Friday Hope Blogging

A gay rights bill has passed in the Ohio House:

For the first time, a bill prohibiting employment or housing discrimination based on sexual orientation passed the Ohio House.

The bill, which has been introduced four times but has always stalled in committee, passed 56-38 and now goes to the state senate.

Meanwhile, the divorce rate in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal, seems to have dropped pretty dramatically:

Provisional data from 2008 indicates that the Massachusetts divorce rate has dropped from 2.3 per thousand in 2007 down to about 2.0 per thousand for 2008. What does that mean? To get a sense of perspective consider that the last time the US national divorce rate was 2.0 per thousand (people) was 1940. You read that correctly. The Massachusetts divorce rate is now at about where the US divorce rate was the year before the United States entered World War Two.

I'm sure Maggie Gallagher will come up with a compelling explanation.

The Obama Administration has announced details of its plan to regulate GHG emissions from cars:

“The proposal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles under the Clean Air Act is a historic step in the fight to curb global warming,” said Vera Pardee, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Clean Air Act is our strongest and most successful tool for reducing air pollution and will now be put to work, together with our fuel-economy law, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect the air we breathe, and save consumers money.”

The proposal is the first time greenhouse gas emissions will be regulated under the Clean Air Act, and it will have a significant impact in slowing the rise of American emissions. But the proposed standards will still leave the United States far behind the vehicle standards already achieved by other countries – standards that are needed to avert dangerous, runaway global warming.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down an utterly deranged mine expansion plan:

The court ruled that the federal Bureau of Land Management had violated various federal laws in agreeing to trade public land with Asarco, which Asarco wanted as part of its expansion of its massive Ray Copper Mine in Arizona. The court held that the agency’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious” and that the agency had not taken the required “hard look” at the exchange’s environmental impacts, including comparing impacts to the land and resources with, vs. without, the exchange....

The lands subject to the exchange provide important habitat for rare plants and animals including desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, and many species of birds. If this proposed land exchange had been allowed to proceed, it would have essentially gutted the White Canyon Resource Conservation Area by allowing mining in a largely pristine place.

In related news, the Justice Department is investigating Gale Norton:

The Interior Department's Office of Inspector General began the investigation during the waning months of the George W. Bush administration and more recently made a formal criminal referral to the Justice Department. Norton is the first Bush official at the Cabinet secretary level to be the subject of a formal political corruption investigation.

The Interior Department is finally phasing out the disastrous "royalty in kind" program:

The scandal-ridden program that allows industry to provide oil and natural gas directly to the Interior Department in lieu of cash royalty payments will be killed, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today.

"The royalty-in-kind program has been a blemish, in my view, on this department," Salazar said at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing. "There were allegations of sex and drugs and a whole host of other inappropriate conduct. ... My decision is that it's time for us to end the royalty-in-kind program."

The Administration is also scrapping BushCo's smog regulations:

In a notice filed Wednesday in a federal appeals court, the Justice Department says there are concerns that the revision made by the Bush administration does not adhere to federal air pollution law. The Environmental Protection Agency will propose revised smog standards to protect health and the environment in late December.

'This is one of the most important protection measures we can take to safeguard our health and our environment,' said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson in a statement. 'Reconsidering these standards and ensuring acceptable levels of ground-level ozone could cut health care costs and make our cities healthier, safer places to live, work and play.'

Furthermore, over 100 of the world's largest investors are calling for a strong international agreement on climate change:

“We must chart a new course toward long-term, sustainable business practices,” said DiNapoli, head of the $116.5 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund. “We cannot drag our feet on the issue of global climate change. I am deeply concerned about the investor risks climate change presents, and the human cost of inaction is unthinkable. As investors in the global economy, we can lead the way toward a future of lasting prosperity.”

Cheryl Rofer has written at length (and brilliantly, of course) on Obama's decision against placing new missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Her observations are spread across several posts (with more to come, I'm sure), but here's one part that struck me:

Obama and Gates are playing a careful game. They are talking about missile defense without making the distinction between theater missile defense, which works, and national missile defense, which doesn’t. Let’s see if that shields them from the neoconservative incoming.

Also via Cheryl, Operation Rescue seems to be running out of money.

"We're now so broke (as the saying goes), we can't even pay attention," Newman wrote.

Newman told The Associated Press in an interview after the mailing that the group has only four paid employees left, compared to nine a year ago. The group typically has an annual budget of $600,000, but donations this year have been down 30 to 40 percent. Newman, who earns $60,000 annually, said he hasn't been paid in two months.

Croatia and Hungary are planning to create a huge biodiversity reserve:

Croatia and Hungary signed today a declaration to establish a Trans-Boundary UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that will protect their shared biodiversity hotspot along the Mura, Drava and Danube Rivers. This paves the way to create Europe’s largest river protection area.

Brazil claims that it will ban sugarcane plantations from the Amazon and other sensitive locations:

Brazil will restrict sugarcane plantations for ethanol production from the Amazon, the Pantanal, and other ecologically-sensitive areas under a plan announced Thursday by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration, reports the Associated Press.

Environment Minister Carlos Minc said the proposal, which will be voted on by Congress next year, would limit sugar growing to an area of 66 million hectares (163 million acres), or 7.5 percent of Brazil.

The Japanese town of Taiji, which is infamous for its annual dolphin slaughter, has suspended this year's "festivities":

While Japan officially declares that the move had nothing to do with the protests, an official at the Taiji fisheries association, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Thursday that the decision was made partly in response to the international outcry created by "The Cove."

The Fiji petrel has been observed and photographed at sea for the first time:

First recorded in 1855 from one specimen found on Gau Island, Fiji, the rare seabird disappeared from scientific view for 130 years. Beginning in 1984 a handful of 'grounded' Fiji petrels Pseudobulweria macgillivrayi were found after landing on village roofs in Gau, but this is the first observation of the bird in its element: at sea.

Photograph: H Shirihai/The Tubenoses Project/BirdLife International
A black coral forest has been found in Italy:

Italian researchers said they've found one of the largest forests of rare black coral in the world, but for fear of tipping off plunderers, they're keeping the location a secret. Not only is it home to black coral, but also another coral species never before studied in the wild.

Intel has launched a new application called Progress Through Processors, which allows you to "donate" unused computer processing power to climate modeling and AIDS and malaria research.

The application will activate only when your PC's performance is not being fully utilized. When your computer usage demands more processor power, the Progress Thru Processors application defers and sits idle until spare processing capabilities become available again.

The fine science blogger, exemplary human being, and semi-occasional Bouphonia commenter GrrlScientist (Devorah Bennu) is angling to become the official blogger for an upcoming Antarctic expedition. I think she's the perfect choice, and I insist that you all join me in voting for her here. (You have to register first, but it's pretty quick and painless...and I say this as an expert procrastinator and all-around lollygagger.) Once you've registered, you can go directly to her voting page by clicking here. Be advised that I'm not asking with this; I'm telling. So hop to it.

Speaking of Antarctica, the photo at the top is by David Burdeny. You can, and must, see more of his work here; it's absolutely breathtaking. If you scroll past the text that follows the photos, you can see his equally evocative "Shoreline Series."


And that's not all! Penguin Science Fiction (via things). Neon Theatres of the Midwest (via Plep). Bioluminescent insects. Furniture based on acoustic patterns from the streets of Cairo. And a fascinating archive detailing right-wing attacks on Sarah Lawrence College during the McCarthy era.


Temperature maps of the moon. Photos of Mongolia. A close-up view of the balloon flower. A geological map of Ganymede. The center of Globular Cluster Omega Centauri. Géométrie (1923). And via Neatorama, photographs of electricity by Hiroshi Sugimoto.


Termites on Liebig cards. More Liebig cards. Vintage bookmarks. Some sentiment cards. And some puzzle cards.


Last, thousands of Vaux swifts entering a chimney...a spectacle I was pleased to view in person a few nights ago.

Enchanted By Conspiracies

David von Drehle has written a lengthy profile of Glenn Beck, for the benefit of those thoughtful people who take an essentially entomological interest in American political disputes.

It's a little gem of centrist thinking. Glenn Beck makes a fortune claiming that Obama has "a deep-seated hatred of white people," sure...but Al Franken made a fortune selling books that "taunt conservatives" in some unspecified way. Conservatives invoke images of "brainwashed children goose-stepping to school," granted...but lefties are prone to equally outré fantasies about "brownshirts" at town hall meetings, just because a bunch of armed louts have made an organized effort to silence speakers by bellowing hard-right slogans at them.

To the really judicious observer, spouting outrageous lies, and attempting to counter those lies, are equal acts of fanaticism. Media Matters, for instance, routinely "cherry-picks" Glenn Beck's inflammatory statements, in order to portray him as someone who makes a career of saying inflammatory things.

I don't mean to imply that Von Drehle is an apologist for Beck. On the contrary, he makes it clear that Beck is simply the latest in a long line of charlatans and demagogues who have set Americans at one another's throats: witness "William Jennings Bryan whipping up populist Democrats over moneyed interests or the John Birch Society brooding over fluoride."

Here, once again, progressive fact is roughly equivalent to conservative fantasy: Bryan railed against the power of moneyed interests in the Gilded Age, while the Birchers insisted that fluoridation was intended to soften us up for a communist takeover. What can this mean, but that the "Cross of Gold" speech and the 1961 Blue Book of the John Birch Society are mirror-image examples of the American penchant for Manichean delusion?

Von Drehle uses the downfall of Van Jones to emphasize that there are grievous sins on both sides of our political divide.

Jones, whose task was to oversee a green-jobs initiative, turned out to be as enchanted by conspiracies as Beck - he once theorized that "white polluters and the white environmentalists" are "steering poison into the people-of-color's communities...."

Even if you want to assume that there's absolutely no truth to this theory -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- it's still interesting that Jones' fascination with conspiracy theories cost him his job, while Beck's has made him very, very rich. (Also, James Inhofe and Michelle Bachmann have pet theories that are at least as lurid as Jones'. But for some reason, progressive attempts to call attention to them haven't gotten much traction. It's almost as though there's some kind of weird double standard in place.)

Von Drehle notes that there's lots of money to be made by stirring up outrage. Michael Moore, for instance, has feathered his nest handsomely with all his "capitalism-bashing," instead of taking a formal vow of poverty like Karl Marx.

Fair enough. On the other hand, Michael Moore is not on TV and radio for several hours every goddamn day. Glenn Beck is, along with hordes of his ideological doppelgängers...despite the fact that their audience is "relatively small," and their views on, say, social programs are a good deal more radical than those of the average American.

William Jennings Bryan is a long-dead object of ridicule, thank God, so there's no point in discussing the role of moneyed interests in this outcome. Still, maybe there's a bit more to Beck's popularity than the lucky confluence of his "genuine talent" with a certain undercurrent of political discontent.

Or maybe there isn't. Lord knows these are angry, bleak times. Ordinary Americans are rightly concerned about our record deficit, which materialized like some continent-sized sinkhole on January 21, 2008. And they're fretting over the fact that government power is expanding again, after contracting for eight blessed years under George W. Bush. Perhaps Beck's popularity simply reflects the...the...anomie and deracinement of a troubled era, just as the movie Network did back in the mid-seventies.

It's hard to find a film that better captures the rotten vibe of the early 1970s, when America found itself suffering through one downer after another: failing companies, tense foreign relations, high unemployment, rampant incivility, spiraling deficits, corruption in high places, a seemingly endless war. Sound familiar?

Yeah, it does. It sounds almost exactly like the America of two or three years ago, during which time our current Prophets of Doom seemed inordinately pleased with the economy and the corruption and the wars and the international tensions, and referred to people who disagreed with their cheery outlook as whiners and pessimists.

But that was then. Things have changed -- in some subtle, almost indefinable way -- and the former tokens of our prosperity are suddenly being recognized as buboes on the body politic.

What's really worrisome is what will happen to audiences who have grown so accustomed to the irresponsible, white-knuckled rage of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann that they no longer listen to cooler heads, and thus fail to understand that Olbermann's lockjawed, dyspeptic objections to torture, and Beck's shrieking and blubbering about a "civilian national security force" that will KILL US ALL, are symptoms of the same deadly extremism.

Do they stay mad forever? Does their screaming ever lead to something better? Does the rage merely migrate, sending new audiences with new enemies to scream from more windows? And if the time comes when every audience is screaming, who, in the end, is left to listen?

Good question! Maybe it's time we all step back from the abyss, and try to find some common ground. Maybe we can all agree to reject the conspiratorial view of history, whether it manifests itself as cold-warrior paranoia about fluoridation, or sensible skepticism about the basic goodwill of "moneyed interests." Maybe Glenn Beck can stop worrying people about the "communist and fascist symbols in the public artwork of Rockefeller Center," and the left can stop worrying them about the autocratic role of insurance companies in the healthcare debate.

At which point, we'll finally be able to move our country forward, and affirm those timeless values on which the far right and the center can agree.

(Illustration: "A flier issued in the 1950s–60s to promote hygiene as a communist goal," published in 1953 by the Keep America Committee.)

Family Values

Conservative astroturfers who are looking for more strident and garish forms of political protest would do well to consider this:

Revelations the Italian mafia has been disposing of toxic waste by putting it onboard ships and then sinking the vessels has sparked health fears along the nearby coastline.

A Mafia informant confessed to sinking three such ships and it is estimated the mob may have sunk 32 more in the last two decades, as European regulations covering waste disposal grew tougher and it became more expensive to comply with them.

Surely this is a cause that all good conservatarians can support, once they've been told to. Modern Republicanism has rallied behind far worse environmental crimes than this, and hailed them as downright Jeffersonian.

The Mafia has some other good things going for it, from a conservative standpoint. Hypermasculine posturing? Check. Achieving social dominance through bootlicking submission to authority? Check. Enforced privatization of public services? Check. Racism and misogyny? Check. Loyalty to the group first, and the country second (if at all)? Check. Unctuous sentimentality about family and children? Check. Gun fetishism? Check. Arms trafficking? Check. A rigid social code based on the bottomless demands of male egotism? Check. Loan sharking? Check. An uneasy marriage of homoeroticism and homophobia? Check.

But all of that is small potatoes, compared to the Mafia's decisive stand against the European Nanny State. The enemy of the friend of my enemy is my friend, and just as it was formerly necessary to arm Iraq against Iran (and vice versa), it is now necessary to stand with organized crime against enviro-socialist tyranny.

Teabagging and going Galt is all well and good, but here's a chance to make an even grander statement, simply by doing what comes naturally. Why shouldn't real Americans dump their garbage in rivers and lakes, in order to assert the inalienable right of legitimate businesses to do the same? It makes at least as much sense as agitating against public health on behalf of the insurance industry, God knows.

And unlike racial and sexual taunts, which linger only in the mind, it'd provide a stark visual reminder of bedrock conservative principles, among which taking unapologetic pride in one's own personal ugliness currently seems to be foremost.

Plus, think of how much fun it'd be to contrast the normal garbage of the workin' man with the effete biodegradable detritus of the Coastal Elite! This is the sort of extra-fancy-grade cultural theorizing that could keep Jonah Goldberg busy for months. (Dig it, man: it's not the garbage that freaks out the Establishment. It's, like, the Truth that the garbage represents.)

It might seem like a bad idea, at first glance, to side publicly with the Italian Mafia. (They're foreigners, after all.) But for a movement that takes an almost erotic pleasure in transgressing social norms, and turning logic on its head, the main danger of declaring that it'd be better to be ruled by the Cosa Nostra than Obama is that it might not be heard above the general din. Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin say stranger things, and defend worse people, almost every day.

Which is why Massey Energy had better get busy, and base a spontaneous grassroots movement on this idea before it's too late. If the general tone deteriorates much further, the moment will be lost, and it'll be like trying to palm off Spooks Run Wild on an audience that's expecting Cannibal Holocaust. The sad truth is, even an über-patriotic orgy of illegal dumping may eventually seem unremarkable, or even quaint.

Hell, if people can get used to this, they can get used to just about anything.

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Let Eliud rejoice with Cinaedus, who is a fish yellow all over.
Let Eleazar rejoice with the Grampus, who is a pompous spouter.
Let Matthan rejoice with the Shark, who is supported by multitudes of small value.
Let Jacob rejoice with Dendrodoris denisoni, who is an eye-trap.

(Photo by Nemo's great uncle.)

Friday Hope Blogging

I don't know whether this study is accurate, but it's certainly interesting:

A new report coming from Optimum Population Trust and carried out by the prestigious London School of Economics says that expanding access to family planning and contraception is about five times less expensive than low-carbon technology in combatting climate change....

Between 2010 and 2050 each $7 spent on basic family planning can reduce emissions more than a ton; to achieve that same level of reduction using low-carbon tech would on average cost $32 per ton....In total, expanding access to basic family planning throughout the globe would save 34 gigatons of carbon emissions over the next 40 years,

The British government has formally apologized for its treatment of Alan Turing:

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ - in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence - and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later....

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

An Afghan student who was sentenced to death for having downloaded an article that criticized Islam's treatment of women has been freed:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai secretly pardoned Kambaksh, who was moved from a Kabul prison two weeks ago before being flown out of the country to an undisclosed location, reported the Independent UK. According to Reporters Without Borders, Kambaksh left the country due to fear of reprisals.

China is embarking on a massive solar-power project that could power 3 million homes:

The deal could open a potentially vast solar market in China and follows the Chinese government’s recent moves to accelerate development of renewable energy.

First Solar, the globe’s largest photovoltaic cell manufacturer, will also likely build a factory in China to manufacture thin-film solar panels, according to Mike Ahearn, the company’s chief executive. “It is significant that a non-Chinese company can land something like this in China,” said Mr. Ahearn in an interview.

“This is nuclear power-size scale,” said Mr. Ahearn added.

Treehugger describes a new electric motor:

[I]ts characteristics - 50% of the volume giving 2x the torque for the same power output - mean it could be used in other things than electric cars, including renewable energy generation and aerospace (lighter airplanes use less fuel...)

Treehugger also has a good discussion of a system for turning industrial waste heat (and geothermal heat) into electricity:

Surplus heat captured by the evaporator is used to "boil" the working fluid into a vapor. Under pressure, the vapor is forced through the screw expander, turning it to spin an electric generator. The vapor is cooled and condensed back into a liquid in the condenser. The working fluid liquid refrigerant is pumped to higher pressure and returned to the evaporator to repeat the process.

The Nature Conservancy is creating maps to aid in appropriate wind farm siting:

Rob Manes, TNC’s Director of Conservation for Kansas, sits on the Fish and Wildlife Service advisory committee that is developing wind farm siting guidelines, where he has proposed that key habitat be identified in advance, so that wind companies can plan around it. Such landscape-scale analysis is already being done by some wind companies, and Manes urged the committee to recommend that the practice become standard procedure. Manes imagines an ever-expanding regional database that would not only would provide maps of important environmental data, such as critical habitat for endangered species, but also would designate wind-friendly areas where turbines and wildlife are less likely to be in conflict.

Since cellphones have rendered phone booths largely obsolete, the city of Madrid plans to turn them into charging stations for electric cars:

Some 30 telephone boxes have been earmarked to form part of a test network of 546 state-subsidised recharging points in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville.

Phone boxes are often ideally placed close to the curbs of pavements and already have their own electricity supply, making them relatively easy to adapt.

Many previously unknown species have been found in an extinct volcano in Papua New Guinea:

A five week expedition into a remote extinct volcano has uncovered a treasure trove of new species in Papua New Guinea, including what may be the world's largest rat, a fanged frog, and a grunting fish. In all the expedition estimates it may have found around forty species unknown to science....

The scientists suspect that in all that they have found sixteen new species of frog, three new fish, twenty insects and arachnids, a new bat species, and of course the giant rat. One of the insects was a walking stick as long as person's forearm.

The giant woolly rat of Bosavi. Photo by Kristofer Helgen.
The World Bank has suspended palm oil projects:

In a letter sent to several NGOs, World Bank president Robert Zoelick said he shared their concerns "about the detrimental effects of palm oil development when sound environmental and social practices are not followed" and that the internal audit "highlighted important deficiencies" in IFC's approach.

Therefore, until a new strategy is implemented to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated, the IFC will not approve any new investments in palm oil. Additionally, the social and environmental impact of all existing loans to the sector will be reviewed.

Meanwhile, the EPA has ruled that all pending mountaintop-removal permits would violate the Clean Water Act.

Very big news out of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this morning: The agency has determined that all 79 mountaintop-removal mining permits submitted to it for review by the Army Corps of Engineers would violate the Clean Water Act. After eight long years of rubber-stamp permits being issued during the Bush administration, this is one of the most dramatic and encouraging actions yet by the Obama administration, and marks a welcome return of the rule of law to the coalfields of Appalachia....

During the Bush administration, EPA never opposed or challenged a permit, despite the fact that they clearly violated laws on the books to protect clean water and public health. Apparently, those days are over. This dramatic announcement by EPA that every single one of the 79 pending permits violates the Clean Water Act is a condemnation of the quality of permits being churned out during the Bush administration and is a testament to the Obama administration’s sincere commitment to science, transparency, and enforcing environmental safeguards.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the permits will never be granted, unfortunately. You can click here to urge the Administration to follow through on this issue.

Speaking of which...like a lot of people who are "left of the left," I have a tendency to dwell gloomily on my pet disappointments, and the glacial pace of "reform." Joseph Romm offers a bit of perspective:

Obama’s record so far on clean energy and the most important environmental issue — global warming — may not be politically radical, but it is unparalleled in U.S. history.

[T]he vast majority of Obama’s initiatives will be recognized by future generations and future historians as the point at which the U.S. government embraced the inevitable and started down the sustainable path that presidents either chose to embrace voluntarily in time to avoid the worst impacts or were forced to embrace by the collapse of the global Ponzi scheme.

In Michigan, regulators are taking a dim view of two proposed coal-fired plants:

Michigan regulators dealt a setback Tuesday to proposals for new coal-fired power plants near Rogers City and Bay City, questioning the need for both projects at a time of growing emphasis on cleaner fuels.

Public Service Commission staff members presented their negative reviews in separate reports to the Department of Environmental Quality, which is considering whether to grant air emissions permits that are required before either plant could be built.

In related news, another utility has pulled out of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE):

Alstom Power, a French company that makes parts for power plants and is working on carbon sequestration, said it is leaving ACCCE immediately. “We have resigned from ACCCE because of questions that have been raised about ACCCE’s support for climate legislation,” said Tim Brown, an Alstom spokesman. The French company, which is partnering with U.S. utilities on power-plant projects, said that it wants to “remove any doubt about our full support” for a climate bill.

An abundant American weed apparently contains an important anti-cancer compound:

A common weed called American mayapple may soon offer an alternative to an Asian cousin that's been harvested almost to extinction because of its anti-cancer properties. The near-extinct Asian plant, Podophyllyum emodi, produces podophyllotoxin, a compound used in manufacturing etoposide, the active ingredient in a drug used for treating lung and testicular cancer. Podophyllyum emodi is a cousin of the common mayapple weed found in the United States.

A new antibiotic shows promise in fighting malaria:

A new study suggests that tigecycline, the first member of a new class of antibiotics, shows significant antimalarial activity on its own and may also be effective against multi drug-resistant malaria when administered in combination with traditional antimalarial drugs.

Certain strains of bacteria may be able to neutralize algal toxins in drinking water:

Blooms of blue green algae (cyanobacteria) are found in both fresh and salt water throughout the world. They produce toxins called microcystins which are released into the water and are easily ingested by animals and humans by drinking, swimming or bathing in contaminated water. Once in the body the toxins attack liver cells causing acute and chronic poisoning. Conventional methods for water treatment such as sedimentation, sand filtration, flocculation and chlorination do not remove microcystins.

The researchers at Robert Gordon's University have identified more than ten bacterial strains capable of metabolizing microcystins, breaking them down into harmless non-toxic materials.

Several Texas newspapers, having noticed that the state's commitment to abstinence has resulted in the country's highest rate of repeat teen pregnancies, are calling for reality-based sex education and increased access to contraception:

Insisting on abstinence for teen mothers having their second or third babies, without fact-based knowledge about condoms and other contraceptives, is public policy with blinders on.

Fascinating new research discusses the possibility of species-specific music:

We performed tests at the University of Wisconsin on the same species of tamarins. As with all previous studies, the tamarins showed a lack of interest in the human music. By contrast, the effect on them of the species-specific music composed by David Teie was remarkably clear and convincing. They displayed a marked increase of activity in response to the music that was designed to excite them, while the “tamarin ballad” music induced a significant calming. This calming effect was measured against the baseline of silence; they moved and vocalized less and orientated more toward the audio speakers during and immediately following the playing of the tamarin ballad.

You can listen to a sample of the composer's katzenmusik here. (I give it a 9 because you can lick your stomach fur to it, but I wouldn't buy it.)

Fonts galore at Jules Vernacular (via Coudal). Slovak book covers. Art inspired by extreme environments. Amateur travelogues at Tout Terrain. And via wood s lot, artwork by Victor Hugo, circa 1850:




Miscellaneous items, ca. 1909. Images from Grandville's Les Fleurs Animées (including "Rose," an original lithograph of which hangs near my front door, to ensure that I look at it often). Furthermore, films by Hilary Harris and photos by Richard Barnes.


Forced perspective and paper architects. The Hubble telescope is fit and working again. An online, two-player version of Hanafuda? Surely this is an age of miracles. This chart details the relationships between languages that are invoked to signify incomprehensibility (e.g., "it's all Greek to me"). Why do most of these linguistic roads lead to China? The answer may lie in these typologies by Mark Luthringer, or these show windows from Western Australia. Either way, at least one pigeon is faster than at least one ISP. Which comes as no surprise, given these production photos from early cinema.


Here's a short film in Pathé color, to sooth your jangled nerves.



(Photo at top by Karen Glaser. You can see more of her work here.)

Debased Presumptions

You'll be pleased to know that Maggie Gallagher has survived her latest confrontation with elemental evil, which took place while she was trying to foment anti-gay outrage in Maine.

Most of the people in Maine were enthusiastic, but one clergyman asked me, "Shouldn't we live with our neighbors in peace?"

His question haunts me for its debased presumptions: Is using democracy to fight for shared values somehow an act of war against our neighbors?

Is opposing equal rights for your gay neighbors an "act of war" against them? Good question. I suppose we could ask them how they feel about it, but they might be biased. It's better to leave the judgment to normal people like Gallagher, who are capable of being perfectly objective, as thus:

"Agree with me or you're a hater" is not the authentic voice of peace and tolerance.

Actually, it is, as the following fact-based vignette will demonstrate.

Maggie Gallagher: I don't want gay people to have the same legal rights I do, because I think they're abnormal and dangerous!

The Authentic Voice of Peace and Tolerance: You are clearly a bigot.

Maggie Gallagher: Nonsense! I don't hate gay people. I just want to deny them certain legal rights, because they're perverts. You want to prevent me from denying them those rights, which makes you the bigot.

The Authentic Voice of Peace and Tolerance: In addition to being a bigot, you are utterly fucking incoherent and deranged. Get some professional help, for fuck's sake, and stop taking your emotional problems out on innocent people.

The thing that really distresses Gallagher is that people persist in calling her a bigot even when she's being perfectly polite.

She's not screaming, she's not swearing, and she's not brandishing a 2x4 studded with rusty nails. She's simply arguing, quite calmly, that gay people must remain second-class citizens forever, or else. But gosh, the way some people react, you'd think she was arguing against interracial marriage, or in favor of segregated drinking fountains!

And you know what's even worse?

So far, the bullies pay no price for their meanness and their rage.

Well, the gay ones do suffer discrimination (and worse). But as Gallagher notes, it serves them right. I mean, if you don't want to suffer discrimination, you shouldn't make people feel bad by calling them names when they try to discriminate against you. Especially when they're civil about it.

It no longer matters how respectfully and civilly one makes the case for humanity's marriage tradition.

Never has the plight of the untermenschen been expressed so powerfully. Why do the heavens not darken?

Seriously, if you homos could stop being such drama queens for a moment, you'd notice that the foot on your neck is shod not in vintage SS jackboots from the local militaria dealer, but in sensible loafers from Macy's. And that the arguments against granting you the same rights as other citizens do not quote The Turner Diaries or The Protocols, but Aquinas and Edmund Burke and G.K. Chesterton. At which point, you'd realize that you owe Gallagher an apology, at the very least. She's no fanatic: she's merely trying to defend Authentic Humanity against the deadly moral contagion that each of you carries like some rainbow-flagged plague ship. Why do you have to take it so goddamn personally?

Remember way up at the top of this post, when Gallagher objected to the "debased presumption" that we ought to live in peace with our neighbors? It turns out that there's something to this idea, after all. It's just that the clergyman garbled things a bit.

This is not an issue of free speech but of neighborliness. Fundamental decency requires that we treat each other with respect, especially when we disagree deeply on hot moral issues.

That's fair enough, isn't it? If gays will respect Gallagher's view of same-sex love as an existential threat to Our Way of Life, which must be controlled at all costs, she will allow them to offer very, very, very, very polite objections...even if she suspects that these objections have more to do with incipient AIDS dementia, or hatred of God Himself, than with actual moral principles.

In this way, we will all work together to create a more equitably inequitable society, in which everyone will either respect the belief that queers must be stopped before they destroy civilization, or stand revealed as a bigot.

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Friday Hope Blogging

Activists are pressuring Verizon to withdraw its support from an utterly demented denialist hootenanny in West Virginia:

The Center for Biological Diversity is ramping up pressure on Verizon Wireless to withdraw its sponsorship of a coal-industry rally in West Virginia that is being held on Labor Day to promote mountaintop-removal coal mining and to oppose climate change legislation. In just two days, supporters from the Center and ally CREDO Action have sent more than 66,000 letters to Verizon asking the company to withdraw their sponsorship of the event. The Center anticipates that more than 100,000 letters will be submitted by concerned citizens by the end of the week.

If you're a Verizon customer, or know someone who is, please consider spreading the word. There's more info here.

A generic version of Plan B has been approved for OTC use:

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved emergency contraceptive Next Choice, a generic version of Plan B, for over-the-counter use. Next Choice, manufactured by Watson Pharmaceuticals, was first approved by the FDA for prescription use on June 24, according to the Pharmaceutical Business Review. Next Choice will be available over-the-counter to women ages 17 and older and with a prescription for women under 17 years old.

A Namibian city will soon hold its first gay-rights march:

About 40 people are expected to march in Keetmanshoop’s first-ever march for gay and lesbian rights on Saturday.

Keetmanshoop, in the southern part of Namibia, near the gay-friendly South Africa, is marking the inauguration of Ada Ma/Hao (We stand together), a new project advocating for equal rights for gender minorities in southern Namibia.

The United States has lifted most restrictions on family travel to Cuba:

The Treasury Department formally lifted nearly all U.S. restrictions on family travel to Cuba on Thursday, along with limits on how much money families can send to relatives on the island.

The department also eased regulations prohibiting U.S. telecommunications and satellite linkages between the United States and Cuba and licensing requirements for visitors engaged in agricultural and medical sales.

President Obama first announced most of the changes in April as part of a general opening that he said would allow Americans to reach out to the Cuban people, and he ordered Cabinet departments to take steps to implement the changes. Since then, the administration has also resumed a regular dialogue with the Cuban government on immigration issues and said it would move toward a resumption of direct mail service between the two countries.

A US court has ruled that the threat of forced marriage is grounds for reconsidering a woman's request for asylum:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled that a family’s threats to force their daughter into marriage if she returns to their native country of Pakistan qualify as “changed circumstances” under U.S. law and warrant a review of the woman’s asylum case.

“The Seventh Circuit’s decision recognizes that our client’s case should not be dismissed simply because the conditions of her persecution, as in many cases of gender-based violence, are not connected to a dramatic country-wide upheaval,” said Claudia Valenzuela, a managing attorney at Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center....

Access to microloans is improving the situation of women in Laos:

The women are provided with small loans, from between $50 - $175, at a low rate of interest,* that they invest in buying the materials and equipment needed for weaving en masse....

With so many villages and women involved in the scheme, they are able to connect small producers to potential large scale buyers - using the collective power of the villagers to demand fair prices.

China is increasing its transparency on environmental issues:

In 2006, Chinese environmentalist Ma Jun estimated that 100 cities nationwide provided no public data on water pollution.

Two years later, the Ministry of Environmental Protection authorized its Measures on Open Environmental Information, a new effort at public disclosure. The freedom-of-information law requires municipalities to provide details on which companies violated pollution regulations or caused large pollution incidents, as well as how much contamination these polluters discharged into the environment.

The measure has been implemented for a year, and cities across China are slowly becoming more forthright with environmental information, according to a study by U.S. and Chinese environmental groups.

Also, despite what shills for the coal industry are saying, China continues to be extremely interested in green technology:

The report from The Climate Group shows that China is leading the development and commercialization of a range of low carbon technologies. With a new breed of entrepreneurs and ambitious government policies, Chinese businesses are amongst the top producers of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and energy efficient appliances.

In the EU, greenhouse gas emissions declined for the fourth year in a row.

Emissions are now 6.2 percent below 1990 levels for the 15 older EU members. These counties have a target of reaching 8 percent below the 1990 level sometime between last year and 2012. EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said in a statement that with this newest drop the EU is on track to hit its target. However, he also added that "this trend needs to be further consolidated in the coming years."

Furthermore, the EU has banned incandescent lightbulbs, in a shocking act of intolerance that will remind all right-thinking observers of Hitler's persecution of the Jews.

From today, the manufacture and import of 100 watt bulbs and all frosted bulbs will be banned in the European Union.

The new rules mean that consumers will be able to buy only the more efficient long life fluorescent or halogen lamps.

Berlin's Templehof airport will soon become the city's largest park:

“Beginning in May the Tempelhof field will be open to all,” Berlin's urban development Senator Ingeborg Junge-Reyer said.

With an area of 230 hectares, the airfield park that straddles both the Kreuzberg and Neukölln districts will be significantly larger than Berlin’s famous Tiergarten park.

In Florida, habitat protections will be put in place for the smalltooth sawfish:

The federal government will protect critical habitat for the endangered smalltooth sawfish along the southwestern coast of Florida between Charlotte Harbor and Florida Bay. The rule, to be published in tomorrow’s Federal Register, comes in response to the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity against the Bush administration for its delay in protecting habitat for several marine species at risk of extinction. The new rule will protect 840,472 acres of coastal habitat for the smalltooth sawfish.

Acacia trees may provide a cheap source of fertilizer for African farmers:

The tall, long-lived acacia tree Faidherbia albida could serve as a free source of long-lasting and crop-boosting nitrogen....

A nitrogen fixer, the tree species could limit the use of polluting chemical fertilizers while also providing animal feed, construction material, and even medicine for farmers across sub-Saharan Africa.

A new method of delivering painkillers has been developed for big cats:

The world's big cats are not easy patients, especially when trying to give them pain killers after a procedure. They will tear off transdermal patches; they are too powerful to restrain for easy—and safe—injections or pills; and when in pain they generally refuse food, making it impossible to hide the drugs in their dinner. Now, however, veterinarian researchers from Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo and the University of Tennessee believe they have found a solution: a surgically implanted, mini-pump that provides pain relief, and can be easily removed after the patient makes a full recovery.

A new nature reserve in Peru will protect over a million acres of rainforest:

On August 27th Peru's Ministry of the Environment approved the creation of the Matses National Reserve to protect the region's biodiversity, ensure its natural resources, and preserve the home of the Matses indigenous peoples (known as the Mayorunas in Brazil). The park is 1,039,390 acres of lowland Amazonian rainforest in eastern Peru.

The park is the culmination of over a decade of work by the local non-profit CEDIA (the Center for the Development of the Indigenous Amazonians) funded in large part by the World Land Trust-US.

Scientists at Stanford have created an open-source digital camera:

Stanford photo scientists are out to reinvent digital photography with the introduction of an open-source digital camera, which will give programmers around the world the chance to create software that will teach cameras new tricks.

If the technology catches on, camera performance will be no longer be limited by the software that comes pre-installed by the manufacturer. Virtually all the features of the Stanford camera – focus, exposure, shutter speed, flash, etc. – are at the command of software that can be created by inspired programmers anywhere.

Teh Russians seem to feel we're making progress on arms control:

Russia and the United States have made progress on reaching a new deal to cut vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying on Thursday by local news agencies.

President Barack Obama and Kremlin chief Dmitry Medvedev agreed in July the outlines of a preliminary deal to replace the landmark 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1) but negotiators are facing a host of technical issues in talks.

Lavrov said negotiators had made progress on difficult issues and would report to both presidents when they meet on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh later this month.

(h/t: Cheryl Rofer).

Researchers have found two new antibodies that neutralize HIV:

"The findings themselves are an exciting advance toward the goal of an effective AIDS vaccine because now we've got a new, potentially better target on HIV to focus our efforts for vaccine design," said Wayne Koff, senior vice president of research and development at IAVI. "And having identified this one, we're set up to find more, which should further accelerate global efforts in AIDS vaccine development."

In related news, researchers have apparently developed a heat-stable hepatitis B vaccine:

In many parts of the world, the need to keep vaccines cold during transport and storage requires allocation of scarce resources for refrigeration equipment and special handling procedures. In addition, vaccines are frequently damaged when they are accidentally frozen or exposed to heat. Heat- and freeze-stable vaccines are more resistant to damage when temperatures rise and fall due to power outages, faulty refrigeration equipment, or handling errors.

The heat-stable hepatitis B vaccine recently developed by PATH and partners could be kept in alternate storage facilities (air-conditioned rooms) and under alternative transport conditions (insulated packaging without ice packs) for potentially its entire shelf life without compromising the effectiveness of the vaccine. The added heat stability can also facilitate outreach to remote areas.

I'm a bit choked up by the news that divers have found the bell from Dreamland pier at Coney Island:

The divers discovered a massive brass bell that was rung in bygone days at the old Dreamland Park whenever passengers left or arrived by steamboat at its once-bustling amusement pier.

In other subaqueous news, a submerged Mexican convent has reappeared:

A 16th Century convent in Mexico has re-emerged as water levels in a dam reservoir have fallen to low levels.

Low water levels at the Malpaso hydroelectric dam in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas have uncovered part of the convent, which was submerged along with the community of Quechula 40 years ago when the dam was built.

The link includes fascinating video footage, so be sure to click through.

Chameleons. Artwork from the Guild of Book Workers. A collection of Yiddish sheet music. Plates illustrating Transformations in the 18th-Century British Book Trade. Historic photos of Australian caves. And a few lovely images from Lost Istanbul.


Google Moon. This theory on the growth of brains and cities doesn't exactly strike me as rigorous, but it's still an enjoyable read. Via things comes The Cliff House Project, which will be of interest, I hope, to a semi-regular reader who has clambered over these rocks with me many times. (She'll also like Starry Messenger.) In addition: fire lookout towers, and some gorgeous Japanese magazine covers.


Dog and piglet. The McCune Collection, and plenty of it. Mongolian interiors. Photographic surveys of exhaust pipe sculptures and kiddie rides. Plates from A Book of Moss, and drawings from a 1929 edition of Alice in Wonderland.


Here's a cartoon, also.



(Photo at top via Environmental Graffiti.)

Variations in the Sun

Having graciously corrected the world's historians on a few elementary points, Jonah Goldberg shifts his attention to climatology and solar physics.

From his God's-eye view, the ant-like labor of climate scientists -- as they rush to and fro, saying this and that -- is both confusing and suggestive. Confusing, because Goldberg doesn't understand it. Suggestive, because this implies that they're trying to hide something.

Simply put, there's a new finding about sunspots, and it has something to do with climate. Don't bother asking Goldberg to explain any of this, though.

What is the significance of all this? To say I have no idea is quite an understatement, but it will have to do.

Ideally, scientists would respond to Goldberg's honest confession of cluelessness in kind, by conceding that they don't understand their pet subjects much better than he does. But instead, they insist on trying to interpret data in ways that strike Goldberg as counterintuitive.

[W]hat I find interesting is the eagerness of the authors and the media to make it clear that this doesn’t have any particular significance for the debate over climate change.

It's not that these scientists are dishonest, necessarily. It may just be that they're a little too close to the issue. What's needed is an outside opinion, preferably from someone who doesn't know the first goddamn thing about climatology, and therefore remains untainted by its rules of entry and its pompous language games.

It's more than a little pathetic, the way these scientists try to hide their sloppy thinking from the blazing searchlight of Goldberg's intellect:

“Global warming is a long-term trend, Dr. Meehl says....This study attempts to explain the processes behind a periodic occurrence.”

This overlooks the fact that solar cycles are permanent “periodic occurrences,” a.k.a. a very long-term trend.

A scientist might try to argue that sunspots are indeed cyclical, while global warming is a trend that represents a marked departure from natural cycles. But look here: If sunspots are periodic occurrences, and have something to do with climate, then why shouldn't global warming, which also has something to do with climate, also be periodic, and therefore natural, and therefore not worth worrying about, probably?

I mean, who you going to believe: A guy whose career depends on seeming to understand climate, or a guy who admits that he knows nothing about climate at all, and therefore has no other concern than strict accuracy?

Which is not to say that man-made pollution has played no role in planetary warming. But the important question to ask here is, how does this fact make Jonah Goldberg feel? Do you honestly think Goldberg would enjoy feeling guilty, or worrying about the world we're leaving for our children, supposing for the sake of argument that he were capable of doing so?

Consider his plight: The poor man can't even go shopping without imagining people attacking him for "frying the earth" by using the wrong type of bags. As if it were possible for individual choice to have some sort of aggregate effect! And all the while, the sun is roaring in the sky, sending glad tidings into our very bones, and the establishment scientists, like, can't even grok it, man!

Which means that they're ingrates. Because the sun is, on the whole, a good thing, and worthy of our notice:

[P]ay no attention to that burning ball of gas in the sky — it’s just the only thing that prevents the planet from being a lifeless ball of ice engulfed in darkness.

I'm not so sure about this. Who told him that the sun is "a big burning ball of gas," and what makes his source credible? Heraclitus said the sun is the size of a man's foot, and forms anew daily. Who is Goldberg to gainsay tradition? Furthermore, the global-warming skeptic Ian Plimer, who happens to be the World's Most Respected Geologist, suggests that the sun is made of iron. Can Goldberg prove it isn't, without resorting to hearsay and prattling about so-called "consensus"?

And if the sun were to go out, would the earth truly become "a lifeless ball of ice engulfed in darkness," or could we rely on innovative free-market solutions -- including nuclear power -- to help us adapt and thrive? And what about the planet's internal heat, as evidenced by volcanoes? Honestly, this sort of alarmism infuriates me.

After directing the attention of solar physicists to certain intriguing qualities of the sun, Goldberg goes on to quote Richard Lindzen (who's from MIT!) to the effect that the climate is not getting warmer. Oddly enough, Lindzen has also "criticized widely publicized assertions by other skeptics that variations in the sun were driving temperature changes in recent decades." Which means that Goldberg is such a ludicrous fucking dilettante that he can't even be bothered to pay serious attention to the preeminent scientist on his side of the "debate."

So what professional advice does Goldberg have for people who've spent their lives researching phenomena of which he is content to remain inexpressibly ignorant?

[M]aybe we should study a bit more before we spend billions to “solve” a problem we don’t understand so well.

Notice Goldberg's humility: Instead of attacking scientists for their pretensions, he's careful to point out that he, too, does not know quite as much as he should.

It's the human condition. We see through a glass, darkly...so you may as well wrap Goldberg's fetid underpants around your head a few times, and go play in traffic.

An Environmentally Sensitive State

Greg Pollowitz has some bad news for the imaginary hippies who are forever dancing 'round the maypole in his skull:

What might come as a shock to those on the left is that to make "green" batteries for their "green" cars to fit their "green" mandates is that you need to mine for the materials that make the batteries possible. Here's a good piece from Reuters on how the future of U.S. supply of he "rare earth" metals needed for the batteries rests on a project in the enviromentally sensitive state of California. Good luck with that.

Breaking news, treehuggers: Building stuff requires the extraction and processing of natural resources!

Now that you know that neodymium batteries can't simply be willed into existence through Thelemic sex ritual, I bet you feel pretty stupid for complaining about drilling for oil in ANWR, and whining about how much water it takes to process tar sands, and agitating for mine safety and pollution prevention. The fact that consumption has consequences clearly demonstrates that consequences don't matter, so you doomstruck Chicken Littles had better cast aside your irrational optimism, and wake up to the cold hard reality of inexhaustible oil and limitless growth.

You'd think that Pollowitz would be going out on a limb here, given that his "argument" is stupid to the point of incoherence. But by invoking the dismay of a hopelessly naive left, and putting "green" in scare quotes, and referring knowingly to the "the enviromentally sensitive state of California" as though the phrase actually meant something, he transports his readers into a realm where, to paraphrase Flann O'Brien, anything can be said and it will be true and will have to be believed.

The Reuters article is about an enormous open-pit mine at Mountain Pass, CA, right off Interstate 15 in the Mojave desert. It closed in 2002, after running for almost 60 years, and reopened in 2007, thanks to increasing demand for rare earths. It's now gearing up to expand production dramatically.

The site did, in fact, cause a number of environmental problems during its first few decades of operation, though the Reuters article all but ignores this. And in a perfect world, we'd shift to cleaner technologies without reopening it. But what Pollowitz neglects to mention -- either because he doesn't know about it, or assumes no one else will -- is that this "project" has already won approval from all the relevant California regulatory agencies, for better or worse. Its EIR was approved back in 2004, for fuck's sake. "Good luck with that," indeed.

But so what? All this proves is that California's progress-hatin' enviro-nazis are a bunch of frauds, and have no moral standing to oppose drilling for oil in national parks, or staking mining claims on the Arctic seabed.

Incidentally, the CEO of Molycorp, which runs Mountain Pass, notes that rare earths are vital to missile-guidance systems.

Where's your Peaceable Kingdom now, you dirt-worshipping hypocrites?

(Photo by Greg Vojtko.)

Our Precious Little Daughters

Rebecca Hagelin doesn't want teens to have sex, which means that she doesn't want them to learn about sex, which means that she doesn't want them to use contraceptives.

It seems stupid, until you understand her rationale. At which point, it seems stupid and vicious.

The basic idea, as always, is that the sexuality of young girls must be strictly controlled for the good of society.

Cynics might claim that this is a way for society to give itself permission to dwell a little more avidly than is necessary on the ins and outs of Teen Sex. But real Americans understand that anything done in a child's name is sincere and blameless by definition, unless it involves pollution control or increasing access to healthcare.

One thing that worries Hagelin is the portrayal of women in the media:

[W]e've created a culture in which our precious little daughters are constantly bombarded by messages that degrade their innate value, reducing them to nothing more than sex objects.

You'd think this would allow her to find some common ground with feminists, who've been making the same point for a pretty long while. Unfortunately, there are some obstacles to a true rapprochement. The first is that Hagelin's idea of "innate value" is skewed rather heavily toward women's utility as breeding stock. The second is that according to this essentially market-based idea of value, women who become sex objects are damaged goods, and will be passed over by male buyers. To feminism, a woman's "innate value" is a bit more durable than that.

Which, I guess, is why Hagelin calls feminism "insidiously evil." You can't blame her, given that feminists are simultaneously complaining about a culture that reduces women to sex objects, and training Our Precious Little Daughters to give blow jobs while they're still in kindergarten. (Please note: While that last statement is not literally true, it does illustrate the severity of the problem.)

Many educators are obsessed with promoting a promiscuous lifestyle. One particularly disturbing tactic is to strip our little girls of their natural inclination toward modesty and replace it with an attitude of sexual dominance. They teach young women that the way to get ahead in the world is not through their grace, or goodness, or intelligence - but through their sexual power.

No citations are necessary, since this is what Hagelin's readers already imagine is happening (especially while they're masturbating). And besides, it's not like someone who really, really, really cares about children would tell a lie. So we may as well face the awful truth: Little girls are indeed being trained for "sexual dominance."

As opposed to what, exactly? Well, let's just call it "modesty." Or better yet, let's say "a natural inclination towards modesty," so that we can pretend something's being stolen from them, rather than imposed on them.

Wouldn't it be nice if women were respected for their intelligence (an important component of which is knowing when to play dumb)? Instead of judging women on their skill at lap dancing, shouldn't we be encouraging them to write essays in defense of female subordination?

Admittedly, the main attraction of both activities is that a woman has "consented" to degrade herself, by representing herself first and foremost as a means to male ends. But you can't conclude that these career options are two sides of the same coin. At least, not if you're using your goodness, grace, and intelligence to assess the situation properly.

Hagelin worries that all this S-E-X people keep having will "destroy the beautiful and selfless concept of committing one's sexuality and heart to only one person for life." But in fact, that commitment is only as beautiful as the feelings of the people making it. An unsatisfactory marriage is not ennobled by monogamy, and lifelong commitment is not "selfless" when it's imposed as a social duty, under pain of censure or worse.

I'm sure you'll be surprised to learn that although unruly girls can "destroy all notions of fidelity, and commitment for both genders," male promiscuity is more of a design flaw, and doesn't seem to shake the very pillars of Heaven. Boys will be boys!

You can't curse the darkness of radical feminist critique without lighting the candle of traditional female submissiveness, and so Hagelin offers a number of suggestions for protecting our daughters -- by which, of course, I mean our sons -- from the existential threat of equality. One good idea is to help them find strong female mentors, like Phyllis Schlafly, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Duggar. But here's an even better one:

Help your daughter discover the joy and peace of mind that comes with teen years that are free from the threat of sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and the low self-esteem sexually active girls report having deep in their hearts.

The first two threats can be addressed pretty well by education and condoms. The latter threat may be a bit more intractable, so long as people like Hagelin keep screaming at sexually active girls that they're not just squandering their innate value -- in a buyer's market, no less! -- but also dragging civilization itself into the grave.

Some people might even argue that Hagelin's entire worldview is designed to reduce female self-esteem to the bare minimum, in that it treats personal worth as something you maintain by existing primarily for the benefit of men. It'd probably seem to Hagelin like an intolerable paradox if a teen girl gave in to sexual bullying because of "principles" like the ones espoused in this column. But I'm sure it's happened once or twice.

Which is why, as much as I'd love to share Hagelin's excitement over the decline of traditional values, I remain a pessimist. I'm afraid they're still very much with us, from our hard-right Websites to our high schools to our strip clubs.

(Image via I am the Lizard Queen.)