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

***********************

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?)

****************************

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.

*************************

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.
*****************************

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.)

*****************************

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.


*****************************


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.


**************************

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



**************************

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.



***************************



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



***************************



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



****************************

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



**************************

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)



***************************

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."

__________________

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."