1. What do we want in our National Parks? Tuesday 24 February at Fort Mason
2. Berkeley's Strawberry Canyon under threat
3. Register now for East Bay's Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour
4. Tankless water heaters
5. California budget: Solutions, or just more nattering?
6. Mark Twain doesn't have a solution, just acerb commentary
7. Let Bay Nature work for you
8. Feedback: coffee, carrots, plastics, pennies, journalism,
agribusiness, and political hypocrisy; oh my!
9. A steep decline in public accessibility to important information
10. LTEs: evolution, religion
11. And yet another view on evolution, a very sensible one
12. Miscellany
13. Compare the sizes of planets to each other,
to the Sun, and the Sun to other suns. You won't be sorry
14. Anton Bruckner, symphonist. And he wasn't English, either
15. Another view of agribusiness, from the impish Steve Mirsky
16. Chinatown gradually being nibbled away
1. The National Park Second Century Commission is having a public meeting in San Francisco Tuesday the 24th 5 PM to 8PM at Fort Mason to hear comments from the public on what they want in their National Parks.
National Parks for the next 100 years
or http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1638723.html
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2. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) plans to construct almost one million square feet of new research buildings on Strawberry Canyon's steep hillsides and in the surrounding watershed landscape. Learn more: www.savestrawberrycanyon.org
Former LBNL director Steven Chu (now U.S. Energy Secretary) was working with East Bay mayors and UC to create a "Green Corridor" to attract private-public partnerships for energy-focused research and development. These sites are all west of the Hayward Fault, in contrast to the hilly LBNL location, which is riddled with fault traces.
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3. Registration for the Fifth Annual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour (East Bay), which will take place on Sunday, May 3, 2009, is now open at www.bringingbackthenatives.net. This free, award-winning tour features 50 pesticide-free gardens that conserve water, provide habitat for wildlife, and contain 50% or more native plants.
The Native Plant Sale Extravaganza will take place throughout the week end of May 2 and 3. Please go here for details: http://www.bringingbackthenatives.net/plantsale.html
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4. Tankless water heaters
Tankless heaters use anywhere from 10 to 20 percent less energy because there's no need to keep an entire tank of water hot, eliminating standby energy loss. Depending, it may also save water. http://www.toolbase.org/Building-Systems/Plumbing/tankless-water-heaters
(I have a long supply line from my shower and bathroom sink, and an even longer one to my kitchen sink. It wastes enormous quantities of water in order to get hot water. It is a disincentive to wash my hands or the dishes as often as I should. Even though the cost of the heater [much higher than conventional storage tanks] plus cost of installation means that it may not repay me for many years, I think I will do it. I can't stand thinking about all the waste of energy and water.)
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5. Comment on California budget settlement from the Center for Biological Diversity
The bad news is that the budget package still included some terrible environmental rollbacks in response to Republican demands. The worst of these was a postponement of regulations to clean up exhaust from diesel construction equipment, which causes serious air pollution and health problems. Bizarrely, the two Republican leaders who pushed for this rollback represent the Central Valley, which has some of the worst air quality and diesel pollution in the state. The budget also exempted eight planned highway infrastructure projects from environmental review.
Of course, it is completely preposterous that a small minority is able to hold the entire state budget hostage and make outrageous demands that would undo years of progress in protecting California's environment and public health. We must make sure it doesn't happen again that a small minority can use the state budget to threaten California's environmental protections. To do that, California will have to repeal the requirement of a two-thirds super-majority vote to pass a state budget.
(JS: Yes, we need to do that, but it would also be helpful to remove another absurdity: The drawing of legislative district boundaries to assure that either a Republican or a Democrat will be elected from that district. This desirable move won't happen, because both parties love it the way it is; incumbents are guaranteed to be re-elected. A pox on both of them. Elected representatives can defy the public will with impunity, and this is acceptable to the public.)
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6. Mark Twain:
"Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."
"Providence protects children and idiots. I know, because I’ve tested it."
(Fran Lebowitz: "All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.")
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7. Let Bay Area nature enthusiasts know what you are up to by listing your events on BayNature.org's online events calendar. That’s even easier to do now with our new online event submission form. You can also still email us your announcements (but please email events two weeks in advance).
The Baynature.org events calendar is the most comprehensive listing of nature-related public activities in the Bay region. What kind of events do we post? Our visitors are looking for hikes, talks, film-screenings, workshops, restoration projects, special days at nature centers or science museums, and anything else local and nature-related.
Events added to the calendar not only show up on our events page, they also feed into our interactive map, one of the most popular features of our website. Your event may also be selected to appear in our new biweekly e-newsletter, Bay Nature Connections.
Visit our website to see our events calendar or submit your event now. We look forward to getting the word out for you!
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8. Feedback
Kathy Shrenk:
I am in the process of breaking a 15-year addiction to diet soda. I am mostly drinking coffee as a replacement. I've definitely been seeing a lot of studies lately about coffee being good for you! And it's definitely better for you than diet soda, what with the osteoporosis, and check this out: http://www.rense.com/general67/rum.htm
My whole saga of quitting is chronicled on my blog: http://schrenkrap.blogspot.com/ It's been six months since I started trying to quit!!
Mei Ling Hui:
Regarding Carrots--I'm pretty sure most, if not all, farmers harvest the carrots right after the root has grown enough to be marketable - I don't think anyone leaves the carrots in the ground to die back in winter and regrow new tops the following summer. In fact I'm pretty sure a carrot is a biennial plant - it grows what we like (yummy orange root) one year then uses that stored energy to flower and seed the following year. So there wouldn't be much in the way of useful product for us after that first year. Carrots are usually harvested about 2 1/2 months after the seeds are initially planted. And younger is better.
I think the taste change has to do with the weather. Carrots don't love hot temperatures and if the carrot is developing more slowly, as it would in times of less sun and heat , it would have more time to accumulate sugars. Perhaps this is why winter greens, like kale, are also better in the winter?
I imagine it's similar to the way radishes are affected by heat. Radishes are best in hot weather because the slower they grow the spicier they get; I grew inedibly spicy radishes once when I seeded too early in the year.
Thanks for this, Mei Ling. You are certainly correct about the biennial nature of carrot, and that it must be harvested the first year from seed, which is what made me dubious about Andrea's explanation.
You may be right about the sweetness and flavor being better in the slow-growing winter season. However, do you know that this is the correct explanation? In the case of fruits, the sweetness is strongly correlated with heat and the amount of energy collected from the sun. Think peaches and melons, which are best in July and August. With a root crop, is it just the opposite? Is there science on this?
Siobhan Ruck: (re Love the Ocean and Use Less Plastic):
I understand there is a huge "plastic island" somewhere...where all the garbage gets sucks into a huge pool
Rather than send a bunch of links, I'll just say: Google "plastic pacific gyre" and you get a lot of good info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch is a good overview.
Chris Darling:
Dear Jake, I have a comment regarding plastics in the ocean. Petitions and resolutions to stop using excess plastic will never solve this problem as those pledging voluntary action will never be all of us or even most of us.
There are two ways to eliminate long-lasting plastic waste. The first is to make it prohibitively expensive to use things like plastic bags. In Ireland, there is a tax of thirty-three cents per bag for use of plastic grocery bags and since it was instituted use of such bags has dropped 94%. Even the retail store owners now think it is a good thing. Here is a quote from a New York Times story about the reaction of the owner of a major retail grocery chain.
'Today, Ireland's retailers are great promoters of taxing the bags. "I spent many months arguing against this tax with the minister; I thought customers wouldn't accept it," said Senator Feargal Quinn, founder of the Superquinn chain. "But I have become a big, big enthusiast."' Here is the link for the story that quote is from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/world/europe/02bags.html?pagewanted=1
But such taxes and fees that will not solve the problem as even the 6% use of plastic bags in Ireland is still millions of plastic grocery bags per year. And no matter how conscientious we are individually, some plastic will end up in the ocean. So we should legislate that all plastic be degradable in the presence of sunlight after a certain amount of time. That way, that which ends up in the ocean will eventually break down so it causes no harm to any living thing.
I have read dozens of calls to individual action regarding our negative impact on the environment since the first Earth Day in 1970. In spite of all the brochures, petitions, resolutions, and promises by individuals to do better in terms of using less water, using cars less, using fewer plastic bags, etc. etc. we are much worse off by many measurements of negative human impact on the environment. The only way it will improve is by making systemic changes that reward the right actions and penalize or make impossible the wrong actions.
D'accord.
James Grant:
Hi Jake, Given a government requirement to choose beteween lowering one's income down or up to the nearest nickel, most would choose to round up. My guess is that retailers, taxing agencies and nickel miners will have a hey day should the mint cancel penny production. Also, the U.S. Mint can now manufacture and deliver every coin denomination at profit. (They are a for profit agency) Coin metals prices have dropped over 60 percent from their highs of the previous two years. By the the pound, nickel is around $5; Copper around $1.50; and zinc around 50 cents.
Eliminating the Penny from the U.S. Coinage System: An Economic Analysis
http://ideas.repec.org/a/eej/eeconj/v27y2001i4p433-442.html
Removing the penny from circulation will have significant adverse direct effects on consumers. Simulations show that the resulting need to round prices will generate a rounding tax of no less than $600 million a year. The inflationary impact of rounding will probably be small. However, even a small effect will cumulate over time to a considerable sum; removing the penny would raise government outlays by about $950 million in 2005 and by $2 billion in 2010. Significant negative effects on firms are also identified. The evidentiary requirement for removing the penny from circulation does not yet appear to meet necessary standards. If and when seigniorage turns negative and inflation reduces the real value of a penny substantially further, then removal will be more attractive.
Well, James, you've certainly caught me off balance on this one. I wish I had the time to try to unravel this. I can't argue; however, I find the statements difficult to credit--in the case of pennies, impossible. If I won't stoop to pick them up, they can't be worth much. (Nickels, too.) And I am not the only one who declines to accept pennies in change. (I decline, even when it costs me 4 cents, which it sometimes does, although most often the clerk will just knock off 1 cent.) Just transportation and distribution costs more than they're worth--and don't ask me for figures.
Perhaps I'll have to file this under Ripley's Believe it or Not, or Unbelievable, Yet True. But someone's going to have to do more convincing. Regardless, thanks.
P.S. Oh, and another thing. The Mint is a for-profit organization? When did that happen? Under Reagan?
Hi Jake, The U.S. Mint is a self funded agency. They operate at a profit by producing and distributing coins, medallions, bullion, and commemorative pieces for sale on the open market. Revenue beyond operating expenses is turned over to the General Fund of the Treasury. In 2008, $735 Million was transferred to the Treasury General Fund.
The treasury uses a business model that considers supply and demand. Last year, the number of penny, nickel, and dime coins shipped to the FRB dropped 34 percent from 2007. So the demand in the marketplace is waning naturally. Alternately, from observations at the container recycling center, many people are not willing to walk away from small change. The last couple years were expensive years for producing the penny and nickel due to high metal costs, but those prices have subsided along with the demand for small coins. Given the Mint's substantial profits, I think the Mint can afford to let the issue ride. .
http://www.usmint.gov/downloads/about/annual_report/2005AnnualReport.pdf
http://www.usmint.gov/downloads/about/annual_report/2008AnnualReport.pdf
From their website: Since Congress created the United States Mint on April 2, 1792, it has grown tremendously. The United States Mint receives more than $1 billion in annual revenues. As a self-funded agency, the United States Mint turns revenues beyond its operating expenses over to the General Fund of the Treasury.
Thanks for all the information. Writing this newsletter is certainly an education. Just today I got the skinny on something I've wondered about for years: Why carrots are so much more sweet and flavorful in the winter. Now this.
I guess by a "for-profit organization" you mean that a government agency is not allowed to make money, but the Mint is allowed to? It is still a government agency, though, isn't it? It sounds like that from what you've written.
Steve Lawrence:
Jake, I sent your bit on endangered game wardens to a friend and retired game warden (warden about 1975-2006). Here's what he wrote back about the endandered California game warden: "Yes, this is known to me and others. It it part of the California fake it program. Say you care, but don't. They will tell you they care, but lack funding priority. We must protect the environment, but not be a burden to business. That and other assorted BS. Wardens; although Peace Officers of a special fund agency, will have to take 2 extra days off a month. Poaching is only a small part. Think pollution and habitat destruction."
Carol Teltschick-Fall:
The Food Pyramid, made to order
Ha, ha, yeah. This would be great if most of our food wasn't poisoned by agri-business practices. But that's our good old Ag Dept, always ready to make us feel better about eating pesticides, gmo's, hormones, antibiotics and manufactured additives.
I don't follow you, Carol. Given that USDA has facilitated agribusiness, they are not necessarily committed to it as the only way to produce food, and they can be just as cooperative with sustainable/organic means of production. The aim of the pyramid is to provide recommended proportions to fats, calories, carbohydrates, and so forth. Those proportions would apply regardless of whether the food is grown sustainably or by agribusiness.
well heck, I was just mouthing off about the general state of our agricultural system and our food, which I perceive to be unhealthy. I don't think the USDA should be cooperating with any methods that are bad for our health.
as an individual, I can buy organic, but how keep the pesticides out the rivers, etc. etc ...
Well, I buy organically-produced food as a rule, but I am in a privileged position. Using the world as a yardstick I am wealthy, or at least well-to-do, and can afford it. I know people who would like to eat organic but can't afford to. (To a degree, this is a matter of scale in growing crops, which organic does not have presently, and possibly never will have.)
I can't help wonder whether feeding billions (and heading for the tens of billions) doesn't require intensive methods such as agribusiness. Is organic a luxury that only we rich can afford? I have read reports that organic can outproduce agribusiness acre-for-acre, but I am dubious. And looking at the whole picture, I am doubtful that the masses can be fed by this method. I would like to be proved wrong. You have all these megalopolitan areas around the world. (Ever heard of Chongquing? 31 million, and counting!!) How many have even heard of it? Where are these megalopolises going to grow their organic, sustainably-produced food? Or for that matter, food from agribusiness?
I am not sanguine; in fact, I get depressed when I think about it too much. You have pressed my Population button, and I can feel another rant coming on, so I'd better stop right now.
well Paul Erlich scared the crap out of me about the carrying capactity thing years ago
but now I feel like the "old gotta feed everyone" argument is being bogusly used by greedy people to justify immoral use of our environment
I'm not saying I don't worry about burgeoning population, but the food and economic paradigm is so screwed up, entire populations could be living off waste
and anyway, if we keep on eating and breathing like this we'll soon all be dead of cancer
rates in U.S now stand at 1 out of 2 for every male and 1 out of 3 for every female
that's epidemic, but no one is talking about it...or bothering with prevention
so don't worry...all us baby boomers ain't gonna live nearly as long as everyone fears we will
John Bosley:
Hey Jake--As always I love your Nature News, but man! it gets tiresome to read stuff from The Economist. I know most of what you copy is fairly innocuous stuff without much to do with economics but that journal is such a loser when it comes to the real economic stuff... Just venting--like I said, I like most of what you take from the journal. I myself can't find time to wade through the neoliberal economic balderdash to find the nuggets, so I guess in fact I should be grateful you do that for us!!
Thanks for the feedback, John. However, I'm not clear whether you and I see the journal's material in the same way. About its being "such a loser when it comes to the real economic stuff", what are you referring to? I may or may not agree with you.
Ultimately, I don't trust journalism, no matter what their policies or POVs. (Leave aside, for the time being, the prejudices, the economic pressures, &c.) The reason for distrust is that writing attempts to portray the reality of the world--any situation you name--via words, which are an abstraction of reality. Even with the best of will and skill on the part of the writer and editor, it is impossible to portray the real world. The challenge to a good writer it to come as close as possible, but it is an impossible task.
The irony is that, knowing this, I still read--and believe--most of what I read. Shocking, I know. And I know that this is true of most other people, whether they're aware of it or not. I enjoy The Economist, but am aware of some of its limitations. On subjects that I know something about in depth, such as biological/ecological issues, they are out to lunch and they make me cringe.
So very nice to get feedback from "the Left Coast," here in Baltimore. Speaking of environment and ecology, I'm sure you are aware of the 800-pound gorilla for us Marylanders (and Pennsylvanians and Virginians...)--the dying Chesapeake Bay. The gyrations and ill-advised "proposals" that are seen every day are enough to make you weep.
I must confess that with The Economist I have a "chicken and egg" problem; my brother takes the magazine and so when I (infrequently) visit him in North Carolina and read the journal more or less cover-to-cover, I get so turned off by their economic reporting that I then skip reading again until the next visit, and the cycle repeats. Due to their title I hardly notice the non-economic stuff but I must admit you do find some good nuggets in their book reviews and so on. My problem with their economics is that it is orthodox neoliberalism--the doctrine that gave us concepts like "globalization," "free trade," and other really (to me) dangerously counter-progressive practices that have been to a large extent responsible for the sorry mess we all find ourselves in.
I do love your newsletters; I lived in the Bay Area on and off for about 25 years total while working on the peninsula; became friends with guys like Don Mayall, who turned me on to your newsletter.
I do sympathize fully with the challenge of reading, sifting, and then writing about what you've read. And by and large I don't find you a gullible person from what I read in the newsletters--for what that's worth. Anyway, take my feedback with a grain of salt and keep on doing what you're doing. I'm sure your fans appreciate getting the "straight dope" from you!!!
Best from Baltimore!!
Then we do agree. I read The Economist, knowing that that is their lens on the world. I can see them taking this view back in the 1800s, and they have been consistent (and internally consistent) ever since. The liberal theory (free markets, open borders, &c) is an appealing theory which I would like to subscribe to. Unfortunately it has serious flaws, as we know. They would perhaps argue that it will work if allowed to, but successive governments have allowed un-liberal practices and ideas to creep in. Now the fox is frequently guarding the henhouse and laissez-faire isn't allowed to work. (I don't think they would put it this way, and I'm not explaining my thoughts very well, but I hope you get the idea.) And crucially, there is the factor of uncontrolled population, which is not part of the theory, and which neither economists nor governments are seemingly willing to address, which defies reason. (Defy reason? Businesses love all those consumers, and the more of them there are, the more they can sell to them.) The result is devastation of the land and natural systems that we depend on. We--as a society--should be able to see that, but greed (on the part of some) and ideology (on the part of The Economist and others) prevent them from seeing the reality. So I suspect yours and my views of the magazine may be similar. I do find them thoughtful (even going back to their very first essays back in 1843) and they do a creditable job in regard to balance, which impresses me greatly.
Your praise means a great deal to me. If I don't hear from readers for awhile I begin to be assailed by doubts that this is the way I should be spending my time, when I am neglecting other issues that need attention. Fortunately, people do give me positive feedback, and that bucks me up and makes me want to continue.
Running Elk:
There is a provision in the stimulus bill (inserted by a Republican, by the way) that prohibits a state's governor from refusing to accept stimulus money for their state. This way, the republithugs can "refuse" the $$$ (because it's another step down the "slippery slope to Socialism", which they couldn't properly define with a dictionary), and be "forced" to accept it, anyway.
Given our attention-challenged electorate, it won't even be mentioned in 2010.
GOP governors take the (stimulus) money and run For higher office, and away from their earlier statements about how much they hate the whole idea of the stimulus.
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9. Accessibility of Scientific Observations
"The growing efforts of governments, corporations, and individuals to prevent competitors from knowing certain things that they themselves know has led to a stunning expansion of intellectual property rights and the strengthening of state classification powers...Broad areas of two sciences, physics and biology, are now off-limits to public discourse because they are national security risks. Our society is sequestering knowledge more extensively, rapidly, and thoroughly than any before it in history. Indeed, the Information Age should probably be called the Age of Amnesia because it has meant, in practice, a steep decline in public accessibility of important information." Physics Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin in The Crime of Reason
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10.
LTE Guardian Weekly 20.02.09
Even Darwin evolves
Steve Jones says "most clerics realised [that Darwin's ideas] have no relevance to religion". Really? After Darwin, neither of the two strong claims for religion - that there's no other plausible explanation for the wonders of nature, and that humans (or, in some variations, certain races) are special - could be intellectually sustained. That just leaves the claim that religion makes us better people. The evidence on this score is equivocal, to put it charitably. Jeremy Gilling, Sydney, Australia
In this year of Darwin, we are subjected to the agonies of Christians trying to reconcile their religion with evolution. Their major dilemma, of course, is to decide at what evolutionary stage do humans acquire a soul? Did Neanderthals have one? What about Homo ergaster, Homo erectus or Homo habilis? What about Lucy, our celebrity Australopithecus afarensis?
If only Homo sapiens have souls, at what stage did evolution give them one - at the start about 200,000 years ago, or when they developed speech about 70,000 years ago?
Hindus, with their larger conception of creation, do not have this problem.
Art Raiche, Killara, NSW, Australia
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11. From The Book of Musical Anecdotes:
"Ralph Vaughn Williams, the great English symphonist, was taught to read by his grandmother from the same book with which she had instructed her younger brother, Charles Darwin. There was a great kerfuffle among the family - like everywhere else - when On the Origin of Species was published, and Ralph, when he was about seven, asked his mother about it. His mother was extremely sensible. She said, "The Bible tells us that God made the world in six days. Great-uncle Charles thinks it took rather longer. But we needn't worry - it is equally wonderful either way."
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12. Following three items are from High Country News:
Former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said goodbye to his employees with a slide show, reports Washingtonpost.com. He showed about 600 slides, "each picturing the distinguished secretary, many of them taken at a national park." One staffer who sat through the presentation commented, "It was special. That's all I should say."
(No ego problem here. Also, Kempthorne spent $235,000 of our money to renovate his office bathroom.)
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Lest it be outdone in the attacking-animal category, Boulder, Colo., can report that a "bitter bovine" attacked a Boulder biker. NewWest.net said a cow "charged a woman" on a trail and knocked her down. "The cow had left the scene by the time rangers arrived, but hikers coming down the trail were warning others about the rogue bovine."
(Mad-cow disease?)
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Not to be outdone in the oddball department, Idaho State Senator Gary Schroeder, R, has introduced a bill requiring his state to gather up its wolves and give them away, preferably to another state, reports the IdahoStatesman.com, though so far none has stepped up to tell Idaho that it's wolf-short. The bill unanimously passed the Senate Resources and Environment Committee, which met in a room festooned with a wolf pelt hung by Schroeder; now the bill moves to the Senate. "We have to protect the elk here and get rid of some wolves," Schroeder explained. High Country News
From Jay Leno:
"Senator Roland Burris, who was appointed by Governor Blagojevich, could be in trouble for perjury and for giving conflicting statements in his testimony about campaign contributions. That's the trouble with politicians. They think the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth are three different things."
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13. The following websites compare the sizes of the planets, then the size of the planets compared to the Sun, then the Sun compared to larger stars, then the larger stars to those that dwarf them, then others which dwarf THEM, and so on. Mercifully, they stop at the Milky Way Galaxy, and don't try to compare it to other galaxies. Whew! Unbelievable, yet true.
The first of these following sites talks much too fast for my brain to keep up with it, although younger minds may cope. The second, however, are stills which demand rapt attention. Not just once or twice, but...well, daily wouldn't be too much. It's a way to stretch your mind, and fill it with wonder. Print them out and paste them on your wall.
JAKE - Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL4cFjmnQT8
& http://dalesdesigns.net/small.htm
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14. A misfit in Vienna
Bruckner's 4th Symphony was played by the San Francisco Symphony this week, so I dredged up this item from my files. It is an excerpt from article on the symphonist Anton Bruckner by Michael Steinberg in San Francisco Symphony program notes. I value it because it is good writing (Steinberg is unexcelled in writing about music), and it casts light on the times, on Vienna (from whence flowed most of the great instrumental music in western history), and on the composer.
"...with his peasant speech, his social clumsiness, trousers that looked as though a carpenter had built them, his disastrous inclination to fall in love with girls of sixteen, his distracting compulsions, his piety (he knelt to pray in the middle of a counterpoint class when he heard the angelus sound from the church next door), his powerful intelligence that functioned only when channeled into musical composition or teaching, a Neatherthal male chauvinism that even his contemporaries found remarkable, his unawareness of intellectual or political currents of his or any other day, Bruckner was not a likely candidate for success in that compost heap of gossip and intrigue that was Vienna, nor indeed anywhere in a world where a composer's success depends on so much other than skill at inventing music."
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15. 1977's Empire of the Ants acknowledges the human susceptibility to pheromonic influence: "Giant ants...use pheromones to enslave the local human population and to compel the humans to operate a sugar factory for them." In Florida, this same phenomenon is called agribusiness.
Steve Mirsky in Scientific American, October 2004
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16. The following article by Howard Wong is truncated from Part I (of three parts), appearing in the newsletter of San Francisco Tomorrow, January 2009
Honoring Chinatown’s History
Chinatown is a thriving Chinese community and a living historical testament---honoring 160 years of Chinese in America. Moreover, Chinatown’s history is a means for its survival and vibrancy...San Francisco’s Chinatown is an architectural and cultural gem and it is not even protected as a landmark Historic District.
Chinatown Could Easily Have Disappeared
Many Chinatowns in the US have waned or vanished for social and economic reasons. Many urban Chinatowns today, such as Manhattan and Boston, are battling escalating land values and encroaching financial districts. Marysville, California was once the second largest Chinatown in California...In San Francisco, early Chinese pioneers were resilient and stalwart in preserving their community. Warding off powerful economic forces, Chinese-Americans organized, garnered political/ foreign support, emphasized Chinatown’s tourism strengths and revenue-generating potential and reinvented the neighborhood as a new Oriental City of exotic culture and “veritable fairy palaces”. Chinatown’s preservation is as much a testament to a civil rights struggle, as to perseverance and cultural strength.
Chinatown Gradually Being Nibbled Away
Chinatown remains a cultural hub for Chinese Americans, a gateway for recent immigrants, a regional tourist attraction, a marketplace, a generator of diverse small businesses, a link to community services and home to Chinese-Americans, families, foreign-born and elderly. But gradually, over time, nearly imperceptible because of its slow progression, Chinatown’s uniqueness and history is vanishing. Chinatown’s distinguishing architecture and exotic impact are being supplanted by a rush to modernization and clichéd commercialism.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Nature News from Jake Sigg
1. Golden opportunity to preserve Bay Area open space/need for grantwriter
2. The oceans vs plastic; act
3. Two men at the top of my pantheon: Darwin and Lincoln, born the very same day: 12 February 1809
4. Penguins and Albatross--the world through the eyes of a seabird, Feb 19
5. Lead shot in the food chain; now on DVD
6. This weekend's Great Backyard Bird Count made it on Marketplace!; so did Alan Greenspan, to his regret
7. Free action toolkit for Do Not Mail Registry
8. Interacting with San Francisco's Park Patrol
9. Feedback: words, words, words
10. The strain in Spain falls mainly on the train: AVE Madrid
11. Another birthday celebration: Galileo 15 February
12. A new golden age for stargazing
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1.
"Golden Lands, Golden Opportunity" Aggressive Report Would Preserve Remaining Bay Area Open Space
"Thousands of acres in the Bay Area - from redwood forests in Sonoma County to orchards in Contra Costa and a large section of open space on San Francisco's waterfront - should be protected from development, according to a report released Tuesday.
The areas are included in the first comprehensive list of woodlands, trails, orchards, watersheds and parks that more than 100 land-use experts decided should be part of a regionwide green corridor with space for wildlife, human recreation and agriculture."
Read the full article on SFGate.com (copy and paste url)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/04/BA4Q15ME6N.DTL.
Nature in the City Needs a Grantwriter!
If you have a background in grantwriting, and have some spare time on your hands, we really need you! We are looking for a volunteer grantwriter to help us get the funding we need to continue all the wonderful things we do for San Francisco and its people & wildlife.
Please forward this on to anyone you think may be interested! If you are succesful you will be compensated for your work.
Give us a call at 415-564-4107 or send an e-mail to steward@natureinthecity.org if you would like to lend us your expertise.
*****************************
2.
OceanHealth.Org and San Francisco's Surfrider Chapter (www.sfsurfrider.org) are encouraging shoppers to "Love the Ocean & Use Less Plastic" on Valentine's Day by remembering their reusable shopping bags and avoiding plastic products on Valentine's Day. Please join the online campaign at http://tinyurl.com/8hhzyj to show your support and to learn ways that you can help.
_________________
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority." E.B. White
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3.
Modern biology owes unpayable debt to Darwin
For any endeavor, identifying the greatest practitioner of all time is almost always contentious...Physicists would argue over Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, with perhaps a few votes for Niels Bohr. Mathematicians would divide their votes among Newton, Archimedes and Carl Gauss.
But then there's biology. The greatest biologist of all time? There's only one answer. Any other vote invalidates the voter as unqualified. It's Darwin.
On the occasion of his 200th birthday the world is celebrating the life and work of the man who made modern biology possible. As geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once so aptly proclaimed, "Nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution." No scientist's birthday warrants more hullabaloo and hoopla.
Excerpt from Science News editorial 31.01.09
_____________
Abraham Lincoln
Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, the same day as Abraham Lincoln, who also struggled to reconcile our binary natures in his first inaugural address on the eve of the Civil War: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." From Skeptic column in Scientific American, February 2009
Here are some helter-skelter, disjointed notes about Lincoln, in no particular order, unattributed, including direct quotes. I gathered the material from a variety of sources: reading books, articles, internet, radio (hastily-scribbled notes), a CD course from The Teaching Company. Why do I do this? Primarily because Lincoln has taught me a great deal about life and about government--AND how we got where we are. It could have been otherwise. Late in life I am learning how complex human beings are, and how tricky it is to govern us. He is unquestionably one of the very great political leaders--one of the three or four in human history, in the view of one scholar.
Lincoln and race
Lincoln was a racist, as were almost all whites at the time. He used the N-word in his racist jokes, thought blacks inherently inferior, and proposed the solution of shipping them back to Africa. Although shocking to modern sensibilities, none of this should be surprising. In my youth (1930s, '40s), racism and sexism was rife, and few thought much about it. True, in school we were being taught that treating blacks as inferior was unfair and unjust, so the groundwork for attitude change on race was being laid. (Not so for sexism, which was so deeply ingrained and accepted that it was almost invisible, and certainly never mentioned in school.) Nevertheless, slavery was deeply repugnant to Lincoln and--in spite of his denials to accusations that he would free the slaves--the South deeply distrusted him, so much so that as soon as he was elected the South began seceding.
Lincoln grew regarding views of race; he once declined to invite Frederick Douglass to the White House.
Lincoln and Douglass were pre-eminently self-made men; they both were continually evolving--which was a contradiction of the very idea of slavery. Lincoln and Douglass came to know each other.
Lincoln met more blacks in the White House than all previous presidents combined.
Although racist, Lincoln was strongly opposed to slavery, but he had to ready the nation first. However, even in 1863 he wasn't sure the two races could co-exist.
We have mythologized Lincoln; we see him not as a human. We have greater respect for him when we see him as a recovering racist.
Lincoln and politics
Lincoln was one of most hated men in America. He received only 40% of the vote for president in 1860. He was ridiculed, caricatured, and frequently referred to as "ugly". (Some people even today regard him as ugly or unattractive. I have never understood this, as his deep character lines are anything but ugly to me.)
Some of his own cabinet hated him and tried to undermine him.
Many in America and Europe believed that the decay of democracy was embodied in the choice of a backwoods solicitor such as Lincoln to guide the destiny of his nation.
The war was going badly. Initially, Lincoln thought the rebellion would be put down and life would go on. (He called it rebellion; he refused to even consider the idea of secession)
He understood how fragile democracy is. He always tried working things out.
Politics is usually about paying back; Lincoln overcame this temptation and appointed many rivals and enemies. (Arabian proverb: Hold your friends close; hold your enemies even closer.) For example:
He appointed William H. Seward, one of his opponents in the 1860 Republican presidential primary, as Secretary of State. Seward developed into a loyal supporter.
He appointed Salmon P. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury. Chase was a humorless, relentlessly ambitious man who never liked Lincoln. (The feeling was mutual.) He never gave up the desire to be president, not even in 1864, when Lincoln ran for re-election.
Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's "Mars," (Secretary of War) also at first held Lincoln in very low esteem, publicly blaming the North's initial reverses in the war on the president's ineptness. Eventually, however, Stanton warmed to the difficult task of reforming the War Department and a mutual respect between him and his president grew as the difficult war proceeded.
Many of Lincoln's cabinet appointments were from his opposition--some of them contemptuous of Lincoln--and they reflected opinion of the Democrats from the North. They thought they could control Lincoln, but they learned otherwise.
So Lincoln's turbulent group of touchy, ambitious men actually became a team and guided the Union during those dangerous times. In the end, though, it was Lincoln's forbearance, humor and understanding of human nature that was the linchpin of this fragile team that saved the Union.
In her outstanding work on this subject, Team of Rivals, the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin describes the consummate skill Lincoln showed in managing this unruly group of ambitious establishment politicians during a time of our nation's greatest peril.
(Postscript: When it was decided to name a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, I was a little disappointed that they had not named it instead for Frederick Douglass, a deeply impressive man and a towering figure in my mind.)
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4.
“Penguins and Albatross ~ The World Through the Eyes of a Seabird”
Presented by Ted Cheeseman
Thursday, February 19, 7.30 pm - free
SF County Fair Building, located at 9th and Lincoln Ave.
Join naturalist and expedition leader Ted Cheeseman for a lecture exploring what it is to be a seabird in the vast unforgiving desert of the open ocean. How is it that albatross can fly 1400 miles on a single feeding trip to bring home just one meal for a chick? How can penguins survive, thrive raise chicks in the world's harshest environments, but yet do not populate the mild tropics? Illustrated with images from Ted's travels with Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris around the world, Ted will tell stories of the new views we are able to have into the lives of seabirds through GPS-telemetry. We are only now learning how truly magnificent penguins and albatross are just as many species face sharp declines at the hands of industrial fishing and climate change. Through his expeditions with Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris, Ted frequently travels across the Southern Ocean and to its sub-Antarctic islands, the heart of prime penguin and albatross habitat. Ted will take you undersea with penguins and on the wing of an albatross, an entertaining and educational journey among the world's greatest mariners with beautiful photographs and the most recent bird science.
Ted's abiding love of penguins and albatross stems from a lifetime of guiding travelers to remote seabird breeding colonies. He grew up traveling extensively with Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris, and began studying and photographing wildlife very early. After completing a master's degree in tropical conservation biology at Duke University, Ted returned to California to lead and organize expeditions full time with Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris. These voyages take Ted around the globe several times each year, sharing his love for the natural world with travelers. Through voyages to Antarctica Ted has witnessed the decline of his favorite of all birds, the Wandering Albatross, inspiring him to become involved with conservation efforts to protect these magnificent birds. Ted currently leads expeditions to South America, Antarctica and the Arctic for Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris.
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5.
TO: MEMBERS OF THE CALIFORNIA FISH & GAME COMMISSION, et al.
At the Commission's 2/05/09 Public Forum I mentioned the availability of a new Canadian documentary entitled, "Mystery of the Toxic Swans," dealing
with the lead shot issue and its devastating effects on wildlife (and not just swans). The film has already aired on Canadian TV to very favorable reviews, and the producers are currently seeking venues in the U.S.
As noted, former Commissioner Judd Hanna has a featured spot in the film. As you'll recall, Mr. Judd was politically lynched for speaking the truth about lead shot. Here's hoping all of you fare better.
The DVD is available from:
OMNI FILM PRODUCTIONS
111 Water Street
Vancouver V6B 1A7 CANADA tel. 604/681-6543
I was told that the cost of the DVD is $25 (U.S.), plus $6 (postage and handling). Could be cheaper in bulk, or for educational purposes. I would urge you all to get a copy. Again, I remain convinced that lead should be banned nationwide for all hunting and fishing. The science is in.
Eric Mills, coordinator
ACTION FOR ANIMALS
Oakland
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6.
I am a regular listener to NPR's Marketplace (4 pm weekdays KQED-FM), and was surprised and delighted to see a plug for the Great Backyard Bird Count going on now and through the weekend:
Marketplace datebook for Friday, February 13, 2009
And to benefit our feathered friends, the annual Great Backyard Bird Count begins, creating a record of where the birds are.
on the weekend of the count and click on the big “Enter your Checklists” button
The program occasionally has items about the health of the economy being connected to the health of the environment, but I it seems more of a stretch to figure the connection here, unless there is a chance to sell more binoculars. (Just kidding.)
____________________
A commentary from Marketplace:
Really, Mr. Greenspan?
Tonight*, CNBC airs a two-hour documentary on the economy’s collapse called “The House of Cards.” It includes comments from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan says he was baffled by what was happening in the subprime mortgage market until late 2005, when it was too late. Greenspan is often blamed for letting interest rates sink too low for too long, but he says if the Fed had stepped in, the outcome would have been painful:
“We could have basically clamped down on the American economy, generated a 10 percent unemployment rate. And I will guarantee we would not have had a housing boom, a stock market boom or indeed a particularly good economy either.”
Uh, excuse me, but with all due respect, Mr. Greenspan, what in the world do we have now?
*' Tonight' was several days ago
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7.
We've put together a guide outlining some of our favorite ways to help establish a Do Not Mail Registry in the U.S. Will you help promote the petition online, create a junk mail monster, or help build the Do Not Mail Coalition? Get your free action toolkit now.
Take it from NASA's leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen: A Do Not Mail Registry is long overdue.
* "20 years after I first testified before Congress on the threats posed by climate change, we have reached a point at which we must remove unnecessary carbon emissions from our lives, or face catastrophic consequences. It is hard to imagine waste more unnecessary than the 100 billion pieces of junk mail Americans receive each year, and these new findings, revealing that the emissions of junk mail are equal to that of over nine million cars, underscore the prudent necessity of a Do Not Mail Registry."
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8.
(I lost the attribution on this item, but the item itself is important for advice regarding your experience with San Francisco's Park Patrol):
Thank you so much for writing your concerns about the Rangers. On our own part, we have witnessed the Rangers being effective and responsive in our respective park areas, but if that has not been the case for you and others, then it is important that this information be given to the Ranger management, so that they can work with the staff.
Please, in the future – and if you have the contacts for the people who were unhappy in the past – ask the people to send their complaints to the Rangers. They now have dispatchers, one of whose jobs it is to record and report all issues. To reach the dispatchers, call 415-242-6390 or call 311 and ask to be transferred.
If anyone feels uncomfortable talking directly to the Rangers about problems, then they should contact Dennis Kern, RPD Director of Operations, and express their concerns to him. Mr. Kern can be reached at Dennis.Kern@sfgov.org
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9. Feedback
On Feb 10, 2009, at 1:32 PM, Nancy Dunn wrote:
The literally incredible suggestion was intended more as a joke than anything else. Some humor does not transfer well to email.
Steve Neff:
but wouldn't it ruin the flow of my joke to spell "loo" correctly? It is so hard sometimes to know how to tell jokes properly in the e-mail age!
I know, Steve, I know. Yours is not the first one I misinterpreted. I have had a hard time learning about how we communicate, and I have constantly underestimated (Dubya would say "misunderestimated") the non-verbal aspects: body language, inflection, &c. I am learning the hard way about being careful with joking via email. All you have is words in black and white, without all those non-verbal clues we depend on.
I shouldn't confine it to joking: One has to be careful about expressing oneself in general via email. Email is good for data and other information. Beyond that, be careful, especially with people who are not close friends and who do not know you well. This applies to my newsletter, and I think of it always when writing things. Even then, many people are unsure of how I mean something; it's a risk I have to take.
yeah, e-mail is easily misinterpreted. I'm not really sure why it is different from writing letters. I've had friendships lost through e-mail, but never through letters. I think it FEELS to us like verbal conversation, maybe because it is instantaneous, but it sure ain't. For all its advantages, I think we as a society are losing something important.
Marck Menke:
The one I was referring to is included in the collection 'Consider The Lobster' under another title: 'Authority and American Usage'. I can't do the article justice in a summary but it brings up a lot of interesting points around the questions "Whose language?" and "Who decides what
is good usage versus poor." Wallace doesn't come out in favour of no prescriptions but he does suggest humility and argumentation that goes beyond "Because I say so or my dictionary or class system do it that way".
As for whether you are any of those pejorative terms I listed (BTW, "snoot" is Wallace's own term for draconian usage obsessives.)... I'll leave you and everyone else to self-define (unless backed into a judgmental corner.). I'm not beyond, being stymied or non-plussed by some word misapplications, such as the misuse of "literally"... but I really hate squabbling and snickering over bullshit like the number of syllables in 'forte'.
So perhaps I am a 'snoot' myself, in a anarcho-progressive way... but I'm definitely not a 'creationist'. Its exciting to find new words an usage patterns to try out, even before the dictionary gives me its sanctimonious permission to do so.
Well, Marck, I am a conservative when it comes to language. I formerly was obsessed with efficiency, and spelled words like tonite, lo-cost, enuf, &c. Slowly I evolved to honoring the derivation, as there is rich historical and cultural association in words like enough, dialogue, although, &c. I like to know that catalogue and dialogue came from the French, and English -ough words have a story to tell. Many aspects of the world are sterile and homogenized enough, and I like to preserve a trail to word origins.
I don't know what to say about the pronunciation of forte. Perhaps you're right; I can be anal and nitpicky, and I can't make a case for this being a to-the-barricades issue. (Nitpickers have a place, too, however; don't dismiss their contributions entirely.)
However, I didn't hear a reaction from you regarding words like pristine, incredible, genuine. Although they are used, sometimes even by semi-serious people, for all practical purposes they have lost their meaning from overuse or misuse, and there is no word to replace them. If we don't have a word to express a concept, that means that the concept disappears. We are impoverished. I consider this a serious matter.
Apropos an item which I am omitting here:
BTW, as an aside--not directly related to this--I recall riding in the back of a car with someone who asked me if I was aware of how many times I said "you know". (This was in the 1970s, when "you know" and "like" were the lingua franca of the young. I was no longer young, but I picked up the expression from hearing it constantly.) I denied using it; she said she would poke me every time I said it. As we were talking, she kept poking me in the ribs. "Stop it," I said, annoyed and a little angry. "I'm not saying it all those times." "Yes, you are," she said. She kept it up until I started hearing myself saying it. I couldn't believe it. For months afterward I kept catching myself, and I evolved to the point where I checked myself before uttering it. I found it difficult to realize that I never listened to what I was saying. How could I have said it a dozen times in about 2-3 minutes and not even be aware of it? JS
On Feb 9, 2009, at 5:36 PM, Stephen Shotland wrote:
Oh for an interesting malapropism. Be it intentional or not.
How about the head of Grace Steamship Company, in supporting Ronald Reagan's stand on abortion: "We were all feces at one time. I was a feces; you were a feces."
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10. AVE Madrid
Early morning at Barcelona's railway station and the platform crowd looks smarter than it would have done a year ago. But these are not ordinary weekday commuters. They are besuited businessmen heading for Madrid, almost 500 km away. A sleek new high-speed AVE train will whisk them to the capital at speeds of up to 300 kmph in plenty of time for their morning meetings.
...Domestic airlines have lost a fifth of their passengers in the space of a year...This shift is the consequence of an ambitious programme for high-speed rail...Spain's high-speed network is still in its infancy. Another 9,000 km of lines are planned over the next decade. The aim is to create Europe's most extensive high-speed network, with 90% of Spaniards living within 50 km of a station.
Excerpted from The Economist 07.02.09
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11. Born 15 February 1564: Galileo Galilei
In May 1609, Galileo received a letter from Paolo Sarpi telling him about a spyglass that a Dutchman had shown in Venice. Galileo wrote in the Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius) in April 1610:
"About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby. Of this truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons believed while other denied them. A few days later the report was confirmed by a letter I received from a Frenchman in Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to investigate means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did soon afterwards, my basis being the doctrine of refraction."
By the end of 1609 Galileo had turned his telescope on the night sky and began to make remarkable discoveries. Swerdlow writes:
In about two months, December and January, he made more discoveries that changed the world than anyone has ever made before or since.
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12. A new golden age for stargazing
The International Year of Astronomy is already sparking innovation and competition
It’s been 400 years since University of Padua professor Galileo Galilei had the bright idea of turning a modified spyglass toward the night sky. What he saw forever shattered the Earth-centered cosmos.
Four centuries later, telescopes reveal daily that the universe is vaster, stranger and more violent than Galileo could have imagined. He incited the compulsion to tunnel deeper into the sky, and the universe shows no sign of running out of surprises.
…Galileo “wouldn’t have had the cultural reference frame to appreciate or understand all this stuff,” said (an astronomer). “First of all, he’d get stuck on the scale of the universe.”
A constant in the history of the telescope is that new instruments inevitably change our view of the cosmos. Another constant is that the Copernican model, in all its significance, continues to hold. There does not appear to be anything particularly special about our place in the universe.
“Life is sort of a small fraction of what the universe is about—depending on your perspective. If you look out in the universe, it’s a pretty dead place…Anyone coming from Galileo’s time would be shocked by the diminution of mankind in the context of the universe. Galileo would be less shocked than most,” said Adam Burrows, a Princeton astronomer.
Excerpted from Washington Post
2. The oceans vs plastic; act
3. Two men at the top of my pantheon: Darwin and Lincoln, born the very same day: 12 February 1809
4. Penguins and Albatross--the world through the eyes of a seabird, Feb 19
5. Lead shot in the food chain; now on DVD
6. This weekend's Great Backyard Bird Count made it on Marketplace!; so did Alan Greenspan, to his regret
7. Free action toolkit for Do Not Mail Registry
8. Interacting with San Francisco's Park Patrol
9. Feedback: words, words, words
10. The strain in Spain falls mainly on the train: AVE Madrid
11. Another birthday celebration: Galileo 15 February
12. A new golden age for stargazing
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1.
"Golden Lands, Golden Opportunity" Aggressive Report Would Preserve Remaining Bay Area Open Space
"Thousands of acres in the Bay Area - from redwood forests in Sonoma County to orchards in Contra Costa and a large section of open space on San Francisco's waterfront - should be protected from development, according to a report released Tuesday.
The areas are included in the first comprehensive list of woodlands, trails, orchards, watersheds and parks that more than 100 land-use experts decided should be part of a regionwide green corridor with space for wildlife, human recreation and agriculture."
Read the full article on SFGate.com (copy and paste url)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/04/BA4Q15ME6N.DTL.
Nature in the City Needs a Grantwriter!
If you have a background in grantwriting, and have some spare time on your hands, we really need you! We are looking for a volunteer grantwriter to help us get the funding we need to continue all the wonderful things we do for San Francisco and its people & wildlife.
Please forward this on to anyone you think may be interested! If you are succesful you will be compensated for your work.
Give us a call at 415-564-4107 or send an e-mail to steward@natureinthecity.org if you would like to lend us your expertise.
*****************************
2.
OceanHealth.Org and San Francisco's Surfrider Chapter (www.sfsurfrider.org) are encouraging shoppers to "Love the Ocean & Use Less Plastic" on Valentine's Day by remembering their reusable shopping bags and avoiding plastic products on Valentine's Day. Please join the online campaign at http://tinyurl.com/8hhzyj to show your support and to learn ways that you can help.
_________________
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority." E.B. White
******************************
3.
Modern biology owes unpayable debt to Darwin
For any endeavor, identifying the greatest practitioner of all time is almost always contentious...Physicists would argue over Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, with perhaps a few votes for Niels Bohr. Mathematicians would divide their votes among Newton, Archimedes and Carl Gauss.
But then there's biology. The greatest biologist of all time? There's only one answer. Any other vote invalidates the voter as unqualified. It's Darwin.
On the occasion of his 200th birthday the world is celebrating the life and work of the man who made modern biology possible. As geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once so aptly proclaimed, "Nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution." No scientist's birthday warrants more hullabaloo and hoopla.
Excerpt from Science News editorial 31.01.09
_____________
Abraham Lincoln
Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, the same day as Abraham Lincoln, who also struggled to reconcile our binary natures in his first inaugural address on the eve of the Civil War: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." From Skeptic column in Scientific American, February 2009
Here are some helter-skelter, disjointed notes about Lincoln, in no particular order, unattributed, including direct quotes. I gathered the material from a variety of sources: reading books, articles, internet, radio (hastily-scribbled notes), a CD course from The Teaching Company. Why do I do this? Primarily because Lincoln has taught me a great deal about life and about government--AND how we got where we are. It could have been otherwise. Late in life I am learning how complex human beings are, and how tricky it is to govern us. He is unquestionably one of the very great political leaders--one of the three or four in human history, in the view of one scholar.
Lincoln and race
Lincoln was a racist, as were almost all whites at the time. He used the N-word in his racist jokes, thought blacks inherently inferior, and proposed the solution of shipping them back to Africa. Although shocking to modern sensibilities, none of this should be surprising. In my youth (1930s, '40s), racism and sexism was rife, and few thought much about it. True, in school we were being taught that treating blacks as inferior was unfair and unjust, so the groundwork for attitude change on race was being laid. (Not so for sexism, which was so deeply ingrained and accepted that it was almost invisible, and certainly never mentioned in school.) Nevertheless, slavery was deeply repugnant to Lincoln and--in spite of his denials to accusations that he would free the slaves--the South deeply distrusted him, so much so that as soon as he was elected the South began seceding.
Lincoln grew regarding views of race; he once declined to invite Frederick Douglass to the White House.
Lincoln and Douglass were pre-eminently self-made men; they both were continually evolving--which was a contradiction of the very idea of slavery. Lincoln and Douglass came to know each other.
Lincoln met more blacks in the White House than all previous presidents combined.
Although racist, Lincoln was strongly opposed to slavery, but he had to ready the nation first. However, even in 1863 he wasn't sure the two races could co-exist.
We have mythologized Lincoln; we see him not as a human. We have greater respect for him when we see him as a recovering racist.
Lincoln and politics
Lincoln was one of most hated men in America. He received only 40% of the vote for president in 1860. He was ridiculed, caricatured, and frequently referred to as "ugly". (Some people even today regard him as ugly or unattractive. I have never understood this, as his deep character lines are anything but ugly to me.)
Some of his own cabinet hated him and tried to undermine him.
Many in America and Europe believed that the decay of democracy was embodied in the choice of a backwoods solicitor such as Lincoln to guide the destiny of his nation.
The war was going badly. Initially, Lincoln thought the rebellion would be put down and life would go on. (He called it rebellion; he refused to even consider the idea of secession)
He understood how fragile democracy is. He always tried working things out.
Politics is usually about paying back; Lincoln overcame this temptation and appointed many rivals and enemies. (Arabian proverb: Hold your friends close; hold your enemies even closer.) For example:
He appointed William H. Seward, one of his opponents in the 1860 Republican presidential primary, as Secretary of State. Seward developed into a loyal supporter.
He appointed Salmon P. Chase as Secretary of the Treasury. Chase was a humorless, relentlessly ambitious man who never liked Lincoln. (The feeling was mutual.) He never gave up the desire to be president, not even in 1864, when Lincoln ran for re-election.
Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's "Mars," (Secretary of War) also at first held Lincoln in very low esteem, publicly blaming the North's initial reverses in the war on the president's ineptness. Eventually, however, Stanton warmed to the difficult task of reforming the War Department and a mutual respect between him and his president grew as the difficult war proceeded.
Many of Lincoln's cabinet appointments were from his opposition--some of them contemptuous of Lincoln--and they reflected opinion of the Democrats from the North. They thought they could control Lincoln, but they learned otherwise.
So Lincoln's turbulent group of touchy, ambitious men actually became a team and guided the Union during those dangerous times. In the end, though, it was Lincoln's forbearance, humor and understanding of human nature that was the linchpin of this fragile team that saved the Union.
In her outstanding work on this subject, Team of Rivals, the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin describes the consummate skill Lincoln showed in managing this unruly group of ambitious establishment politicians during a time of our nation's greatest peril.
(Postscript: When it was decided to name a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, I was a little disappointed that they had not named it instead for Frederick Douglass, a deeply impressive man and a towering figure in my mind.)
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4.
“Penguins and Albatross ~ The World Through the Eyes of a Seabird”
Presented by Ted Cheeseman
Thursday, February 19, 7.30 pm - free
SF County Fair Building, located at 9th and Lincoln Ave.
Join naturalist and expedition leader Ted Cheeseman for a lecture exploring what it is to be a seabird in the vast unforgiving desert of the open ocean. How is it that albatross can fly 1400 miles on a single feeding trip to bring home just one meal for a chick? How can penguins survive, thrive raise chicks in the world's harshest environments, but yet do not populate the mild tropics? Illustrated with images from Ted's travels with Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris around the world, Ted will tell stories of the new views we are able to have into the lives of seabirds through GPS-telemetry. We are only now learning how truly magnificent penguins and albatross are just as many species face sharp declines at the hands of industrial fishing and climate change. Through his expeditions with Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris, Ted frequently travels across the Southern Ocean and to its sub-Antarctic islands, the heart of prime penguin and albatross habitat. Ted will take you undersea with penguins and on the wing of an albatross, an entertaining and educational journey among the world's greatest mariners with beautiful photographs and the most recent bird science.
Ted's abiding love of penguins and albatross stems from a lifetime of guiding travelers to remote seabird breeding colonies. He grew up traveling extensively with Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris, and began studying and photographing wildlife very early. After completing a master's degree in tropical conservation biology at Duke University, Ted returned to California to lead and organize expeditions full time with Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris. These voyages take Ted around the globe several times each year, sharing his love for the natural world with travelers. Through voyages to Antarctica Ted has witnessed the decline of his favorite of all birds, the Wandering Albatross, inspiring him to become involved with conservation efforts to protect these magnificent birds. Ted currently leads expeditions to South America, Antarctica and the Arctic for Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris.
****************************
5.
TO: MEMBERS OF THE CALIFORNIA FISH & GAME COMMISSION, et al.
At the Commission's 2/05/09 Public Forum I mentioned the availability of a new Canadian documentary entitled, "Mystery of the Toxic Swans," dealing
with the lead shot issue and its devastating effects on wildlife (and not just swans). The film has already aired on Canadian TV to very favorable reviews, and the producers are currently seeking venues in the U.S.
As noted, former Commissioner Judd Hanna has a featured spot in the film. As you'll recall, Mr. Judd was politically lynched for speaking the truth about lead shot. Here's hoping all of you fare better.
The DVD is available from:
OMNI FILM PRODUCTIONS
111 Water Street
Vancouver V6B 1A7 CANADA tel. 604/681-6543
I was told that the cost of the DVD is $25 (U.S.), plus $6 (postage and handling). Could be cheaper in bulk, or for educational purposes. I would urge you all to get a copy. Again, I remain convinced that lead should be banned nationwide for all hunting and fishing. The science is in.
Eric Mills, coordinator
ACTION FOR ANIMALS
Oakland
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6.
I am a regular listener to NPR's Marketplace (4 pm weekdays KQED-FM), and was surprised and delighted to see a plug for the Great Backyard Bird Count going on now and through the weekend:
Marketplace datebook for Friday, February 13, 2009
And to benefit our feathered friends, the annual Great Backyard Bird Count begins, creating a record of where the birds are.
The program occasionally has items about the health of the economy being connected to the health of the environment, but I it seems more of a stretch to figure the connection here, unless there is a chance to sell more binoculars. (Just kidding.)
____________________
A commentary from Marketplace:
Really, Mr. Greenspan?
Tonight*, CNBC airs a two-hour documentary on the economy’s collapse called “The House of Cards.” It includes comments from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan says he was baffled by what was happening in the subprime mortgage market until late 2005, when it was too late. Greenspan is often blamed for letting interest rates sink too low for too long, but he says if the Fed had stepped in, the outcome would have been painful:
“We could have basically clamped down on the American economy, generated a 10 percent unemployment rate. And I will guarantee we would not have had a housing boom, a stock market boom or indeed a particularly good economy either.”
Uh, excuse me, but with all due respect, Mr. Greenspan, what in the world do we have now?
*' Tonight' was several days ago
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7.
We've put together a guide outlining some of our favorite ways to help establish a Do Not Mail Registry in the U.S. Will you help promote the petition online, create a junk mail monster, or help build the Do Not Mail Coalition? Get your free action toolkit now.
Take it from NASA's leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen: A Do Not Mail Registry is long overdue.
* "20 years after I first testified before Congress on the threats posed by climate change, we have reached a point at which we must remove unnecessary carbon emissions from our lives, or face catastrophic consequences. It is hard to imagine waste more unnecessary than the 100 billion pieces of junk mail Americans receive each year, and these new findings, revealing that the emissions of junk mail are equal to that of over nine million cars, underscore the prudent necessity of a Do Not Mail Registry."
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8.
(I lost the attribution on this item, but the item itself is important for advice regarding your experience with San Francisco's Park Patrol):
Thank you so much for writing your concerns about the Rangers. On our own part, we have witnessed the Rangers being effective and responsive in our respective park areas, but if that has not been the case for you and others, then it is important that this information be given to the Ranger management, so that they can work with the staff.
Please, in the future – and if you have the contacts for the people who were unhappy in the past – ask the people to send their complaints to the Rangers. They now have dispatchers, one of whose jobs it is to record and report all issues. To reach the dispatchers, call 415-242-6390 or call 311 and ask to be transferred.
If anyone feels uncomfortable talking directly to the Rangers about problems, then they should contact Dennis Kern, RPD Director of Operations, and express their concerns to him. Mr. Kern can be reached at Dennis.Kern@sfgov.org
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9. Feedback
On Feb 10, 2009, at 1:32 PM, Nancy Dunn wrote:
The literally incredible suggestion was intended more as a joke than anything else. Some humor does not transfer well to email.
Steve Neff:
but wouldn't it ruin the flow of my joke to spell "loo" correctly? It is so hard sometimes to know how to tell jokes properly in the e-mail age!
I know, Steve, I know. Yours is not the first one I misinterpreted. I have had a hard time learning about how we communicate, and I have constantly underestimated (Dubya would say "misunderestimated") the non-verbal aspects: body language, inflection, &c. I am learning the hard way about being careful with joking via email. All you have is words in black and white, without all those non-verbal clues we depend on.
I shouldn't confine it to joking: One has to be careful about expressing oneself in general via email. Email is good for data and other information. Beyond that, be careful, especially with people who are not close friends and who do not know you well. This applies to my newsletter, and I think of it always when writing things. Even then, many people are unsure of how I mean something; it's a risk I have to take.
yeah, e-mail is easily misinterpreted. I'm not really sure why it is different from writing letters. I've had friendships lost through e-mail, but never through letters. I think it FEELS to us like verbal conversation, maybe because it is instantaneous, but it sure ain't. For all its advantages, I think we as a society are losing something important.
Marck Menke:
The one I was referring to is included in the collection 'Consider The Lobster' under another title: 'Authority and American Usage'. I can't do the article justice in a summary but it brings up a lot of interesting points around the questions "Whose language?" and "Who decides what
is good usage versus poor." Wallace doesn't come out in favour of no prescriptions but he does suggest humility and argumentation that goes beyond "Because I say so or my dictionary or class system do it that way".
As for whether you are any of those pejorative terms I listed (BTW, "snoot" is Wallace's own term for draconian usage obsessives.)... I'll leave you and everyone else to self-define (unless backed into a judgmental corner.). I'm not beyond, being stymied or non-plussed by some word misapplications, such as the misuse of "literally"... but I really hate squabbling and snickering over bullshit like the number of syllables in 'forte'.
So perhaps I am a 'snoot' myself, in a anarcho-progressive way... but I'm definitely not a 'creationist'. Its exciting to find new words an usage patterns to try out, even before the dictionary gives me its sanctimonious permission to do so.
Well, Marck, I am a conservative when it comes to language. I formerly was obsessed with efficiency, and spelled words like tonite, lo-cost, enuf, &c. Slowly I evolved to honoring the derivation, as there is rich historical and cultural association in words like enough, dialogue, although, &c. I like to know that catalogue and dialogue came from the French, and English -ough words have a story to tell. Many aspects of the world are sterile and homogenized enough, and I like to preserve a trail to word origins.
I don't know what to say about the pronunciation of forte. Perhaps you're right; I can be anal and nitpicky, and I can't make a case for this being a to-the-barricades issue. (Nitpickers have a place, too, however; don't dismiss their contributions entirely.)
However, I didn't hear a reaction from you regarding words like pristine, incredible, genuine. Although they are used, sometimes even by semi-serious people, for all practical purposes they have lost their meaning from overuse or misuse, and there is no word to replace them. If we don't have a word to express a concept, that means that the concept disappears. We are impoverished. I consider this a serious matter.
Apropos an item which I am omitting here:
BTW, as an aside--not directly related to this--I recall riding in the back of a car with someone who asked me if I was aware of how many times I said "you know". (This was in the 1970s, when "you know" and "like" were the lingua franca of the young. I was no longer young, but I picked up the expression from hearing it constantly.) I denied using it; she said she would poke me every time I said it. As we were talking, she kept poking me in the ribs. "Stop it," I said, annoyed and a little angry. "I'm not saying it all those times." "Yes, you are," she said. She kept it up until I started hearing myself saying it. I couldn't believe it. For months afterward I kept catching myself, and I evolved to the point where I checked myself before uttering it. I found it difficult to realize that I never listened to what I was saying. How could I have said it a dozen times in about 2-3 minutes and not even be aware of it? JS
On Feb 9, 2009, at 5:36 PM, Stephen Shotland wrote:
Oh for an interesting malapropism. Be it intentional or not.
How about the head of Grace Steamship Company, in supporting Ronald Reagan's stand on abortion: "We were all feces at one time. I was a feces; you were a feces."
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10. AVE Madrid
Early morning at Barcelona's railway station and the platform crowd looks smarter than it would have done a year ago. But these are not ordinary weekday commuters. They are besuited businessmen heading for Madrid, almost 500 km away. A sleek new high-speed AVE train will whisk them to the capital at speeds of up to 300 kmph in plenty of time for their morning meetings.
...Domestic airlines have lost a fifth of their passengers in the space of a year...This shift is the consequence of an ambitious programme for high-speed rail...Spain's high-speed network is still in its infancy. Another 9,000 km of lines are planned over the next decade. The aim is to create Europe's most extensive high-speed network, with 90% of Spaniards living within 50 km of a station.
Excerpted from The Economist 07.02.09
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11. Born 15 February 1564: Galileo Galilei
In May 1609, Galileo received a letter from Paolo Sarpi telling him about a spyglass that a Dutchman had shown in Venice. Galileo wrote in the Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius) in April 1610:
"About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby. Of this truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons believed while other denied them. A few days later the report was confirmed by a letter I received from a Frenchman in Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to investigate means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did soon afterwards, my basis being the doctrine of refraction."
By the end of 1609 Galileo had turned his telescope on the night sky and began to make remarkable discoveries. Swerdlow writes:
In about two months, December and January, he made more discoveries that changed the world than anyone has ever made before or since.
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12. A new golden age for stargazing
The International Year of Astronomy is already sparking innovation and competition
It’s been 400 years since University of Padua professor Galileo Galilei had the bright idea of turning a modified spyglass toward the night sky. What he saw forever shattered the Earth-centered cosmos.
Four centuries later, telescopes reveal daily that the universe is vaster, stranger and more violent than Galileo could have imagined. He incited the compulsion to tunnel deeper into the sky, and the universe shows no sign of running out of surprises.
…Galileo “wouldn’t have had the cultural reference frame to appreciate or understand all this stuff,” said (an astronomer). “First of all, he’d get stuck on the scale of the universe.”
A constant in the history of the telescope is that new instruments inevitably change our view of the cosmos. Another constant is that the Copernican model, in all its significance, continues to hold. There does not appear to be anything particularly special about our place in the universe.
“Life is sort of a small fraction of what the universe is about—depending on your perspective. If you look out in the universe, it’s a pretty dead place…Anyone coming from Galileo’s time would be shocked by the diminution of mankind in the context of the universe. Galileo would be less shocked than most,” said Adam Burrows, a Princeton astronomer.
Excerpted from Washington Post
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Nature News from Jake Sigg
1. The problem from whence most other problems flow - population
2. Stories Beneath the Surface at Lands End - February 15
3. Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, HR 669 - registering your support
is easy.
4. NOAA Cautions Public to Avoid Seal Pups on California Beaches
5. Past, Present, and Future on Mt Sutro - Feb 19
6. Train to be a docent at San Francisco Botanical Garden
7. Banks getting the message?
8. Feedback
9. Are worms vital to human health?
10. Save the date: April 5 for CNPS garden tour in San Francisco
11. Creation and annihilation: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius
12. Terra not so incognita: A 16th century mapmaker had expert information about the Americas
13. Another constitution for Bolivia?/Words from Rod Blagojevich's new room-mate?
Gory details of SF Recreation and Park Dept Budget: http://www.parks.sfgov.org/site/recpark_page.asp?id=98335
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1. Here's a BBC news item about population that may be of interest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7865332.stm
According to the US census, the world population is now heading towards 6.8 billion: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
(I think it was about ten years ago when we passed six billion. Can't people see where this is heading? We're not helpless, you know. And does anyone bother to connect this phenomenon with other problems that are worrying them--like, for only one example, the current economic/financial crisis?)
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2.
Stories Beneath the Surface at Lands End
Sunday, February 15, 1-3:30 p.m.
Join National Park Service archaeologist Leo Barker to hear the dirt on the research conducted at Sutro Baths, Point Lobos, and the surrounding area. Walk back in time to remember the native people and to rediscover the cultural history of the Sutro District. This is a short, but semi-strenuous hike with stairs and some uphill sections. Wear sturdy shoes and dress for possibly windy conditions. Heavy rain cancels.
Meet at the newly reopened Merrie Way parking lot off Point Lobos Avenue, above Sutro Baths. Reservations are required by calling (415) 385-3065 or emailing cchristman@parksconservancy.org by Friday, February 13th.
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3.
Some of California Invasive Plant Council's national partners are working to support a newly introduced invasive species bill to improve import screening of animals. HR 669, the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, was introduced by Congresswoman Bordallo from Guam (where the invasive brown tree snake has wiped out most native birds), and is currently co-sponsored by CA Congressman George Miller.
We can help support this important legislation (and by extension, future legislation on invasive species) by urging our Congressional representatives to co-sponsor. The Union of Concerned Scientists has made this easy -- click
http://action.ucsusa.org/site/R?i=JQVXdTOtlm8OI42XtgTLmg
to quickly send a letter. And be thankful we don't have to deal with released pet Burmese pythons like our natural resource colleagues in Florida do.
Please circulate this email to others you think will be interested.
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4.
NOAA Cautions Public to Avoid Seal Pups on California Beaches
NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary advises beachgoers not to attempt to "rescue" any seal pups they may find.
Each year, healthy harbor seal pups are needlessly separated from their mothers by people who mistake them for orphans. Harbor seal mothers may leave their pups unattended while feeding at sea, only to later rejoin and nurse them. The presence of humans or dogs near a seal pup could prevent a mother seal from reuniting with her young one. Report suspected orphaned or injured pups to a licensed facility to assess the need for rescue:
• The Marine Mammal Center 415-289-SEAL (-7325)
• Pt. Reyes National Seashore 415-464-5170 (24 hrs.)
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5.
MOUNT SUTRO PRESENTATION
SAN FRANCISCO NATURAL HISTORY SERIES
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2009
Past, Present and Future on Mt. Sutro
with Guest speaker Craig Dawson
Craig Dawson will share some uncovered history and update us about recent discoveries and new plans!
Presentations begin promptly at 7:30 p.m. in the Randall Museum Theatre.
Admission is free; donations are always appreciated.
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6. San Francisco Botanical Garden Adult Docent Training begins Saturday February 21
Spring docent training topics will include:
Flowers and Plant reproduction, Plant Adaptations, California Native Plants and Water Conservation, Ethnobotany, Endangered Plants, Cloud Forest Plants and Conservation Strategies for Plant Communities.
We will focus on the plants and gardens of California, Mexico and Asia. We will also spend time in the Fragrance, Succulent and Entry Gardens.
During the training you will work directly with garden visitors and experienced docents. The training will emphasize successful techniques for interacting with the public and for creating engaging garden interpretation. You do NOT need any special plant or science background to enroll, only a desire to learn and share your knowledge with garden visitors.
Enrollment fee: $75 includes materials and textbook
Contact Tom Laursen, Volunteer Services Manager, San Francisco Botanical Garden Society at 661-1316 ext 412 to apply.
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7.
Getting the message?
Wells Fargo scrapped plans to hold a conference in Las Vegas, “in light of the current environment”. The bank received $25 billion in federal aid last year. Goldman Sachs also said that “in light of the current environment” it was rescheduling a hedge-fund managers’ conference that had been due to take place in March at a 300-acre luxury resort in Florida. The Economist
LTE, Guardian Weekly
Sir: Last year "money in colossal quantities disappeared". To where? One has to wonder if it ever existed in the first place or was it just another of those virtual entities spawned in the virtual reality worlds of computing. Dennis Roddy, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
__________
"Confidence grows at the rate a coconut tree grows, and falls at the rate a coconut falls." Indian policymaker at World Economic Forum at Davos
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8. Feedback
Margo Bors:
Hi Jake, The stories about aerobatic ravens remind me of my mother. She was a flight instructor for decades with thousands of hours of flight time. Her love and specialty was aerobatics. I had never seen a raven on many visits to her home in Southern California . But after her funeral in 2001 when we returned to her house, there were two ravens out front who stayed around for quite a while, putting on a show - cavorting, doing aerobatics, landing on the house. I always felt they had come to welcome home a comrade in flight.
ML Carle:
I don't know what was meant by "ravens didn't used to live in the desert," but I taught school in the Mohave - Baker - 1978 to 80, and ravens were definitely there. Jaeger's 1950 _Desert Wildlife_ mentions them. When I lived there, grass wasn't part of the environment. And wildfire nowhere in evidence. It was quite startling to return to Hole in the Wall campground near Mitchell Caverns, and find the landscape burnt over a huge area.Thousands of Joshua trees and pinons dead and black. I gather they don't spring back.
ML: It has been my understanding that ravens are a recent arrival in the desert. Perhaps that understanding was not strictly correct. However, 1950 is relatively recent, and the hand of man was heavy then. I wonder whether Jaeger's observations were a consequence of this human presence. The desert is a severe and demanding environment, and I wonder if ravens were present and, if so, in what numbers. My guess is that they were sparse or absent, say, 300 years ago. And yes, I am only too painfully aware of the presence of grasses such as Schismus and their devastating effects, such as promotion of fire in a non-fire-evolved ecosystem.
Tony Holiday:
Jake, THANKS so much for the link to the ProjectCoyote org. I am sincerely impressed by this site and these people, and those puppy pix are awesome. I have that film "Still Wild at Heart." While I have yet to see my first live coyote as of this writing, I have still fallen in love with these beautiful, intelligent little guys and am glad to see there are other people out there who care and are trying to protect them.
Best to you and thanks for such informative and interesting e-letters...
Tony, urban hiker and nature/animal lover
San Francisco
James LeCuyer:
To the very fine fellow that wrote the article in the Guardian Weekly about "groupthink" being to blame for the present financial crisis: You're obviously trying to sneak out of your own and your friends' responsibilities in this matter. The NeoConservative policies of militarization, deregulation, privatization, and reduction of taxes over the past 40 years got us into this fix. The proper solution is to re-regulate and tax the rich out of their ancestral homes and wealth. They need training anyway in basic survival techniques. There's a lot they could learn by living with a single mom trying to get by on minimum wage. Our world needs immediate environmental help, and a Depression such as we are flailing or way in to could well be the end of effective environmental efforts on a global scale.
There is one thing every reader of Jake Sigg's Nature News can do to help bring the environmental movement back into public school classroom lessons where it has so long been missing. If you have a child in a public school, you can call the Principal and ask if he or she knows if there is effective education program taking place in that school. Find out which teachers are teaching to the environment, and honor them. Contact the school PTSA and the Student Government and demand that real environmental thinking and discussion take place in every subject in every class. Do it now. It's effective, and a lot of fun.
John Anderson:
(I almost never use the word ecology, precisely because it is used improperly. It is a fuzzy term, and people who use it don't have a clear idea of what they mean. The dictionary defines it as the study of organisms and their relation to each other and to their surroundings. I have found that substituting 'ecosystem(s)' almost always expresses the thought. The term's misuse is so widely used and entrenched that it's unlikely it can ever be set straight. Other terms suffering a similar fate:
(More examples to come. Can you contribute some?)
“Orientate”
Using “inane” instead of “insane”
Using “in lieu of” when the writer meant “in view of”
Both of the latter examples, by the way, are from PhD’s.
'Orientate' irritates me, but I see it in respectable journals and used by writers. My dictionary says: another term for orient . ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: probably a back-formation from orientation .
But I still refuse to use it and find it annoying.
I also use 'inane', but in its proper meaning. I haven't heard it used for 'insane', but I am ready to believe that there are those who do.
Ditto for 'in lieu of', which is a proper phrase. Again, I haven't heard people use it incorrectly, but in general I find a trend to using terms that sound right, or sound similar to another phrase, but are used incorrectly or inappropriately. I guess that is what you refer to.
That’s exactly what I mean. Personally, I’d rather listen to fingernails on blackboards.
A man after my own heart.
Siobhan Ruck:
"Literally", as in "when I saw what happened to my 401K, I literally had a heart attack". It's used as an intensifier, or when "virtually" (or "figuratively") is what is really meant. Literally means "actually", e.g., "his speech literally put me to sleep" means you were actually nodding off during the speech, not just bored out of your skull. I think it's too late to rescue that one, alas.
Bravo, Siobhan. I appended "more examples to follow" because I knew I had a raft of them that I couldn't call immediately to mind. And I knew other people would be able to contribute, as they are doing. Thanks for this one; you hit on one of my pet hates.
I'm sure I don't need to tell you that this casualness is damaging the language and impairing its ability to mean anything. Incredible, unbelievable, eg, are destroyed from casual use or overuse, as are many other words. When something really is difficult to credit, or too strange or unlikely to be believed, there is no longer a word to express it. The language is thus made poorer and unable to express a range of feelings it formerly had.
I welcome more of these, and will compile them into a list. Why? I don't know; I'm a collector. They may or may not come in handy some day, but it makes me feel good having a compilation.
Brian Kemble:
Hi Jake,
I was glad to see “forte” on the list of mis-used/mispronounced words, since it is a favorite example of mine. In this case, people want to put an accent aigu where there is none, and the complementary error is “coupé” (French for “cut off”), where it is normal usage to drop the accent aigu and pronounce it as a one-syllable word (“She’s my little deuce coupe, You don’t know what I got”). But this error has persisted for so long that coupe with one syllable has now been accepted as an English word in the dictionary.
And while we’re on the subject of word games, the prefix “in” is commonly placed at the beginning of words to mean “not”, so that the meaning is opposite with the prefix from what it would be without it (considerate/inconsiderate, etc.). But there is one word in English where adding “in” at the beginning means the same thing as without the prefix: flammable.
On Feb 5, 2009, at 4:36 PM, Steve Lawrence wrote (in regard to "I think the support for Sharp Park Golf Course from the Pacifica City Council is tied to the development proposals for the quarry: the Council's preferred plan for raising tax revenues for the city's depleted coffers is to develop the quarry and lure seniors, travelers, home-buyers, etc. with a golf 'asset' near by.":
Could be related to the contract to supply recycled water to SFPUC for Sharp Park, which, I understand, is owned by SF. Pacifica may have a good deal here. They had surplus capacity. SF has loads of money, and, as it has no recycled water despite plans for same dating back to 1992, perhaps it is eager to promote recycled water. Susan Leal, the prior GM under which the contract was made, surely was; she earned her quals as a proper progressive while GM of SFPUC, a first. Somewhere I believe I have the contract, but even with it, I don't know what it costs to produce the additional recycled water; that is needed to figure the profit for Pacifica.
Mary Keitelman:
comment, on #14:
Dr. Oppenheimer founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and by doing that shared science with so many generations of children-- giving us all far more than his colleague Dr. Lawrence, who is remembered all over berkeley campus.
(Dr Oppenheimer here refers to Robert's brother Frank.)
link fyi:
http://press.exploratorium.edu/the-exploratorium-and-the-san-francisco-opera-explore-doctor-atomic/
comment, on #15
The exact same thought crossed my mind yesterday, as I read Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Chu's first press conference/media interview, where he states the severe results California will experience due to global warming:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-me-warming4-2009feb04,0,567052.story
I hope he succeeds in changing U.S. energy consumption!
thanks again for a great newsletter!
Jeff Miller:
Hi Jake - regarding item #7, trafficking of turtles for the world pet and food trade, the harvest impacts are accelerating here in the U.S. We have petitioned the 4 southeastern states with the highest harvest rates to end unsustainable commercial harvest of freshwater turtles, the vast majority of which are exported as food to southeast Asia. We are about to petition the remaining 9 states that still have unlimited commercial harvest to end the trade. See http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/southern_freshwater_turtles/index.html Jeff Miller, Center for Biological Diversity
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild plants and animals. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law, and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters, and climate that species need to survive. We want those who come after us to inherit a world where the wild is still alive.
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9. Are worms vital to human health? Click here: BBC NEWS | Health | Are worms vital to human health?
Hookworm
The hookworm may help treat people with asthma
Could the humble worm hold the key to wiping out allergies and a whole lot of disorders of the immune system?
Researchers in Nottingham are investigating whether giving hook worms to asthma sufferers can cure their condition.
Another group in the US is trying a pig worm on patients with ulcerative colitis or inflammation of the colon and bowel.
And scientists in Cambridge have proved that giving an extract of the tropical worm which causes bilharzia to mice can stop them developing type 1 diabetes.
The theory behind all this is that worms and other organisms, through our evolutionary history, developed a role in driving our immune systems.
Professor Danny Altman, professor of immunity at Imperial College, said: "There is compelling evidence that something in our immune systems has changed since our ancestors, in fact has changed since our great grandparents.
Read the whole article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7856095.stm
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10. SAVE THE DATE: Sunday April 5, 2009, 11 AM – 3 PM.
The Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society presents the Native Plant Garden Tour. It's free and self-paced, no registration required, visit anytime 11 AM-3 PM. This is a special, once a year chance to see, up-close, wonderful local gardens as well as talk with their owners and care-takers. Native plant gardens conserve water and provide vital habitat for wildlife. Come and enjoy Spring in San Francisco. The gardens range from new to well established, all include significant native plants. The gardens are located throughout San Francisco, in a variety of neighborhoods.
Information for 2009, including maps and garden descriptions will be posted on the website soon; http://www.cnps-yerbabuena.org/gardentour
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11.
Creation and annihilation
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius, by Graham Farmelo
Genius is said to have two forms. There are ordinary geniuses, whose achievements one can imagine others might have emulated, so long as they worked extremely hard and had a dollop of luck. Then there are extraordinary geniuses whose insights are so astonishing and run so counter to received wisdom that it is hard to imagine anyone else devising them. Einstein was one such genius. Paul Dirac, whose equations predicted the existence of antimatter and who died in 1984, was another. He was quite probably the best British theoretical physicist since Isaac Newton.
Dirac became one of the fathers of quantum mechanics at the age of 23. The theory, developed in the 1920s and 1930s, makes seemingly bizarre statements, including the fundamental truth that it is impossible to know everything about the world. But while his colleagues struggled with the philosophical implications of their equations, Dirac thought words were treacherous and saw merit only in mathematics. For him, equations were beautiful. As he aged, he grew more certain that beauty was a guide to truth. His view that fundamental physics could be gleaned from elegant mathematics now permeates a whole field of inquiry into the reality of nature, string theory.
…Dirac went on to win the Nobel prize in physics in 1933 for his discovery of antimatter. Of the small group of young men who developed quantum mechanics and revolutionised physics almost a century ago, he truly stands out. Paul Dirac was a strange man in a strange world. This biography, long overdue, is most welcome.
Excerpt from review in The Economist 24/1/09
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12.
Terra not so incognita
A sixteenth-century German mapmaker appears to have had some expert information about the American continents
How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents?
It is one of the bigger mysteries in the history of the Renaissance. But it is not the only one involving Martin Waldseemueller, a map-making cleric whose own story is sufficiently obscure that his birth and death dates aren’t known for certain.
Waldseemueller appears to have also known something about the contours of South America’s west coast years before Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the bottom of the continent. History books record them as the first Europeans to bring back knowledge of the Pacific Ocean.
The evidence of this knowledge is in Waldseemueller’s world map of 1507, perhaps the most valuable of the 5 million maps owned by the US Library of Congress. It was acquired for $10 million in 2003 and went on permanent display last year.
The map---in near-perfect condition and with no other known copies—is the oldest document that applies the label “America” to the land mass between Africa and Asia.
This was, of course, in honour of Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator who had sailed to the New World for the Portuguese. The act of naming was apparently Waldseemueller’s alone; there is no evidence that the term was in use at the time.
Research…has made the mystery of Waldseemueller’s knowledge deeper and richer. But it hasn’t answered the biggest question: how did he know?
‘There is some probability that Waldseemueller knew something that is no longer extant—information that we don’t have,” (the researcher said).
…In Cosmographiae (of 1507): “The earth is now known to be divided into four parts. The first three parts are continents, but the fourth part is an island, because it has been found to be surrounded on all sides by sea.”
(The researcher) said he thinks the phrases “now known” and “has been found to be” are crucial. They suggest geographical knowledge that is confirmed and believed, at least in some circles. “The idea that this was a total guess is far-fetched.”
…Equally intriguing is South America’s shape. Inscribed along the western edge of that land mass in the 1507 map are the words “terra ultra incognita” – land most unknown.
But the border is not drawn as one long, ignorantly straight line. Instead, it is a series of straight lines meeting at shallow angles, implying a mixture of knowledge and uncertainty…the correlation is about 75%, and at two important places—near the equator and near the place in northern Chile where the coast veers sharply to the northwest—the width of Waldseemueller’s South America and the actual one are almost the same. The coastline was perhaps not as ultra incognita as he let on. (Excerpted from Washington Post)
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13.
I see Bolivia has a new constitution. Do they really need another one?
It is said that, when Brazil once wanted a new constitution, a posse of American lawyers descended, bearing advice. "What do we need Americans for?" went the cry. "They've only had one constitution. We need Bolivians. They've had hundreds."
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I think this is perhaps an Illinois cartoon(?) I heard it on the radio, but lost the attribution:
Jail cell-mate talking with ex-governor Rod Blagojevich: "The food was better when you were governor."
2. Stories Beneath the Surface at Lands End - February 15
3. Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, HR 669 - registering your support
is easy.
4. NOAA Cautions Public to Avoid Seal Pups on California Beaches
5. Past, Present, and Future on Mt Sutro - Feb 19
6. Train to be a docent at San Francisco Botanical Garden
7. Banks getting the message?
8. Feedback
9. Are worms vital to human health?
10. Save the date: April 5 for CNPS garden tour in San Francisco
11. Creation and annihilation: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius
12. Terra not so incognita: A 16th century mapmaker had expert information about the Americas
13. Another constitution for Bolivia?/Words from Rod Blagojevich's new room-mate?
Gory details of SF Recreation and Park Dept Budget: http://www.parks.sfgov.org/site/recpark_page.asp?id=98335
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1. Here's a BBC news item about population that may be of interest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7865332.stm
According to the US census, the world population is now heading towards 6.8 billion: http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
(I think it was about ten years ago when we passed six billion. Can't people see where this is heading? We're not helpless, you know. And does anyone bother to connect this phenomenon with other problems that are worrying them--like, for only one example, the current economic/financial crisis?)
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2.
Stories Beneath the Surface at Lands End
Sunday, February 15, 1-3:30 p.m.
Join National Park Service archaeologist Leo Barker to hear the dirt on the research conducted at Sutro Baths, Point Lobos, and the surrounding area. Walk back in time to remember the native people and to rediscover the cultural history of the Sutro District. This is a short, but semi-strenuous hike with stairs and some uphill sections. Wear sturdy shoes and dress for possibly windy conditions. Heavy rain cancels.
Meet at the newly reopened Merrie Way parking lot off Point Lobos Avenue, above Sutro Baths. Reservations are required by calling (415) 385-3065 or emailing cchristman@parksconservancy.org by Friday, February 13th.
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3.
Some of California Invasive Plant Council's national partners are working to support a newly introduced invasive species bill to improve import screening of animals. HR 669, the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act, was introduced by Congresswoman Bordallo from Guam (where the invasive brown tree snake has wiped out most native birds), and is currently co-sponsored by CA Congressman George Miller.
We can help support this important legislation (and by extension, future legislation on invasive species) by urging our Congressional representatives to co-sponsor. The Union of Concerned Scientists has made this easy -- click
http://action.ucsusa.org/site/R?i=JQVXdTOtlm8OI42XtgTLmg
to quickly send a letter. And be thankful we don't have to deal with released pet Burmese pythons like our natural resource colleagues in Florida do.
Please circulate this email to others you think will be interested.
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4.
NOAA Cautions Public to Avoid Seal Pups on California Beaches
NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary advises beachgoers not to attempt to "rescue" any seal pups they may find.
Each year, healthy harbor seal pups are needlessly separated from their mothers by people who mistake them for orphans. Harbor seal mothers may leave their pups unattended while feeding at sea, only to later rejoin and nurse them. The presence of humans or dogs near a seal pup could prevent a mother seal from reuniting with her young one. Report suspected orphaned or injured pups to a licensed facility to assess the need for rescue:
• The Marine Mammal Center 415-289-SEAL (-7325)
• Pt. Reyes National Seashore 415-464-5170 (24 hrs.)
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5.
MOUNT SUTRO PRESENTATION
SAN FRANCISCO NATURAL HISTORY SERIES
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2009
Past, Present and Future on Mt. Sutro
with Guest speaker Craig Dawson
Craig Dawson will share some uncovered history and update us about recent discoveries and new plans!
Presentations begin promptly at 7:30 p.m. in the Randall Museum Theatre.
Admission is free; donations are always appreciated.
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6. San Francisco Botanical Garden Adult Docent Training begins Saturday February 21
Spring docent training topics will include:
Flowers and Plant reproduction, Plant Adaptations, California Native Plants and Water Conservation, Ethnobotany, Endangered Plants, Cloud Forest Plants and Conservation Strategies for Plant Communities.
We will focus on the plants and gardens of California, Mexico and Asia. We will also spend time in the Fragrance, Succulent and Entry Gardens.
During the training you will work directly with garden visitors and experienced docents. The training will emphasize successful techniques for interacting with the public and for creating engaging garden interpretation. You do NOT need any special plant or science background to enroll, only a desire to learn and share your knowledge with garden visitors.
Enrollment fee: $75 includes materials and textbook
Contact Tom Laursen, Volunteer Services Manager, San Francisco Botanical Garden Society at 661-1316 ext 412 to apply.
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7.
Getting the message?
Wells Fargo scrapped plans to hold a conference in Las Vegas, “in light of the current environment”. The bank received $25 billion in federal aid last year. Goldman Sachs also said that “in light of the current environment” it was rescheduling a hedge-fund managers’ conference that had been due to take place in March at a 300-acre luxury resort in Florida. The Economist
LTE, Guardian Weekly
Sir: Last year "money in colossal quantities disappeared". To where? One has to wonder if it ever existed in the first place or was it just another of those virtual entities spawned in the virtual reality worlds of computing. Dennis Roddy, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
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"Confidence grows at the rate a coconut tree grows, and falls at the rate a coconut falls." Indian policymaker at World Economic Forum at Davos
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8. Feedback
Margo Bors:
Hi Jake, The stories about aerobatic ravens remind me of my mother. She was a flight instructor for decades with thousands of hours of flight time. Her love and specialty was aerobatics. I had never seen a raven on many visits to her home in Southern California . But after her funeral in 2001 when we returned to her house, there were two ravens out front who stayed around for quite a while, putting on a show - cavorting, doing aerobatics, landing on the house. I always felt they had come to welcome home a comrade in flight.
ML Carle:
I don't know what was meant by "ravens didn't used to live in the desert," but I taught school in the Mohave - Baker - 1978 to 80, and ravens were definitely there. Jaeger's 1950 _Desert Wildlife_ mentions them. When I lived there, grass wasn't part of the environment. And wildfire nowhere in evidence. It was quite startling to return to Hole in the Wall campground near Mitchell Caverns, and find the landscape burnt over a huge area.Thousands of Joshua trees and pinons dead and black. I gather they don't spring back.
ML: It has been my understanding that ravens are a recent arrival in the desert. Perhaps that understanding was not strictly correct. However, 1950 is relatively recent, and the hand of man was heavy then. I wonder whether Jaeger's observations were a consequence of this human presence. The desert is a severe and demanding environment, and I wonder if ravens were present and, if so, in what numbers. My guess is that they were sparse or absent, say, 300 years ago. And yes, I am only too painfully aware of the presence of grasses such as Schismus and their devastating effects, such as promotion of fire in a non-fire-evolved ecosystem.
Tony Holiday:
Jake, THANKS so much for the link to the ProjectCoyote org. I am sincerely impressed by this site and these people, and those puppy pix are awesome. I have that film "Still Wild at Heart." While I have yet to see my first live coyote as of this writing, I have still fallen in love with these beautiful, intelligent little guys and am glad to see there are other people out there who care and are trying to protect them.
Best to you and thanks for such informative and interesting e-letters...
Tony, urban hiker and nature/animal lover
San Francisco
James LeCuyer:
To the very fine fellow that wrote the article in the Guardian Weekly about "groupthink" being to blame for the present financial crisis: You're obviously trying to sneak out of your own and your friends' responsibilities in this matter. The NeoConservative policies of militarization, deregulation, privatization, and reduction of taxes over the past 40 years got us into this fix. The proper solution is to re-regulate and tax the rich out of their ancestral homes and wealth. They need training anyway in basic survival techniques. There's a lot they could learn by living with a single mom trying to get by on minimum wage. Our world needs immediate environmental help, and a Depression such as we are flailing or way in to could well be the end of effective environmental efforts on a global scale.
There is one thing every reader of Jake Sigg's Nature News can do to help bring the environmental movement back into public school classroom lessons where it has so long been missing. If you have a child in a public school, you can call the Principal and ask if he or she knows if there is effective education program taking place in that school. Find out which teachers are teaching to the environment, and honor them. Contact the school PTSA and the Student Government and demand that real environmental thinking and discussion take place in every subject in every class. Do it now. It's effective, and a lot of fun.
John Anderson:
(I almost never use the word ecology, precisely because it is used improperly. It is a fuzzy term, and people who use it don't have a clear idea of what they mean. The dictionary defines it as the study of organisms and their relation to each other and to their surroundings. I have found that substituting 'ecosystem(s)' almost always expresses the thought. The term's misuse is so widely used and entrenched that it's unlikely it can ever be set straight. Other terms suffering a similar fate:
(More examples to come. Can you contribute some?)
“Orientate”
Using “inane” instead of “insane”
Using “in lieu of” when the writer meant “in view of”
Both of the latter examples, by the way, are from PhD’s.
'Orientate' irritates me, but I see it in respectable journals and used by writers. My dictionary says: another term for orient . ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: probably a back-formation from orientation .
But I still refuse to use it and find it annoying.
I also use 'inane', but in its proper meaning. I haven't heard it used for 'insane', but I am ready to believe that there are those who do.
Ditto for 'in lieu of', which is a proper phrase. Again, I haven't heard people use it incorrectly, but in general I find a trend to using terms that sound right, or sound similar to another phrase, but are used incorrectly or inappropriately. I guess that is what you refer to.
That’s exactly what I mean. Personally, I’d rather listen to fingernails on blackboards.
A man after my own heart.
Siobhan Ruck:
"Literally", as in "when I saw what happened to my 401K, I literally had a heart attack". It's used as an intensifier, or when "virtually" (or "figuratively") is what is really meant. Literally means "actually", e.g., "his speech literally put me to sleep" means you were actually nodding off during the speech, not just bored out of your skull. I think it's too late to rescue that one, alas.
Bravo, Siobhan. I appended "more examples to follow" because I knew I had a raft of them that I couldn't call immediately to mind. And I knew other people would be able to contribute, as they are doing. Thanks for this one; you hit on one of my pet hates.
I'm sure I don't need to tell you that this casualness is damaging the language and impairing its ability to mean anything. Incredible, unbelievable, eg, are destroyed from casual use or overuse, as are many other words. When something really is difficult to credit, or too strange or unlikely to be believed, there is no longer a word to express it. The language is thus made poorer and unable to express a range of feelings it formerly had.
I welcome more of these, and will compile them into a list. Why? I don't know; I'm a collector. They may or may not come in handy some day, but it makes me feel good having a compilation.
Brian Kemble:
Hi Jake,
I was glad to see “forte” on the list of mis-used/mispronounced words, since it is a favorite example of mine. In this case, people want to put an accent aigu where there is none, and the complementary error is “coupé” (French for “cut off”), where it is normal usage to drop the accent aigu and pronounce it as a one-syllable word (“She’s my little deuce coupe, You don’t know what I got”). But this error has persisted for so long that coupe with one syllable has now been accepted as an English word in the dictionary.
And while we’re on the subject of word games, the prefix “in” is commonly placed at the beginning of words to mean “not”, so that the meaning is opposite with the prefix from what it would be without it (considerate/inconsiderate, etc.). But there is one word in English where adding “in” at the beginning means the same thing as without the prefix: flammable.
On Feb 5, 2009, at 4:36 PM, Steve Lawrence wrote (in regard to "I think the support for Sharp Park Golf Course from the Pacifica City Council is tied to the development proposals for the quarry: the Council's preferred plan for raising tax revenues for the city's depleted coffers is to develop the quarry and lure seniors, travelers, home-buyers, etc. with a golf 'asset' near by.":
Could be related to the contract to supply recycled water to SFPUC for Sharp Park, which, I understand, is owned by SF. Pacifica may have a good deal here. They had surplus capacity. SF has loads of money, and, as it has no recycled water despite plans for same dating back to 1992, perhaps it is eager to promote recycled water. Susan Leal, the prior GM under which the contract was made, surely was; she earned her quals as a proper progressive while GM of SFPUC, a first. Somewhere I believe I have the contract, but even with it, I don't know what it costs to produce the additional recycled water; that is needed to figure the profit for Pacifica.
Mary Keitelman:
comment, on #14:
Dr. Oppenheimer founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and by doing that shared science with so many generations of children-- giving us all far more than his colleague Dr. Lawrence, who is remembered all over berkeley campus.
(Dr Oppenheimer here refers to Robert's brother Frank.)
link fyi:
http://press.exploratorium.edu/the-exploratorium-and-the-san-francisco-opera-explore-doctor-atomic/
comment, on #15
The exact same thought crossed my mind yesterday, as I read Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Chu's first press conference/media interview, where he states the severe results California will experience due to global warming:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-me-warming4-2009feb04,0,567052.story
I hope he succeeds in changing U.S. energy consumption!
thanks again for a great newsletter!
Jeff Miller:
Hi Jake - regarding item #7, trafficking of turtles for the world pet and food trade, the harvest impacts are accelerating here in the U.S. We have petitioned the 4 southeastern states with the highest harvest rates to end unsustainable commercial harvest of freshwater turtles, the vast majority of which are exported as food to southeast Asia. We are about to petition the remaining 9 states that still have unlimited commercial harvest to end the trade. See http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/southern_freshwater_turtles/index.html Jeff Miller, Center for Biological Diversity
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild plants and animals. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law, and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters, and climate that species need to survive. We want those who come after us to inherit a world where the wild is still alive.
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9. Are worms vital to human health? Click here: BBC NEWS | Health | Are worms vital to human health?
Hookworm
The hookworm may help treat people with asthma
Could the humble worm hold the key to wiping out allergies and a whole lot of disorders of the immune system?
Researchers in Nottingham are investigating whether giving hook worms to asthma sufferers can cure their condition.
Another group in the US is trying a pig worm on patients with ulcerative colitis or inflammation of the colon and bowel.
And scientists in Cambridge have proved that giving an extract of the tropical worm which causes bilharzia to mice can stop them developing type 1 diabetes.
The theory behind all this is that worms and other organisms, through our evolutionary history, developed a role in driving our immune systems.
Professor Danny Altman, professor of immunity at Imperial College, said: "There is compelling evidence that something in our immune systems has changed since our ancestors, in fact has changed since our great grandparents.
Read the whole article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7856095.stm
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10. SAVE THE DATE: Sunday April 5, 2009, 11 AM – 3 PM.
The Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society presents the Native Plant Garden Tour. It's free and self-paced, no registration required, visit anytime 11 AM-3 PM. This is a special, once a year chance to see, up-close, wonderful local gardens as well as talk with their owners and care-takers. Native plant gardens conserve water and provide vital habitat for wildlife. Come and enjoy Spring in San Francisco. The gardens range from new to well established, all include significant native plants. The gardens are located throughout San Francisco, in a variety of neighborhoods.
Information for 2009, including maps and garden descriptions will be posted on the website soon; http://www.cnps-yerbabuena.org/gardentour
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11.
Creation and annihilation
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius, by Graham Farmelo
Genius is said to have two forms. There are ordinary geniuses, whose achievements one can imagine others might have emulated, so long as they worked extremely hard and had a dollop of luck. Then there are extraordinary geniuses whose insights are so astonishing and run so counter to received wisdom that it is hard to imagine anyone else devising them. Einstein was one such genius. Paul Dirac, whose equations predicted the existence of antimatter and who died in 1984, was another. He was quite probably the best British theoretical physicist since Isaac Newton.
Dirac became one of the fathers of quantum mechanics at the age of 23. The theory, developed in the 1920s and 1930s, makes seemingly bizarre statements, including the fundamental truth that it is impossible to know everything about the world. But while his colleagues struggled with the philosophical implications of their equations, Dirac thought words were treacherous and saw merit only in mathematics. For him, equations were beautiful. As he aged, he grew more certain that beauty was a guide to truth. His view that fundamental physics could be gleaned from elegant mathematics now permeates a whole field of inquiry into the reality of nature, string theory.
…Dirac went on to win the Nobel prize in physics in 1933 for his discovery of antimatter. Of the small group of young men who developed quantum mechanics and revolutionised physics almost a century ago, he truly stands out. Paul Dirac was a strange man in a strange world. This biography, long overdue, is most welcome.
Excerpt from review in The Economist 24/1/09
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12.
Terra not so incognita
A sixteenth-century German mapmaker appears to have had some expert information about the American continents
How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents?
It is one of the bigger mysteries in the history of the Renaissance. But it is not the only one involving Martin Waldseemueller, a map-making cleric whose own story is sufficiently obscure that his birth and death dates aren’t known for certain.
Waldseemueller appears to have also known something about the contours of South America’s west coast years before Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the bottom of the continent. History books record them as the first Europeans to bring back knowledge of the Pacific Ocean.
The evidence of this knowledge is in Waldseemueller’s world map of 1507, perhaps the most valuable of the 5 million maps owned by the US Library of Congress. It was acquired for $10 million in 2003 and went on permanent display last year.
The map---in near-perfect condition and with no other known copies—is the oldest document that applies the label “America” to the land mass between Africa and Asia.
This was, of course, in honour of Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator who had sailed to the New World for the Portuguese. The act of naming was apparently Waldseemueller’s alone; there is no evidence that the term was in use at the time.
Research…has made the mystery of Waldseemueller’s knowledge deeper and richer. But it hasn’t answered the biggest question: how did he know?
‘There is some probability that Waldseemueller knew something that is no longer extant—information that we don’t have,” (the researcher said).
…In Cosmographiae (of 1507): “The earth is now known to be divided into four parts. The first three parts are continents, but the fourth part is an island, because it has been found to be surrounded on all sides by sea.”
(The researcher) said he thinks the phrases “now known” and “has been found to be” are crucial. They suggest geographical knowledge that is confirmed and believed, at least in some circles. “The idea that this was a total guess is far-fetched.”
…Equally intriguing is South America’s shape. Inscribed along the western edge of that land mass in the 1507 map are the words “terra ultra incognita” – land most unknown.
But the border is not drawn as one long, ignorantly straight line. Instead, it is a series of straight lines meeting at shallow angles, implying a mixture of knowledge and uncertainty…the correlation is about 75%, and at two important places—near the equator and near the place in northern Chile where the coast veers sharply to the northwest—the width of Waldseemueller’s South America and the actual one are almost the same. The coastline was perhaps not as ultra incognita as he let on. (Excerpted from Washington Post)
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13.
I see Bolivia has a new constitution. Do they really need another one?
It is said that, when Brazil once wanted a new constitution, a posse of American lawyers descended, bearing advice. "What do we need Americans for?" went the cry. "They've only had one constitution. We need Bolivians. They've had hundreds."
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I think this is perhaps an Illinois cartoon(?) I heard it on the radio, but lost the attribution:
Jail cell-mate talking with ex-governor Rod Blagojevich: "The food was better when you were governor."
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Jake Sigg's Nature News
1. California Native Plant Society multi-media program TONIGHT: cactus and other succulents
2. Candlestick-Hunters Point development project alternatives - February 11
3. Help burrowing owls in East Bay- Feb 7/wetland habitat in San Francisco Feb 7/Least terns in Alameda Feb 8
4. Plant for the green hairstreak butterfly Sunday the 8th at 11.30
5. Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915 talk Thursday 12 Feb
6. New film: American Coyote - Still Wild at Heart
7. World's turtles at risk of extinction because of commercial trafficking
8. Animal-lover Winston Churchill on cats, dogs, and pigs
9. Moths escalate the insect arms race - jam bat sonar
10. The Watershed Nursery sale on entire inventory of native plants
11. An easy project for whole family: 12th annual great backyard bird count - February 13-16
12. Excellent classes at Regional Parks Botanic Garden
13. Sharp Park golf course: increase recreational opportunities, preserve endangered species, make our coast more resilient to climate change
14. Robert Oppenheimer trashed by UC Berkeley
15. Notes & Queries: What killer facts might silence climate-change deniers?
16. Economic crash: Shooting bankers won't do it--it was groupthink
17. The interesting world of bryophytes and mosses - classes in Berkeley
18. Feedback: ravens, mostly
19. Evolution--balls and brains. Not for the politically correct
20. Fitting epitaph for Bush presidency/definition of 'ecology'
1. California Native Plant Society program - free and open to the public
Cacti, Agaves, and Yuccas of California and Nevada
Thursday 5 February, 7.30 pm
Speaker: Stephen Ingram
Plant identification workshop 6-7.15 pm. Beginners welcome
California and Nevada are known for their astonishing array of plant life, and few components of this diverse flora are more intriguing than the cacti, agaves, and yuccas. These spiny succulents have long been a source of fascination for explorers, naturalists, and scientists. Stephen Ingram's multimedia presentation explores some of the unique attributes of the plants and highlights what makes them such intriguing components of our plant communities. With stunning images of their colorful blossoms and unusual growth forms, this program showcases a number of species that occur in California's deserts and coastal areas. Following the presentation, Stephen will sign copies of his recently published book that includes 262 color photographs, 16 botanical watercolors, and 5 range maps. His photos have been used in numerous books, magazines, and calendars.
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2.
Wednesday, February 11 Arc Ecology will hold a public meeting on its Candlestick-Hunters Point development project alternatives at the Bayview Opera House. Barbecue at 5:30 PM and the meeting at 6 PM. Do come if you can and invite all you can.
This is a very important issue for the southeast section of the city and for the whole city. This meeting is a good way to become informed of some of the important issues of this complex proposal.
Here are a few excerpts from the letter sent to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by 15 environmental and neighborhood organizations:
Taking no action at this time will not delay this project. Legally, no project can proceed until a Final EIR is approved. We are asking you to withhold premature endorsement on this proposal because we believe it has some serious but easily remedied flaws.
We share the view of the City and the developer that this project is vitally important to the City and to the Bayview Community. It has the potential to:
* provide for a final and complete remediation of the last Superfund site in the City, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard,
* provide new economic stimulus to the City and to the Bayview, an underserved and underdeveloped community,
* provide new housing for City residents of all income levels,
* provide significant park and recreation space essential for health and quality of life,
* help the City reach one of the major goals of its Sustainability Plan, to maintain and increase the City’s biodiversity,
* provide a model for addressing water issues such as recycling and stormwater treatment, and meeting the city goal of reducing potable water use by 10 million gallons/day by 2018.
However, we believe that as presently designed the project will not only fail to meet many of these goals as effectively as it should, it may even lead to negative impacts for some of these goals.
Arc Ecology has explored some alternate concepts for the project that we believe can greatly enhance the proposed plan. We are not suggesting that Arc’s concepts should necessarily be substituted for the Lennar proposal, although further study may suggest they be incorporated into the project. They do, however, illustrate ways the Lennar proposal fails to adequately address the issues cited above and demonstrates that viable alternatives exist that would better achieve the Proposition G goals of this development project.
(Full letter provided on request.)
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3.
We have another opportunity to help Burrowing Owls at Cesar Chavez Park - Saturday Feb 7
As most of you may know, temporary fencing was put up around the owls currently living at Cesar Chavez Park to allow more space between them and park users. While we are anticipating these owls to leave in a few weeks time, we want to take this opportunity for some public outreach. Thanks to Della Dash and the East Bay Conservation Committee, we now have informational brochures about the owls that we would like to pass out to park users.
Interested?
Join the East Bay Conservation Committee Board Chair, Phil Price at Cesar Chavez Park at the southeast entrance (at the entrance sign as Marina Boulevard forces you to turn left onto Spinnaker Way) at 10am this Saturday, February 7th. Heavy rain cancels. If you plan to attend, please email Phil at pnprice@creekcats.com, or call his cell phone at 510-909-8863. It is highly encouraged to email.
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Help Golden Gate Audubon Restore Critical Wetland Habitat in San Francisco's Southern Waterfront!
As part of our ongoing efforts to restore wetlands in San Francisco Bay, we will continue our efforts at Pier 94, throughout the year. Activities include invasive plant removal, trash pickup, monitoring, and planting in the fall. The site is home to native California Sea-blite, as well as nesting shorebirds.
· Saturday, February 7, 9:00 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Pier 94 Plant Monitoring. Monitor the native and non-native plants of Pier 94. Never done it before? Not to worry, we are looking for plant people and recorders alike. Come out and join the fun. Refreshments will be provided! Please RSVP to Jennifer Robinson if you are planning to attend. Rain cancels.
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Help Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge Committee and Golden Gate Audubon Restore CA Least Tern Habitat.
February 8, 9:00 a.m. to noon: Join our TogetherGreen Volunteer Days with the Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge workday. Come help us prepare habitat for California Least Terns! Meet at the main refuge gate at the northwest corner of former Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda. Rain or shine!
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4.
Mark your calendars to be part of the work party to put Hairstreak plants into our secondly-acquired D.P.W. lot along the corridor: the Aerial Staircase (directly across the first lot at 14th/Pacheco). Sunday, February 8th. 11:30. Stay as long as you can...or just for awhile. We will actually work at both sites, and the goal is to get as many plants as we have left into the ground this remaining planting season. We really had a fantastic time last time. It gets the neighbors out and asking "What is going on?" and that is the most rewarding outreach...when we talk about the butterfly.
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5.
SAN FRANCISCO NATURALIST SOCIETY--FREE PROGRAM
7:30 PM, Thursday, February 12, 2009
"Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915"
with speaker Nancy DeStefanis, Executive Director San Francisco Nature Education
Learn about the Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915, constructed in San Francisco’s Marina District,-called the Last Great Fair. The Palace of Fine Arts is the only remaining building of the Exposition and is currently under renovation. Nancy will show slides that depict the beauty and innovations of the various buildings and exhibits along with dramatic opening day footage courtesy of Rick Prelinger (Prelinger Archives).
Randall Museum Theatre
199 Museum Way, San Francisco
info: 554-9600 ext 16 or San Francisco Nature Education, 387-9160
http://www.sfnature.org/programs/lecture_schedule.html
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6.
Project Coyote & Still Wild at Heart Announce New Film:
American Coyote — Still Wild at Heart
To view a trailer of the film go to www.ProjectCoyote.org
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7. We need Federal legislation to stop the commerce before we lose an entire family of animals
The Asian Turtle crisis: The world's turtles are at risk of extinction
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200902031030/NEIGHBORHOODS01/902030332
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8.
"Cats look down on people; dogs look up to people; pigs treat people as equals." - Winston Churchill
(Churchill loved animals, and he was especially fond of his little pigs, which he kept always.)
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9. Moth jams bat sonar
...a tiger moth called Bertholdia trigona "goes berserk," making a lot of noise above the range of human hearing when a hunting bat approaches. Bats rely on their natural sonar to locate flying moths in the dark, but in the lab, the bats rarely managed to nab one of these loud moths. When researchers disabled the moth's noisemaking organs, though, bats caught the moths in midair with ease and ate them..."the work is the first example of any prey item that jams biological sonar; when threatened these moths emit a steady, broadband sound. Insect-hunting bats and their moth prey have become a classic in the study of evolutionary arms races. This is warfare," (says the researcher).
Excerpt from Science News 31.01.09
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10. Special Winter Sale - February 1st - 27th.
During the month of February 2009, The Watershed Nursery has dropped prices on its entire inventory. Here's your chance to save BIG on a large selection of beautiful Native California plants, including many drought tolerant plants. Enjoy 5%-50% off regular prices!
You can place your order by email, phone or fax between February 1st - 27th or shop for your selection in person on Fridays from 10 am to 5 pm.
phone: (510) 234-2222
email: twn@thewatershednursery.com
web: www.thewatershednursery.com
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11.
12th Annual Great Backyard Bird Count - February 13 – 16, 2009 - COUNT FOR FUN! COUNT FOR THE FUTURE!
Plan to join tens of thousands of other bird watchers across North America as we tally the birds over these four days. Count on your own or with family, friends, and neighbors to make this the biggest, best GBBC ever! Pass along our website: www.birdcount.org!
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12. Excellent classes at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden
Growing California native plants from seed, Sunday 22 February
Backyard beekeeping Saturday 7 March, Sunday 15 March
Lewis and Clark: The Voyage of the Corps of Discovery (morning), and botanical legacy (afternoon) - Saturday 14 March
---and many more: http://www.nativeplants.org/events.html
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13. From Brent Plater, January 15:
"There is a development idea for more golf, among other things, south of Mori Point. I think the support for Sharp Park Golf Course from the Pacifica City Council is tied to the development proposals for the quarry: the Council's preferred plan for raising tax revenues for the city's depleted coffers is to develop the quarry and lure seniors, travelers, home-buyers, etc. with a golf 'asset' near by.
Pacificans: contact your public officials and tell them there is already too much golf in Pacifica, and we need to Restore Sharp Park!"
(I will get mail from outraged Pacificans, telling me that there is a shortage of golf in Pacifica.)
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14. LTE, San Francisco Chronicle
Oppenheimer was not given his due at UC Berkeley
Editor: Thank you for the review of David Grubin's new documentary on Robert Oppenheimer. I watched it and agree that it is excellent. However, it did not answer the question that has troubled me for many years since coming to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate in 1967.
Why has the presence of one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century been virtually erased at Cal? Ernest Lawrence's name is everywhere, but Oppie's is absent except for an annual lecture series.
I attempted to answer this question in my dissertation/book Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. The conclusion I came to is a combination of Red Scare, anti-Semitism, public relations and the political economy of the Bomb.
Oppenheimer never got along with the boys in the Bohemian Club to which so many of the UC regents belonged and into which Lawrence was readily inducted. Lawrence was Nordic, all American and put tycoons at their ease; Oppie was not and did not. Oppie's politics were liberal; Lawrence's moved in the opposite direction as he increasingly consorted with the wealthy and powerful.
The regents have also long had a PR problem explaining why the University of California develops and promotes the most terrible weapons of mass destruction. Oppenheimer was known by everyone as the Father of the ABomb, Lawrence not so (though he should be remembered as co-father because his engineering expertise was necessary to refine U-235.) Thus, in the virtual shrine to Lawrence at the Heart of the Lawrence Hall of Science, there is only one photo of Oppenheimer and one mention of the Bomb.
Finally, the Bomb meant big money for those involved in masking it. The BNrookings Institution in 1998 estimated that the nuclear arms race has cost the nation $5.5 trillion, and some of that awresome sum went to the firms of regents for whom the nuclear arms race was a golden key to unlock the federal treasury. Lawrence himself went onto the boards of corporations heavily involved in the production of nuclear weaponry. Oppenheimer, of course, did not and was destroyed along with his brother, Frank, whom I knew when he was director of the Exploratorium.
I thought you would be interested in some of the local backstory to the Oppenheimer saga.
Gray Brechin, Project scholar
California's Living New Deal Project
UC Berkeley
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15. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
No convincing some folks
What killer facts might silence climate-change deniers?
There aren't any. If you don't want to believe something, facts, no matter how compelling, won't convert you. Just look, for two examples, at those who don't accept that smoking is bad for you and those who reject Darwin in favour of divine creation.
Alan Williams-Key, Madrid, Spain
Extinction.
Dave Fawkner, Nimbin, NSW, Australia
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16.
Blame the economic crash on groupthink
Shooting the bankers won't do it. This crisis was born out of a capitulation to the tyranny of orthodoxy
..."We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand." The words are from 1930, not 2009, but John Maynard Keynes's comment is as true today. He attributed the failure to a lack of understanding. Until very recently we thought we had put that right: plenty of clever economists; many of the sharpest minds going into finance; every economic indicator meticulously tracked; information spilling out of every analyst. But we forgot that there is a massive gap between information and understanding. The latter requires judgment, and that depends on moral attributes such as courage and wisdom.
...(A professor) produced some fascinating analysis last year of testosterone and cortisol among City traders and showed how their abnormally high hormones resulted in increasingly risky, and ultimately stupid, behaviour. The average age of those trading billions of dollars was 26. It's basic stuff: young males take risks. But with the advent of yuppies in the late 1980s anyone over 45 on a trading floor was regarded as a loser; we handed over a pivotal role in our "delicate" economy to those only too happy to take huge risks with it...It was like putting kids at the controls of Ferraris: how can we be surprised at the monumental pile-up?
The voracious appetite to apportion blame is now gathering pace. Look at the history of the 1930s and such anger is to be expected, but we need to be very wary of indulging it...Dead bodies are the oldest form of sacrifice; far harder is to acknowledge that it was a collective systemic failure. Yes, some individuals were greedy, but many were simply behaving in ways that the system encouraged, and which the rest of us failed to stop.
Vengeance is a satisfying emotion, but it has a disturbing history of landing on bystanders. Rather, we need a collective reckoning and large slices of humble pie all round. As Hamlet says: "Use every man after his desert and who shall 'scape whipping?"
Excerpted from Guardian Weekly 30.01.09
(There's not a lot of satisfaction you're going to get from the ongoing financial mess, so try the next-best thing--bitter wry humor: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01moranis.html)
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17. Jepson Herbarium courses, taught on the Berkeley campus:
Intermediate Bryology: February 21–22, 2009
We will work towards genus recognition of all California mosses and liverworts, and use more advanced keys than those used in the beginner's class. Emphasis will be on the bryoflora of the central coast, but participants are encouraged to bring their own collections to work on. Course fee ($235/$260)
Grimmia: February 28–March 1, 2009
The genus Grimmia is the most diverse and abundant group of moss to inhabit the higher and dryer parts of western North America. However, Grimmia species have the reputation of being notoriously difficult to recognize. This workshop will introduce a series of tables that can be used to identify species. Course fee ($235/$260)
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18. Feedback
Siobhan Ruck:
As someone who's spent hundreds - no, thousands - of hours watching hawks and ravens flying in the Marin Headlands (often together), I must take issue with the characterization of the raven as imitating a hawk's flight. Hawks are great, but I have never seen them pull off the elegant rolls and playful flourishes of ravens. Perhaps they could do so, but it doesn't seem to enter their minds. No, the raven is in a class by itself as a superb aerialist, and would only imitate a hawk for the pure sport of messing with our minds.
Dominik Mosur:
Hi Jake, I thought you might be interested in the fact that the WRENTIT looks to be staging a comeback of sorts in San Francisco.
When I first started birding the City in 2001 WRENTITS were known to remain only on Bayview Hill and occasionally one would be reported
from the coastal bluffs over Baker Beach in the Presidio.
In 2007 Wrentits were recorded for the first time at the East Wash (behind Legion of Honor) and were apparently breeding again on the
bluffs in the Presidio for at least a couple of years. Last year (2008) there were several reports of Wrentits from Glen Canyon, and Josiah Clark observed one carrying food at Lobos Creek a site they had previously been absent from (that by the way also underwent major restoration work!)
Saturday 1/31, while on a lunchbreak from the Randall I drove up to Twin Peaks reservoir to get away from the off-leash dogs that plague our Natural Area at Corona Heights. I was floored to find a pair of Wrentits quietly foraging in the scrub on the south side of the reservoir.
According to a number of sources Wrentits don't disperse very far from the site where they are hatched (I've seen figures from 500 yards to a
mile with availability and type of habitat present no doubt playing a part in this).
I think it's really exciting that a bird species which is obligate to native vegetation zones like coastal scrub and chaparral (which continue to be destroyed in CA at a rapid pace) appears to be actually expanding its range here in the city, especialy considering that at one time it was thought that its extirpation was inevitable.
Thanks for the report, Dominik. I wonder if its reappearance could be connected to the restoration work going on by agencies and by volunteers?
Alan Hopkins:
Jake, People who are intrested in Crows, Ravens, and Jays and our urban wildlife will want to read "Crow Planet: Finding Our Place in the Zoopolis" by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Actually, it’s a good read for anyone interested in the urban/wildlife issue. It should be out in July.
Ravens not only cause problems for the Tortoise but also for our Western Snowy Plovers, Marbled Murrelets as well as other birds such as Olive-sided Flycatcher that are all but gone from the City.
I don’t have the totals from this year’s (2008-9) San Francisco Christmas Bird Count but here are some numbers to show how Crows, Ravens and Jays have increased in the area:
Steller’s Jay 1983= 8, 2008= 44
Scrub Jay 1983= 78, 2008= 202
American Crow 1983= 9, 2008= 295
Common Raven 1983= 14, 2008= 564
Thanks, Alan, and especially for the data. I worked as a gardener in Golden Gate Park from 1959 on, and these birds, with the exception of the scrub jay, were not there before the 1970s. I remember how startled I was to see my first raven, then later a crow. That must have been in the 1970s or early '80s. They have been steadily increasing since, and they are now overwhelmingly present. I can't look out my window without seeing several. And I didn't see a Steller's jay until the last 10-15 years. The first time I saw one (in my backyard oak tree) I was so excited I had to telephone someone to exclaim about it.
Preying on desert tortoise is also new; ravens never used to inhabit the desert. I've heard reports of their extending their ranges into areas where they'd never been before. All these, as you know, are just symptoms of the profound changes wrought by man.
Doug Allshouse:
Jake, Ah, the yin and yang of the raven, so perfectly touched upon by you. Observing ravens in flight is a delight to behold--their pure joy of being airborne. Their most common partners in their fun of flight are any species of buteo hawks, especially red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks around here. The raven is so superior in flight to those buteos that it's no wonder they love to harass them, just for the fun of it. I've seen red-tails get so frustrated when screaming at them doesn't work that they will barrel-roll over on their backs (in flight) and extend their talons to try and intimidate the black wonders. NOT HAPPENING!! As for their propensity of raiding nests, you can say the same for all the corvids with the jays leading the pack by sheer numbers alone.
Ravens got so good at pulling up the plastic trash bags lining the cans with their beaks in the picnic area at San Bruno Mountain that the county installed bear-proof receptacles. I remarked to the rangers that if the ravens ever figure out how to gain access to the trash, the human race can take a step down on the evolutionary ladder. Good stuff, Doug
Not many will be interested in an academic, quantifiable, take on ravens, but if you are:
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v101n03/p0620-p0621.pdf
John Anderson:
Re: Item number 4 in your news letter, “life on man”- the classic book on this is The Life that Lives on Man. I forget the name of the author; I was going to Google it, but avoided doing so after reading further down in the newsletter. The book is fascinating, though it made me itchy reading it.
On Feb 1, 2009, at 12:10 PM, Young, Karl wrote:
Re. "...They see a propensity to religion as a natural human characteristic, like a propensity to language. Examining the biological and evolutionary causes of language is a respectable endeavour, so why not apply the same approach to religion? This sort of science seeks not to transcend religion, but to absorb it and reduce it to just another natural phenomenon that can be prodded, measured and explained. Such research is now going on apace—and set to provoke screams that will echo well beyond 2009..."
I'll raise you one; why not a study of the human propensity towards complete explanations. Though I'm a big fan of science and not of sacred cows I do see a bit of irony in the pride that certain people take in the ability of science to debunk, while failing to reflect on possible evolutionary causes of the need for rational explanation. "Prodding, measuring, and explaining" seem to be very powerful methods but I'm ignorant of any real "explanation" of the relationship between nature and human "understanding" of it (or maybe re. another item in this edition of Nature News, microbial understanding of it !).
Yah, Karl, I think I agree with you. As you and I know, there are a lot of 3rd-rate (and possibly 4th-rate) scientists, and your statements certainly apply to some of the work done in the name of science.
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19. Evolution
Balls and brains
The quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa
There are few better ways of upsetting a certain sort of politically correct person than to suggest that intelligence (or, rather, the variation in intelligence between individuals) is under genetic control. That, however, is one implication of a paper about to be published in Intelligence by Rosalind Arden of King’s College, London, and her colleagues. Another is that brainy people are intrinsically healthier than those less intellectually endowed. And the third, a consequence of the second, is that intelligence is sexy. The most surprising thing of all, though, is that these results have emerged from an unrelated study of the quality of men’s sperm.
…Alternatively (or in addition) it may be that intelligence is one manifestation of an underlying, genetically based healthiness. That is a view held by many evolutionary biologists, and was propounded in its modern form by Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, who is one of Ms Arden’s co-authors (and, as it happens, her husband). These biologists believe intelligence, as manifested in things like artistic and musical ability, is such a reliable indicator of underlying genetic fitness that it has been chosen by members of the opposite sex over the millennia. In the ensuing arms race to show off and get a mate it has been exaggerated in the way that a peacock’s tail is. This process of sexual selection, Dr Miller and his followers believe, is the reason people have become so brainy.
…Brainy men, it seems, do have better sperm. By implication, therefore, they have fitter bodies over all, at least in the Darwinian sense of fitness, namely the ability to survive, to attract mates and to produce offspring…To him that hath, in other words, shall be given. Unfortunately for the politically correct, Dr Miller’s hypothesis looks stronger by the day.
Excerpted from The Economist 6 December 2008
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20. LTEs, Guardian Weekly
Sir: Journalists struggling to find a fitting epitaph for the Bush presidency could do worse than quote HL Mencken: "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
John Brennan, Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
Sir: In Lost Eden you say that "they discovered a rich ecology". In what form? Two stone tablets? Ecology is the science that explains the interaction between organisms and environment. What the team really discovered was probably a rich and varied ecosystem.
Dag Tangen, Oslo, Norway
(I almost never use the word ecology, precisely because it is used improperly. It is a fuzzy term, and people who use it don't have a clear idea of what they mean. The dictionary defines it as the study of organisms and their relation to each other and to their surroundings. I have found that substituting 'ecosystem(s)' almost always expresses the thought. The term's misuse is so widely used and entrenched that it's unlikely it can ever be set straight. Other terms suffering a similar fate:
coup de grace: Most people pronounce it as though it's spelled 'gras'. So instead of meaning "stroke of mercy" (ie, putting something out of its misery), it would mean "stroke of fat". Correct pronunciation of "grace" is "grahss".
forte: 'Forte' is a French word, meaning strength or strong points, therefore it is pronounced fort. Yet few people know this, and pronounce it fort-ay, which is the Italian pronunciation of a word spelled the same but with a different meaning: loud. Pronounce it correctly and people look at you funny.
pristine: immaculate, perfect, in mint condition, as new, unspoiled, spotless, flawless, clean, fresh, new, virgin, pure, unused, according to the dictionary. There is no place on Earth to which you can apply that term, not even Antarctica. Yet it is used casually to apply to very degraded areas, such as scraps of original landscape in San Francisco having a modest percent cover of native plants but heavily infested with invasive plants. I even occasionally encountered it in scientific reports, and most scientists are very scrupulous in choosing and ordering words.
(More examples to come. Can you contribute some?)
2. Candlestick-Hunters Point development project alternatives - February 11
3. Help burrowing owls in East Bay- Feb 7/wetland habitat in San Francisco Feb 7/Least terns in Alameda Feb 8
4. Plant for the green hairstreak butterfly Sunday the 8th at 11.30
5. Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915 talk Thursday 12 Feb
6. New film: American Coyote - Still Wild at Heart
7. World's turtles at risk of extinction because of commercial trafficking
8. Animal-lover Winston Churchill on cats, dogs, and pigs
9. Moths escalate the insect arms race - jam bat sonar
10. The Watershed Nursery sale on entire inventory of native plants
11. An easy project for whole family: 12th annual great backyard bird count - February 13-16
12. Excellent classes at Regional Parks Botanic Garden
13. Sharp Park golf course: increase recreational opportunities, preserve endangered species, make our coast more resilient to climate change
14. Robert Oppenheimer trashed by UC Berkeley
15. Notes & Queries: What killer facts might silence climate-change deniers?
16. Economic crash: Shooting bankers won't do it--it was groupthink
17. The interesting world of bryophytes and mosses - classes in Berkeley
18. Feedback: ravens, mostly
19. Evolution--balls and brains. Not for the politically correct
20. Fitting epitaph for Bush presidency/definition of 'ecology'
1. California Native Plant Society program - free and open to the public
Cacti, Agaves, and Yuccas of California and Nevada
Thursday 5 February, 7.30 pm
Speaker: Stephen Ingram
Plant identification workshop 6-7.15 pm. Beginners welcome
California and Nevada are known for their astonishing array of plant life, and few components of this diverse flora are more intriguing than the cacti, agaves, and yuccas. These spiny succulents have long been a source of fascination for explorers, naturalists, and scientists. Stephen Ingram's multimedia presentation explores some of the unique attributes of the plants and highlights what makes them such intriguing components of our plant communities. With stunning images of their colorful blossoms and unusual growth forms, this program showcases a number of species that occur in California's deserts and coastal areas. Following the presentation, Stephen will sign copies of his recently published book that includes 262 color photographs, 16 botanical watercolors, and 5 range maps. His photos have been used in numerous books, magazines, and calendars.
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2.
Wednesday, February 11 Arc Ecology will hold a public meeting on its Candlestick-Hunters Point development project alternatives at the Bayview Opera House. Barbecue at 5:30 PM and the meeting at 6 PM. Do come if you can and invite all you can.
This is a very important issue for the southeast section of the city and for the whole city. This meeting is a good way to become informed of some of the important issues of this complex proposal.
Here are a few excerpts from the letter sent to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by 15 environmental and neighborhood organizations:
Taking no action at this time will not delay this project. Legally, no project can proceed until a Final EIR is approved. We are asking you to withhold premature endorsement on this proposal because we believe it has some serious but easily remedied flaws.
We share the view of the City and the developer that this project is vitally important to the City and to the Bayview Community. It has the potential to:
* provide for a final and complete remediation of the last Superfund site in the City, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard,
* provide new economic stimulus to the City and to the Bayview, an underserved and underdeveloped community,
* provide new housing for City residents of all income levels,
* provide significant park and recreation space essential for health and quality of life,
* help the City reach one of the major goals of its Sustainability Plan, to maintain and increase the City’s biodiversity,
* provide a model for addressing water issues such as recycling and stormwater treatment, and meeting the city goal of reducing potable water use by 10 million gallons/day by 2018.
However, we believe that as presently designed the project will not only fail to meet many of these goals as effectively as it should, it may even lead to negative impacts for some of these goals.
Arc Ecology has explored some alternate concepts for the project that we believe can greatly enhance the proposed plan. We are not suggesting that Arc’s concepts should necessarily be substituted for the Lennar proposal, although further study may suggest they be incorporated into the project. They do, however, illustrate ways the Lennar proposal fails to adequately address the issues cited above and demonstrates that viable alternatives exist that would better achieve the Proposition G goals of this development project.
(Full letter provided on request.)
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3.
We have another opportunity to help Burrowing Owls at Cesar Chavez Park - Saturday Feb 7
As most of you may know, temporary fencing was put up around the owls currently living at Cesar Chavez Park to allow more space between them and park users. While we are anticipating these owls to leave in a few weeks time, we want to take this opportunity for some public outreach. Thanks to Della Dash and the East Bay Conservation Committee, we now have informational brochures about the owls that we would like to pass out to park users.
Interested?
Join the East Bay Conservation Committee Board Chair, Phil Price at Cesar Chavez Park at the southeast entrance (at the entrance sign as Marina Boulevard forces you to turn left onto Spinnaker Way) at 10am this Saturday, February 7th. Heavy rain cancels. If you plan to attend, please email Phil at pnprice@creekcats.com, or call his cell phone at 510-909-8863. It is highly encouraged to email.
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Help Golden Gate Audubon Restore Critical Wetland Habitat in San Francisco's Southern Waterfront!
As part of our ongoing efforts to restore wetlands in San Francisco Bay, we will continue our efforts at Pier 94, throughout the year. Activities include invasive plant removal, trash pickup, monitoring, and planting in the fall. The site is home to native California Sea-blite, as well as nesting shorebirds.
· Saturday, February 7, 9:00 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Pier 94 Plant Monitoring. Monitor the native and non-native plants of Pier 94. Never done it before? Not to worry, we are looking for plant people and recorders alike. Come out and join the fun. Refreshments will be provided! Please RSVP to Jennifer Robinson if you are planning to attend. Rain cancels.
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Help Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge Committee and Golden Gate Audubon Restore CA Least Tern Habitat.
February 8, 9:00 a.m. to noon: Join our TogetherGreen Volunteer Days with the Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge workday. Come help us prepare habitat for California Least Terns! Meet at the main refuge gate at the northwest corner of former Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda. Rain or shine!
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4.
Mark your calendars to be part of the work party to put Hairstreak plants into our secondly-acquired D.P.W. lot along the corridor: the Aerial Staircase (directly across the first lot at 14th/Pacheco). Sunday, February 8th. 11:30. Stay as long as you can...or just for awhile. We will actually work at both sites, and the goal is to get as many plants as we have left into the ground this remaining planting season. We really had a fantastic time last time. It gets the neighbors out and asking "What is going on?" and that is the most rewarding outreach...when we talk about the butterfly.
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5.
SAN FRANCISCO NATURALIST SOCIETY--FREE PROGRAM
7:30 PM, Thursday, February 12, 2009
"Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915"
with speaker Nancy DeStefanis, Executive Director San Francisco Nature Education
Learn about the Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915, constructed in San Francisco’s Marina District,-called the Last Great Fair. The Palace of Fine Arts is the only remaining building of the Exposition and is currently under renovation. Nancy will show slides that depict the beauty and innovations of the various buildings and exhibits along with dramatic opening day footage courtesy of Rick Prelinger (Prelinger Archives).
Randall Museum Theatre
199 Museum Way, San Francisco
info: 554-9600 ext 16 or San Francisco Nature Education, 387-9160
http://www.sfnature.org/programs/lecture_schedule.html
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6.
Project Coyote & Still Wild at Heart Announce New Film:
American Coyote — Still Wild at Heart
To view a trailer of the film go to www.ProjectCoyote.org
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7. We need Federal legislation to stop the commerce before we lose an entire family of animals
The Asian Turtle crisis: The world's turtles are at risk of extinction
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200902031030/NEIGHBORHOODS01/902030332
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8.
"Cats look down on people; dogs look up to people; pigs treat people as equals." - Winston Churchill
(Churchill loved animals, and he was especially fond of his little pigs, which he kept always.)
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9. Moth jams bat sonar
...a tiger moth called Bertholdia trigona "goes berserk," making a lot of noise above the range of human hearing when a hunting bat approaches. Bats rely on their natural sonar to locate flying moths in the dark, but in the lab, the bats rarely managed to nab one of these loud moths. When researchers disabled the moth's noisemaking organs, though, bats caught the moths in midair with ease and ate them..."the work is the first example of any prey item that jams biological sonar; when threatened these moths emit a steady, broadband sound. Insect-hunting bats and their moth prey have become a classic in the study of evolutionary arms races. This is warfare," (says the researcher).
Excerpt from Science News 31.01.09
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10. Special Winter Sale - February 1st - 27th.
During the month of February 2009, The Watershed Nursery has dropped prices on its entire inventory. Here's your chance to save BIG on a large selection of beautiful Native California plants, including many drought tolerant plants. Enjoy 5%-50% off regular prices!
You can place your order by email, phone or fax between February 1st - 27th or shop for your selection in person on Fridays from 10 am to 5 pm.
phone: (510) 234-2222
email: twn@thewatershednursery.com
web: www.thewatershednursery.com
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11.
12th Annual Great Backyard Bird Count - February 13 – 16, 2009 - COUNT FOR FUN! COUNT FOR THE FUTURE!
Plan to join tens of thousands of other bird watchers across North America as we tally the birds over these four days. Count on your own or with family, friends, and neighbors to make this the biggest, best GBBC ever! Pass along our website: www.birdcount.org!
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12. Excellent classes at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden
Growing California native plants from seed, Sunday 22 February
Backyard beekeeping Saturday 7 March, Sunday 15 March
Lewis and Clark: The Voyage of the Corps of Discovery (morning), and botanical legacy (afternoon) - Saturday 14 March
---and many more: http://www.nativeplants.org/events.html
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13. From Brent Plater, January 15:
"There is a development idea for more golf, among other things, south of Mori Point. I think the support for Sharp Park Golf Course from the Pacifica City Council is tied to the development proposals for the quarry: the Council's preferred plan for raising tax revenues for the city's depleted coffers is to develop the quarry and lure seniors, travelers, home-buyers, etc. with a golf 'asset' near by.
Pacificans: contact your public officials and tell them there is already too much golf in Pacifica, and we need to Restore Sharp Park!"
(I will get mail from outraged Pacificans, telling me that there is a shortage of golf in Pacifica.)
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14. LTE, San Francisco Chronicle
Oppenheimer was not given his due at UC Berkeley
Editor: Thank you for the review of David Grubin's new documentary on Robert Oppenheimer. I watched it and agree that it is excellent. However, it did not answer the question that has troubled me for many years since coming to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate in 1967.
Why has the presence of one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century been virtually erased at Cal? Ernest Lawrence's name is everywhere, but Oppie's is absent except for an annual lecture series.
I attempted to answer this question in my dissertation/book Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. The conclusion I came to is a combination of Red Scare, anti-Semitism, public relations and the political economy of the Bomb.
Oppenheimer never got along with the boys in the Bohemian Club to which so many of the UC regents belonged and into which Lawrence was readily inducted. Lawrence was Nordic, all American and put tycoons at their ease; Oppie was not and did not. Oppie's politics were liberal; Lawrence's moved in the opposite direction as he increasingly consorted with the wealthy and powerful.
The regents have also long had a PR problem explaining why the University of California develops and promotes the most terrible weapons of mass destruction. Oppenheimer was known by everyone as the Father of the ABomb, Lawrence not so (though he should be remembered as co-father because his engineering expertise was necessary to refine U-235.) Thus, in the virtual shrine to Lawrence at the Heart of the Lawrence Hall of Science, there is only one photo of Oppenheimer and one mention of the Bomb.
Finally, the Bomb meant big money for those involved in masking it. The BNrookings Institution in 1998 estimated that the nuclear arms race has cost the nation $5.5 trillion, and some of that awresome sum went to the firms of regents for whom the nuclear arms race was a golden key to unlock the federal treasury. Lawrence himself went onto the boards of corporations heavily involved in the production of nuclear weaponry. Oppenheimer, of course, did not and was destroyed along with his brother, Frank, whom I knew when he was director of the Exploratorium.
I thought you would be interested in some of the local backstory to the Oppenheimer saga.
Gray Brechin, Project scholar
California's Living New Deal Project
UC Berkeley
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15. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
No convincing some folks
What killer facts might silence climate-change deniers?
There aren't any. If you don't want to believe something, facts, no matter how compelling, won't convert you. Just look, for two examples, at those who don't accept that smoking is bad for you and those who reject Darwin in favour of divine creation.
Alan Williams-Key, Madrid, Spain
Extinction.
Dave Fawkner, Nimbin, NSW, Australia
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16.
Blame the economic crash on groupthink
Shooting the bankers won't do it. This crisis was born out of a capitulation to the tyranny of orthodoxy
..."We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand." The words are from 1930, not 2009, but John Maynard Keynes's comment is as true today. He attributed the failure to a lack of understanding. Until very recently we thought we had put that right: plenty of clever economists; many of the sharpest minds going into finance; every economic indicator meticulously tracked; information spilling out of every analyst. But we forgot that there is a massive gap between information and understanding. The latter requires judgment, and that depends on moral attributes such as courage and wisdom.
...(A professor) produced some fascinating analysis last year of testosterone and cortisol among City traders and showed how their abnormally high hormones resulted in increasingly risky, and ultimately stupid, behaviour. The average age of those trading billions of dollars was 26. It's basic stuff: young males take risks. But with the advent of yuppies in the late 1980s anyone over 45 on a trading floor was regarded as a loser; we handed over a pivotal role in our "delicate" economy to those only too happy to take huge risks with it...It was like putting kids at the controls of Ferraris: how can we be surprised at the monumental pile-up?
The voracious appetite to apportion blame is now gathering pace. Look at the history of the 1930s and such anger is to be expected, but we need to be very wary of indulging it...Dead bodies are the oldest form of sacrifice; far harder is to acknowledge that it was a collective systemic failure. Yes, some individuals were greedy, but many were simply behaving in ways that the system encouraged, and which the rest of us failed to stop.
Vengeance is a satisfying emotion, but it has a disturbing history of landing on bystanders. Rather, we need a collective reckoning and large slices of humble pie all round. As Hamlet says: "Use every man after his desert and who shall 'scape whipping?"
Excerpted from Guardian Weekly 30.01.09
(There's not a lot of satisfaction you're going to get from the ongoing financial mess, so try the next-best thing--bitter wry humor: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01moranis.html)
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17. Jepson Herbarium courses, taught on the Berkeley campus:
Intermediate Bryology: February 21–22, 2009
We will work towards genus recognition of all California mosses and liverworts, and use more advanced keys than those used in the beginner's class. Emphasis will be on the bryoflora of the central coast, but participants are encouraged to bring their own collections to work on. Course fee ($235/$260)
Grimmia: February 28–March 1, 2009
The genus Grimmia is the most diverse and abundant group of moss to inhabit the higher and dryer parts of western North America. However, Grimmia species have the reputation of being notoriously difficult to recognize. This workshop will introduce a series of tables that can be used to identify species. Course fee ($235/$260)
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18. Feedback
Siobhan Ruck:
As someone who's spent hundreds - no, thousands - of hours watching hawks and ravens flying in the Marin Headlands (often together), I must take issue with the characterization of the raven as imitating a hawk's flight. Hawks are great, but I have never seen them pull off the elegant rolls and playful flourishes of ravens. Perhaps they could do so, but it doesn't seem to enter their minds. No, the raven is in a class by itself as a superb aerialist, and would only imitate a hawk for the pure sport of messing with our minds.
Dominik Mosur:
Hi Jake, I thought you might be interested in the fact that the WRENTIT looks to be staging a comeback of sorts in San Francisco.
When I first started birding the City in 2001 WRENTITS were known to remain only on Bayview Hill and occasionally one would be reported
from the coastal bluffs over Baker Beach in the Presidio.
In 2007 Wrentits were recorded for the first time at the East Wash (behind Legion of Honor) and were apparently breeding again on the
bluffs in the Presidio for at least a couple of years. Last year (2008) there were several reports of Wrentits from Glen Canyon, and Josiah Clark observed one carrying food at Lobos Creek a site they had previously been absent from (that by the way also underwent major restoration work!)
Saturday 1/31, while on a lunchbreak from the Randall I drove up to Twin Peaks reservoir to get away from the off-leash dogs that plague our Natural Area at Corona Heights. I was floored to find a pair of Wrentits quietly foraging in the scrub on the south side of the reservoir.
According to a number of sources Wrentits don't disperse very far from the site where they are hatched (I've seen figures from 500 yards to a
mile with availability and type of habitat present no doubt playing a part in this).
I think it's really exciting that a bird species which is obligate to native vegetation zones like coastal scrub and chaparral (which continue to be destroyed in CA at a rapid pace) appears to be actually expanding its range here in the city, especialy considering that at one time it was thought that its extirpation was inevitable.
Thanks for the report, Dominik. I wonder if its reappearance could be connected to the restoration work going on by agencies and by volunteers?
Alan Hopkins:
Jake, People who are intrested in Crows, Ravens, and Jays and our urban wildlife will want to read "Crow Planet: Finding Our Place in the Zoopolis" by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Actually, it’s a good read for anyone interested in the urban/wildlife issue. It should be out in July.
Ravens not only cause problems for the Tortoise but also for our Western Snowy Plovers, Marbled Murrelets as well as other birds such as Olive-sided Flycatcher that are all but gone from the City.
I don’t have the totals from this year’s (2008-9) San Francisco Christmas Bird Count but here are some numbers to show how Crows, Ravens and Jays have increased in the area:
Steller’s Jay 1983= 8, 2008= 44
Scrub Jay 1983= 78, 2008= 202
American Crow 1983= 9, 2008= 295
Common Raven 1983= 14, 2008= 564
Thanks, Alan, and especially for the data. I worked as a gardener in Golden Gate Park from 1959 on, and these birds, with the exception of the scrub jay, were not there before the 1970s. I remember how startled I was to see my first raven, then later a crow. That must have been in the 1970s or early '80s. They have been steadily increasing since, and they are now overwhelmingly present. I can't look out my window without seeing several. And I didn't see a Steller's jay until the last 10-15 years. The first time I saw one (in my backyard oak tree) I was so excited I had to telephone someone to exclaim about it.
Preying on desert tortoise is also new; ravens never used to inhabit the desert. I've heard reports of their extending their ranges into areas where they'd never been before. All these, as you know, are just symptoms of the profound changes wrought by man.
Doug Allshouse:
Jake, Ah, the yin and yang of the raven, so perfectly touched upon by you. Observing ravens in flight is a delight to behold--their pure joy of being airborne. Their most common partners in their fun of flight are any species of buteo hawks, especially red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks around here. The raven is so superior in flight to those buteos that it's no wonder they love to harass them, just for the fun of it. I've seen red-tails get so frustrated when screaming at them doesn't work that they will barrel-roll over on their backs (in flight) and extend their talons to try and intimidate the black wonders. NOT HAPPENING!! As for their propensity of raiding nests, you can say the same for all the corvids with the jays leading the pack by sheer numbers alone.
Ravens got so good at pulling up the plastic trash bags lining the cans with their beaks in the picnic area at San Bruno Mountain that the county installed bear-proof receptacles. I remarked to the rangers that if the ravens ever figure out how to gain access to the trash, the human race can take a step down on the evolutionary ladder. Good stuff, Doug
Not many will be interested in an academic, quantifiable, take on ravens, but if you are:
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v101n03/p0620-p0621.pdf
John Anderson:
Re: Item number 4 in your news letter, “life on man”- the classic book on this is The Life that Lives on Man. I forget the name of the author; I was going to Google it, but avoided doing so after reading further down in the newsletter. The book is fascinating, though it made me itchy reading it.
On Feb 1, 2009, at 12:10 PM, Young, Karl wrote:
Re. "...They see a propensity to religion as a natural human characteristic, like a propensity to language. Examining the biological and evolutionary causes of language is a respectable endeavour, so why not apply the same approach to religion? This sort of science seeks not to transcend religion, but to absorb it and reduce it to just another natural phenomenon that can be prodded, measured and explained. Such research is now going on apace—and set to provoke screams that will echo well beyond 2009..."
I'll raise you one; why not a study of the human propensity towards complete explanations. Though I'm a big fan of science and not of sacred cows I do see a bit of irony in the pride that certain people take in the ability of science to debunk, while failing to reflect on possible evolutionary causes of the need for rational explanation. "Prodding, measuring, and explaining" seem to be very powerful methods but I'm ignorant of any real "explanation" of the relationship between nature and human "understanding" of it (or maybe re. another item in this edition of Nature News, microbial understanding of it !).
Yah, Karl, I think I agree with you. As you and I know, there are a lot of 3rd-rate (and possibly 4th-rate) scientists, and your statements certainly apply to some of the work done in the name of science.
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19. Evolution
Balls and brains
The quality of a man’s sperm depends on how intelligent he is, and vice versa
There are few better ways of upsetting a certain sort of politically correct person than to suggest that intelligence (or, rather, the variation in intelligence between individuals) is under genetic control. That, however, is one implication of a paper about to be published in Intelligence by Rosalind Arden of King’s College, London, and her colleagues. Another is that brainy people are intrinsically healthier than those less intellectually endowed. And the third, a consequence of the second, is that intelligence is sexy. The most surprising thing of all, though, is that these results have emerged from an unrelated study of the quality of men’s sperm.
…Alternatively (or in addition) it may be that intelligence is one manifestation of an underlying, genetically based healthiness. That is a view held by many evolutionary biologists, and was propounded in its modern form by Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, who is one of Ms Arden’s co-authors (and, as it happens, her husband). These biologists believe intelligence, as manifested in things like artistic and musical ability, is such a reliable indicator of underlying genetic fitness that it has been chosen by members of the opposite sex over the millennia. In the ensuing arms race to show off and get a mate it has been exaggerated in the way that a peacock’s tail is. This process of sexual selection, Dr Miller and his followers believe, is the reason people have become so brainy.
…Brainy men, it seems, do have better sperm. By implication, therefore, they have fitter bodies over all, at least in the Darwinian sense of fitness, namely the ability to survive, to attract mates and to produce offspring…To him that hath, in other words, shall be given. Unfortunately for the politically correct, Dr Miller’s hypothesis looks stronger by the day.
Excerpted from The Economist 6 December 2008
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20. LTEs, Guardian Weekly
Sir: Journalists struggling to find a fitting epitaph for the Bush presidency could do worse than quote HL Mencken: "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
John Brennan, Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
Sir: In Lost Eden you say that "they discovered a rich ecology". In what form? Two stone tablets? Ecology is the science that explains the interaction between organisms and environment. What the team really discovered was probably a rich and varied ecosystem.
Dag Tangen, Oslo, Norway
(I almost never use the word ecology, precisely because it is used improperly. It is a fuzzy term, and people who use it don't have a clear idea of what they mean. The dictionary defines it as the study of organisms and their relation to each other and to their surroundings. I have found that substituting 'ecosystem(s)' almost always expresses the thought. The term's misuse is so widely used and entrenched that it's unlikely it can ever be set straight. Other terms suffering a similar fate:
coup de grace: Most people pronounce it as though it's spelled 'gras'. So instead of meaning "stroke of mercy" (ie, putting something out of its misery), it would mean "stroke of fat". Correct pronunciation of "grace" is "grahss".
forte: 'Forte' is a French word, meaning strength or strong points, therefore it is pronounced fort. Yet few people know this, and pronounce it fort-ay, which is the Italian pronunciation of a word spelled the same but with a different meaning: loud. Pronounce it correctly and people look at you funny.
pristine: immaculate, perfect, in mint condition, as new, unspoiled, spotless, flawless, clean, fresh, new, virgin, pure, unused, according to the dictionary. There is no place on Earth to which you can apply that term, not even Antarctica. Yet it is used casually to apply to very degraded areas, such as scraps of original landscape in San Francisco having a modest percent cover of native plants but heavily infested with invasive plants. I even occasionally encountered it in scientific reports, and most scientists are very scrupulous in choosing and ordering words.
(More examples to come. Can you contribute some?)
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