revenue earned by Google from the search is directed to Ripple, which passes 100% of this amount directly on to one of the four charities they have selected to help fight global poverty.

Mali’s jatropha plant has some interesting uses:

Some 700 communities in Mali have installed biodiesel generators powered by oil from the hardy Jatropha curcas plant to meet their energy needs, according to Reuters. The Malian government is promoting cultivation of the inedible oilseed bush, commonly used as a hedge or medicinal plant, to provide electricity for lighting homes, running water pumps and grain mills, and other critical uses. Mali hopes to eventually power all of the country’s 12,000 villages with affordable, renewable energy sources.

The Sietch Blog discusses Sony's prospective line of human-powered electronic devices, as well as a new solar wireless router, both of which will be particularly useful in the developing world. (Apropos of which, Catherine Laine of AIDG Blog has a nice Flickr set of photos she took at Cooper Hewitt Design Museum’s Design for the Other 90% exhibit.)

A symbiotic relationship between plants and bacteria may have promising applications:

The demonstration of alternative pathways capable of triggering the nodulation signal in certain rhizobia is promising for future techniques for bringing these bacteria into association with different leguminous plants. It therefore becomes possible to increase agricultural production of a greater number of important plants, notably in tropical countries, while cutting down the use of fertilizers.

You heard it here first.

Inhabitat reports on the “solar city” of Rizhao, China:

Since 2001, Rizhao City (Shandong Province, China) officials have been educating the public and initiating new building regulations to promote the use of solar panels in their city. Traffic lights, street lamps and over 60,000 greenhouses are solar powered. Today, the city of nearly three million has over a half-million square meters of solar water heating panels—99% of households in the central districts use solar water heaters and more than 30% do so in the outlying villages.

A strange new lamp made of aluminum foil is alleged to have great potential:

“Built of aluminum foil, sapphire and small amounts of gas, the panels are less than 1 millimeter thick, and can hang on a wall like picture frames,” said Gary Eden, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the U. of I., and corresponding author of a paper describing the microcavity plasma lamps in the June issue of the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics….

Like conventional fluorescent lights, microcavity plasma lamps are glow-discharges in which atoms of a gas are excited by electrons and radiate light. Unlike fluorescent lights, however, microcavity plasma lamps produce the plasma in microscopic pockets and require no ballast, reflector or heavy metal housing. The panels are lighter, brighter and more efficient than incandescent lights and are expected, with further engineering, to approach or surpass the efficiency of fluorescent lighting.

This is the first I’ve heard of it, and I have no idea what to make of it. The same goes for Inhabitat’s rather incoherent discussion of a process that recycles waste heat into sound and electricity:

If you take a source of heat and apply to any enclosed area, the air inside it will expand increasing the pressure inside. This pressurized air will then move through a filter or opening on one side, producing a simple clear sound at a standard frequency…. The sound waves then pass through “piezoelectric” devices which transform the sound into electricity when squeezed by sound.

After that, it’s something of a relief to visit the terra cognita of Stirling engines. Green Wombat has a longish post on the progress of Stirling Energy Systems’ massive installation in the Mojave Desert (which I discussed in an earlier edition of FHB).

Although the Stirling dish is one of the most efficient ways to convert sunlight into electricity, the sheer scale of the California utility projects - the contracts call for Stirling to provide up to 1.75 gigawatts of solar electricity - has prompted doubts among the company's rivals about its ability to manufacture so many dishes and engines and keep them operating. "The rocket science part of it has been completed," Osborn told Green Wombat at Stirling's headquarters, tucked away in an office park north of downtown Phoenix. "What we’re doing now is taking the units that work well and perform well and making the changes so they’re amenable to high-volume manufacturing."

Grist reports on a heartening outbreak of opposition to coal-to-liquids plants. And in Florida, state regulators have unanimously rejected the construction of a new “clean coal” plant. The main objection was its cost, though environmental issues seemingly played a part as well. The article is noteworthy for this odd quote:

Though 70 miles from the Everglades and 40 miles from Big Cypress National Wildlife Refuge, the Moore Haven site fell within a park-protection zone requiring stringent federal air-quality standards.

40 to 70 miles? Those parks may as well have been on the far side of the moon, eh?

Voters in Tennessee have rejected a plan to subsidize big-box retailers with their tax dollars. How arrogant of these people to imagine that they know what’s best for their town! That goes double for El Paso, Texas, which is balking at reopening the Asarco copper smelter:

The El Paso City Council, officials from neighboring Sunland Park, N.M., and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, recently signed a joint resolution against Asarco. They hope state environmental officials deciding Asarco's future in El Paso will consider the symbolic move.

Nancy Pelosi has scuttled a challenge to California’s right to enforce more stringent emissions rules:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, responding to pressure from California officials and environmentalists, has slapped down a new proposal by top House Democrats that would have wiped out California's ability to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks.

In a brief but pointed statement Tuesday night, the San Francisco Democrat said, "Any proposal that affects California's landmark efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or eliminates the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions will not have my support."

Also, California’s attorney general is suing San Bernardino for failing to take climate issues into account when making land use decisions:

If the suit is successful, California cities and counties could be forced to take steps to limit sprawl, promote compact development, require builders to design energy-efficient houses that offer solar power, and encourage less driving, more mass transit and use of alternative fuels.

Still more trouble for the Minutemen:

A man who mortgaged his home in order to help the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps build border fencing on private land in Cochise County is suing the group and its president, Chris Simcox, for fraud and breach of contract.

Dave Neiwart explains why this is good news:

As these lawsuits work their way through the courts, we'll be finding out a whole lot more about how these right-wing scam artists bilked millions of people into sending them their hard-earned dollars. It's the same old story with a new cast, but watching how it plays out is always instructive.

While we’re on the topic, you may want to check out this list of global migration myths (via Subtopia).

Researchers claim to have found 24 new species in a Suriname rainforest:

Among the 24 species believed new to science are an Atelopus frog with brilliant purple markings, four Eleutherodactylus frog species, six species of fish, 12 dung beetles and an ant species. The scientists also found 27 species endemic to the Guayana Shield region comprising Suriname and neighboring Guyana, French Guiana and northern Brazil, including a rare armored catfish, Harttiella crassicauda, feared extinct because gold mining activities had contaminated a creek where it was last seen more than 50 years ago.

Here in the US, the yellow-billed loon has made some headway in gaining protection under the ESA. And an Alabama developer has suffered a second, and hopefully crushing, legal defeat:

For the second time in five years, an Alabama federal court has halted two massive resort projects to protect the habitat of the endangered Alabama beach mouse. On May 31, Judge William Steele issued a preliminary injunction preventing any action that would result in killing the Alabama beach mouse until a final decision could be reached in the case.

Here's a picture of the varmint in question.


There’s word of a new flame-retardant plastic:

A group of scientists from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have just created a new synthetic polymer that doesn't burn and doesn't require the flame-retardant chemicals found in most plastics….The polymer uses a chemical known as bishydroxydeoxybenzoin or BHDB as its building block, which releases water vapor upon breaking down in a fire instead of noxious gases.

This is expected to be useful in reducing fatalities from fires on airplanes.

New Canadian legislation forces schools to test their water for lead contamination yearly, while stepping up lead mitigation efforts:

The province will help purchase water filters for pregnant women and low-income parents with young children in older neighbourhoods, the two groups that are most vulnerable to lead.

Queen's Park is also helping municipalities adjust the chemistry of water to prevent leaching lead from pipes, and encouraging cities to help homeowners replace lead pipes through such things as financing.

It’ll end in serfdom, needless to say. If you’re not free to drink leaded water, you’re not free at all!

Also in Canada, an environmental group wants to create an interactive map that details local pollution sources:

"The City of Toronto has promised since the year 2000 that they would have a community right-to-know bylaw," said Cino.

"It's been seven years and we haven't seen it. Well, the community has concerns, and we want to show you there are concerns. If this is a very successful project and we can build this map, then why can't Toronto build it?"

Meanwhile, 3D maps from Google Earth are helping activists and NGOs to educate people about a wide variety of regional problems:

For example, Mary Ann Hitt, executive director of nonprofit Appalachian Voices, said a collective of grassroots organizations is using 3D maps in Google Earth to show how millions of acres of Appalachian Mountains across four states have been destroyed by mining companies….

"This has revolutionized our thinking," Hitt said here Wednesday at the Fifth International Symposium on Digital Earth. "It's given us the ability to give the kind of tour of the mountains that we only could give previously to the media or government officials. This gives (us) an audience of 200 million people," she said.

In related news, the bioacoustician Bernie Krause is working with Google Earth to catalog soundmarks:

Some, such as a recording made north of California's Lake Tahoe, come with before-and-after recordings – in this case recordings taken before and after selective logging took place at the spot in the late 1980s. Krause returned to the meadow 15 times after the logging. A gurgling brook takes center stage to a background cast of birds in the "before" recording; "after" reveals little life at all….

His goal is to get people to reconsider a culture in which noise equates with power, in favor of one in which people value the importance of natural sounds in their own lives.

Unfortunately, you won’t find archived sounds at A Visit to Old Los Angeles and Environs. But the pictures are evocative enough:


Also evocative: Confetta’s magnificent Flickr set of wonderfully odd cigarette cards. (I highly recommend the slideshow version.)


Micscape has a nice feature on diatoms of the North Sea, as well as a survey of mantids, stick insects, and centipedes.

Next, via Things, comes Modern Ruins. (I may’ve linked to this site before, come to think of it. And I may link to it again.)

And another thing: Oiseaux from Agence Eureka; the wallpaper designs of Dan Funderburgh; “45 rpm curios” from Office Naps; a new form of música fronteriza from Subtopia; and vintage postcards of airships, offered for sale.


(Illustration at top: “Antarctic Iceberg” by Edward Seago, 1956.)

Lift and Deepen

An Indian billionaire has taken a cold, hard look at his life, and figured out what was missing from it:

Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, has plans to build a 570-foot, 27-story skyscraper in Mumbai as a home for his six-person family, a stark contrast to the city's many crowded slums. Some planners predict similar skyscraper projects will follow.

"The building, named Antilla after a mythical island, will have a total floor area greater than Versailles and be home for Mr Ambani, his mother, wife, three children and 600 full-time staff."

Speaking of crowded slums, overcrowding among England’s dead has led urban planners to consider a sort of reverse Antilla:

In a technique called "lift and deepen" old graves will be deepened with room for up to six new coffins to be placed on top of the older remains.

Six? It’s a start, but I think they ought to be thinking at least as big as Mr. Ambani. There’s no obvious reason why these subterranean tenements shouldn’t go further and fare better. Or perhaps they could form the basement levels of a skyscraper that'd house dead people who are accustomed to the finer things in life.

An article by Debbie Woodell discusses further challenges posed by the population boom among the dead (they multiply like rabbits, you know):

Some cemeteries barely make ends meet and have to rely on unconventional ways to pay the bills (200-year-old Congressional Cemetery, in the shadows of Capitol Hill in Washington, rents itself out as a dog park). Others long ago fell into serious disrepair, and many of these turn into havens for vandalism and other crimes.

The main exceptions, as Ms. Woodell notes, are cemeteries whose residents draw tourists. Which makes me think that the best way to revitalize our ailing cemeteries is to acquire some corpses of substance.

Great individuals, we understand, are citizens of the world. Why shouldn’t their remains be sold to the highest-bidding city, or bought by private collectors who’d then lease or donate them in the name of civic betterment? Why should the bones of Henri Landru molder in France, when they could be a boon to tourism in, say, Fort Stockton, Texas? And why should Adam Smith languish in a socialist backwater like Scotland, when he could be installed in Lake Havasu City, within sight of London Bridge?

That leaves the question of what can we do with the underachieving dead. I suggest that their ashes be used as a building material for monuments to the powerful. It'd be a sort of trickle-down arrangement, in which the great provide an opportunity for the little people to make themselves useful.

(The illustration at top is from John Ronan's plan for a municipal mausoleum behind the Chicago Post Office, which he based on Arnold Boecklin's "Isle of the Dead.")

My Head All Full of Stuffing, My Heart All Full of Pain

CKR and Eli have simultaneously bestowed a Thinking Blogger award on yours truly, which is as almost as kind as it is baffling. I’d feel more honest if I’d gotten a “Emotionally Disintegrating Blogger” award, but perhaps those are in short supply. There's a war on, after all.

Then again, it’s possible that I do deserve to be called a “thinking blogger,” to the extent that I find thinking more bearable than feeling, these days.

Anyway, the rules of the game oblige me to name five bloggers who make me think. Which is difficult, being as it covers everyone on my blogroll and then some. Accordingly, I’ll list five bloggers I think deserve to be more widely read, in alphabetical order.

Interrobang is on hiatus, but worth waiting for.

Juniper Pearl is a funny, engaging writer whose intense moral seriousness has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.

Niches routinely informs me about things that don’t make me want to eat rat poison.

Olvlzl’s distaste for pseudorationality and self-defeating identity politics may almost outstrip mine.

Question Technology questions technology.

All of these people are more interesting than me, as is everyone else on my blogroll. Go thou and seek 'em out.

The Natural Qualities of the Oyster

While nattering nabobs of negativism like myself worry about the bioaccumulation of prescription drugs in marine organisms, prattling poltroons of positivism like George May see the chance of a lifetime:

An Australian oyster farmer has hit upon a technique he believes has created the ultimate aphrodisiac -- feeding his shellfish the drug Viagra. George May said the natural qualities of the oyster, known for arousing sexual desire, combined with the best modern pharmaceutical equivalent to create a potentially multi-million dollar market.

PZ Myers suggests feeding these oysters to rhinoceri, to make their horns more potent. As it happens, rhino horn is not actually used as an aphrodisiac. Still, the basic idea is sound: Eating the penis of a tiger that was fed on the gallbladders of bears that were fed on oysters that were fed on Viagra would probably turn the average man into something out of Beardsley’s Lysistrata.

There are more exciting possibilities, though. Given that food is increasingly being accepted as a drug-delivery system, it makes excellent sense to market drug-laden shellfish as a dietary supplement. It’s natural for consumers to be wary of food that’s “contaminated” with drugs, which is why it's far more constructive to refer to shellfish laced with anti-depressants as “mood enhancing.”

By the same token, caffeinated fish could be marketed as a regional delicacy in the Northwest; it’d be a heart-healthy alternative to the caffeinated doughnut. As for Viagra, the siting of shellfish farming operations near retirement communities could add considerable value to an already lucrative commodity.

All of which goes to show how prejudicial, question-begging terms like “pollutant” can prevent people from recognizing and taking advantage of valuable opportunities.

Kill the Intruders!

As everyone knows, complicated problems require complicated solutions:

For years and years, the Israeli military has been trying to figure out a way to keep Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip from crossing over into Israel proper. The latest tactic: create a set of "automated kill zones" by networking together remote-controlled machine guns, ground sensors, and drones along the 60-kilometer border.

The chance that a captured contractor or journalist or soldier will someday be driven into one of these "kill zones" is vanishingly small, natch.

Meanwhile, DARPA wants to use moths to infiltrate enemy encampments:

It is hoped that one day, a sensor-enabled insect with a 100-yard range could be placed within five meters of a target using electronic remote control and, potentially, Global Positioning System technologies.

Ultimately, the moth will be able to land in enemy camps in remote location unobserved, beaming video and other information back via what its developers refer to as a “reliable tissue-machine interface.”

In a perfect world, the moths would report directly to the drones, which would then proceed to expunge the evildoers as dispassionately as Jonah Goldberg's robotic vacuum cleaner sucks up the Cheeto dust and perineal scurf under his desk.

As I've mentioned previously, there's some concern that these automated systems will malfunction and kill innocent people. This is a pleasant subject for debate, I suppose, inasmuch as it allows us to pretend that our military operations normally don't kill innocent people.

That said, more and more people seem to relish the thought of automated killing (along the US/Mexico border, for instance). I'm disturbed by the idea of a self-enforcing law that treats individuals as nothing more than moving targets. But it's even more disturbing to consider the possibility that this form of "defense" isn't based on bureaucratic efficiency, or technophilia run amuck, so much as contempt; a casual, fully automated death is what the enemy deserves. Turning the fate of these people over to dispassionate machines demonstrates how passionately we hate them.

It's a bit of a cliche, but post-9/11 security really does seem like an autoimmune disease. Our way of life is in such peril that nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of its defense - including our way of life. Our freedom is so fragile that it requires massive border walls, which require automated kill zones, which require buffer zones, which require perimeter fences, which require drone overflights, and so on. We must adapt or die!

Of course, it's usually easier for insurgents to adapt to rigid, costly defenses than for those defenses to adapt to new insurgent strategies. The terrorists have only to change their tactics, whereas we have to change our architecture, our transportation and infrastructure, our laws, our ethics...our way of life, in short. As things escalate, ever more drastic changes are justified by the promise that life will go on as usual.

In the end, the thing that's most likely to destroy us is our belief that victory is possible.

(The illustration at top is from "Tom Swift and His Giant Robot" by Victor Appleton II, 1954.)

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

It’s a more festive day than usual, thanks to the discovery of five - or possibly six - new species of nudibranch. Here’s your chance to get acquainted.

Cerberilla chavezi sp. was collected from the Bahia de Santiago, Colima in Mexico and is named for Roberto Chavez, who provided assistance during fieldwork and suggested dive sites.

Cuthona destinyae came out of hull scrapings from the M/V Destiny in La Gordornia, Guerrero, Mexico, and thus, is named for the boat.

Cuthona millenae, named for Sandra Millen for her knowledge of Pacific nudibranchs, was collected from under a rock at 19m depth in the Bahia de Banderas, Jalisco-Nayarit, Mexico.

Cuthona behrensi, a beautiful white specimen with white-tipped rhinophores named for nudibranch specialist Dave Behrens, who supported the research effort, was found by Alicia Hermosillo under a rock at 13m depth at Los Frailes, Golfo de Chiriqui, Panama.

Eubranchus yolandae was collected from Los Arcos, Bahia de Banderas, Jalisco-Nayarit, Mexico, from a rock wall at a depth of 17m. This species was named for Yolanda Camacho-Garcia for her contributions to the knowledge of Pacific ophistobranchs.

Herviella sp., was photographed and collected by Alicia Hermosillo from a floating buoy southeast of Isla Coiba, Coiba National Park, Panama. The new species status and naming of this animal awaits the discovery of additional specimens.

All photos by Alicia Hermosillo.

Friday Hope Blogging

In China, public outcry has halted the construction of a paraxylene plant. That’d be remarkable enough, but it turns out that the protestors organized the response with text messages:

Angry locals had denounced the project as an "atomic bomb" threatening the seaside environment, the report said, adding they claimed to have circulated nearly a million mobile phone text messages urging family and friends to protest the plant.

Food for thought, I’d say.

Taiwan plans to shut down its nuclear waste dump on Orchid Island:

Taiwan will shut a nuclear waste dump on sparsely populated Orchid Island by 2016, eliminating a toxic risk and a source of friction with indigenous people on this tropical paradise in the Pacific Ocean.

This is not such good news for the Taiwanese, as their toxic sludge will now have to be repatriated. On the other hand, keeping one’s nuclear waste within one’s own borders seems to me like a pretty basic moral responsibility.

Brazil has decided to subsidize birth control:

Less than a month after Pope Benedict XVI criticized government-backed birth control measures during a visit to Brazil, Lula da Silva said the plan will give poor Brazilians "the same right that the wealthy have to plan the number of children they want."

The World Bank has awarded almost $200,000 to a group that will bring clean-burning charcoal to Haiti:

This project has developed an array of technologies to produce clean-burning cooking charcoal from agricultural waste materials at a lower cost than current methods. Converting agricultural residues to charcoal leads to a significant reduction in airborne particulates, and thus to improved respiratory health. This agro-charcoal does not contribute to deforestation and is more affordable than conventional wood charcoal. Moreover, local jobs and micro-enterprises will be created, further increasing incomes and consequently improving health.

Speaking of airborne particulates, a federal court has ruled that Idaho farmers must end the practice of field-burning:

Grass seed farmers on the Rathdrum Prairie burn their fields each summer to prompt a new crop without replanting. People with respiratory problems have complained about the health effects of the smoke, and the issue has resulted in multiple lawsuits.

What makes this case especially noteworthy is that the EPA not only took the side of the farmers, but encouraged the governor to make an end-run around the federal court:

[T[he EPA sent a letter to Idaho Gov. Butch Otter offering the opinion that Idaho could continue to allow burning because the 9th Circuit decision didn’t come right out and say it “vacated” a previous EPA approval of field-burning in 2005. The decision did say that the EPA’s 2005 approval was “legally unsustainable.”

Thus, this ruling is a victory over pollution and Bushist corruption.

Apropos of agriculture, it seems that relatively small changes to current practices could dramatically reduce the incidence of schistosomiasis:

“We know agricultural and irrigation practices play a large role in the transmission of schistosomiasis,” he said. “Altering these practices, in addition to providing the medicine and pesticide, may be the best way to drastically reduce, or even eliminate, the spread of the disease.”

Meanwhile, in Africa, urban gardens are improving the lives of poor city dwellers:

Lipepele and her husband took the vacant land next to their one-room home and planted sweet potatoes, which have highly nutritious leaves. Following the Mama Bongisa advice, they mounded the earth to get as much surface area as possible and to prevent Kinshasa's harsh rains from flooding the beds.

Soon they had enough crops to improve their diet; and after that they were able to sell the excess to buy caterpillars, fish, and other proteins.

WorldChanging directs what little there is of my attention to Worldbike, which is designing “cargo bicycles” for the developing world. The assumption that old technologies have been perfected, or become outmoded, is something that I’ve tried to challenge since I began this feature, so I found Worldbike’s promo literature very interesting:

Worldbike designs higher-strength, longer-wheelbase bicycles with integrated cargo capacity….Why hasn’t it been built before? Because American recreational customers are the singular focus of the bicycle industry. But things are changing.

They're also changing in Oregon, where computer recycling will soon be mandatory and free:

Legislation that earned final approval Tuesday in the Oregon Senate will redirect televisions and computers into a mandatory recycling program, which would be free to the public and financed by electronics manufacturers.

The passage of the plan comes after similar bills short-circuited in 2003 and 2005 - but the legislation moved to the top of the agenda with the shift of the statehouse to Democratic control.

Financing such programs is a lot cheaper when you avoid using toxic materials, so it’s no surprise that Intel has vowed to make all future processors completely lead-free.

Democratic gains in Oregon also enabled the passage of an important bill protecting women's reproductive rights:

The new law, effective on January 1, 2008 requires private health insurers to cover birth control prescriptions and also requires hospitals to provide sexual assault survivors with emergency contraceptives.

The bill was introduced to the Oregon legislature in the early 1990s, but Republicans have blocked its passage in the House since then. The Democrats gained control of the House in November 2006 and, with a majority in the Senate, recently passed the legislation.

Minnesota legislators have passed a landmark energy bill:

[Sen. Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul] says as impressive as a 40 percent reduction in CO2 emissions might sound, it won't be enough to stop global warming. So Anderson convinced her colleagues to set a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Minnesota by 80 percent by the year 2050....

After much debate and a few compromises, utilities companies agreed to support the bill.

As most readers will know, the town of Greensburg, Kansas was recently destroyed by a tornado. Now, some interesting rebuilding ideas are being kicked around:

Local politicians, along with state leaders, are talking about a new town with energy-efficient technology and sustainable energy sources….

But if the citizens have the will to build anew, with the best in “green” technology, they should have access to efficient energy sources, smart architectural design and the finest in community concepts. Happily, the state of Kansas, businesses and nonprofit groups seem willing to help.

One thing they could do is make sure that each house is equipped with this new power switch:

It is a button placed at the door of your house, and upon pressing it will turn off all of the non-essential electricity users. So rather than making sure all of the lights are turned off and other gadgets and appliances, this House-Off Switch can do it all with a simple push.

Iron nanoparticles can apparently remove arsenic from drinking water, without the problems that plague standard iron-based filtration systems:

Researchers from Rice University….have created a filtering system that uses nanoscale magnetite (Fe3O4) to bind both As(III) and As(V), which can then be removed from water with a magnet. Preliminary tests with Brownsville groundwater and Houston tap water have been encouraging, and now the team is working to scale up its filter for use in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Things continue to go poorly for the Minutemen:

The top leaders of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps have been terminated by the group's president, Chris Simcox, for requesting a meeting to discuss a lack of financial accountability by the organization's leadership.

That’s just the beginning of Simcox’s problems; the SPLC has much more. Regardless of one’s stance on illegal border crossings, the MCDC is an absolute snake pit. It’s probably too much to hope that any of its members will shift their focus from illegal immigration to economic exploitation, period. Regardless, the public meltdown (and possible prosecution) of a high-profile demagogue like Simcox strikes me as a good thing.

There’s renewed hope that antibodies from H5N1 survivors can be used to prevent or treat the disease:

[M]onoclonal antibodies generated from blood of human survivors of the H5N1 virus are effective at both preventing infection in mice and neutralising the virus in those already infected. The research had been fast-tracked for funding by the UK's Wellcome Trust and is also supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health in the US and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

In other medical news, there’s talk of a promising new treatment for uterine fibroids:

A noninvasive ultrasound procedure effectively shrinks uterine fibroids and significantly relieves fibroid-related symptoms in women, according to the results of a multicenter clinical trial reported in the June issue of the journal Radiology. Magnetic resonance-guided, focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS) allows radiologists to precisely target fibroids without harming healthy surrounding tissue.

Satellite monitoring could help to save polar bears from the effects of climate change:

In a project named "Warm Waters for Cool Bears," WCS will use both current and historical satellite imagery to predict where sea ice is likely to persist and where subsequent conservation efforts to save the species will be most effective.

And there's fascinating news about the music of the spheres. Or one sphere, anyway:

"The sun's interior vibrates with the peal of millions of bells, but the bells are all on the inside of the building," said Scott McIntosh of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., lead member of the research team. "We've been able to show how the sound can escape the building and travel a long way using the magnetic field as a guide."

The new result also helps explain a mystery that's existed since the middle of the last century -- why the sun's chromosphere (and the corona above) is much hotter than the visible surface of the star. "It's getting warmer as you move away from the fire instead of cooler, certainly not what you would expect," said McIntosh.

If you don't yet share my obsession with signage and typography, I advise you to go directly to Lettermade, without passing "Go" or collecting $200.


That link comes from Coudal, which also alerts me to Dark Roasted Blend’s astonishing survey of Communist Gothic architecture by Yakov Chernikhov, whose work reminds me of everyone from Piranesi to Rizzoli to Turner.


Also via DRB, underwater sculpture in the West Indies. I like the idea much more than the execution, though some of the images did put me in mind of Thomas de Quincey’s Savannah-la-Mar, which “fascinates the eye with a Fata-Morgana revelation, as of human life still subsisting in submarine asylums sacred from the storms that torment our upper air.” Your mileage may vary.

I’m far less ambivalent about Airform Archives - a site compiling “things related to sound, visual art, architecture, modernism, music, design, fluxus, 78's, literature, film, ephemera, and much more” – which has some marvelous old photos of musicians, as thus:


Archaeological Collage shows how the streets of Portland, Oregon have changed over time, with an interface similar to that of the Third View project. Very nice! Meanwhile, Cornell Mushroom Blog holds forth on "the aerial dance of nematodes, waving their glassy noses around in the air like cobras charmed by some microscopic swami." That brings us, naturally enough, to the University of Sheffield's National Fairground Archive Image Database. Which is as good a place to leave you as any.


(Photo at top: "After the Storm, Arch Cape, Oregon" by Rolfe Horn, 2000.)