An Unforgivable Choice

Matt Barber, a member in good standing of what Peggy Noonan calls the Conservative Thinkosphere of the Net, has discovered an ugly example of left-wing hypocrisy: Liberals claim to believe in tolerance, but in reality, they're intolerant...of intolerance!

If you don't believe this, try calling publicly for the extermination of homosexuals and see how long it takes for some lefty to get angry at you.

The fact that writers for Town Hall and NewsMax discover this paradox anew every few days shouldn't distract us from Barber's more impressive achievement: He has revealed feminist women once and for all as people who tend to support abortion rights and oppose anti-feminist politicians. The jig is up, ladies, and your disdain for Sarah Palin was what gave you away:

Palin blew it, you see. She made an unforgivable “choice.” She publicly expressed, through both word and selfless deed, that she values all people during every stage of development*, from conception to natural death.

*Offer may not be valid in all states.

In the real world, of course, no one finds Palin's choice unforgivable; many people, including myself, find it admirable. What's unforgivable is the fact that she wants to be applauded for making that choice of her own free will, and for wishing to take free will entirely out of the equation for women who don't have her personal beliefs or her financial resources.

Beyond that, her decision to give birth to and raise her own child doesn't indicate that "she values all people during every stage of development," any more than the prohibition on abortion in Pakistan makes that nation a peaceable kingdom (please note that I'm referring here to violence besides the support of policies that routinely result in women being mutilated or killed).

Barber singles out "abortion-centric feminism" for particular abuse, as though any other kind were possible while the earth is encumbered with panty-sniffing control-addicts like him. He admires Palin because she's "easy on the eyes" — as all godly men must — but also because she "declined to slaughter her own unborn child, Trig, to goddess feminism." And he complains that feminists are claiming en masse that she's "not a real woman," which is a terrible thing to say about any woman unless she's a feminazi or a dyke.

It turns out that feminists object to Palin's choice because they view abortion as an important rite of passage (which is why you never see them calling for sex education, male birth control pills or increased access to contraception). In fact, the credo of these barren, castrating, shrewish, ugly, unnatural, selfish quasi-women is as follows:

“All women are endowed by mother earth with the inalienable right to eat their own young."

Putting aside the issue of Barber's soul-deep loathing for women — which is as hard to miss, and as appetizing, as a foot-high pile of dogshit on your dinner plate — I have to say I'm weary of being lectured on "selfishness" by people whose idea of virtue involves heaping abuse and misery on the poor and the powerless, in the name of a religion whose only truths are emotionally alien and politically inimical to them.

I'm also tired of being lectured on morality by people whose basic discomfort with human existence is so profound that only potential life has any chance of meeting their standards for purity. And I'm tired of being lectured on violence by people who are not only comfortable denying human rights to their fellow citizens, and forcing women to bear the children of rapists, but also have no problem blowing up pregnant women in foreign countries and demanding that I wave the flag over whatever's left of their bodies.

One day, I hope to vote in an election that will finally sweep these people from any semblance of power, and to live in a country where their ravings get no more respect than they themselves currently afford to the pleas of the hungry and the homeless and the sick and the abused. For now, I'll gladly settle for flinging Sarah Palin back into the outer darkness where she belongs.

(Photo via Menstrual Poetry.)

Scary Stories

Chris Horner finds it amusing that members of Mensa -- who are supposed to be, like, all smart and shit -- have invited the archfiend James Hansen to be the keynote speaker at an upcoming synod, or convocation.

How can bright people believe, like the UN Secretary General, that computer model scenarios of the future are more frightening than Hollywood movies? Because they’re . . . real?

Well, apparently because they also accept observed, um, truths like “It is now firmly established that Earth’s global surface temperature is increasing and that human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the primary cause of that global warming.”

Horner may not know much about climate modeling, but he knows what he likes. And he likes this:


Most people, when they attempt to win an argument by posting a graph, make some effort to explain what the graph measures, and how, and why, and so forth. Horner can be forgiven for this oversight, as he's writing exclusively for blue-ribbon experts in the field of applied neopaleoconservato-climatologographical discoverism.

As for me, I write for the Plain People of the Blogosphere, who may not have much book-larnin', but know how many apples makes four. Thus, I think I should point out that the "2002" on the bottom left represents the year 2002, while the "2008" on the right represents the year that we're all enjoying right now, viz., 2008.

What we have here, in other words, is a six-year snapshot of temperature anomalies and CO2. The latter is going up. The former are fluctuating, but trending downwards.

You may have heard it said that there are insufficient data to support AGW; after all, instrumental temperature records only go back for over a century. No such objection is thinkable in regards to six years' worth of data, though. This one graph, spanning a mere three-quarters of the Bush administration and ending with a global cold spell, solves all problems, answers all objections, and refutes, in absentia, any "computer modeling scenarios" that predict this trend won't persist over the next decade.

Regardless, the conclusions Horner has drawn from it are wrong. And I have a chart that proves it.


What more evidence could anyone want?

Horner's no alarmist, generally speaking, but he is sincerely worried that Mensa is in danger of being "hijacked" by "activist members," just like the American Meteorological Society (which has apparently been taken over by zealots who insist on looking at climate data collected prior to 2002). A scary story, indeed.

Just for the record, the World Meteorological Organization measures climate averages over 30-year periods, in order to eliminate natural year-to-year variation. The question is: Are they crazy, or just plain stupid?

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Not the cat or the worm
Not Ceratosoma amoena
Not the slime
Not the fowl nor the fish
Not the birds of the air
None of them has a name
But amen
Amen in the dark

(Photo by doug.deep.)

Friday Hope Blogging

The US Supreme Court granted a stay of execution to Troy Davis - who was convicted in 1991 of murdering a policeman - 90 minutes before he was scheduled to receive a lethal injection.

Seven out of nine witnesses who gave evidence at Davis' trial have recanted or changed their testimony, which was the backbone of the prosecution's case in the absence of a murder weapon, fingerprints and DNA.

Here's the really remarkable part of the story:

The US high court was not in session this week and the request was heard Tuesday by just one member of the court, conservative justice Clarence Thomas.

British Columbia's Appeal Court has upheld the bubble-zone law that prevents anti-choice protesters from harassing patients and staff outside abortion clinics.

The three Appeal Court judges were unanimous in ruling that while the right to protest against abortion is protected, the object of the bubble-zone law is to protect vulnerable women and that justifies limiting protesters' rights.

In Malawi, beauty salons are distributing female condoms.

Pamela Msukwa, family planning and HIV technical coordinator for PSI/Malawi, said hair salons were chosen for the program because they "provide a very viable and highly targeted market" due to their popularity with women in Malawi. She added, "That's where they get to talk about issues, and there is always somebody they can discuss issues with." A team of women associated with the organization promote and distribute the condoms, and salon staff members are trained on how to talk about the products with their customers.

No Capital reports that South Africa's disastrous health minister has been removed from office:

AIDS activists Friday were celebrating the removal of South Africa’s health minister, who promoted nutritional supplements instead of conventional medicine for people with HIV.

A simple screening test for cervical cancer has performed very well in rural China:

An affordable and simple test for 14 high-risk strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) was highly accurate in a trial in rural China, researchers reported Sunday.

Routine cervical cancer screening has cut mortality from the disease in advanced industrial nations by 50-80 percent. However, the sophisticated laboratory equipment needed is a barrier for many poor nations, which may lack medical infrastructure and even electricity in remote areas.

There are rumors of intense dissatisfaction with Sarah Palin among the McCainiacs. I take them with several grains of salt - why would people sentient enough to notice her failings overlook McCain's? - but you can draw your own conclusions.

A plan to drill for uranium near the Grand Canyon has been blocked:

The Center for Biological Diversity, Grand Canyon Trust and Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter have reached a settlement agreement with the United States Forest Service and VANE Minerals, a British mining firm, over a legal challenge to uranium exploration approved last December for national forest land immediately south – some within three miles – of Grand Canyon National Park.

The suit held that the Kaibab National Forest violated the National Environmental Policy Act and Appeals Reform Act when it approved 39 exploratory drilling holes using a “categorical exclusion” from detailed public and environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. The settlement follows an April preliminary injunction and requires the Forest Service and VANE Minerals to withdraw the drilling approval and to undertake a full Environmental Impact Statement process prior to any renewed effort to drill at the sites.

A nonprofit partnership is making low-income housing in New Mexico greener:

Spending roughly $1 million at each property, the Reliant Group installed energy-efficient, doublepaned windows and low-flow toilets and shower heads to help residents save on their utility bills. Energy-saving fluorescent lights were installed in kitchens and entries. Ceiling fans were added.

A rooftop solar system for heating water was installed at one of the Albuquerque apartment properties, Montgomery Manor at 4301 Morris NE. Playgrounds with equipment made from recycled milk jugs were put in all the properties. LEED-certified flooring tile was put in common areas.

"These things don't save on the owner's energy bill," said Hans Juhle, a partner in the Reliant Group. "They reduce the resident's bill and these are people who live on the margin."

Amsterdam will use existing tram lines to deliver products throughout the city, which will allow them to get diesel delivery vehicles off the streets:

Once in the city, they have a fleet of electric delivery vans (e-cars) that can then take the individual deliveries to their exact destination.

This project alone could take about half the delivery truck traffic off the streets, thus reducing the amount of particulate pollution in the air (sulfur), as well as noise pollution, and just plain “size” pollution. If we could take about half of the delivery trucks out of our own cities, we could all breathe easier as well as drive our sub-compacts and electric vehicles without worry of becoming a bug splat on some semi's window.

Apropos of which:

Turn-of-the-century trolley tracks were unearthed unexpectedly this week in downtown Ventura by crews replacing a crosswalk.

Workers discovered the rusted steel rails about six inches below ground while replacing a concrete crosswalk in the middle of Main Street at the Oak Street intersection, officials said.

Los Angeles officials hope to turn a brownfields site into a green industrial park:

It's a vacant lot now, but Los Angeles officials hope to turn the former brownfield site downtown into a cluster of "green" manufacturing businesses to meet the region's growing demand for solar and wind power and other clean technologies.

The proposed CleanTech Manufacturing Center would be established on a city-owned 20-acre parcel in an industrial area near the intersection of 15th Street and Santa Fe Avenue, south of the 10 Freeway and west of the Los Angeles River.

The development, which city officials say could accommodate as much as 1 million square feet of industrial space, would essentially function as a green industrial park and incubator.

The EPA has decided to shelve a couple of studies in which children are exposed to pesticides and other chemicals:

The two studies, entitled “Observational Studies to Characterize the Determinants of Exposure to Chemicals in the Environment for Early-Lifestage Age Groups” (involving infants under age 3 in the Las Vegas area) and “Novel Approaches for Assessing Exposure for School-Aged Children in Longitudinal Studies” have been “cancelled until further notice.” They are reminiscent of a notorious experiment called the Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study (with the anomalous acronym CHEERS) in which Florida parents would have been paid to spray pesticides in the rooms of their infant children. The ensuing furor forced EPA to grudgingly end CHEERS in April 2005 in order to secure the confirmation of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.

Dell claims its laptop screens will soon be mercury-free:

Replacing those by LEDs means that the displays will use less energy, will probably have a longer useful life (LEDs last a very long time), will be mercury-free and more recyclable.

A new iguana has been discovered in Fiji:

B. bulabula has a distinct bright nose and a U-shaped band around its neck, Fisher said. The other two species either have a V-shaped band or spots around their necks.

And unlike its dry forest-dwelling relatives, B. bulabula rummages through wet forests.

Over a hundred new species of sharks and rays have been found in Australia. You can see a few of them here.

In Japan, ten crested ibis have been released into the wild, 27 years after the last native ibis died:

Ibises have returned to Japan for the first time since 1981 after researchers released 10 of the endangered birds Thursday.

The large white birds, some wearing small GPS devices on their backs for tracking, flew away from a crowd of cheering onlookers and headed for nearby rice paddies.

Red-faced, with pink-white feathers, a curved black beak and a floppy feathered crown, the crested ibis was once common in rice fields in Japan and across Asia, where it feasted on bugs and frogs.

Photo: Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center
The Senate has passed an extension of the Production Tax Credit.

The U.S. Senate just voted overwhelmingly, 93 to 2, to approve legislation containing a one-year extension of the crucial wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) through December 31, 2009. The bill, H.R. 6049, also would create a new investment tax credit for purchases of small wind systems used to power homes, farms and small businesses.

You can urge your representatives to pass the bill by clicking here.

California's Proposition 2 (aka the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act) faces stiff opposition from the usual industry groups. Please consider giving Yes on 2 some cash, if you can spare it. Once you've done that, you can get busy on making your own hydroelectric generator. Your reward will be great in heaven!

Your reward will be great down here, too, consisting as it does of Built St. Louis, "a site dedicated to the historic architecture of St. Louis, Missouri" (via Plep). And Thirty-Three Theaters and a Funeral Home (via wood s lot). And Sagebrush Vernacular: Architecture of Rural Nevada (via yours truly).


A fascinating and relatively new ailment: lunar hay fever. A history of The Civilian Conservation Corps at Mammoth Cave National Park. Useful tips on living through the Depression via Miss Bailey Says: Common Sense in 1930s Relief Programs. An exhibition of Printing Matrices for Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition.


Furthermore: A simulated earthquake. An account of Four Years in the White North (recommended soundtrack: Sounds of Antarctic Wildlife). A survey of Cinema in Quebec in Silent Era (via The Bioscope, of course). The design work of Raymond Loewy. The return of Einstein's telescope. An archive of snapshot disasters.


Here's a short film to end with.



Illustration: "The Gramineous Bicycle Garnished with Bells the Dappled Fire Damps and the Echinoderms Bending the Spine to Look for Caresses" by Max Ernst, 1921).

Doing the Nation's Business

Whatever else John McCain may lack - wisdom, credibility, a conscience - he does not suffer from any lack of friends, and those friends are eager to aid him in his quest to defeat the unelectable foreign-born nonwhite neo-Marxist terrorist-loving America-hating demagogue who opposes him.

James P. Pinkerton acknowledges that "John McCain’s campaign is behind, and he is running out of time." But McCain still has a chance, if he can somehow look deep within himself and find the courage to speak out against illegal immigration:

One Republican has a good suggestion: At Friday’s debate, McCain should make a pivot of his own, connecting foreign policy, national security, and domestic policy - and thus get back to illegal immigration.

Well, why not? Granted, McCain suffers in part from the dismal reputation of his party, which indulged in an eight-year orgy of race-baiting while praising the "strong fundamentals" of our economy, so it's not obvious that this tactic will gain back any of the ground he's lost. And the midterms seemed to confirm the Wall Street Journal's theory that "immigration is an issue, like trade, that always looks better in the polls than it does on election day." Still, it's worth a shot, and I agree with Pinkerton that it won't cost him many minority votes; most of them are probably still reeling from being blamed for the subprime mortgage crisis, and won't even notice.

One of Jonah Goldberg's readers has a very clever idea:

I think McCain should show up for the debate looking reluctant and disheveled. He could apologize for this condition, saying he had to rush back from doing the nation’s business. He could be like Grant having to apologize to the impeccably dressed Lee at Appomattox for showing up all muddy and in an old private’s coat. There was, after all, a war that needed winning.

Goldberg christens this "the Grant Gambit" and pledges his allegiance to it; the idea that it might be greeted with gales of laughter, especially when attempted by a man who hasn't been present for a Senate vote since April, doesn't seem to have occurred to him.

I think it's ridiculous, myself, but since I'm a liberal fascist - of sorts - true patriots would be wise to embrace whatever I reject. With that in mind, let me make it perfectly clear that I really, really don't want McCain to totter onstage in a state of studied deshabille and upbraid Obama for tearing him away from the stupendous labor of our salvation. It would ruin my day, honest.

The most popular piece of advice the wingnuttosphere has for McCain is to step aside, for fuck's sake, and let the unsinkable Sarah Palin debate Obama. That's probably because unlike him, she's wildly popular (in a properly non-Hitlerian and non-messianic way, of course). But it's also possible that they like the idea of being able to cite anything Obama dares to say to her as evidence of sexism, which has very recently become unfashionable among the Dominionist crowd.

Anyway, since I'm one of those dictator pawns who "fell hook, line, and sinker into the dialectic," let me suggest that the proper course of action here is all of the above. McCain should show up in shirtsleeves, with his hair tousled and a stained Arby's napkin tucked under his dewlap. He should spend ten minutes howling about La Reconquista and explaining our immediate need for a two-story drone-patrolled border fence with a moat and a minefield on either side, and then turn the floor over to Sarah Palin, with the explanation that he must hurry back to the Senate to vote against a bill honoring Tom of Finland. (Bonus points for pulling out his pocket watch and crying, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!")

I will await further developments with considerable interest.

(Illustration: "Mock bank note parodying the "shinplasters" of the 1837 panic. Such small-denomination notes were based on the division of the Spanish dollar, the dominant specie of the time. Hence they were issued in sums of 6 (more accurately 6 1/4), 25, 50, and 75 cents. These fractional notes proliferated during the Panic of 1837 with the emergency suspension of specie (i.e., money in coin) payments by New York banks on May 10 of that year. "Treasury Note" and "Fifty Cents Shin Plaster" (nos. 1837-9 and -11) also use the bank note format to comment on the dismal state of American finances. Unlike these, however, "Humbug Glory Bank" is actually the same size as a real note. The note is payable to "Tumble Bug Benton," Missouri senator and hard-money advocate Thomas Hart Benton, and is signed by "Cunning Reuben [Whitney, anti-Bank adviser to Jackson and Van Buren] Cash'r" and "Honest Amos [Kendall, Postmaster General and influential advisor to Van Buren] Pres't." It shows several coins with the head of Andrew Jackson at left, a jackass with the title "Roman Firmness," a hickory leaf (alluding to Jackson's nickname "Old Hickory"), and a vignette showing Jackson's hat, clay pipe, spectacles, hickory stick, and veto (of the 1832 bill to recharter the Bank of the United States) in a blaze of light. Above is a quote from Jackson's March 1837 farewell address to the American people, "I leave this great people prosperous and happy." Via the Library of Congress.)

A Confined Situation

A new report from the GAO suggests that contrary to everything we've been hearing lately, there may be a downside to the deregulation of politically powerful industries:

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) are large livestock and poultry operations that raise animals in a confined situation....[T]hese operations can produce from 2,800 tons to 1.6 million tons of manure a year....

EPA has not yet assessed the extent to which pollutants from animal feeding operations may be impairing human health and the environment because it lacks key data on the amount of pollutants being discharged by these operations.

Some might argue that the figure of "2,800 tons to 1.6 million tons of manure" per CAFO comprises "key data on the amount of pollutants being discharged by these operations," at least in terms of making a urgent case for action.

And indeed, an urgent case for action has been made:

The EPA's proposal, announced in December, would exempt animal-feeding operations from reporting emissions of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide above 100 pounds per day. A spokesman for the EPA said Tuesday that the goal of the proposal is "reducing reporting burdens and protecting public health and the environment.

As for the more pressing question of water pollution, the GAO reports that "EPA currently has no plans to conduct a national study to collect information on CAFO water pollutant discharges."

Fortunately, there's no evidence that relaxing oversight and easing regulations has ever caused any problem that taxpayers couldn't solve by bailing out the negligent parties.

(Photo: Flooded hog farm in North Carolina, ©Neuse River Foundation/Rick Dove.)

Remediating Public Insanity

I originally posted this back in 2004, in reference to a Kerry presidency. I think it's worth saying again, even if a lot of its phrasing now seems (even more) stilted and quaint. I've updated it by changing the candidate's name; obviously, the additional challenges this candidate faces call some of my arguments into question.

Like the white-power groups with whom it's surreptitiously aligned, the extremist wing of the GOP thrives on the resentment and insecurity of an uneducated, white economic underclass. Calculating thugs like Rove and Norquist have broadened and implemented these feelings, and turned them into an absolutely deadly form of paranoid self-pity.

I've been wondering what can be done with these people if Obama takes office. It's a crucial question, because as it stands now they're in serious danger of doing violence to themselves and others. I think the most logical course of action would be for Obama to restart, immediately, a couple of FDR's New Deal programs. The Works Progress Administration, which ran from 1935 to 1943, was the best known of these; it employed 8 million Americans, who built and repaired infrastructure all over the country. It ought to be brought back by all means, along with the related Civil Works Administration program. But I think that another, lesser-known program would be equally worthwhile.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, which operated from 1934 to 1937, was an environmental remediation program that put millions of people to work maintaining and restoring America's wetlands, forests, beaches, and parks. Because these projects can take time, the program provided free lodging for workers, allowing the government to keep costs down while still providing workers with a living wage.

We have plenty of work to do along these lines. Restoration of wetlands, such as is being undertaken in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a huge task that requires a huge number of workers; they would not only get steady work for years, but also come to understand environmental science.

With this program, everyone wins. The usual right-wing arguments don't apply. It's not welfare, not a handout. It decreases unemployment, obviously, and it may teach workers a trade. It also benefits municipalities; unsightly and dangerous sites can be cleaned up and developed, or turned into parks. It benefits homeowners, by raising property values. It can bring local and national benefits in terms of increased tourism (by attracting birdwatchers, for instance). In some cases, it will make areas safer, reducing medical and legal costs at every level.

Perhaps most important, it could bring a sense of common ownership and civic involvement to people who've been hoodwinked into viewing the environment and the government as enemies. It could make good citizens out of people who are currently in thrall to demagogues, who've taught them to be hostile to their own best interests. The Right's rhetoric is spiritual poison; it's estranged millions of people from their own laws and their own land. Obama needs to hire these people to rebuild the country, and pay them good wages, and give them an allegiance to something more noble than dumbed-down, warmed-over laissez-faire economics.

Obama has to win these people over, at all costs. If he does, he'll be able to cripple and isolate the Right, and cut them off from their most fertile recruiting grounds. If he doesn't, they'll become shock troops in an endless, slow-motion insurrection that'll make what Clinton went through look like a walk in the park.

(Photo: Civilian Conservation Corps laborers in Lassen National Forest, California, 1933.)

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.
What we are seeking is Mexichromis multituberculata
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.

(Photo by doug.deep.)

Friday Hope Blogging

An Illinois appellate court has ruled that a fertilized egg is not a person:

The case was originally brought to a Cook County judge as a wrongful death suit when an Illinois couple sued their fertility clinic for "tens of thousands of dollars" for inadvertently destroying the unimplanted eggs stored at the clinic.

A judge has ruled that Florida's gay adoption ban is unconstitutional.

Declaring the adoption to be in the boy's "best interest," Circuit Judge David J. Audlin Jr. ruled the Florida ban contrary to the state Constitution because it singles out a group for punishment, the Herald said.

Mississippi and Florida are the only states that forbid gays to adopt children. Florida's ban has been in place for 31 years.

AIDG Blog describes a low-cost solar water heater that may replace that country's dangerous electric shower heads:

This past summer, prototypes were installed at the homes of 10 low to middle income families in Xela. A major design challenge the team still must address is how to retain heat overnight and cope with the variability in temperatures and sunlight between Guatemala’s dry and rainy seasons.

GT Solar is predicting a huge drop in polysilicon prices:

Rising capacity to produce polysilicon is expected to come on line by the second half of 2009 -- nearly a year after many market experts had predicted -- and should reduce spot market levels from the nearly $500 per kilogram at which they have recently been quoted.

Lower silicon prices will translate into lower solar cell and panel costs, he said, likely trimming the costs to $1.25 to $1.40 per watt in the next few years and making solar panels competitive with traditional forms of electricity generation.

Kraft is turning cheese waste into energy:

Two cheese plants in New York will turn used whey into energy in a move that will supplant a third of the facilities' natural gas purchases. The company also will avoid the expense of hauling the waste away.

Digesters at the company's Lowville plant, which makes Philadelphia cream cheese, and a string cheese plant in Campbell turn the whey into biogas. It's part of the company's broader efforts to green operations in the areas of agriculture, packaging, energy, water, waste and transportation.

A noise-dampening system is being devised for wind turbines:

“These systems react autonomously to any change in frequency and damp the noise – regardless of how fast the wind generator is turning,” says Illgen. The key components of this system are piezo actuators. These devices convert electric current into mechanical motion and generate “negative vibrations”, or a kind of anti-noise that precisely counteracts the vibrations of the wind turbine and cancels them out. The piezo actuators are mounted on the gearbox bearings that connect the gearbox to the pylon.

A new system has been proposed for fisheries management:

Guaranteeing individual fishermen a share of the catch could help avert a global collapse of fisheries, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Such programs, known as catch-shares, eliminate the frantic race to get the biggest share of the catch as in traditional open-access fishing, a system that promotes overfishing and habitat destruction, putting a key global food supply at risk.

"Under open access, you have a free-for-all race to fish, which ultimately leads to collapse," said Christopher Costello of the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose study appears in the journal Science.

Wolves will not be removed from the Endangered Species List...yet.

The federal government plans to withdraw a rule that removed wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and parts of Utah, Oregon and Washington from the endangered species list.

If U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula agrees, a lawsuit filed by environmentalists will end, and federal biologists will get a chance to rewrite the plan to meet objections the judge made. Molloy's preliminary injunction July 17 temporarily relisted wolves and put a halt to plans in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming to open hunting seasons on the animals.

Italy has banned a class of pesticides linked to the collapse of bee colonies:

The Italian government banned the use of several neonicotinoid pesticides that are blamed for the deaths of millions of honeybees. The Ministero del Lavoro della Salute e delle Politiche Sociali issued an immediate suspension of the seed treatment products clothianidin, imidacloprid, fipronil and thiamethoxam used in rapeseed oil, sunflowers and sweetcorn.

Hundreds of new species have been found in the waters off Australia:

Dozens of new marine species were found, such as shrimp-like animals with claws longer than their bodies, along with already known animals like a tongue-eating isopod parasite that eats a fish's tongue and then resides in its mouth.

"We were all surprised and excited to find such a large variety of marine life never before described, most notably soft coral, isopods, tanaid (small, bottom-dwelling) crustaceans and worms, and in waters that divers access easily and regularly," said Julian Caley, research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).

More info here.

Also in Australia, a frog that was thought to be extinct has been rediscovered:

The armored mistfrog was rediscovered accidently during a collecting trip in a remote part of Queensland. It was the first time the species had been seen since 1991.

"A lot of us were starting to believe it had gone extinct, so to discover it now is amazing," Conrad Hoskin, a researcher at The Australian National University in Canberra who did the DNA analysis to confirm the frog's identity, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. "It means some of the other species that are missing could potentially just be hidden away along some of the streams up there."

Photo courtesy of James Cook University
Eleven rare species of monkey have been found in West Africa:

Urgent conservation measures are needed to protect some of the world's most endangered primates from the hunting, logging, and oil palm development in a region that has only recently emerged from a period of civil strife, report researchers writing in the open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science.

In related news, Rwanda and Burundi have agreed to protect a large tract of tropical forest:

The agreement will help improve conservation in Rwanda’s Nyungwe National Park and Burundi’s Kibira National Park, which house the largest remaining tract of montain forest in East Africa. WCS says the Nyungwe-Kibira Landscape is "considered the most wildlife-rich ecosystem in the entire Albertine Rift – a network of valleys in Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Tanzania that lie alongside some of Africa’s largest mountain ranges. The rift itself is considered one of Africa’s most important areas for conservation."

Scientists have discovered that certain fish are able to glow red:

Due to absorption of 'red' wavelengths of sunlight by sea-water, objects which look red under normal conditions appear grey or black at depths below 10m. This has contributed to the belief among marine biologists that red colours are of no importance to fish. Nico Michiels, from the University of Tübingen, Germany, led a team of researchers who captured the striking images in the article which, as he describes, "Shows that red fluorescence is widespread among marine fish. Our findings challenge the notion that red light is of no importance to marine fish, calling for a reassessment of its role in fish visual ecology".

A strange, previously unknown type of ant has been discovered in the Amazon:

The species — named Martialis heureka or the "ant from Mars" due to its unusual characteristics — is blind, subterranean, and predatory, according to Christian Rabeling, the University of Texas at Austin biologist, who discovered the insect. The ant is so unique that it has been placed in its own new subfamily, the first such treatment of a living species of ant since 1923.

This species is about 120 million years old, unless you're a devotee of Sarah Palin, in which case it was created last Thursday.

Incidentally, water bears can survive in space:

"Our principal finding is that the space vacuum, which entails extreme dehydration, and cosmic radiation were not a problem for water bears. On the other hand, the ultraviolet radiation in space is harmful to water bears, although a few individual can even survive that," says Ingemar Jönsson.

Revere is concerned about a new effort to restrict public access to publicly funded scientific research.

Open Access advocates are urging constituents to contact their own representatives and senators and especially members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees before September 24 to say you oppose HR6845. Like you, I get pretty tired of having to do things like this, but campaigns like this are incredibly effective. If access to research that you paid for is important to you, this is the time to do something. This legislation will lock you out of access to important public health and medical information. It needs to be stopped now.

The post includes a draft letter, and a list of congressional contacts. Please consider getting involved.

A company has created the first flushable diaper:

Consider the fact that disposable diapers make up the third-largest consumer item dumped in landfills and take 500 years to decompose. Clearly there is a environmental problem waiting to be solved in the design of diapers. Now gDiapers have presented a solution - the world’s first flushable, compostable diaper! Their cute eco baby bottom-toppers are the first diapers to merge the convenience of disposables with the sustainability of cloth diapers.

The Iconography of Hope: "a compass rose pointing in all directions, toward imaginary future and real past, false future and immutable present, a world of tomorrow contained in the lost American yesterday."

Arctic Cinema: Early Film in the Far North. Drawings by the inimitable Carolyn Wells. A mysterious example of early Japanese animation. A magazine dedicated to floating mechanisms within architecture. And from BibliOdyssey, views of the Merapi Volcano.


A bookbinding movie. The Pop Vs Soda Map. Aurorae galore at The Aurora Borealis Photo Pool (via Plep). The Casimir Zagourski Postcard Collection, comprising photos of Africa taken "between 1924 and 1941, which formed a part of his overal project, "L'Afrique Qui Disparait" (Disappearing Africa)." Arabic Music. Also from BibliOdyssey, a collection of images from lace modelbuchs:


Furthermore: À la recherche du chronochrome. A close-up view of The Pin Cushion Flower. And A Bird's-Eye View of the Delaware Valley:



Last, an early cartoon detailing "the earlier and simpler forms of life on earth."



(Photo at top by Lori Nix. Be sure to check out the rest of her work...it's gorgeous!)

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

I've been struggling lately to meet multiple deadlines, and haven't really had a chance to read the news, let alone write about it. Longtime readers have probably noticed that this happens to me every so often; that's how things go in my line of work, though my tendency to procrastinate doesn't help matters.

This time, the only way I could get my work done was not just to cut back on blogging, but to pretend I didn't even have a blog. It's very possible that I needed a vacation from it in any case...although a vacation that didn't involve 12-14 hours in front of the computer, in a room that looks like a bookstore after an earthquake, would've been preferable.

Anyway, I'm not quite out of the woods yet, but I do hope to be able to get back to blogging over the coming week. Thanks for the comments and e-mails, meanwhile...I appreciate it.

(Photo by Raymond™.)

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Illegibility
of Chromodoris hinuanensis. All things twice over.

The strong clocks justify
the splitting hour,
hoarsely.

You, clamped
into your deepest part,
climb out of yourself,
for ever.

(Photo by Raymond™.)

Friday Hope Blogging

I'm very busy this week, so I beg you to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. (On second thought, maybe you'd better not concentrate on either one!)

In California, opponents of same-sex marriage didn't want the state to describe their proposed constitutional ban as a "limit" on marriage rights. For reasons that ought to be obvious even to authoritarian homophobes, a judge has rejected their argument:

[A] Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled Friday that Brown's reference to an elimination of rights was an accurate description of the purpose and effect of Prop. 8, and a state appeals court in Sacramento turned down an emergency appeal by the Yes on 8 campaign late Friday.

Meanwhile, supporters of the Electrogenital Torture for Parking Violations Act are lobbying to get it renamed the "Safer Streets Initiative." I'll let you know how things turn out.

Colombia's High Court has ruled that emergency contraception and abortion are two different things:

[C]itizen Carlos Humberto Gómez Arambula...argued that the EC is "abortive" and violated the right to life for Colombian citizens. This was the same argument that the Constitutional Court of Chile used to ban the free distribution of emergency contraception in the public health system last April.

Contrary to what happened in Chile, the Colombian high court declared that EC is not abortive and does not fall afoul of the right to life. This is in line with the World Health Organization, which has unequivocally stated that "Levonorgestrel emergency contraceptive pills have been shown to prevent ovulation and they did not have any detectable effect on the endometrium (uterine lining) or progesterone levels when given after ovulation. Emergency contraception pills are not effective once the process of implantation has begun, and will not cause abortion."

That's all well and good, but what about Carlos Humberto Gómez Arambula's feelings?

Yet another bid to expand off-road vehicle use in Death Valley has failed:

Inyo County officials had hoped to take control of three routes — little-used paths and canyon bottoms — using a repealed, 19th-century right-of-way law known as R.S. 2477. The judge ruled that the county waited too long to assert its claims to the three roads within the national park because they were included in wilderness study areas by the federal Bureau of Land Management in 1979. The court agreed with arguments by conservation groups and the National Park Service that the county’s claims were barred because it had failed to file suit within the 12-year statute of limitations. The court thus dismissed the county’s claims to all of one route and most of the other two routes.

The appalling Paul Hoffman has left the Interior Department:

Hoffman sparked a furor by trying to rewrite all Park Service management policies to subordinate the parks’ conservation mission to “enjoyment” by the public, a stance that promoted human intrusions from snowmobiles to hunting. In his draft, Hoffman, a “Young Earth” creationist, struck all references to evolution (such as, “species are evolving” and “naturally evolving ecosystems”) in some cases leaving entire paragraphs intact except to excise an evolution reference.

The Navy has agreed to limit its use of sonar:

The Navy's use of low frequency active sonar will remain limited to certain military training areas of the Pacific Ocean, according to an agreement approved by a U.S. district court in San Francisco today.
The comprehensive agreement between the Navy and conservation organizations follows a court injunction issued early this year against the Navy's Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active sonar system, which fills vast ocean areas with blasts of underwater noise to detect submarines at great distances.

The court agreed with a coalition of organizations led by the Natural Resources Defense Council that the Navy's proposed LFA deployment in more than 70 percent of the world's oceans is illegal.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that oil sands can't be described as "sustainable":

The ASA said that the use of the word "sustainable" throughout the advertisement was defined as "primarily in environmental terms". Because Shell had not provided evidence that it was "effectively" managing carbon emissions from its oil sands projects "in order to limit climate change", the ASA deemed that the advertisement was misleading.

The ASA came to the same conclusion about Shell's claims about the redevelopment of the Port Arthur oil refinery and said the advertisement should not be shown again in its current form.

Research continues into the use of paved surfaces as solar collectors:

“Asphalt has a lot of advantages as a solar collector,” Mallick says. “For one, blacktop stays hot and could continue to generate energy after the sun goes down, unlike traditional solar-electric cells. In addition, there is already a massive acreage of installed roads and parking lots that could be retrofitted for energy generation, so there is no need to find additional land for solar farms. Roads and lots are typically resurfaced every 10 to 12 years and the retrofit could be built into that cycle. Extracting heat from asphalt could cool it, reducing the urban ”˜heat island’ effect. Finally, unlike roof-top solar arrays, which some find unattractive, the solar collectors in roads and parking lots would be invisible.”

Ikea is investing $75 million towards cheap solar panels:

Stenebo's Greentech will put about US$75 million into at many as ten companies in five different areas: solar technology, energy conservation, water saving products, alternative lighting, and new product materials. Scandinavian companies are Greentech's first focus. Nearly all of these areas are ones we would welcome the IKEA low-cost approach to, although setting up solar roof panels with just the simplistic diagrams and little Allen keys that accompany IKEA's usual do-it-yourself furniture seems something of a stretch. Then there's the problem than many installations require building and other permits. But IKEA's fabulous distribution network of 270 global superstores would mean green tech for the global masses, a welcome development.

Texas has taken steps towards building transmission lines for wind energy:

Already the nation’s leader in wind energy, the Lone Star state has been given a preliminary go-ahead to allocate $4.9 billion towards building new transmission lines to carry wind energy from rural areas into urban hubs like Dallas. This doesn’t necessarily mean the production of new turbines, just the most efficient use of the existing wind energy infrastructure. The upgrade stands to harness 18,000 megawatts from Texas’ 4,000 wind turbines - enough to power more than 4 million homes.

Apparently, they're unaware that there are forty gallons of oil in the average tree.

A company claims to have grown "significant amounts" of bioplastic in switchgrass:

Mirel is a versatile bioplastic with has many uses including food packaging, agricultural products, and consumer goods. It’s tough and durable, resistant to heat and hot liquids, and completely biodegrades when exposed to microbial activity in soil, marine environments, or compost piles.

Now Metabolix can make Mirel by combining genes of naturally occurring substances to produce a polyhydroxybutyrate (PHA) polymer that grows directly in switchgrass. As an added bonus, once the polymer has been harvested, the leftover plant can be used as a source for biomass energy. An efficient and versatile source of bioplastic such as this is sure to enable future generations of eco-friendly industrial design.

Now, then. Precarious houses (via wood s lot). The strange story of Shanta Rao Dutt. Childhood photos recreated Many Years Later.


The type-writer! : a machine to supersede the pen. An online myriorama, complete with moving parts. Electronics in the World of Tomorrow. And an exhibition of Asia-Pacific Photography 1840s-1940s.


Last, a new type of Film-Ballet.



(Illustration at top: "Rising Sun" by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, 1904. Via Woolgathersome.)

Freedom Machines

It's no use talking to Ernest Istook about donkey carts, or velocipedes, or ornithopters. The plain fact is, he's simply wild about automobiles! He likes them so much that he refers to them, rather tautologically, as "great American Freedom machines."

Consider the evidence: As long as you've got enough money to fill your tank, you can use your car to travel from the place where you live to the place where you work. If that's not freedom, what is?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. In some states, you can also drive your car to a late-term abortion appointment, or a same-sex marriage ceremony (though you filthy perverts may rest assured that Mr. Istook and his colleagues are working on these problems as we speak).

Also, unlike mass transit, transportation by car is not subsidized by taxpayers (so long as you ignore the cost of oil and gas subsidies, and building freeways through residential areas, and treating pavement runoff laden with automotive fluids and heavy metals, and sacrificing parks and agricultural land, and protecting oil tankers and infrastructure, and air pollution, and congestion and crashes, and the billions of dollars that driver fees and taxes fail to cover in any given year).

In NYC, meanwhile, plans are being made to screen every vehicle Freedom machine that visits the island for radioactivity.

The proposal — called Operation Sentinel — relies on integrating layers of technologies, some that are still being perfected. It calls for photographing, and scanning the license plates of, cars and trucks at all bridges and tunnels and using sensors to detect the presence of radioactivity.

A while back, I suggested that purposefully triggering urban radiation sensors would be a cheap and easy way of causing chaos. That was idle speculation, of course, and there's no reason to believe that our pitiless enemies are capable of coming up with a tactic like that (not without dedicating an hour or two to working out the logistics, anyway).

Which is just as well, because if Noah Shachtman is to be believed, the current system is very sensitive indeed:

I spent some time with an NYPD unit, armed with these sensors. Just about anything would set them off -- like a patient getting chemotherapy, for example.

Even assuming they manage to reduce the false alarms to a bare minimum, it sounds as though this extraordinarily data-hungry Emancipation Contraption will cause more problems than it solves:

Data on each vehicle — its time-stamped image, license plate imprint and radiological signature — would be sent to a command center in Lower Manhattan, where it would be indexed and stored for at least a month as part of a broad security plan that emphasizes protecting the city’s financial district, the spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said.

In other news, we need better icebreakers (or Exalted Yankee Liberty Devices, as I prefer to call them) if we're going to keep the goddamn Russkies away from the North Pole:

Russia -- which last year planted a titanium flag under the North Pole, claiming 460,000 square miles of Arctic waters -- "has 20 icebreakers in its fleet, seven of them nuclear powered, including the largest ice-breaking vessel in the world," Homeland Security Today observes. Of the Coast Guard’s three polar icebreakers, two have outlived their originally designed service lives of 30 years.

The third sets sail this week, Reuters notes, "to determine the extent of the continental shelf north of Alaska and map the ocean floor, data that could be used for oil and natural gas exploration." And maybe claim some turf for America, too.

(Illustration at top by Bruce McCall.)

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

The purple of Ceratosoma willani glimmers,
into following coloures of jewels,
Sharp Blue Diamond that turquious the uncertain shapes,
Rocky timber of Bleeding cut ray marble Hues
Of crystal spring sunlight stairs, the Dirty Blinding cut glass,
[ ]tuby orange Faded tissue moist uneven Stones,
[ ]eep sky frail cloudless light turkey cerealean - through paper glass,
[ ]ell rainbows - Brilliant - Blinding Pink, of Disk thin size,
[ ]oem in creamy white pearls, in a platinum strings,
A mass of chips that demand palatte complete
Brown rough gold nuggest - For framing safety

(Photo by Raymond™.)

Friday Hope Blogging

First and foremost, the odious Phill Kline has been defeated:

A political newcomer knocked Phill Kline out of the race for Johnson County district attorney Tuesday, defeating the hopes of abortion opponents who had campaigned nationwide.

If Kline has any thought of moving to a country where his beliefs would pose less of an obstacle to professional advancement, he could try Iran...although it, too, is showing signs of creeping liberalism:

Iran's judiciary has decided to scrap the punishment of stoning convicts to death in draft legislation submitted to parliament for approval, the local press reported on Wednesday.

In Illinois, perpetrators of domestic violence will be made to wear a GPS device:

Diane Rosenfeld, a lawyer who worked to add GPS monitoring to Massachusetts state law, told Ms. Magazine that a key aspect of GPS legislation is that it places responsibility for following orders of protection on the offender rather than the victim. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich stated that "with this legislation, we will further help victims of domestic violence by monitoring their abusers whereabouts and aiding law enforcement in tracking violations of a restraining order."

The owners of a meatpacking plant in Postville, IA — which was recently the scene of a brutal roundup of immigrant workers — are being charged for violating child-labor laws:

The state's investigation found dozens of violations from "virtually every aspect of Iowa's child labor laws," said Dave Neil the Iowa Labor Commissioner. Officials also said the scope of the case -- with 57 children involved -- makes it unusually large....

Under Iowa law, it is illegal for children under the age of 18 to work in a meatpacking plant. Neil said he was recommending "that the attorney general's office prosecute these violations to the fullest extent of the law."

The Birkenstock-shod ecofreaks at Maker's Mark have decided to run their distillery on bourbon waste:

The anaerobic digestion facility installed by waste management provider Ecovation will process stillage - the water, grain and yeast waste leftover from making bourbon - and produce a methane and carbon dioxide biogas for use in the distillery's boilers.

I'll drink to that, as soon as my doctor allows me to have alcohol again.

Brazil is talking about restricting ethanol production in one of the world's largest wetlands:

Under the proposal no new ethanol plants will be allowed in the Patanal’s plains and sugar cane planters already in the region will be required to use direct, no-till planting methods, thereby eliminating machinery and agrochemicals from the cultivation process, according to ministry statements.

Australia has turned its largest tropical rainforest into a park:

The forest houses 57 percent of Australia's butterflies and is seen by scientists as a critical refuge for biodiversity against the impact of climate change.

California will launch an interesting experiment in carbon farming:

Long-standing farming practices in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta expose fragile peat soils to wind, rain and cultivation, emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and cause land subsidence (the land actually sinks due to the loss of ground water). Industrial farming has been a disaster to this area, in order to capture or contain the carbon, farmers would “grow” wetlands. In doing so, they would begin to rebuild the Delta’s unique peat soils, take CO2 out of the atmosphere, ease pressure on the Delta’s aging levees and infuse the region with new economic potential.

Carbon-capture farming works as CO2 is taken out of the air by plants such as tules and cattails. As the plants die and decompose, they create new peat soil, building the land surface over time.

The world's smallest snake has been found in Barbados:

"New and interesting species are still being discovered on Caribbean islands, despite the very small amount of natural forests remaining," said Hedges, who christened the miniature brown snake "Leptotyphlops carlae" after his herpetologist wife, Carla Ann Hass.

And researchers in Africa have discovered a huge colony of endangered gorillas:

The world's known population of critically endangered western lowland gorillas has more than doubled following a new census that revealed some 125,000 in the Republic of Congo.

The survey, conducted across conducted in an area of 18,000 square miles of rainforests and swamps by the Wildlife Conservation Society and local researchers, offers new hope for one of the world's most charismatic endangered species.

Incidentally, Greg Pollowitz at Planet Gore mocks the "scientists" — those are his quotes, not mine — who made this discovery while working in this remote and dangerous area, on the grounds that since they previously "botched" these numbers, they might be wrong about...others.

Indeed, no one really knows anything, when you come right down to it, except that Doomsday has been canceled due to lack of interest (and that not voting in favor of offshore drilling raises oil prices).

Pollowitz also recommends getting a more accurate census of polar bears, presumably so that we can know exactly how many of them are threatened by habitat loss, and then ignore that number.

What's that you say? Oh, right...hope blogging.

This is a nice idea:

What if instead of standard streetlights your nighttime walks were brightened by light-laden boughs of luminous leaves? That’s the concept behind Jongoh Lee’s elegant Invisible Streetlight, a solar-powered alternative to those ubiquitous energy-sucking globes posted throughout parks and other public spaces. The lamps are designed to wind around existing branches, seamlessly integrating into their environs to enchanting effect. The design makes a wonderful addition to the current crop of beautiful biomimetic led lamps.

It may be possible to make rubber out of dandelions:

According to new research being done in Ohio, dandelion root sap could be made into a rubber of equal quality to traditional rubber from trees, at a lower cost.

An MIT chemist's discovery may make it easier and cheaper to store solar energy:

Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at MIT, has developed a catalyst that can generate oxygen from a glass of water by splitting water molecules. The reaction frees hydrogen ions to make hydrogen gas. The catalyst, which is easy and cheap to make, could be used to generate vast amounts of hydrogen using sunlight to power the reactions. The hydrogen can then be burned or run through a fuel cell to generate electricity whenever it’s needed, including when the sun isn’t shining.

A compound derived from cyanobacteria that grow on coral reefs may treat cancer:

Many common medications, from pain relievers to cholesterol-reducing statins, stem from natural products that grow on the earth, but there is literally an ocean of compounds yet to be discovered in our seas. Only 14 marine natural products developed are in clinical trials today, Luesch said, and one drug recently approved in Europe is the first-ever marine-derived anticancer agent.

"Marine study is in its infancy," said William Fenical, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of oceanography and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "The ocean is a genetically distinct environment and the single, most diverse source of new molecules to be discovered."

In conclusion: A representation of earth without its surface. A somewhat disturbing, but certainly unique spectacle. Four pieces of strange and wonderful news. A collection of hold-to-light opera cards. And, via Coudal, a reassuring message from The Journal of Urban Typography:


Also: The diabolical imagery and visual curiosities of Alexander Ver Huell. The colors of scenic stones and vintage fez labels. And some paintings by John Haberle.


Newsfilm Online comprises "3,000 hours of UK cinema newsreel and television news content, dating 1910s-2000s" (via The Bioscope). But you may never make it there, thanks to this exquisitely beautiful collection of fruit wrappers.


I'll leave you with some slow-motion footage of lightning (via Neatorama).

.

(Photo at top via Stuck in Customs.)