Friday Hope Blogging

The Kansas Senate has failed to override the governor's veto of an anti-choice bill:

An attempt to overrule Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson’s veto of a late-term abortion bill failed in the Kansas Senate on Wednesday. The Senate voted 26-14 to revive the legislation — but that was one vote short of the two-thirds majority required to enact legislation over a veto.

Argentina's House of Deputies has approved same-sex marriage:

The House of Deputies approved same-sex marriage by an ample margin Wednesday and sent the legislation for consideration in the Senate. President Cristina Fernandez has promised not to veto the measure if it reaches her desk.

Gay rights activist Esteban Paulon calls it historic – the first time a gay marriage initiative has been debated in a national legislature in Latin America.

Speaking of marriage, it's been known for a long time that liberal states have fewer divorces than conservative ones. Now, researchers claim to have come up with an explanation.

To define the divide in a sentence: In red America, families form adults; in blue America, adults form families.

In other words, conservatives tend to see starting a family as a prerequisite for becoming a responsible adult, while liberals tend to see becoming a responsible adult as a prerequisite for starting a family. It's an interesting argument, though I'm sure there are plenty of other factors to be considered. (Link via wood s lot.)

The Obama administration may impose stricter regulations on for-profit colleges:

The tougher rules would require ITT Educational Services, Career Education, and Apollo Group’s University of Phoenix to show that their graduates earn enough money to pay off their student loans. If for-profit colleges can’t meet the standard, they could lose federal financial aid, which typically makes up three-quarters of their revenue.

The proposed rules may disqualify for-profits from receiving federal financial aid if their graduates must spend more than 8 percent of their starting salaries on repaying student loans.

The US cut its CO2 emissions by seven percent in 2009:

The seven percent decline is the largest absolute and percentage decline since the US EIA began keeping comprehensive records of yearly energy data in 1949.

Joe Romm says this about that:

Surely this country could reduce CO2 emissions a little more than 7% in 10 years and meet the modest target set out in the Senate climate bill, which appears likely to be introduced next week....

Yes, a part of the recent drop in CO2 is due to the recession, but actually that was only just a piece. Other key factors including low natural gas prices, gains in efficiency, state renewable energy standards, and a clean-energy-friendly stimulus.

The House has passed the Home Star Energy Retrofit Act:

The House vote was bipartisan; there are two Republican cosponsors in the Senate (Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina); there's a huge list of businesses big and small supporting it....The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers -- two of the most conservative business groups in the country and ardent foes of climate legislation -- not only came out in support of the bill, they made it part of their scorecards.

US researchers have come up with an interesting bladeless wind turbine:

SolarAero recently unveiled a new bladeless wind turbine that offers several advantages over current wind turbines — it emits hardly any noise in operation, has few moving parts, and since it doesn’t use spinning blades it’s much less of a hazard to bats and birds. The whole assembly is inside an enclosed housing, with screened inlets and outlets to keep animals safely out. It also can be installed on sensitive locations such as radar installations or sites under surveillance where the rotating blades cause detrimental effects.

Google, meanwhile, has invested $40 million in North Dakotan wind farms.

While the farms certainly provide plenty of clean, renewable power, they also use state-of-the-art turbine technology. The spinning blades can constantly adjust their individual pitch levels to achieve an optimal level of efficiency. The turbines are also about 15 percent larger than traditional designs. That larger surface area results in an even greater energy-capture rate.

The University of North Carolina will phase out its use of coal:

Earlier this week the University of North Carolina, accompanied by the Sierra Club and the North Carolina Energy Policy Council, made the announcement that it will begin phasing out coal burning from its plant, with the ultimate goal of being completely coal free by 2020....

This is being hailed as a significant first victory in the Sierra Club's campaign to get 58 universities nationwide to stop using coal as a fuel.

The premium consumers pay for green power is falling:

NREL analysts report that the rate premium that customers pay for green power continues to drop. The average net price premium for utility green power products has decreased from 3.48 cents/kWh in 2000 to 1.75 cents/kWh in 2009.

Even during the downturn, the assessment shows that consumers continued to support renewable energy by voluntarily participating in utility green power programs.

Austria is turning old phone booths into charging stations for electric vehicles:

Telekom Austria unveiled its first phone booth-turned-recharging station yesterday in Vienna. The company hopes to convert 29 more of the country’s 13,500 booths by the end of the year and then continue to roll out more and more. It takes about 6.5 hours to recharge an electric car, 80 minutes to juice a scooter and only 20 minutes to charge an electric bicycle.

And an improved type of electric cable could greatly reduce energy loss:

This is the most advanced cable in terms of distribution (24 kV), since its current value is higher than that obtained up to date, 3200 Amperes RMS, and therefore can transport the electrical strength of 110 MVA, i.e. five times more than a conventional copper cable of the same dimensions.

The superconducting electric cable could reduce energy loss by 50% and even by 70% in some parts of the distribution network. Reduction in loss represents energy saving and a significant decrease in CO2 emissions in the present distribution of generation of the Spanish electricity system.

The government will protect habitat for the endangered black abalone:

The agreement results from a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s failure to designate critical habitat for the shellfish, which, once common in Southern California tide pools, has declined by 99 percent since the 1970s.

Washington DC has approved new standards for school lunches:

[T]he measure calls for District public and charter schools to add more fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains to the meals of about 71,000 students. It also encourages schools to buy food from organic farms in Maryland and Virginia, adds thousands of students to the free-lunch program and will eventually triple the amount of time that students have to spend exercising.

Concord, MA will ban bottled water:

The effort was lead by Jean Hill, an 82-year old activist, who lobbied neighbors and officials alike on the consequences of plastic bottles filling landfills and polluting local waters. "All these discarded bottles are damaging our planet, causing clumps of garbage in the oceans that hurt fish, and are creating more pollution on our streets,'' says Hil. "This is a great achievement to be the first in the country to do this. This is about addressing an injustice.''

Good discusses the appeal of community ovens:

The wood-fired Braddock community oven sits in a former vacant lot next to a former convent and across the street from the last remaining U.S. Steel plant in the area– a reminder of industrial halcyon days gone by. A local mason constructed the hearth from reclaimed stone and cinderblock from a run-down garage. With a few thousand dollars the oven was built and turning out smokey pizzas and gooey frittatas. “That this pile of material that was once a dilapidated garage in danger of collapsing could be repurposed for a bread oven is just a win win for everyone,” says Fetterman. Since its opening, art installations, literary gatherings, and Slow Food events have attracted hundreds of people to the site.

Sikkim claims that all its farms will be organic by 2015:

Nestled in between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan the small Indian state of Sikkim is probably best known for its mountainous beauty and as being home to the red panda, but by 2015 it's going to have another notable distinction: Converting all its farms to certified organic agriculture.

The Economic Times reports that the state has been slowing use of chemical fertilizer since 2003 and has currently converted 6,000 of its 70,000 hectares of farm land.

Students at Rice University have made an electricity-free blood centrifuge out of a salad spinner:

Created by Lauren Theis and Lila Kerr, the ingenious DIY centrifuge is cobbled together using a salad spinner, some plastic lids, combs, yogurt containers, and a hot glue gun. The simple and easily-replicated design could be an invaluable tool for clinics the developing world, enabling them to separate blood to detect diseases like anemia without electricity.

Three Palestinian teenagers have invented an electronic cane for the blind (h/t: Karin).

Three schoolgirls from Nablus have been chosen to represent Palestine at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in California next month. The girls developed an electronic cane to help visually impaired people get around.

The cane has sensors that buzz differently according to the surface ahead and can even indicate when someone is approaching a liquid surface.

The ingenious idea started as a simple science project. Aseel Abu Leil, Aseel Sha’ar, and Nour El Arda teamed up at UNRWA’s Askar Girls’ School, Nablus....

The three 14-year-olds are ecstatic to be able to represent Palestine to an American audience at the fair in San Jose, California. They are busy working on their prototype before the trip in May – and are hoping to win the fair’s top prize of US$50,000.

An inhalable measles vaccine will soon be tested on human subjects:

Needles are never fun. They hurt, they can cause infection and in some unfortunate cases, they can spread disease. That’s why researchers are developing an inhalable measles vaccine for the developing world, where clean needles aren’t always available. The vaccine, which is under development at CU Boulder, will begin human testing this summer.

Archaeologists have discovered that the Mayan city of Palenque had pressurized water:

"Water pressure systems were previously thought to have entered the New World with the arrival of the Spanish," the researchers said in a recent issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. "Yet, archaeological data, seasonal climate conditions, geomorphic setting and simple hydraulic theory clearly show that the Maya of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, had empirical knowledge of closed channel water pressure predating the arrival of Europeans."

(See also The Origins Of Invention: Industry Among Primitive Peoples.)

The world's largest beaver dam has been discovered in Canada:

A Canadian ecologist has discovered the world's largest beaver dam in a remote area of northern Alberta, an animal-made structure so large it is visible from space. Researcher Jean Thie said Wednesday he used satellite imagery and Google Earth software to locate the dam, which is about 850 metres (2,800 feet) long on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park.

I haven't posted many audio links lately. Therefore: A phonographic tour of continental Europe. American English dialect recordings. Recordings from the Tony Schwartz collection. And the Juan B. Rael Collection, which comprises "religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado." Yeah! Send me Daddy!

The 1934 Pool. Vintage Mexican advertisements. An exhibition of photos by students of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind (via wood s lot). Photos by Biały Kwadrat. And images of Coney Island, circa 1906.


The Faces of Mars. Flags of forgotten countries. Photos by Rasmus Norlander. Drawings from the notebook of a 19th-c. doctor. Karl's Journey to the Moon. Some bottlecaps. And photos of the South Bronx by Roy Mortenson.


While we're at it, here's this.



(Photo at top by Marvin Newman, 1951.)

Mohonkgate

The "Climategate" scandal raised doubts many of us have long had about the integrity of the temperature data that allegedly support the AGW hypothesis. A new article attempts to strangle this newborn dissent in its cradle by praising temperature records from the Mohonk Preserve in New York:

It is the rarest of the rare: a weather station that has never missed a day of temperature recording; never been moved; never seen its surroundings change; and never been tended by anyone but a short, continuous line of family and friends, using the same methods, for 114 years....Mohonk offers a powerful confirmation of warming climate, as well as a compelling multigenerational yarn.

If these records really comprise "a powerful confirmation of warming climate," why is there any need to stress that point? Surely, the data should speak for themselves, without any need for "warmist" editorializing! Right away, one begins to suspect that there's more here than meets the eye. And sure enough:

The weather log, for many decades kept on hand-written sheets, lacks only 37 days of precipitation data from 1901, 1908 and 1909, due to a missing data sheet, and a few days when observers apparently didn't look at the rain gauge.

"Only" 37 days? Clearly, the authors of this piece fail to understand that in Science, no detail is unimportant. A butterfly flapping its wings in Cairo can cause hurricanes in the Arctic, as the Law of Unintended Consequences conclusively shows. And yet, we're expected to believe that 37 days' worth of missing data are "unimportant" to the climate models upon which the alarmist case rests.

Consider this: If these data are unimportant, why are they missing? And what transpired on those days when observers just "happened" to ignore the rain gauge? If there's nothing to hide, then why hide anything?

Apologists will say that the missing data pertain to precipitation rather than temperature. Of course, it's an article of faith among warmists that higher temperatures result in more precipitation (I guess they've never been to Death Valley). We know that if the missing data had shown heavy rainfall, they would've been hailed everywhere as "proof" of AGW. The fact that the data are missing suggests that they were...well, let's just say "embarrassing," from the warmist perspective.

Of course, there may be an innocent explanation, like incompetence or stupidity. However, Science does not advance by giving charlatans the benefit of the doubt. On the contrary, Science requires us to check and recheck data until we are 100-percent positive that they weren't gathered by moral cripples.

With this solemn duty in mind, I have sent upward of 400 FOIA requests to Mohonk personnel and their families, requesting all their data in double-reverse triplicate with knobs on. Furthermore, I have requested all handwritten correspondence to and from the "scientists" who collected these data, so that their handwriting can be subjected to a fully transparent process of ethico-graphological time series analysis (the precise details of which I'm not able to reveal at this time, for obvious reasons).

I'm also trying to find out where their kids go to school, just in case a little pressure is needed to encourage these bean-counters to obey the Constitution.

Needless to say, I will keep you informed about my growing suspicions as this case unfolds.

Side Effects

Tony Brenton argues that we'd better start looking seriously at geoengineering, because "our current approach to climate change is failing."

It's no wonder, given that reducing GHG emissions is widely seen as a tyrannical, big-government solution that relies on dubious computer models and will bankrupt the planet.

Geoengineering, by contrast, is relatively straightforward: it's a simple matter of convincing world governments to agree on, and pay for, a global climate-modification regime based on expert risk assessment and robust computer models. What kind of lunatic would oppose that?

Of course, there are some risks:

There could be catastrophic side-effects. While the global climate may be tamed, there could be regional variations even worse than the problem that we are trying to fix. Above all, how would these techniques be managed? Whose hand would be on the thermostat?

Well, the UN's out of the running, because it's a hotbed of socialistic one-worlders and a probable incubator for the Antichrist. And Algore's disqualified because he's a horrible fat fraud and all good-hearted people hate him. And we can't trust climatologists to do it, because their credibility was destroyed forever by Climategate. If we want maximum buy-in, I think we'd better angle for some sort of joint venture between DARPA, Bechtel and a forward-looking energy company like BP.

Brenton argues that unilateral weather-modification is likely to become commonplace. A while back, I blogged on an interesting conflict caused by China's effort to clean Beijing's air by means of cloudseeding:

One Zhoukou official accused Pingdingshan of intercepting clouds that would probably have drifted to other places.

Brenton imagines a far more drastic situation, in which China would be able to adjust "the planetary thermostat" for fun and profit. Failure to create global "ground rules" for geoengineering, he claims, will make such scenarios more likely. Therefore, he proposes a regulatory system based on nuclear arms treaties:

These combine an effectively global agreement designed to restrain proliferation and keep the technology in as few hands as possible with a web of specific agreements among the nuclear-weapons states designed to maximise transparency, create predictable behaviour, limit warhead numbers and generally minimise the likelihood of a runaway arms race or nuclear war by accident.

I'm especially interested in deterrence. Should we punish cloud-theft with drought or floods?

Kidding aside, if the world isn't capable of reaching "an effectively global agreement" on reducing CO2 emissions, despite 20 years of effort, why would it be capable of reaching one on geoengineering, which is arguably more complicated and dangerous, and can just as easily be portrayed as Socialist Tyranny or Neocolonialism or what have you?

Brenton calls geoengineering a "Third Way." I call it business as usual: ignore long-term problems until it's too late, improvise a short-term response and hope for the best.

Speaking of which:

A massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico has become the testing ground for a new technique where a potent mix of chemicals is shot deep undersea in an effort to stop oil from reaching the surface, and scientists are hurriedly weighing the ecological risks and benefits.

In other news, doctors say that an old lady who swallowed a fly is expected to make a full recovery, now that she's swallowed a spider.

The Spill So Far

Jonah Goldberg objects to claims that the Deepwater Horizon disaster is "Obama's Katrina," on the grounds that Katrina wasn't that big a deal, and this spill probably won't be that big a deal either, when you look at it from the Historical Perspective (i.e., the point at which it stops being news and we all go back to worrying about celebrity sexaholism).

The only similarity, really, is that the media are getting people all upset for no good reason, just like they did back then.

Many outlets reported that rape gangs were rampant in New Orleans, that snipers were keeping the feds at bay, that the Superdome was littered with rotting bodies, that poor black people were left to die in disproportionate numbers. None of that was true....

Indeed. Poor black people were left to die in proportionate numbers, which is a whole different thing. As for the Superdome, you definitely can't say it was "littered with rotting bodies," because only six people died and their bodies weren't in the building long enough to rot. Although I haven't actually checked the statistics, I have a hunch that more Americans die in the bathtub every single day. But would any of us seriously argue that bathing should be outlawed? Besides hippies, I mean? Of course not.

Goldberg, you will recall, was the funny fellow who advised hurricane refugees in the Superdome to "hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents." (I hasten to add that he wouldn't approve of calling them "refugees," because to do so would be to "sanctify them" with "victim status"; we need to save our sorrow and pity for people who deserve it, like Augusto Pinochet.)

Bygones, though. We were all a little upset back then, thanks to the media, and we all said things we didn't mean, or meant things we didn't say, or something. Now we have an oil slick to worry about, so it's time to stop worrying and put things in perspective. The spill is pretty big, area-wise. But who knows how deep it is, depth-wise? Suppose it's only a couple of...uh....micrometers thick and the whole thing would fit in a swimming pool or two?

Estimates of how much oil has been spilled have varied wildly, in part because satellite imaging is great at capturing the "sheen" from a spill but not so good at measuring its thickness. Even if the higher estimates turn out to be true, the spill so far is relatively minor in size compared with others in history.

Yes, even if the spill continues to get bigger, it's relatively minor so far. Hell, the Valdez spill wasn't that dramatic either, compared to lots of other disastrous oil spills. Let's keep things in perspective! Saddam Hussein dumped anywhere from 2 to 500 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf (views differ!), and all it did was kill a bunch of animals and plants and affect the regional economy in ways that are difficult to quantify and therefore irrelevant.

The point is, the sky didn't fall. And isn't that what really matters? Disasters are inevitable, but the future will remain bright so long as we refuse to learn from them.

Academic Ghettoes

Robert Maranto is worried, and here's why:

Academia's ideological homogeneity harms education by limiting the views students are exposed to.

Don't laugh! It's a serious problem. If this stranglehold is not broken, how will students develop an unexamined faith in free markets and American exceptionalism? What other authority figures will defend the orthodox viewpoint on God, gays and guns? Where else will they hear the truth about welfare Cadillacs, African slave traders, leprosy among immigrants and the Clinton Body Count? Unless America's colleges clear a conceptual space for the subaltern micronarratives of the corporatist right, the day may come when America forgets that taxes are too high.

One of the ways academia marginalizes conservatives is by providing them with specialized facilities in which to conduct their groundbreaking research into the totally awe-inspiring awesomeness of Freedom.

My friend Steve Balch wants university alumni to push for the establishment of centers studying free institutions and free markets, as already operate at Duke, Brown, Princeton, Villanova, and elsewhere. I fear that these will become academic ghettoes.

Yes, ghettoes! What else would you call it when a few brave defenders of the Free Market are huddled together in a prestigious center funded by grants from major corporations, voiceless save for their easy access to op-ed pages, Sunday news shows and the White House? It's like Watts, if it had been full of angry white guys with money. Or Greenwich Village before Stonewall, only with more closet cases.

Confining conservatives to "centers" and "thinktanks" is like saying they don't deserve to be in charge of everything, everywhere, in perpetuity. The time has come for these huddled masses to speak truth to power, according to the rules laid down by Saul Alinsky (who is the movement's new guiding light, as one can tell from the fact that its members complain about him as obsessively as they once complained about "postmodern relativism").

As the radical Saul Alinsky wrote, the powerless can discomfort the powerful by pointing out when the high and mighty fall short of their professed ideals.

In practice, this involves asking clever questions like "if you libtards are so goddamn tolerant, why don't you tolerate homophobia?" No one has ever tried this tactic before, so it's no wonder Maranto is giddy with the thrill of discovery.

If universities are open-minded, why do they never sponsor debates?

Beats me. I'm guessing it has something to do with ACORN.

If "social justice" theorists like Jonathan Kozol are really in it for the children, why don't they donate their $20,000 speaking fees to scholarships?

It's a good question, so long as one assumes that Kozol never does this, or anything like it (Maranto's odd focus on "scholarships" makes me a bit suspicious, however). Whether Kozol actually gets $20,000 for speaking is another good question. If this is Maranto's idea of academic argument, it's not surprising that he's been "denied a job or two."

What exactly is a non-researcher like William Ayers doing on the governing board of the American Educational Research Association?

Well, let's see. AERA is committed to "advancing educational research," which is not necessarily the same thing as conducting it. And the AERA site says that "the broad range of disciplines represented by the membership includes education, psychology, statistics, sociology, history, economics, philosophy, anthropology, and political science." And Ayers' UoI page claims that his interests include "narrative and interpretive research."

Therefore, the goal here is clearly to impose Islamo-Socialism on Our Innocent Children, given the incontrovertible fact that OMG BILL AYERS!!!11

Anyway, if hard-right activists can somehow find it within themselves to ask tough, probing questions like these, people will finally start listening to them! Everything must change, yet again, so that everything can remain the same.

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Hope Blogging

The sheriff of Pima County, AZ has announced that he will not enforce the new anti-immigrant law:

Dupnik called the law "racist" and "disgusting" and "stupid" and, in his "nuanced judgment" could not be enforced without mandatory racial profiling. Dupnik's reckoning of the legal issue is that he's just as likely to be sued for racial profiling as he is for not doing enough racial profiling, so he's standing pat, and will not enforce the new law.

You can add the Major League Baseball Players Association to the list of people who are unhappy with Arizona's racialist dingbattery:

The recent passage by Arizona of a new immigration law could have a negative impact on hundreds of Major League players who are citizens of countries other than the United States. These international players are very much a part of our national pastime and are important members of our Association....The Major League Baseball Players Association opposes this law as written.

Meanwhile, San Francisco has suspended official visits to Arizona:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally.

The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including for law enforcement officials investigating a crime, officials said.

Health insurers have reportedly been shamed into early compliance with the new healthcare legislation:

Following last week's Reuter's story by Murray Waas on WellPoint's practice of targeting breast cancer patients for rescission, both WellPoint and UnitedHealthcare announced they would implement reforms immediately, instead of waiting until the new law kicks in.

Following that story, the administration and Congressional leaders immediate contacted WellPoint's CEO to urge her to end the practice. Committee and Subcommittee Chairs from the House Committees on Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Education and Labor sent a letter to the CEOs of the seven major insurance companies, "urging them to end rescissions and institute independent third-party review." Yesterday afternoon, the industry as a whole agreed to do the same, according to a letter from AHIP's Karen Ignani to top House Democrats.

In Florida, Democrats have blocked a GOP attempt to force women who need an abortion to pay for ultrasound:

The anti-choice legislators in Florida may have just been outmaneuvered.

In reaction to a last minute bill in the Florida legislature that requires all women seeking an abortion to pay out of pocket for an ultrasound before they can have the procedure, unless they show proof of rape or incest, Democrats did the unthinkable.

They shut down the House of Representatives.

Women who serve in the US military are no longer banned from submarines:

The first U.S. women allowed to serve aboard submarines will be reporting for duty by 2012, the Navy said Thursday as the military ordered an end to one of its few remaining gender barriers.

The DoJ is currently accepting public comments on the need to prevent prison rape.

On March 10, 2010, the Department of Justice opened a 60-day public comment period on national standards addressing sexual abuse in detention. Released last June by a bipartisan federal commission, these common-sense measures have the potential to help end sexual abuse in detention. But the standards are opposed by some powerful corrections leaders. These officials argue that it is too expensive to stop prisoner rape, and they seem to have a great deal of influence over the Department of Justice.

I can't tell you how many times I've been dismayed to hear people who are ostensibly "progressive" snicker over the idea of criminals being raped in prison (usually by black men, for some odd reason). I hold this truth to be self-evident: No one deserves to be raped under any circumstances, and preventive measures need to be taken regardless of what "corrections leaders" think.

In response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Obama has suspended new offshore drilling. (OMG he blew it up on purpose!)

As the federal government helps the efforts, Obama has reportedly stated that no new drilling will be allowed until officials can figure this whole mess out. Great news! While it’s not an official ban, at least new offshore drilling is on hold for the time being.

I support this decision, of course. But calling it "great news" may be stretching things a bit.
Apropos of which, you can learn how to help the animals affected by this spill by clicking here.

Thirty-three US generals and admirals have announced their support for a strong climate bill:

It is time to secure America with clean energy. We can create millions of jobs in a clean energy economy while mitigating the effects of climate change across the globe. We call on Congress and the administration to enact strong, comprehensive climate and energy legislation to reduce carbon pollution and lead the world in clean energy technology.

Cape Wind has finally received federal approval:

After nearly a decadelong permitting path, the Obama administration has approved the United States' first offshore wind farm.

The 130-turbine Cape Wind project, to be located in federal waters of Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts, is expected to meet 75 percent of the total electricity demand of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island.

Wyoming has approved some modest wildlife protections at proposed wind-power sites:

Under the guidelines, construction activity will be halted within two miles of an active grouse lek during the mating season each spring, though turbines will be allowed to operate in any location more than a quarter mile from a lek (increased to six tenths of a mile for one species).

In semi-related news, Inhabitat reports on a fascinating wind-powered knitting machine.

[T]he Wind Knitting Factory is a 1.2 meter diameter handmade wind mill attached to a loom mechanism. As the wind blows, it spins the loom and knits a scarf tube!

Obviously the stronger the wind is blowing, the faster a scarf can be knit. Each scarf is 2 meters long and is labeled with the day it was made and how long it took to the wind to knit it. Totally powered by free renewable energy without any human power, these amazing little scarves are perfect for wearing on a windy day too!

A new law will retire or retrofit Colorado's coal-fired power plants:

“This law is a template for tomorrow that allows us to transform our energy portfolio, our economy and our environment by working strategically and collaboratively,” Gov. Ritter said. “By shifting our oldest and least efficient coal plants to cleaner, Colorado-produced natural gas, we send a strong message to the rest of the country that we absolutely can cut air pollution and protect public health while also creating jobs and protecting ratepayers.”

Russia apparently intends to remove roughly one million abandoned oil barrels from the Arctic:

[T]he Soviet military positioned bases on Alexandra Land and shipped in vast quantities of oil to sustain them. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the barrels were abandoned, considered too costly to transport or dispose of properly. So there they remained, slowly deteriorating in the artic snow, threatening to poison the island's ecology.

Faced with this looming crisis, Prime Minister Putin suggested his nation commit to cleaning the mess of previous generations....

New research suggests that microbes in soil will not release more CO2 as the planet warms:

In some tentative (as in, more research is needed) global warming science good news, scientists from UC Irvine, and Colorado State and Yale universities have discovered that microbes in soil begin emitting less CO2 as their environment warms. This contradicts previous studies which anticipated an ever-increasing amount of emissions from soil as average temperatures climb.

Iowa is closing several public caves in order to protect bats.

Iowa will close three public caves to help fight the spread of a disease that has killed a million bats across the eastern United States in the past several years.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources beginning Monday will prevent access to Maquoketa Caves near Maquoketa, Starr's Cave near Burlington and Searryl's Cave in Jones County.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has doubled protected habitat for the endangered Hine’s emerald dragonfly.

The Hine’s emerald dragonfly, renowned for its aerobatic virtuosity and electrifying green eyes, is the only dragonfly on the U.S. endangered species list. Once found in fens, bogs, and other wetlands throughout the Midwest, the species remains in only a few scattered breeding sites in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri. The Hine’s emerald is primarily threatened by habitat destruction due to urban and agricultural development, off-road vehicles, road and pipeline construction, logging, and groundwater contamination from pesticides and other pollutants.

Photo by Carol Freeman.

Madagascar has officially banned the "cutting, exploitation and export of rosewood and ebony."

Madagascar's transitional government has finally signed a decree banning the logging and trade of precious hardwoods, a month after announcing the moratorium.

The decree comes in direct response to mounting pressure from the international community over ongoing destruction of Madagascar's national parks by illegal loggers.

Pokeberries may improve the efficiency of solar panels:

Nanotech Center scientists have used the red dye made from pokeberries to coat their efficient and inexpensive fiber-based solar cells. The dye acts as an absorber, helping the cell's tiny fibers trap more sunlight to convert into power.

Pokeberries proliferate even during drought and in rocky, infertile soil. That means residents of rural Africa, for instance, could raise the plants for pennies. Then they could make the dye absorber for the extremely efficient fiber cells and provide energy where power lines don't run, said David Carroll, Ph.D., the center's director.

"They're weeds," Carroll said. "They grow on every continent but Antarctica."

Mucilage from the prickly pear cactus may act as a natural water filter:

Assistant Professor Norma Alcantar at the University of South Florida in Tampa has discovered that when mucilage (a type of gum used to store water) from the prickly pear cactus is mixed with water that contains high levels of sediment or the bacterium Bacillus cereus, both the bacteria and the sediment sink to the bottom. The mucilage, in other words, acts as a cheap and effective natural filter, which could be employed by millions of people in developing nations to produce clean water.

Researchers have come up with a solar pasteurization system for farmers in Peru:

Currently, poorer farmers are unable to obtain market certification for their milk and dairy products because they can't afford pasteurization equipment. As long as their facilities remain unhygenic, they're kept out of the marketplace. However, John Cannarella, Ryan Lewis, Jared Stepanauskas, and Natalie Maslow have come up with a solar powered solution that is cheap and could have global implications for farmers in rural or developing areas.

More than twenty US cities are considering adding or improving streetcar lines:

Due to a change in federal transportation policy under President Obama, 22 American cities are reportedly considering building or expanding streetcar lines. Not only would the streetcar construction help revitalize many American cities, it could promote greater adoption of public transit and decrease reliance on cars.

US companies are increasingly moving from the suburbs to the city:

These companies are getting a jump on a major cultural and demographic shift away from suburban sprawl. The change is imminent, and businesses that don’t understand and plan for it may suffer in the long run.

To put it simply, the suburbs have lost their sheen: Both young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don’t require cars—that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in which residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together.

Santa Clara County, CA has banned McDonald's Happy Meals:

Happy Meal toys and other promotions that come with high-calorie children's meals will soon be banned in parts of Santa Clara County unless the restaurants meet nutritional guidelines approved Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors.

"This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's' love of toys" to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure. "This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes."

This is a nice idea:

It's an obvious problem in urban and suburban jungles around the country: many people are eager to garden but have nowhere to indulge their green thumbs. And plenty of homeowners have gardens in need of tending.

Enter SharedEarth.com. Taking the Craigslist model to gardening, it helps match up prospective gardeners to those with gardens, for free.

And so is this:

Want to start a community project aimed at local government transparency and bettering your block? EveryBlock, a site that culls ultralocal news about specific neighborhoods, has combined its powers with SeeClickFix, a reporting tool site that that allows anyone to report and track community problems that need a little local government love.

The EPA has launched a searchable chemical information database:

ToxRefDB provides detailed chemical toxicity data in an accessible format. It is a part of ACToR (Aggregated Computational Toxicology Resource), an online data warehouse that collects data from about 500 public sources on tens of thousands of environmentally relevant chemicals, including several hundred in ToxRefDB. Those interested in chemical toxicity can query a specific chemical and find all available public hazard, exposure, and risk-assessment data, as well as previously unpublished studies related to cancer, reproductive, and developmental toxicity.

The FDA has approved a therapeutic vaccine for prostate cancer:

The big story here is that this is the first proof of principle and proof that immunotherapy works in general in cancer, which I think is a huge observation," said Dr. Philip Kantoff, chief of solid tumor oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the lead investigator in Dendreon's largest clinical trial for the drug.

Here's one of those simple ideas that seems incredibly obvious in hindsight:

Changing the hue of hospital gowns and bed sheets to match a patient’s skin color could greatly enhance a physician’s ability to detect cyanosis and other health-related skin color changes, according to a new study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute....

“If a patient’s skin color shifts a small amount, the change will often be imperceptible to doctors and nurses,” Changizi said. “If that patient is wearing a skin-colored gown or adhesive tab, however, and their skin uniformly changes slightly more blue, the initially ‘invisible’ gown or tab will appear bright and yellow to the observer.”

Eugene Deslaw's La Marche des Machines is finally online, which is well and good, but when is someone going to post Vers Les Robots? I've been wanting to use it at the end of FHB for years.

While we're waiting: An imploding stadium, viewed from within. Photos by Zoltán Vancsó. Vintage Olivetti ads. Paintings by Alan Reynolds (via wood s lot). Tiles and corbels and fonts...oh my! An Iconography of Contagion. And photos of Sweden by Carl Curman.


Belize radio. The Ant Nebula. An infrasonic soundscape of Manhattan, "which articulates an idea of New York City becoming an instrument and a sonic geographical browser by mapping the city with the ambient sounds." Photos by Katrien Franklin. And paintings by Carrie Marrill.


The James Koetting Ghana Field Recording Collection. China's hanging coffins. An underground church and other doors to other worlds. A little thought experiment (via wood s lot). Around the world in 80 seconds. And photos of storms by Mitch Dobrowner.



Last, here's an informative film clip for you.



(Image at top by Sohan Qadri, via but does it float.)

Reasonable Suspicion

Good news, folks! George Will likes the new racial-profiling law in Arizona. And really, what's not to like? It won't affect normal people, nor will it affect legal immigrants except inasmuch as they may have to show identification papers to prove that they're not unassimilable Untermenschen who are rotting this country from within.

That could be slightly inconvenient if you're in a hurry, I suppose, or if it happens several times a week. But apart from that, the innocent have very little to fear. If they don't like it, they can go to Russia.

Will says the federal government has no right to criticize Arizona's law, since it's the federal government's fault that Arizona has a problem with filthy stinking Mexicans illegal immigrants in the first place.

He's right, of course. Obama could have dug a border moat a mile wide and a mile deep, filled it with Candiru, surrounded it with minefields, and patrolled it with drones bearing thermobaric warheads. But he dropped the ball. And as everyone knows, if Washington DC fails to resolve a state's problems in an emotionally satisfying way, that state is constitutionally allowed — nay, obligated — to pursue brutally stupid pseudo-solutions cribbed from authoritarian dystopias.

Thus, one mustn't view the Arizona law as "presumptively unconstitutional" just because one of the things that constitutes "reasonable suspicion" of non-citizenship is the color of a person's skin. After all, airport screeners pass their wands over white people, even though white people are generally good-natured and harmless. It's precisely this national commitment to fair play that will restrain Arizona's police from abusing their powers any more than they already do.

Besides, there are so many "Hispanics" in Arizona that there's no way the police could harass all of them; they'll naturally be forced to pick and choose. Therefore, they're far more likely to pick up the bad Hispanics who steal and rape and spread leprosy than the good useful Hispanics who mow our lawns and wash our dishes. That's just common sense!

Joking aside, I firmly believe that in any given year, the WaPo's op-ed page does much more damage to this country, and displays much more contempt for its laws, than undocumented immigrants.

(Illustration via Phronesisaical.)

The Greater Scheme of Things

NRO's Jim Manzi has dared to give aid and comfort to the Warming Cult (and not for the first time, either). Since modern conservatarianism has pretty much dispensed with all emotions but anger and self-pity, Manzi's remarks have naturally been met with a heapin' helpin' of both.

Andy McCarthy has written a response to Manzi, and it's nothing if not illuminating. Loyalty seems to be the main issue: The denialists may be fools, but they're our fools. If you hold them to the same standards you apply to the Left, you lose. And if you lose, you're nobody and nothing.

Then there's the issue of AGW, and whether it's true even though it has no right to be.

As for your dilation on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), I don’t write much about the subject. I haven't taken the time to study it, as you have. But I have read enough to roll my eyes at most of the public debate.

Dude, I can totally relate. I don't know much about accretion-powered pulsars. But I once heard this goddamn egghead say something about 'em, and it wasn't so much what he said as the way he said it, with that smug look people like him get when they say stuff like that to people like me. If I'd gone to some Brainiac School and gotten into this guy's field I probably would've proved him wrong by now. And yet he's lecturing me on accretion-powered pulsars? Fuck that noise. I know plenty about gravity. Hell, I once heaved a 63-2 in the junior college decathlon. I'd like to see Faggy McPulsarson try that.

Anyhow, Manzi's a jerk not just for "dilating" on the subject of his own essay, but also for being comparatively well-informed about it. McCarthy trusts his gut, like all honest men, and his gut informs him that AGW ain't strictly on the level.

From the premise that AGW is undeniable, the alarmist side leaps to the extravagant conclusion that we are therefore capable of, and obliged to, do something meaningful about it.

To put it another way: How can you say that I'm not engaging with the alarmists' arguments, when I've just referred to them as "alarmists"?

The only appropriate response to AGW is to drop "an atom bomb of derision" on anyone who suggests that it could very well be a serious problem. This is so self-evident to McCarthy that one can almost empathize with his pain at having to explain it to a colleague.

Imagine that you've spent years working shoulder to shoulder with a comrade at the agricultural collective, and one fine day he claims that Stalin didn't actually invent the tractor. He's wrong, he's a liar, he's betrayed the Revolution...and yet, you can't help weeping, even as you denounce him to the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. For there was a time when you loved him as a brother.

Next, McCarthy describes the AGW debate in terms so simple that even he can understand them. Alarmists say that over time, lots of little things can add up to big things. Skeptics acknowledge this provisionally, while pointing out that they don't care because "denying it makes sense in the greater scheme of things."

And these are the thanks they get:

[T]he alarmists deride the skeptics over their denial as if they were denying something as basic and incontestable as that two plus two equals four.

In reality, they're simply denying that it matters whether 0.0002 and 0.0002 equals 0.0004. That's a whole different thing, as you can tell from all those zeroes.

[T]he skeptics continue denying — even if they are wrong in absolute terms — because they fear alarmists have set the table in such a way that to concede the premise is to concede the draconian remedies alarmists have in mind.

Whether they're absolutely wrong or absolutely right, you have to admit that what they say makes a lot of sense. And isn't that what matters most, when you stop to think about it without thinking about it too much?

I would say that, given our finite capabilities and the shortness of life, AGW may not be a problem at all, and, if it is a problem, it is not urgent enough to obsess over.

McCarthy himself concedes that he doesn't believe this because he's "taken time to study" the science. He believes it because it's the proper thing to believe, even — or especially — if it's "wrong in absolute terms." That, amazingly, is his response to Manzi's claim that people on the Right have been displaying an "unwillingness to confront the strongest evidence or arguments contrary to [their] own beliefs."

Perhaps because he senses some problem with this line of reasoning, McCarthy quickly retreats to the epistemological bedrock of Islamofascism: There's no point worrying about the climate when we're in "a global war against jihadists whose mass-murder attacks — and their catastrophic costs — are impossible to predict."

Apparently, uncertainty is sometimes a threat, rather than a comfort.

Please don't conclude from all this that McCarthy is an ineducable zealot. As it happens, he can imagine — just barely — a situation in which it would be quite reasonable to take action on AGW. For instance, suppose Modern Science were able to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that:

1. There's a real problem


2. It's more dangerous, at this very moment, than Islamic Terror™


3. It can be solved without doing things of which McCarthy disapproves, like regulating industry
   


4. Scientists aren't just making the whole thing up in order to hasten the Dictatorship of the Proletariat


5. No relevant scientist has any conceivable financial interest in the outcome of the debate
   

In that case, McCarthy would immediately stop being a skeptic, as long as no other excuses for skepticism had come up in the meantime (e.g., news that a leading climatologist had rented a DVD of Avatar, or dined on arugula).

Please note that this is not evidence of bias: he applies exactly the same standards to skeptical scientists like Richard Lindzen (except for #5, which only applies to anti-capitalist greedheads like Al Gore, natch).

That's fair if anything is, so let's have no more of this alarmist talk about "epistemic closure." After all, it may never happen!

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

The bride has adorned herself with stars,
The pure myrtle
Which bends over the adoring countenance of the dead.

Full of blossoming shiver
The blue coat of Chromodoris loringi finally embraces you.

(Photo by doug.deep.)

Friday Hope Blogging

An Arkansas circuit judge has struck down a state law that prohibits unmarried couples from adopting children:

Act 1 unconstitutionally burdens non-marital relationships and acts of sexual intimacy between adults by forcing them to choose between becoming a parent and having any meaningful type of intimate relationship outside of marriage, Circuit Judge Chris Piazza ruled in a lawsuit challenging the initiative voters approved in 2008.

Obama is speaking out against Arizona's demented racial profiling law:

“Our failure to act responsibly at the Federal level will only open the door to irresponsiblity by others,” Obama said. “That includes for example the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

Obama added that his administration could join the fight. “I’ve instructed members of my admininstration to closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation,” he said, adding that it was “misguided.”

Plans to develop a wildlife preserve in Southern California have been scrapped:

As a result of a legal settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity, the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a 1,100-acre wildlife preserve in western Riverside County will once again be protected from industrial development. The settlement resolves a dispute surrounding the approval for large-scale development on the March Stephens’ Kangaroo Rat Preserve – home to numerous imperiled species, including the endangered Stephens’ kangaroo rat. Not only will the land be returned to the preserve, but under the terms of the settlement agreement, any future proposals to release the area for development must undergo strict environmental review.

National Geographic has video footage of a new microbial sea species, discovered as part of the Census of Marine Life:

[T]here was one sampling area in the South Atlantic that sampled an area about the size of a small bathroom. And found 700 species of just crustaceans, most of which were new to science.

Scientists have found 123 new species in Borneo:

"You have some iconic small species which are very interesting to talk about but perhaps it's the plants that are tremendously important in terms of potential future cures," said David Norman, director of campaigns for the WWF.

"About half of all synthetic drugs have a natural origin -- these are commercial drugs based on plants and sometimes animals. So we can't afford to lose species," he said.

Other interesting new species have been found off the coast of Greenland.

Efforts to control invasive species in the Galapagos seem to be working:

In fall 2009, entomologist Mark Hoddle, the director of the Center for Invasive Species at the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues visited the Galapagos Islands to assess the impact and safety of the lady bug beetle that had been released in 2002 to suppress the cottony cushion scale.

"Pest numbers have been reduced by more than 99 percent on some native plants like mangroves, which were very susceptible to attack by cottony cushion scale," Hoddle said. "While from other rarer native plants, like Darwiniothamnus tenuifolius, the pest appears to have been completely removed."

A new collaborative site called iFixit helps people repairs electronics and other gadgetry that might otherwise wind up in a landfill:

As iFixit states, "The internet sucks at providing repair information. It either doesn't exist, or it's spam-ridden, disorganized, or there's no feedback loop to find out if the information is good. At the same time, there is massive pent-up expertise in enthusiast forums where people are posting detailed information about repairs they've done. We are providing a platform for those people to share what they know, and to come together to build a resource that humanity desperately needs."

Albania is repurposing its military bunkers:

[S]ome have become eco-hostels, complete with bedroom views from parapets; others now serve as US-style hamburger joints (perhaps the ultimate symbol of capitalist consumerism), or as ice cream shops on sandy beaches. The changes are undeniably positive and provide an exemplary instance of how the concept of ‘recycling’ might extend beyond the merely functional, into the deepest reaches of collective cultural memory and identity - through its physical landscape, Albania is recycling the memories of a sinister past, into a fresh future with new purpose.

Photo: Concrete Mushrooms Project

There's talk of turning suburbs into agricultural centers:

In cities, agriculture might be able to take the place of vacant lots. And in suburbia? Well, in 2008, the New Urbanism evangelist Andrés Duany, of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ), architects and town planners, proclaimed that "agriculture is the new golf," a prescient and deliberately provocative claim that is helping frame the conversation about suburbia's future. "Only 17 percent of people living in golf-course communities play golf more than once a year. Why not grow food?"

Meanwhile, black organic farmers are helping to address the problem of food deserts:

Many of the farmers, descendants of blacks who fled sharecropping and segregation during the Great Migration, now sell victuals at farmers markets that are becoming fixtures in black neighborhoods. The farmers also sell to food co-ops in the same areas. Some supply produce to black-owned (and other) restaurants, as well as well-known natural food supermarkets.

And in Durham, NC, tobacco fields have given way to food crops:

Spring is just blowing into the Triangle, bringing strawberries, mushrooms and the first Sugar Snack carrots and small white turnips. “We’re raising things I never would have dreamed of,” said Michael Brinkley, a farmer whose family farm in nearby Creedmoor produced up to 60 acres of tobacco until about five years ago, when the Brinkleys shifted entirely to produce.

And in Africa, traditional land-management techniques are being used to re-green the Sahel:

One inexpensive method of farming that helps to restore the Sahel’s degraded land is so-called Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) (see also Millions Fed: “Re-Greening the Sahel: Farmer-led Innovation in Burkina Faso and Niger”). By pruning shoots that periodically and naturally sprout from below-ground root webs, farmers can promote forest growth and take advantage of a naturally occurring source of fuel, food, or animal fodder.

The trees produce fruit rich in nutrients and help to restore the soil by releasing nitrogen and protecting the ground from erosion by wind and rain. The cultivated but naturally occurring forest also creates a local source of firewood and mulch, reducing the time spent in gathering fuel for cooking meals and cleaning households (see Reducing the Things They Carry). The practice also cuts down on deforestation as the trees that are used for fuel are replaced with seedlings and tended by farmers.

The CDC has released a report detailing the effects of community design on public health:

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), created with input from ASLA, illustrates the importance of considering public-health factors, such as physical activity, respiratory and mental health, water quality, social equity, healthy aging, and social capital, when creating the built environment.

The report includes case studies that illustrate best practices in healthy community design, and it recommends action steps to advance healthy community design principles.

You can read it here, if you're interested.

An Oklahoma appeals court has announced that it will not reconsider its ruling that elements of an Oklahoma anti-immigrant law are legally unenforceable:

The decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a blow to state officials and other advocates of House Bill 1804, the anti-illegal immigration law passed in 2007....

The case now will go back to U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron in Oklahoma City to decide whether she will turn her 2008 preliminary injunction against the law into a permanent injunction.

In related news, immigrants hold one-third of America's doctorates:

Immigrants, who account for a disproportionate share of Americans without a high school diploma, also made up nearly one-third of Americans with doctoral degrees in 2009 — a sharp increase compared with five years earlier, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

Speaking of education, a 30-day comment period is underway for the bizarre textbook changes approved by the Texas State Board of Education. All American citizens are eligible to comment. Click here for more details.

A US industry group claims that solar power created 17,000 jobs in 2009:

[I]nstallations generating 441 Megawatts of power were put up, manufacturing costs went down, the industry attracted $1.4 billion worth of investment in venture capital, and the industry grew 17,000 American jobs.

Another solar group is petitioning Obama to put solar panels back on the White House. You can add your name here.

Google is providing data on the information requests it receives from world governments:

Google's new tool displays the number of "user requests" that Google received from various governments from July to December 2009. According to the tool, the company received thousands of such requests from the U.S. government during that period — thousands of requests digging into the intimate details of individual lives that are captured in emails, search histories, reading and viewing logs, and the like. And if Google is receiving thousands of requests every six months, how many more are going out to Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and the thousands of other online services that we use every day?

Apparently, the iPhone is proving helpful to people with dyslexia, by allowing them to read books onscreen:

John Stein, Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford University and chair of the Dyslexia Research Trust explains that the iphone has more space between lines and presents fewer words at a time, which eases the crowding effect that creates confusion for people with dyslexia.

Ontario is banning toilets that waste water:

Water-guzzlers with tanks that use 13 litres for one flush will be outlawed in the province this summer....

Ontario’s per capita water consumption is one of the highest in the world. Each person uses 260 litres a day.

And an effort is underway to retrieve tons of garbage from the top of Mount Everest.

Problems remain with waste on the upper reaches of Everest, but climbing groups are stepping up efforts to clean house. Several expeditions in recent years have recovered thousands of pounds of trash from the higher, more dangerous Everest camps. And this spring, a 31-member Nepalese-led expedition will attempt to gather two metric tons of trash from the highest reaches of Everest – the notorious “death zone” above 26,000 feet – a historical first.

Things to do today: Support Akvo. Visit the Archigram Archive. Read The Single Mother's Manifesto. Wander through a Desolate Metropolis. And marvel at the first photos from NASA'S Solar Dynamics Observatory:


Comic Book Cartography. The lost state of Jefferson. A helpful list of state microbes, fossils, minerals, and macroinvertebrates. A helpful Lowden Plan calculator that converts dollars to chickens. Glass cinema slides. A WWII pseudo-dictionary for saboteurs. And x-rays of flowers.


Motel postcards and plenty of 'em (via Coudal). Memory of the World. Lightning on Saturn. Lightning on earth. Images of pollen. Illustrations by Edward Ardizzone (via things). And via wood s lot, linocuts by Cyril Power.

And here's a movie, too:



(Image at top: "Broken Egg and Summer Landscape" by John Olsen.)

The Whole Situation

Danger Room interviews an American soldier who tried to save a pair of Iraqi children after their father's van was shelled by an Apache helicopter.

If you read it — and you should — you'll understand why he began to feel, later, that he was in danger of losing his sanity.

Here's what happened when he tried to get help:

I was pretty distraught over the whole situation with the children. So I went to a sergeant and asked to see [the mental health person], because I was having a hard time dealing with it. I was called a pussy and that I needed to suck it up and a lot of other horrible things....I was told that I needed to get the sand out of my vagina.

In unrelated news, the Oklahoma Senate has passed five new anti-choice bills, including one that requires women to undergo an invasive form of ultrasound.

I guess they must really love children.

Utopian Dreams

Robert H. Nelson puts on his thinkin' cap, adjusts the chin-straps, spins the little propeller on top, and delivers himself of the opinion that environmentalism is a Religion Without God.

Where does that leave conventionally religious people who happen to be environmentalists (or some reasonable facsimile thereof)? Under the rug, where they belong! Earth Day is celebrated, Nelson claims, by more than a billion people in 190 countries. Presumably, some of them see their environmental interests as compatible with some conventional religious viewpoint, while others are committed atheists who simply think it's stupid to mow down forests to make disposable chopsticks.

But so what? Let's just go ahead and treat 'em all as irrational cultists who are responding to the ontotheological crisis of [blah blah blah] with a postmodern neo-primitive embrace of [yadda yadda yadda fap fap fap].

Environmentalists see humans engaged in acts of vast hubris, remaking the future ecosystems of the Earth. By playing “God” with the Earth, humans seek to become as God themselves.

The Bible’s book of Deuteronomy reveals dire consequences for those who try to “play God.” We learn that God will strike down sinners who “worship other gods,” causing them to suffer “infections, plague and war. He will blight your crops, covering them with mildew. All these devastations shall pursue you until you perish.”

It is no mere coincidence that contemporary environmentalism prophesies virtually the same set of calamities resulting from the warming of the earth — rising seas, famine, drought, pestilence, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

I suppose it isn't a coincidence, inasmuch as we still have crops and oceans and diseases and weather, just like folks did back in the Bible Days. But the thing is, the fact that the Bible addresses human concerns does not make all latter-day expressions of those concerns Biblical. I could just as easily claim that seismic building codes prophesy "virtually the same calamities" that befell the Three Little Pigs, and interpret them as a veiled belief in the Big Bad Wolf.

If you think that's a stretch, too fucking bad. You can't argue with analogy!

Thus the Endangered Species Act is the new Noah’s Ark; genuinely wild places are the new cathedrals to find spiritual inspiration; Earth Day is the new Easter.

This is due to the pernicious worldwide influence of Calvinism, as anyone can tell from the fact that Nelson says so, duh.

While the language is now different, environmentalists today, no less than the Calvinists of old, see “excessive” consumption — the constant demand for bigger and better, more and more — as a threat to the Earth’s future.

Hail the new puritan! What is Portland, Oregon but a new Geneva, and Randal O'Toole its Servetus? If you doubt this, consider the fact that Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion says God “revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe." Game, set, and match, ya goddamn treehugging reformist supralapsarians!

Just to make matters worse, these Neo-Calvinist Gaiabots present their religious delusions as fact, and insist that they be allowed to influence public policy, which is not how we do things in America. And besides:

Success in stirring powerful religious feelings about the environment does not automatically lead to wise and effective policies.

Which is a shame, because the environment does matter, to an extent: no one wants to see the Grand Canyon filled with garbage unless it's absolutely necessary. Where environmentalists err, as always, is in trying to force us all to eat acorn mash by candlelight in cruelty-free yurts.

When environmental religion seeks a return to an earlier primitive and natural existence, it is embracing utopian dreams that easily can pose a danger to man and earth alike.

So, to recap: Earth Day = religion without God = Calvinism = a primitivist utopia = no more toilet paper, electricity, or dental anesthesia. And don't say it'll never happen, 'cause what if it did?

Now let us purge our minds of these ancient superstitions, and speak calmly of money.

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging