Growth Management

If you've been dying to know how someone who hates urban planning would allocate blame for the housing bubble, this is your lucky day. Randal O'Toole has been giving this matter some serious thought, and he's come to the conclusion that this disaster, like most others, was caused by urban planners and their bizarre insistence on "growth management."

The first thing you need to understand is that while there are actually several contributing factors -- including a sad failure "to properly assess the risks of subprime mortgages" -- most of them were in effect across the country, and can therefore be ignored. Once you've tuned out distracting issues like predatory lending, criminal negligence, unrelenting greed, deregulatory fanaticism, and the quasi-religious faith that overpriced houses will continue to appreciate in value forever, it's much easier to spot the really salient point, which is that some areas were harder hit than others. Since there's no obvious reason for people with easy access to unfeasibly large loans to prefer coastal California to Fort Stockton, TX, higher prices in California can only be the result of manipulation by some tweedy cabal of urban planners.

The most important factor that distinguishes states like California and Florida from states like Georgia and Texas is the amount of regulation imposed on landowners and developers....

And yet, California still has a larger population than Texas and Georgia combined. Since market forces explain everything in life that's worth explaining, the conclusion is obvious: Either people prefer to live in states that impose more regulations on developers, or O'Toole is overlooking other real or perceived factors that make California more attractive than Texas or Georgia, any of which may affect the prices people are willing to pay (or try to pay) for a house.

Granting that it's insane to take out a gigantic ARM on a house in Antelope Valley, the fact that so many people were willing to do it can't really be blamed on smart growth advocates...especially since the multi-decade housing boom in this dreary, bone-dry area is pretty much the antithesis of everything they've ever recommended.

But O'Toole doesn't see it that way. To him, California's sprawl-crazed, foreclosure-blighted, politically conservative Central Valley is apparently the outcome of a vast experiment in New Urbanist central planning, while Atlanta -- where homes are currently sitting on the market for about 20 percent less than in June of 2007 -- is a glibertarian promised land.

And as usual, O'Toole's pejorative definition of "growth management" applies primarily to the policies and concepts he lives to oppose. If you fill a given area with single-family homes on double-wide lots, you're effectively limiting the number (and type) of people who can live there; in other words, you're managing growth. Sprawl tends to be more land-intensive and car-dependent than the higher-density growth typically favored by the planners O'Toole demonizes, which means it's likely to be more exclusive. And of course, that's no accident; it's the outcome of planning, as surely as a greenbelt or subsidized housing is. But like a lot of libertarians, O'Toole tends to depict plans (and public subsidies) that allocate resources "properly" as the impersonal working of natural forces. It's usually when people question the wisdom or fairness of business as usual -- or suggest that a given resource is not, in fact, infinite -- that they become "planners," in O'Toole's sense.

Pleasant Landscapes

Alan Oxley has been hearing a lot about "ethical" business decisions lately, and he's skeptical. The paradox here -- the aporia, if you will -- is that "denying opportunities for growth is clearly unethical."

Palm oil plantations are a good case in point. "Environmentalists" keep saying they're "bad," because they lead to "deforestation" and the "destruction" of "habitat." But consider this:

[Palm oil] is a basic food product for the poor in the developing world.

Here, then, are two competing visions of the future: in one, the Virtuous Poor are burdened with acres of redundant forest comprising rocks and dirt and poisonous snakes. In the other, they're blessed with as much palm oil as they can drink. From a humanitarian standpoint, the choice is clear.

Besides, it's not transnational agribusiness that's bulldozing forests in the developing world; it's poor people who need food and firewood.

Researchers at the Food and Agricultural Organization report regularly that deforestation in developing countries is result of the search for firewood and land to house and feed people.

And besides that, Europe and North America had similar economic incentives for hacking down their own forests -- in addition to the Third World's -- and everything turned out just ducky, as demonstrated by the fact that you're probably reading these words in a reasonably modern house filled with electronic gadgetry.

This was how Europe and North America developed, and it is how the Third World is growing too. The Malaysian government promoted palm oil, making it the world's largest producer for several years as a deliberate and successful strategy to provide prosperity and economic security to previously landless workers.

The Malaysian government's seal of approval should be enough for anyone; after all, Malaysia has been reaping the benefits of palm-oil production ever since this sturdy West African plant was first turned into a cash crop by foreign entrepreneurs under British colonial rule.

Still, a few Negative Nellies persist in wringing their hands over the "loss" of "biodiversity." These people don't seem to realize that this battle is already over, and we won:

Five years ago the U.N. concluded that the biodiversity target of preserving 10% of the world's forests had been reached. There is more forest preserved in the developing world now than in Europe.

That being the case, how can anyone seriously object to additional deforestation? There's only one possible explanation:

This is now merely a campaign to satisfy a Western urge to see pleasant landscapes.

If you thought that colonialism had something to do with exploiting Third World resources and labor while patting oneself on the back for "civilizing" the natives, think again: the real colonialists are those Western snobs whose languid aestheticism is interfering with the world-healing operations of Cargill.

Like Martin Durkin's bolshevist fury at the bourgeois cult of global warming, and Brenden O'Neill's radical critique of eco-imperialism, Oxley's article showcases the growing usefulness of left-wing clichés to corporatist shills. Soon enough, I'm sure, we'll see child labor on cocoa plantations justified with quotes from Frantz Fanon, and Tom DeLay characterizing opposition to Saipan sweatshops as a new and worse form of Orientalism.

It may be that Oxley's happy talk about food and prosperity and biodiversity doesn't impress you much. If so, forget about it, and focus on the bottom line:

Shareholders ultimately rate companies by the business they do, not the causes they support.

A sobering message indeed. We're very fortunate that in this case, a profitable business opportunity also happens to be the salvation of the poor and a boon to the environment. Because if it weren't, we couldn't necessarily trust CEOs and shareholders to listen to humanitarian and environmental arguments against cashing in.

Why We Fight

Robert Gates explains why we must stay in Afghanistan:

There have been plenty of reasons given for keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan: denying Al Qaeda and their allies a sanctuary, saving the locals from some rather ruthless theocrats, preventing another 9/11. To that Defense Secretary [Gates] added a different rationale Monday night. He wants to keep Osama's legions from scoring a propaganda win.

I'm sure it would be a propaganda win for Al-Qaeda if we left. On the other hand, it's also a win if we stay. Whatever else AQ may be, they're not idiots, and they're more than happy to stand by and watch us bleed to death from self-inflicted wounds. Hell, they've even said as much.

But like most American officials, Gates seems to have a secret decoder ring that tells him what AQ's utterances really mean. They couldn't want us to occupy Afghanistan, obviously, so we'd better spend whatever it takes to stay there indefinitely...even if our alleged inability to afford a humane healthcare system kills more Americans annually than Osama bin Laden manages in his wettest dreams. The alternative would be to hand a "victory" to Al-Qaeda, and only a really terrible person would consider doing that.

Having AQ around certainly makes governance easier. All you need to do is explain what they want, and not only are you justified in doing the opposite (which coincidentally happens to be what you already intended), but you can also preemptively paint your opponents as people who want to feed the Mujahideen turtle soup with a gold spoon. Nice work if you can get it.

In other news, it looks as though some National Guard members managed to find a portion of Iraq's WMD:

Thirty members of the West Virginia National Guard filed a lawsuit Monday in Marshall County Circuit Court, alleging that they were negligently exposed to a highly toxic chemical as they guarded a rebuilding project in Iraq in 2003.

The lawsuit contends that members of the Moundsville-based 1092nd Engineer Battalion of the West Virginia National Guard were deployed to the Qarmat Ali water plant near Basra from April to June 2003. The soldiers guarded the facility while KBR Inc. contractors repaired the plant.

"While performing their duties at the Qarmat Ali site, the plaintiffs were exposed to sodium dichromate, a toxic chemical used at the site as an anti-corrosive and containing nearly pure hexavalent chromium, one of the most potent carcinogens and mutagenic substances known to man," the lawsuit states.

I have it on good authority that Al-Qaeda would love to see KBR Inc. humiliated, so this case really needs to be thrown out ASAP.

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Friday Hope Blogging

More companies are taking a stand against the US Chamber of Commerce's climate denialism:

GE is the latest in a growing list of companies unhappy with the Chamber's position on climate. Yesterday, Nike announced that they are resigning from the board of directors, though they plan to maintain membership. The country's largest electric utility, Exelon, announced on Monday that they are leaving the group, joining California utility PG&E and New Mexico utility PNM in secession.

The EPA is taking additional steps to limit GHG emissions:

The EPA proposal will require large industrial facilities that emit more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year to obtain permits covering these emissions. These permits must demonstrate the use of the best available emissions-control technologies and energy efficiency measures to minimize greenhouse gas emissions when facilities are constructed or significantly modified.

“Today, the Obama administration has taken another step to implement the Clean Air Act, our nation’s strongest and most successful tool for reducing greenhouse pollution,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. “But with global warming accelerating, the administration should be moving more quickly to achieve all the benefits that the Clean Air Act offers.”

It looks as though four dams will be removed from the Klamath River:

In a development that could herald the largest dam removal in modern history, 29 parties signed a draft agreement today to destroy four dams on the Klamath River to restore salmon and steelhead runs that have been partially blocked for the better part of the past century on the California-Oregon border.

The agreement is the product of years of often bitter negotiations among electric utilities, government officials, commercial fishers, farmers, native tribes and environmental groups. It calls for the breaching and removal of four Klamath River hydroelectric plants owned and operated by PacifiCorp.

Yet another of BushCo's "plans" for "managing" wilderness areas has been ruled illegal:

[T]he court ruled that the Bush-era West Mojave Plan violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by favoring off-road vehicle use over protection of sensitive desert resources such as endangered species and archeological sites.

“This is a huge win for the California desert,” said Lisa Belenky, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The court’s decision takes the Bureau of Land Management to task for designating thousands of miles of off-road vehicle routes while ignoring the significant damage these vehicles cause to our public lands and the wildlife that depend on these lands for their survival.”

Diesel emissions are way down at two California ports:

A program to cut diesel emissions at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by phasing out older cargo trucks is far ahead of schedule, and already has delivered cleaner air to nearby neighborhoods that have been enveloped by fumes, the mayors of both cities said Thursday.

A year after the adjacent ports launched their "clean trucks" program, new, low-emission big rigs now account for about a third of the trucks hauling cargo to and from the complex, the busiest harbors in the nation. Officials said they expect to reduce diesel truck emissions at both ports by 80% by the end of 2010 -- a year ahead of schedule.

Two Massachusetts police departments have dropped out of the idiotic 287(g) program, which allowed them to enforce immigration laws:

The program had stirred anger and fear among advocates for immigrants who said it would terrify immigrants and deter them from reporting crimes.

Framingham Chief Steven Carl said he withdrew from the program today because federal officials pressured the department to broaden its enforcement. He said he signed up two years ago exclusively to tap into federal databases to investigate crime, and balked when federal officials wanted him to detain immigrants, transport them and even testify in immigration court.

Carl said that could hurt the police's relationship in the community, where 26 percent are immigrants. "It doesn't benefit the police department to engage in deportation and immigration enforcement," Carl said today. "We're done. I told them to come get the computers."

Efforts to protect the Ganges River dolphin seem to be paying off:

India’s booming human population, like China’s, is taking too much water from its largest river, radically altering its flow, and pumping too much waste in. The dolphins, which need deep, clean water and often drown in fishing nets, have paid the price.

At Raja Karna, however, the tide might just be turning. In recent years locals have been encouraged to stop fishing and to use home-made organic compost instead of chemical fertilisers and they have been taught how to build small, basic sewage treatment facilities. The results have been striking: since the early 1980s the dolphin population has more than doubled from 20 to about 55 animals. Everywhere else along the Ganges the population has fallen.

Canadian researchers have found a simple way to reduce bat fatalities around wind turbines:

Slowing the speed of the turbines at night during peak bat migratory periods reduces fatalities by 60 per cent, according to a joint study by the University of Calgary and power company TransAlta published in the Journal of Wildlife Management....

The University of Calgary researchers will now continue their work on finding out what is attracting the bats to the turbines in the first place in the hope of reducing the mortality rate even further.

Researchers claims to have made a new and improved form of concrete from coal plant waste:

Researchers have created an impressive new kind of concrete that's made out of waste products from coal plants--concrete that could both last for hundreds of years and reduce carbon emissions by 90%. The cement industry is one of the most polluting industries there is, contributing 5-8% of the world's greenhouse gases. This new 'geopolymer concrete' could cut a major chunk out of that. And the best part is, it's made from fly ash--one of the most common industrial byproducts on the planet....

[I]t could reduce the need for fly ash disposal sites--like the one that burst open in Tennessee last December and spread toxic byproduct over hundreds of acres. There are now some 600 coal ash dump sites around the US--and that could all theoretically be turned into perfectly safe concrete.

An African artist is turning wildlife snares into sculptures:


That's about it for this week, I'm afraid. Except for Inconstant Moon. And the invective of flowers. And more matches. And some vintage hairstyle placards. And a survey of one thousand billion worlds. And via Plep, some Japanese magic lantern slides.


(Illustration at top by Mark.Weaver.)

Impervious to Evidence

Another day, another metric ton of denialist horseshit from George Will.

Fine. Whatever. We'll do this quickly.

By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere "plateau," not warming's apogee, the [New York Times] assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume.

Knowing the future, y'see, is reserved for George Will, who can effortlessly tell when a plateau is an apogee, on account of his mama didn't raise no suckas.

Impressive as that is, it's child's play compared to what comes next:

The Times reported that "scientists" -- all of them? -- say the 11 years of temperature stability has "no bearing," none, on long-term warming. Some scientists say "cool stretches are inevitable."

Will implies that all scientists must agree that warming will continue for the claim to have any hope of being plausible. At the same, he assigns a belief that all scientists actually do agree on, viz., that "cool stretches are inevitable," to some scientists. (As for the fact that climate is ideally measured in consecutive periods of 30 years...well, the less said about that, the better.)

If there's a more grotesque example of sophistry in the annals of denialism, it was written by George Will, and appears in the very next paragraph:

[T]heories predicting catastrophe from man-made climate change are impervious to evidence. The theories are unfalsifiable, at least in the "short run." And the "short run" is defined as however many decades must pass until the evidence begins to fit the hypotheses.

Emphasis added. Many of us learned the problem with this line of reasoning by flipping coins in grade school; Will probably should have grasped it by the time he got to Magdalen College, Oxford. But who cares about arcane disciplines like statistics? If we don't see 16 feet of water in Wall Street by this time next week, AGW is a hoax!

I don't think any denialist is going to top that...unless his name be George Will:

[Prince Charles] said that by 2050 the planet will be imperiled by the existence of 9 billion people, a large portion of them consuming as much as Western people now do. Environmental Cassandras must be careful with their predictions lest they commit what climate alarmists consider the unpardonable faux pas of denying that the world is coming to an end.

Though it may be arrogant of me to correct an exquisitely sapient grandee like Will on a minor point of cultural literacy, it just so happens that Cassandra's predictions were correct; the problem was that no one would believe her.

As for his larger argument...what the fuck? Or to phrase it more judiciously, what the fucking fuck? The alarmist prediction that we'll have 9 billion people by 2050 contradicts alarmist predictions about climate change, because...what? If warming were a real problem, population wouldn't...huh? Does anyone on God's green earth have the faintest idea what this unsurpassable douchebag is going on about?

My neurasthenia seems to be acting up, so I'm going to take some bromide and lie down with my galvanic belt. In the meantime, I suggest you look at this Random Kitten Generator.

Yesterday's Strategy

Please be advised that Michael Gerson -- scourge of tyrants, dreamer of dreams, and vicarious Emperor of Iraq -- takes a dim view of Joe Biden:

[Biden] voted against the first Gulf War, arguing "What vital interests of the United States justify sending young Americans to their deaths in the sands of Saudi Arabia?" And he displayed consistently poor judgment during the Cold War, opposing missile defenses and undermining resistance to communism in Central America. Biden must view himself as a combination of Kissinger and Clausewitz. But there is little basis for this self-regard.

Especially since that position's already been filled by an eminently qualified chap named Gerson.

Apparently, Gerson envies our nation's torturers so much that he's using the tools of his own gruesome trade to inflict similar anguish on evildoers like yours truly. God knows, neither stupidity nor delusion is a plausible explanation for his claim that opposing extralegal "anti-communist" bloodbaths during the Reagan years makes Biden a would-be Kissinger. The only motivation that makes sense is sheer malice: The pleasure of tormenting his political adversaries with statements that are the rhetorical equivalent of waterboarding clearly outweighs the embarrassment of sounding like a fucking idiot.

Like so many other conservative commentators, Gerson's memory of the last eight years has been decimated by a timely case of amnesia. It wasn't long ago that public debates over strategery were all the rage. But now it's Year 1 of the Obama Regime, and the former things are passed away: 1/20 changed everything!

[T]here are also risks when arguments about military strategy are too public for too long. An enemy can try to influence the outcome of a debate with attacks and propaganda. Al-Qaeda's most recent video warns Europeans that they are about to be abandoned: "It won't be long until the dust of war clears in Afghanistan, at which point you won't find a trace of any American, because they will have gone away far beyond the Atlantic."

Which just goes to show you that Obama is in over his head. A really clever president would be careful not to say anything that Al-Qaeda could spin as a victory for Islamofascism.

Remember all that outrageously demoralizing stuff John Kerry said about being "the last man to die for a mistake"? Well, it's somewhat less outrageous than it used to be.

No one wants to be the last to die for the sake of yesterday's strategy.

I see Gerson's point, of course. But the thing is, claiming that some trumped-up existential threat obliges us to invade a relatively poor and weak country is nothing if not "yesterday's strategy." Before striking up the latest disastrous variation on this theme, Gerson should probably have paid more attention to Clausewitz, who said that "no one starts a war -- or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so -- without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it."

One nice thing about writing op-ed columns on war is that no matter what's going on, you can always announce portentously that "we" stand at a crossroads. Like a compulsive gambler standing in front of the slot machine that's just swallowed this month's mortgage payment, our nation faces a stark moment of decision: do we slink away in defeat and shame, or do we pawn our watch, cross our fingers, and win every penny back, plus a little extra for our trouble?

If McChrystal is to be believed, America is not merely failing to win in Afghanistan; it is losing. It may require a jolt of resources to revive the patient and convince a skeptical American public that progress is possible.

Medical analogies for warfare are always a classy touch, too, as long as you don't think too much about the Hippocratic Oath. (Aren't armed drones a bit like T cells, when you think about it?)

Anyway, all we have to do is kill as many people and spend as much money as it takes to "revive the patient," while giving the public an impression of progress. If that impression wears off, as narcotics will, it's easy enough to announce that we stand at another crossroads, and insist yet again that the only people who understand the right course of action are the shameless moral lepers who forced the wrong one on us.

Which raises an interesting question: Who wants to be the last to die for the sake of yesterday's strategy?

Susceptible Young People

As a concerned mom, a glibertarian polemicist, and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institute, Laura E. Huggins wishes to advise us that "eco-propaganda" is warping Our Children's Minds.

[C]lassroom textbooks are influenced "by an ideological view that presents human beings as evil," according to Dr. Michael Sanera, director of the Center for Environmental Education Research. Sanera compared science textbooks used in sixth through 10th grades in Wisconsin. Though he felt the textbooks all did a good job explaining the carbon cycle and greenhouse effect, nearly all focused only on the human causes of climate change and all predicted catastrophic impact.

In other words, climate change is real, but some part of it is natural, so there's no sense in worrying about the consequences.

Children who've been browbeaten into compliance with this bizarre worldview have "learned to think," according to Huggins. Those who haven't are being scared stupid by unscrupulous textbook publishers. It's fine to terrify kids by harping on the catastrophic results of healthcare reform, or sex-ed classes, or our collective failure to "cauldronize" the Middle East per Michael Ledeen. And it's not only fine, but essential, to frighten them with sin and hellfire. But calling climate change a serious problem...jeez, that's practically child abuse.

She fails to mention that Sanera's study was published way back in 1996. And that he's a bit unclear on what constitutes presenting human beings as "evil," as opposed to ignorant or shortsighted. And that, as ExxonSecrets notes, the Center for Environmental Education Research was a pet project of the CEI, and may not be entirely reliable.

It's not just eco-propaganda that's turning our kids into terminal mopes. The other problem -- and this is where things get really weird -- is that children are alienated from the natural world.

Top off the eco-propaganda with the fact that many schools have moved away from hands-on nature-study and field trips, and that parents are no longer sending their kids to camps or even outside to play, it is no wonder kids are increasingly disconnected and uninterested in the outdoors....

While researchers debate the root cause of people spending less time outside and its associated impacts on mental and physical health, there is little debate that this trend spells trouble for our commitment to conservation....

Rather than scaring susceptible young people about the environment, why not teach them the truth and get them outdoors?

Good idea! Especially on cold winter days, when the falsity of "global warming" will be obvious even to the dimmest child. It's one thing to sit in your living room watching Glenn Beck spout denialist catchphrases in front of a giant green swastika; it's quite another to go outside and catch snowflakes on your tongue, knowing that each of them is an unanswerable argument against Algore's Warming Theory.

Huggins' remarks about conservation are baffling. Maybe she noticed that it's now fashionable for anti-choice activists to complain that contraception helps men to exploit and dominate women, and figured she might as well try a similar faux-progressive detournement in her own field. Just as you can't call someone who weeps over degraded women a misogynist, you can't call someone who wants children to gambol like fauns through dew-kissed meadows an anti-environmentalist shill. It's just common sense.

It's fun and easy, too. Observe: Turning national parks over to timber companies is conservation! Ignoring evidence on principle is critical thought! Thoreau is the spiritual founder of the Wise Use movement, and would've been infuriated by federal protection of wilderness areas! You're limited only by your imagination and malice.

It's not just the thrill of turning your enemies' rhetoric against them that makes this approach so satisfying. There's also a good chance that you'll be able to render useful terms effectively meaningless (cf. "fascist" and "socialist"), transmute them into their opposites, and treat any attempt to restore their basic definitions as elitist indoctrination.

Schools are an ideal place to wage this battle, since children can be snatched up and used as human shields when the purity of one's motives is questioned. With that in mind, here's Huggins' three-step solution to the eco-indoctrination of our "susceptible young people":

First, say no to the eco-propaganda that dribbles down on them all day. Second, teach them to think about environmental issues. And third, say yes next time your child asks to "go play outside."

Sounds absolutely foolproof. Granted, most of us don't actually know enough about climate science to edit our kids' textbooks. But that's OK...we can just cross out anything demoralizing, using the common sense God gave us. It's gotten us this far.

(Photo by Sarah Posner.)

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

The gods grant nothing more than life,
So let us reject whatever lifts us
To unbreathable heights,
Eternal but flowerless.
All that we need to accept is Chromodoris kunei,
And as long as the blood in our veins still pulses
And love does not shrivel,
Let us go on
Like panes of glass: transparent to light,
Pattered by the sad rain trickling down,
Warmed by the sun,
And reflecting a little.

(Photo by alfonsator.)

Friday Hope Blogging

Earlier this week, Pacific Gas & Electric pulled out of the US Chamber of Commerce.

We find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored. In our opinion, an intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges are quite another.

Now, the New Mexican utility PNM Resources has followed suit.

At PNM Resources, we see climate change as the most pressing environmental and economic issue of our time. Given that view, and a natural limit on both company time and resources, we have decided that we can be most productive by working with organizations that share our view on the need for thoughtful, reasonable climate change legislation and want to push that agenda forward in Congress.

As a result, we have decided to let our membership in the U.S. Chamber lapse when it expires at the end of this year.

Jonathan Hiskes has more on corporate disenchantment with the USCOC, and asks a very good question:

So here’s a question for climate activists: Why not hound companies in the Chamber and ACCCE, demanding to know why they lend their money and their legitimacy to such groups? Companies may decide that membership is a weight around their necks they don’t need.

Meanwhile, the G20 has tentatively agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies:

The world's largest economies will agree to phase out subsidies on oil and other carbon dioxide-spewing fossils fuels over the "medium term" in an effort to fight global warming, a G20 document said.

The draft G20 statement showed countries such as Russia, India, and China will back a move to reduce and eliminate most financial support that keeps fuel prices artificially low, albeit without a timetable for the cuts.

An attempt by Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to limit the EPA's authority to regulate CO2 has failed:

The Senate declined Thursday to take up Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s effort to limit for a year the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, factories and other stationary sources of pollution.

Murkowski had sought to amend the Interior Department appropriations bill being considered Thursday by the U.S. Senate, but was blocked from bringing forward her proposal.

And California is imposing some fairly strong restrictions on VOCs:

California air regulators approved strict regulations Thursday for aerosol air fresheners, paint thinners and solvents as a way to lessen smog-forming emissions and reduce a health threat.

The state Air Resources Board voted 8-0 to ban the sale of products that emit high levels of so-called volatile organic compounds. The rules are the toughest state mandate in the nation and will take effect Dec. 31, 2013.

Yellowstone's grizzly bears will once again receive ESA protections:

A federal district court ruling in Montana today returned Endangered Species Act protections to the Yellowstone grizzly bear population. In the case, brought by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Judge Donald Molloy ruled that inadequate regulatory mechanisms were put in place to manage the bears after federal protections were dropped in early 2007, and that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) failed to address the loss of an essential food source for the bears, whitebark pine seeds.

Plans to site a solar-thermal facility in a remote, sensitive desert area have been scrapped:

The proposed project site was located in a remote wildland area currently being planned for inclusion in a new national monument proposed by California senator Dianne Feinstein. The new monument would connect Joshua Tree National Park with the Mojave National Preserve and would protect some of the most pristine, ecologically important and beautiful desert lands in the world.

Peter Galvin, co-founder and conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity, stated, “We are tremendously pleased that this poorly-sited project has been withdrawn.” Galvin added, “Broadwell Valley and similar lands should be recognized as the national treasures that they are and permanently protected as a national monument.”

Rare primates will be protected by new reserves in China and Vietnam:

There are 200 Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys left in the world. The cao vit gibbon, however, is even worse off with only 110 individuals remaining, giving it the dubious honor of being the second most endangered primate in the world (the closely-related Hainan gibbon with only 17 individuals is likely number one).

Both of these species — the cao vit gibbon and Tonkin snub nosed monkey — have received good news recently as new reserves in China and Vietnam have been created in part to aid their survival.

Photo by Zhao Chao, FFI.
In related news, conservation efforts are helping the Central Asian saiga antelope:

In a decline on par with that suffered by the American bison in the Nineteenth Century, in the 1990s the saiga antelope of the Central Asian steppe plummeted from over one million individuals to 50,000, dropping a staggering 95 percent in a decade and a half. Since then new legislation and conservation measure have helped the species stabilize in some areas but in others the decline continues.

And the world's first shark sanctuary has been created in Palau:

BBC news reports that Johnson Toribiong, President of Palau, has announced that a sanctuary about 230,000 square miles in total will be established to protect sharks. All commercial shark hunting in their entire Exclusive Economic Zone - about the size of France - will be banned.

"These creatures are being slaughtered and are perhaps at the brink of extinction unless we take positive action to protect them," said President Toribiong. "Their physical beauty and strength, in my opinion, reflects the health of the oceans; they stand out."

A plurality of Republican voters seem to favor a public healthcare option:

The poll asked this question: "Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?"

The top-line result is 65% in favor, 26% opposed. Among Democrats only, it's 81%-12%, and independents are at 61%-30%. And among Republican respondents, 47% are in favor, to 42% opposed.

For the first time, an AIDS vaccine has shown significant protective effects:

The combo cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the study of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok.

That benefit is modest, yet "it's the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine," said Col. Jerome Kim, an Army doctor who helped lead the study.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has won its lawsuit for the release of telecom lobbying records:

A judge ordered the government Thursday to release more records about the lobbying campaign to provide immunity to the telecommunications giants that participated in the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the records be provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) by October 9, 2009.

Green roofs seem to be even more beneficial than was previously thought:

[R]esearchers have attempted to quantify the benefits of covering urban rooftops with plants. The scientists found that replacing traditional roofing materials with ‘green’ in an urban area the size of Detroit with a population of about one-million, would be equivalent to eliminating a year's worth of carbon dioxide emitted by 10,000 mid-sized SUVs and trucks.

Lynchburg, VA is imposing some sensible restrictions on big-box retailers:

Requirements include making provisions for mass transit access; building a connected system of external sidewalks and internal walkways; and employing a more environmentally friendly system of stormwater management that allows at least 25 percent of all water to return directly to the soil.

Despite the usual alarmist predictions from the usual conservatarian thinktanks, Phoenix's light rail system is a terrific success:

Even its proponents were surprised by its success and its transformative effect on downtown businesses, particularly during a recession.

Valley Metro light rail opened last December. Opponents viewed the $1.4 billion, 20-mile line a boondoggle for the largely auto-dependent city. Now some of them admit to riding it.

Illinois "has a new law that starts building the infrastructure for a real regional food system":

The legislation establishes a council to develop a fresh farm and food system in the state, and it creates a system that allows buyers for state agencies to pay up to 10 percent above the lowest bid when purchasing locally grown foods. It also sets a goal for state-owned agencies to increase their purchase of locally grown foods each year so that 20 percent of their food purchase is spent on Illinois-grown foods by 2020.

Currently, an estimated 4 percent of the money Illinois residents spend on food each year is for products grown in the state, and just several hundred of the state’s 76,000 farmers are producing for the local market, according to a task force report.

Ontario has launched the feed-in tariff system mandated under its Green Energy Act:

The tariffs are precedent setting in North America not only for the number of different technologies listed, but also for the prices offered. Solar energy advocates will be particularly pleased. Ontario’s proposed tariffs, if implemented, will be the highest in North America. For rooftop solar they will be comparable to those offered in Germany and France.

The UK is taking a small but significant step towards disarmament:

Gordon Brown will add momentum to moves towards nuclear disarmament tomorrow by announcing that he intends Britain to build only three, and not the planned four, replacement Trident nuclear submarines.

The move, which could cut billions from the defence budget over the next decade, was welcomed by anti-nuclear campaigners today, who said it was a "step in the right direction" but did not go far enough.

Cheryl Rofer explains the implications:

This is actually pretty significant. If America and Russia move toward 1500 warheads, that is getting close to where the other nuclear powers - Great Britain, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan need to be included in negotiations. So Britain is moving ahead of the curve.

Onwards and upwards. Swedish Matchboxes and Edible Geography. Photos by Kobi Israel. The South Bronx in the 80s and 90s. International doorhangers. And vintage cheese labels.


Lawnmower cards (via Plep). Photos by Henry Busse. Images from the Byron Collection. Drawings from the Civil War. And photos by Esther Bubley.


Animal Architecture and Abandoned Farm House Rooms. Urban Life Through Two Lenses. Port Townsend Then and Now. Lots and lots of red dust. And via Moon River, a photo of White Sands, New Mexico from 1952.


And now, a word from our sponsors.



(Photo at top: "Ores of Copper" via EPOD.)

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

In addition to being a socialist, a fascist, a eugenicist, a friend of terrorists, a foreign-born pretender, a liar, and woefully inexperienced, Barack Obama acts a lot like a college administrator. That's the expert opinion of Victor Davis Hanson, who's been a celebrity academic long enough to know that college administrators represent pretty much everything that's wrong with America.

In [Obama's] limited experience, those who went to Yale or Harvard are special people, and the Ivy League environment has been replicated in the culture of the White House.

It's a huge change from the last administration, which comprised former short-order cooks, lawn care specialists, and Wal-Mart greeters. And it signifies that Obama is -- wait for it, now -- an elitist.

We heard all about that before the election, interminably. But it's worth going over the facts once more, if only for the sake of using the magic word "arugula." Here's Obama's worldview in nuce:

Middle America is an exotic place inhabited by aborigines who bowl, don’t eat arugula, and need to be reminded to inflate their tires.

Not everyone in Middle America bowls, obviously, and not everyone who does bowl views it as a patriotic duty or a holy sacrament or a definitive proof of heterosexuality. And not everyone in Middle America refuses to eat arugula on principle. And Obama didn't actually restrict his advice on tire pressure to Middle Americans.

But once you ignore these little details, it's pretty clear that Middle America is an undifferentiated mass of dour hyperconformists whose sense of self is too fragile to withstand the idea that some people don't bowl.

This cartoon Heartland, with its population of hive-minded hayseeds who assent unanimously to any proposition Hanson dreams up, is the product of an elitist worldview if anything is. But hell, it's not like any of these hicks will notice Hanson's sleight of hand. And even if a couple of them did, he can revoke their membership in the Herrenvolk as easily as he imposed it on them.

Anyway, here's what's currently going on at our nation's colleges, and by analogy, in our government.

Faculties are swamped with memos from deans, provosts, and presidents, reiterating their own “commitment to diversity,” reminding how they would not “tolerate hate speech,” and in general blathering about the “campus community.” University administrators instruct faculty on everything from getting a flu shot, to covering up when coughing, to how to make a syllabus and avoid incorrect words.

It's outrageous, isn't it? They've actually convinced themselves that a college is some sort of...of...community, the viability of which can somehow be diminished by turning a blind eye to expressions of racial and sexual hatred. Worse, they keep trying to force basic concepts of preventative medicine down everyone's throats, under the pretext that having lots of teachers and students out with the flu is disruptive and costly. The whole thing smacks of Nazism, but without the guns and the stylish uniforms and the belief in transcendent values.

Ivy League administrators are also to blame for Obama's alarming fixation on "czars." You can tell because just like Obama, these administrators have a habit of appointing people to various positions, and then making formal announcements about it.

Among the frequent topics of the daily university executive communiqués are the formulaic “My team now includes...,” “I have just appointed...,” “Under my direction”....

There's more, natch. Unlike its obsessive critics, the Obama administration is given to "whining or petulance." Which is no surprise, given that "feelings of being underappreciated by the public for all one’s self-sacrificial efforts are common university traits."

In related news, Obama has a "wounded-fawn sense of sacrifice," because he deigned to enter politics and submit to the dreary ritual of being elected president, instead of seeking tenure at UC-Berkeley. Surely it's no coincidence that "academic culture...promotes this idea that highly educated professionals deigned to give up their best years for arduous academic work and chose to be above the messy rat race."

Obama didn't actually do that, granted. But if he had, he would've. Which is typical of academics, and therefore of his administration. The conclusion is obvious:

[T]he United States is now a campus, we are the students, and Obama is our university president.

This metaphor may seem a bit quaint, given that so many of Hanson's fellow travelers have already decided, by means of equally rigorous logic, that they're prisoners of a new gulag, if not of the antichrist himself.

On the other hand, as Hanson's inevitable reference to a course on "Race, Class, and Gender in the Latina Cinema" shows, griping about higher education remains one of the best ways of indulging in racial polemics while pretending to be talking about something else. Like complaints about Obama's "socialism" -- behind which one can hear decades of white outrage over welfare Cadillacs, and the ever-looming threat of reparations -- complaints about his roots in academia reinforce his status as a Lord of Misrule who's turning the world upside-down in order to crush white aspirations and white culture.

If you ask me, the reason Hanson offers all these laborious analogies, even though they're marvelously stupid, and don't even begin to prove what he claims, is because they give his howl of racial anxiety the superficial form of a logical argument. As such, they serve pretty much the same function as statistics in the pages of American Renaissance: they reassure readers that what they're perusing is a product of sober intellectual inquiry, rather than crypto-racialist sour grapes. A civilized era calls for civilized debate, after all...and never more so than when one is explaining that teh darkies and their white enablers are out to destroy Western culture.

I know I'm not supposed to say any of this. I know that the only people who make truly racist arguments nowadays are Ku Klux Klan members, minorities, and leftists; everyone else is simply enjoying a bracing debate on values and civilization and heritage and genetics and stuff. I know that when you heap scorn on those "elitists" who dare to claim that the artistic productions of minorities are worthy of intelligent people's attention, you're standing up for academic standards rather than racial ones. I know that once you've asserted your elemental belief in fairness, no one can be offended by your assumption that behind every successful black woman, there are 25 honest, hard-working white men who were kicked to the curb and reduced to dressing in burlap potato sacks. And I know that sneering at a class on Latina film is not an expression of contempt for Latinas, but for the multiculturalism that elevates them above their station, and the Marxist orthodoxy that claims their station was assigned to them by something other than Divine Will.

Nonetheless, I'm going to be deliciously irreverent -- just like Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart -- and suggest that if conservative commentators don't want to be accused of racist demagogy, they should follow these simple steps:

1. Stop obsessing over multiculturalism in higher education, which really isn't fooling anyone.


2. Start worrying a lot less about anti-Americanism and reverse racism in academia, and a lot more about all those heavily armed would-be secessionists carrying pictures of Obama with a bone through his nose.


3. Stop drafting everyone between Scranton and Fresno into your personal army of racially aggrieved Kulturkampfers.


4. Quit having tantrums over things that didn't bother you at all two years ago, like czars and deficits and fake underclass pedigrees and an Ivy League president who whines that no one appreciates the wonderful things he's doing for the country.

Of course, the political rewards for doing these things would be negligible at best. Which is why you can't really blame people like Hanson for preferring to create a new pedagogy of the oppressed, and deploy their subaltern micronarratives against hegemonic discourses like evolution and climatology and Civil War studies and population genetics and feminism. To paraphrase Paolo Friere, this is the great humanistic and historical task of white conservatarian loudmouths: to liberate themselves by portraying their victims as their oppressors, no matter how ludicrous it sounds to sane people.

(Illustration: "Louis Budenz’s article, 'Do Colleges Have to Hire Red Professors?' was the first publication listing Sarah Lawrence College as hiring Communist professors. Soon after this article was published, the Americanism Committee of the American Legion began targeting Sarah Lawrence faculty members. November, 1951.)

A Very Satisfying Place to Be

Textron Defense Systems has built a better mousetrap:

The Sensor Fuzed Weapon is a marvel of military technology, says its maker, Textron Defense Systems. An advanced "cluster bomb," it is designed to spray 40 individual projectiles of molten copper, destroying enemy tanks across a 30-acre swath of battlefield.

The problem is, cluster bombs are unpopular. Worse, a major international treaty against them is pending. The USA didn't sign it, of course -- we're not idiots -- but potential client nations did. What to do?

Textron, with the support of the Pentagon and the State Department, is mounting a campaign to derail the cluster-bomb treaty and write a new set of rules under the United Nations that would make it easier to sell its weapon around the world.

And why not? Who, after all, is more qualified to define the laws of "civilized" warfare than a company that stands to benefit from selling an advanced cluster bomb?

Textron’s primary argument for scrapping the treaty is that 99 percent of the bomblets released by the Sensor Fuzed Weapon will explode in combat, leaving only a tiny amount of unexploded ordinance that could be picked up by a child or hit by a farmer’s plow. Textron calls this capability "clean battlefield operation."

Emphasis added, but probably unnecessary.

As we all know, tank combat takes place in vast wastelands littered with transparent Platonic solids, so neither the 30-acre kill zone nor the "tiny amount" of leftover UXO has any real significance to civilians. If you don't believe me, do the math: Assuming you drop, say, 100 Sensor Fuzed Weapons on the Hun, there'd only be 40 unexploded bomblets left over.

Since that's practically nothing, it's little wonder that the US Air Force has bought 4,600 of these weapons, which should produce well under 2,000 pieces of UXO (while boosting tourism, ideally). And it's no wonder at all that Textron's president of business development is glutinous with self-approbation:

“Knowing that we are in no way, shape or form contributing to [civilian suffering] is really a very satisfying place to be," he said.

This is a moral high ground that very few of us can hope to invade and occupy. You can't blame Textron for trying to secure its perimeter.

To that end, they've launched a PR Website that's pleadingly titled "dontbanthesolution.com." If you read it, you'll learn that it's not just the relatively small number of unexploded bomblets that makes this weapon the greatest shield against human suffering since the invention of ether. There's also the fact that it saves us from having to use "greater numbers of traditional bombs" on whatever mongrel nations are currently threatening the repose of Our Innocent Children.

Think how much less misery the unnecessary, illegal, incompetent, vicious, and apparently interminable war on Iraq would've caused if the Coalition of the Willing had restricted itself to using these well-nigh surgical munitions. Now, multiply that humanitarian benefit by every other grotesquely cynical war of choice we've launched over the last 40-odd years, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what's at stake here. As humanitarians, lovers of peace, and children of God, we owe it to the memory of our innocent victims to insist on advanced cluster bombs with no fewer than 40 submunitions, whether we're defending brutal client states, fragile political egos, oil company profits, or the moral rights of US arms manufacturers.

Now, if Textron would restrict itself to environmentally preferable components, and manufacture the Sensor Fuzed Weapon with solar-thermal energy, I'd feel even better about our new era of sustainable power.

(Photo by Ken Jarecke.)

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

If you only knew.

Far from me, joyful as a flower dancing in the river at the tip of its aquatic stem, sad as seven pm in a mushroom bed.

Far from me yet silent in my presence and still joyful like a stork-shaped hour falling from on high.

Far from me at the moment when the stills are singing, at the moment when Hypselodoris bayeri curls up on its white pillows.

If you only knew.

Far from me, o my ever-present torment, far from me in the magnificent noise of oyster shells crushed by a night owl passing a restaurant at first light.

If you only knew.

(Photo by Wayne Atkinson, via Sea Slug Forum.)

Friday Hope Blogging

A gay rights bill has passed in the Ohio House:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Administration is also scrapping BushCo's smog regulations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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

Enchanted By Conspiracies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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