Special to Bayview Hill-Jake Sigg's Nature News

1. Last jaguar in the U.S. euthanized

2. San Bruno Mountain habitat restoration workshop March 14

3. Summer courses at the SFSU Sierra field campus

4. Some opportunities: tree swallow monitoring/hosting at Audubon Canyon
Ranch/Marin waterfalls tour March 7

5. Learning from bushfires

6. Sensible words from E.O. Wilson

7. Is the honeybee crisis real?

8. The rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War

9. Water: a surprising amount is needed to produce some everyday items

10. Still time to register for Weed Day at Capitol/research needs for invasive plants in California

11. Paddle to the sea May 16 - June 7

12. California Native Grasslands workshops

13. Nominate someone for a Chronicle profile/three profiles from Chronicle archives

14. Some items from California Academy of Sciences

15. Photos to identify the weedy grass ehrharta

16. Serotonin turns loner locusts into swarming, gregarious cereal killers

17. Feedback

18. The Presidio and Bayview-Hunter's Point: Is one Superfund site cleaner than the
other?

19. Financial/economic miscellany

20. 150th anniversary of Sholom Aleichem

21. International Year of Astronomy: Votes on Hubble telescope tasks



1. From the Center for Biological Diversity:

In deeply sad news, the first wild jaguar to be captured and fitted with a radio-collar in the United States -- and the only jaguar known to be living here -- was euthanized in Phoenix, AZ Monday night. The jaguar, "Macho B" was accidentally captured in an Arizona Game and Fish Department trap on February 18th and was recaptured and euthanized Monday after he was found to be suffering from kidney failure.

This is a terrible setback for the fragile population of northern jaguars that once ranged from the Bay Area of California to the Appalachian Mountains and now are so rare that only four have been photographed in the U.S. since 1996. Macho B was the oldest known jaguar in the wild, at an estimated 15 to 16 years.

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2.

Habitat Preservation Project

San Bruno Mountain needs your help and care!

San Bruno Mountain is constantly invaded by non-native plants that overrun and destroy native habitat

San Bruno Mountain is:

* The largest urban open space in the country
* Home to 3 endangered butterflies; the Mission Blue, Callippe silverspot and San Bruno Elfin
* Home to a host of rare or endangered plants
* On a list of 18 biodiversity hot spots on the planet.
* An island surrounded by metropolitan San Francisco

San Bruno Mountain Watch and the San Mateo County Parks Department are looking for volunteers to adopt an area of endangered habitat and care for it. Volunteers will be trained to preserve and maintain native habitat for the plants and animals of San Bruno Mountain.

When: Saturday, March 14, 10 am to 1 pm

Where: San Bruno Mountain Watch, 44 Visitacion, Suite 206, Brisbane

What: Learn basic ecology, important native plant and exotic species identification, invasive species control, safe and effective use of a weed whip.

For more information and to RSVP please contact us at 415-467-6631, or sanbruno@mountainwatch.org

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3. Summer courses at the SFSU Sierra campus



Here is a fun and productive way to spend your vacation. San Francisco State University's summer campus near Yuba Pass in the Sierra Nevada offers courses in biology (plants, insects, birds, butterflies, ecology), geology, astronomy, writing retreats, illustration (with Jack Laws), and many, many more. I have taken courses in botany and astronomy there, and highly recommend them. You stay in tents, and delicious meals are served, so all you need is your sleeping bag and personal items.



For more information: jsteele@sfsu.edu, 415-338-1571



(The astronomy course includes looking through large telescopes that reveal exciting and beautiful views of objects you never knew existed. My most vivid memory when I took this course--I still see it in my mind's eye--is the "star" Albireo, which is the head of Cygnus the Swan. Albireo under magnification is revealed as two stars, one of which is daffodil yellow, the other a sapphire blue. The contrast is so striking and so ineffably beautiful that I gasped. It is burned into my memory.)

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4.

Marin waterfalls tour, Saturday 7 March: http://www.californianaturetours.com/AllTours/MarinWaterfallsOrchidsHike.html

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Tree Swallow Nest Box monitoring in the SF Botanical Garden
Volunteers are needed to monitor the nest boxes and record any nesting activity through Mid-May. The Tree Swallow nest boxes were built by Dave Matson, woodshop instructor at Woodside International High School, and installed in the Botanic Garden. Volunteers can become certified as a nest box monitor through this program.

Hosts Needed for Audubon Canyon Ranch
Want a chance to enjoy a beautiful nature and birding site while helping others? Join the GGA team of Audubon Canyon Ranch (ACR) hosts this spring! Each year, from mid-March to mid-July, thousands of visitors come to see herons and egrets nesting in the redwood trees at the ACR Bolinas Lagoon Preserve, overlooking Bolinas Lagoon in western Marin County. Hosts greet and direct visitors and answer questions. All of the information hosts need is provided in advance.

For more information on any of these activities contact Jennifer Robinson at jrobinson@goldengateaudubon.org, or 510.919.5873.

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5.

LTE: Guardian Weekly

Learning from bushfires



The devastating wildfires in Australia have created a raft of misinformation and a scramble to both lay blame and excuse decades of forestry mismanagement and rapacious logging. The eucalypt forests, when left unlogged, are damp: the tree canopy joins to exclude the harsh, drying sun. The gullies are moist and steamy, with ferns and deep, damp forest litter.



The forests have been irredeemably altered in their ecology by 40 years of ruthless logging for woodchip pulp. The mature trees are gone, the forest canopy is open and the ground exposed. Most of the animals that nature designed to keep these forests healthy have been driven to extinction by loss of habitat and poisoning programmes by forest management to prevent them from eating regrowth.



These forests, over vast areas, have been reduced to dried-out monocultures to suit the logging industry. The streams have been filled with eroded silt, which is now clogging virtually every estuary on the south-east coast of New South Wales and Victoria, stifling fish breeding and destroying oyster farms.



Most of the worst fires occurred in areas “managed” in this way. More “hazard reduction” burning will only exacerbate the problem.



The native forest is not a “hazard” to be reduced. But its mismanagement has reduced it to a tinderbox. Australia will see more of these fires.

S. Foulkes, Bermagui, NSW, Australia



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6.

“We do not float above the biosphere in some higher spiritual or technoscientific plane. Life swarms around us, and even in us…For many reasons, not least our own well-being, we need to take better care of the rest of life. Biodiversity…Will pay off in every sphere of human life, from medical to economic, from our collective security to our spiritual fulfillment.”

Edward O. Wilson, in Foreword to Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, a collection of scientific essays

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7. In an article in current issue of The Economist, headlined:

The economic crisis has contributed to a glut of bees in California. That raises questions about whether a supposed global pollination crisis is real, here is final paragraph:



Though the idea that there is a broader and costly pollination crisis under way is entrenched (the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation is spending $28m on a report investigating it), the true picture is cloudier. In 2006 America’s National Academy of Sciences released a report on the status of pollinators in North America that concluded “for most North American pollinator species, long-term population data are lacking and knowledge of their basic ecology is incomplete.” Simply put, nobody knows. As for the managed bees of America, Dr Ratnieks says that “the imminent death of the honeybee has been reported so many times, but it has not happened and is not likely to do so”.



I asked Philip Gerrie, former president of the San Francisco Beekeepers Association, for his reaction.

Hi Jake, I would agree with their findings. I'm going to a bee symposium in Santa Rosa Saturday and will learn more. There is wisdom in being around for a while. Some events happen only every few decades and only those that have lived through it can pass on what happened. The media made a thing of this because it was an easy story to spin to the end-of-the-worlders. It has happened before but the media didn't pick it up and give it a name. They found there was nothing there to be called Colony Collapse Disorder.



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8.

Reagan and Gorbachev

A friendship that frightened America's cold warriors



The rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, by James Mann



He kicks off with a chapter on the relationship between Reagan and Richard Nixon, who may have kept a low public profile but bombarded the president with advice. And this advice appears with hindsight to have been fairly bad. Along with Henry Kissinger, who also periodically weighed in, Nixon seemed unable to grasp what Reagan instinctively understood, even if he was wary about articulating it: that Mr Gorbachev really was a different kind of Soviet leader from those that America had faced in the previous decades.



It is this, according to Mr Mann, that made Reagan a rebel, and his rebellion was rooted in a profound philosophical difference. One realist school of thought held that the cold war was something immutable, a fact of history that could at best be managed through the grinding diplomatic protocols known as detente. The other school, to which Reagan belonged, sensed that communism was weaker than it looked and that the cold war would die with it.



Unfortunately, it was not just Nixon and Mr Kissinger who belonged to the first realist school but also most of the State Department, the Pentagon and the rest of the national security apparatus, not to mention the whole chorus of the conservative commentariat. Here, for instance, is George Will, of the Washington Post, writing in 1987: “Reagan seems to accept the core of the catechism of the anti-nuclear left…the notion that the threat is the existence of nuclear weapons, not the nature of the Soviet regime.” In extending a hand of friendship to Mr Gorbachev, Reagan terrified the great bulk of his own political base.



…Ultimately, or so Mr Mann concludes, the Soviet Union collapsed because of Mr Gorbachev and the communist system’s internal contradictions. Neither the arms race nor any concerted effort to strangle the Soviet economy pushed the empire over the edge. Nor, for that matter, did Reagan’s sensible policy of conditional engagement. Which does rather raise the question: how much in the end did that rebellion of Ronald Reagan really matter?



Excerpt from review in The Economist 28/2/09



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9.

Water

Excess liquidity

A surprising amount of water is needed to produce some everyday items



How precious a commodity is water? For those who find it in short supply, such as farmers and others hurt by recent droughts in parts of China, Australia, America and Kenya, its value is easily grasped. Consumers already show increasing interest in the resources used (such as energy) or pollution caused (for example in emissions of carbon) in the production of everyday items. They might be surprised to learn how much water is needed to create some daily goods.



A cup of coffee, for example, needs a great deal more water than that poured into the pot. According to a new book on the subject, 1,120 litres of water are required for the production of beans for a single litre of the beverage (or 140 litres per cup). A relatively modest 120 litres go into making the same amount of tea. As many as four litres of water are used to make a litre of the bottled stuff. Household items are just as thirsty. Oceans are needed to make shoes, hamburgers and microchips. And several bathfuls go to making a plain cheese sandwich, which can sometimes seem a little dry.



See economist.com/dailychart



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10. California Invasive Plant Council:

There's still time to register for Day at the Capitol on March 11, the day after the statewide WMA meeting!
Register on our Day at the Capitol webpage.

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The California Invasive Plant Council announces the release of its report on Research Needs for Invasive Plants in California. Read it here: http://www.cal-ipc.org/ip/research/researchneeds.php

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11. Paddle to the Sea



This event, sponsored by the Tuolumne River Trust, is a 3-week festival celebrating the Tuolumne River as it courses from the Sierra Nevada to the San Francisco Bay. Kayakers and rafters will begin this journey on the upper stretches of the Clavey and Tuolumne Rivers, travel through the Central Valley where canoers will take the lead, pass the confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin Rivers, and continue on to the San Francisco Bay. Join us for kayaking, rafting, canoeing, or for our weekend celebration festivities. You can come for a day, a week, or for the entire trip! The event takes place from May 16 - June 7. For more information, visit http://www.tuolumne.org/content/article.php/paddle2009



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12. California Native Grasslands workshops:



Sustainable Grazing. At the Hastings Reserve in Upper Carmel Valley, March 18-20.



CNGA Field Day at Hedgerow Farms, Apr 17, Winters, CA.



Signup and further information at http://www.cnga.org/workshop_signup.html



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13. On Mar 1, 2009, at 12:35 PM, Edward Guthmann wrote:

I recently started a weekly feature that runs Monday in the Datebook section, called What I Do. It’s a Studs Terkel kind of thing: someone describing their work in their own words. Examples can be found on the below website.



If you know anyone who’d be a good candidate for one of these profiles, please let me know. It could be any kind of job. What I’m looking for are people who are good talkers and have good insights and an original take on things.



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?Submit=S&term=Edward+Guthmann&Go.x=41&Go.y=8&Go=Search&st=s



Do you or someone you know want to share a work story? E-mail us at datebookletters@sfchronicle.com.



Other examples of Guthmann's writing (on a different kind of subject than the above) can be found at :



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/01/CM5E109UDJ.DTL&hw=Liam+O%27Brien&sn=001&sc=1000 (Liam O'Brien)



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/04/DDGU5M55VT1.DTL (Greg Gaar)



(by Ron Sullivan, not Guthmann): http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/07/06/HO239175.DTL (Jake Sigg)



I added the last one to complete the Terrible Trio.



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14. From California Academy of Sciences:

Evolve 2009 - the citywide celebration of evolution in honor of Charles Darwin's bicentennial - continues in March with lectures and book discussions. On March 10, the Academy's adult book group debuts with a focus on The Voyage of the Beagle. On March 21, teens can discuss the book Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature. And on March 24, Kevin Padian of UC Berkeley will share his personal experience during Kitzmiller v. Dover, the 2005 trial about intelligent design.
See the complete schedule of Evolve 2009 events.

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15. (Regarding the weedy ehrharta grass)

On the first matter, I know you can't include photos/attachment. Was thinking that it might be possible to include links to photos in stories like this, just as you link to articles or announcements in other items.



Yes, I can do that, and do many times. However, in the case of both oxalis and ehrharta--which have both caused me anxiety and grief for the past several years--there is so much information that it, at least temporarily, defeated me. I was so time-short that I dropped the idea of cruising the net for ID pictures. However, I now have an address:



http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?stat=BROWSE&query_src=photos_flora_sci&where-genre=Plant&where-taxon=Ehrharta+erecta&title_tag=Ehrharta+erecta



As many pictures as there are of ehrharta at this site, they still do not clearly portray its distinctiveness. Once you learn how to distinguish it from other grasses it's easy to spot it, even among other grasses. The clincher is that flowering culm with its tiny florets clasping the tip of the culm. The branches bearing the florets do open out. The key is those tiny florets, which are distinctive. Also distinctive is the yellow-green color and the shape of the leaf blades.



In general, CalPhotos is a good site for plant photos: http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/flora/



And here is a better picture of the distinctive ehrharta inflorescence:

If you go to www.cal-ipc.org, click on Plant Profiles in red, choose what plant you are interested in from the pick list, you get the profile page for that plant, which has links to all sorts of stuff, including the CalPhotos page for that plant.



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16.

Serotonin turns loner locusts into swarming, gregarious cereal killers

Smells, sights, tickles boost levels of the neurotransmitter



Neighbors say he seemed like such a nice, quiet locust. But a surge of serotonin, researchers now say, sent this solitary type to join a crop-destroying plague.



Desert locusts often live as shy loners that try to avoid others of their kind. If they do get crowded for several hours, though, the locusts start to switch behavior dramatically, almost becoming another animal.



"Party animal" is the way (a researcher) describes the new form. Loners get livelier. They move toward, rather than away from, other locusts. And if swarming persists, locusts can sweep across the landscape and devour pretty much all vegetation. That switch in behavior turns out to be rely on a compound known to be important in human moods, the neurotransmitter serotonin.



Excerpt from Science News 28/2/09

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17. Feedback



Steve Neff:

Jake: In regards to the great horned owl question, I don't have an answer, but I would like to share a very memorable experience I had from 15 or so years ago. I was doing one of my pre-dawn hikes in the eucalyptus near the Saddle area on San Bruno Mtn when I, too, heard a hooting above me, as well as hooting in reply from a distance. I found the one above me and stayed to watch it. After awhile the distant one flew to a nearby tree and they continued their conversation. By this time the sun was coming up and soon they stopped and I left. A night or two later I returned and they were both in their same respective trees, hooting to each other. As I watched, the one flew to the branch of the other, directly above me, maybe 7 feet separating them. As they continued hooting, the one edged down the branch closer to the other, and eventually they were sitting side by side. They seemed quite indifferent to my presence. I assumed this was a courting ritual. In my excitement, I promptly took someone I was courting on a hike there a week later. Unfortunately, I had less success than the owls. (PS the eucalyptus have since been cut down for habitat preservation)

I always appreciate the feedback, Steve, and I will post your response. Is it OK if I leave off your parenthetical thoughts in final sentence? I don't fear open discussion of issues, but there are so many people who don't understand habitat issues, and who associate the trees with those owls, and may think that we have now dispossessed the owls--I hope you get the picture. The sentence by itself gives a very misleading picture. The habitat restoration is creating diversity of plants and animals, and more foraging grounds for owls and everything else. I'm sure you know this, and I know you didn't intend that meaning.



I have been through this sort of thing so many times, and I know exactly who makes use of these spurious arguments. I'm gun-shy.

oh sure, that's fine. I think you know that I wasn't saying I think the eucs should not have been cut down. I know that great horned owls were there before those trees and are still there. And I know that those euc stands are a breeding ground for horrible ivy and wholesale loss of diversity. It's just that I can appreciate that everything is not 100% black and white, that there is still beauty in all living things, and that that experience, under that tree was a very very beautiful moment for me. I find it personally ironic(?) that I nevertheless support the tactic of cutting down such trees.

By the way, I saw an awful lot of miner's lettuce growing in some of the burned areas of San Bruno.

Yes, I led a field trip there Saturday. Miner's lettuce has always been, and always will be, abundant as long as invasive plants are kept away. They will be in Owl & Buckeye Canyons for many years yet; however, I did see one substantial colony of ehrharta, and a small one of oxalis. If these aggressive plants aren't nipped in the bud, there is nothing to stop them, and they will in several years' time displace the miner's lettuce, as well as most of the plant and animal diversity present now.



Public land agencies have been slow to recognize the problems of invasive organisms. They were just beginning to take their responsibilities seriously in this regard when the financial meltdown happened and the California budget crashed. So now, if problems like this are to be addressed, it must be done by volunteers, who are not plentiful.



Ian Wilson:

Dear Jake, If any of your readers are beekeepers, they might find this web site about "Natural Beekeeping" to be of interest: http://www.bwrangler.com/ncel.htm

I came across this intriguing idea in a recently published book about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- Fruitless Fall, by Rowan Jacobsen -- http://www.amazon.com/Fruitless-Fall-Collapse-Coming-Agricultural/dp/1596915374/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235947672&sr=1-2

In brief, the Varroa mite, a bee parasite that appeared in the US in the 1980's, is ignored by bees when the honeycomb cell diameter is the industry standard 5.4mm. However bees kick out and destroy Varroa mites when the cell diameter is reduced to 4.9mm. The drawback with small cells is that they result in smaller bees and reduced honey production. However a beekeeper from Wyoming called Dennis Morrell discovered that feral bees construct honey combs that have small cells near the queen, and progressively larger cells, up to almost 6mm diameter, towards the edge of the hive. Morrell came up with a tapered design for a hive without any foundation (boards with pre-formed 5.4mm hexagonal cells). The bees make their own natural honeycombs like those of feral bees, and presto, you have happy bees virtually free of the Varroa mite (and other pests and diseases), who still produce plenty of honey. Morrell's "top-bar" design is harder to manage than the standard Langstroth hive, so it probably won't take off with commercial beekeepers, but it looks like a viable solution to colony collapse disorder for hobbyists, organic gardeners etc.

Ian: Thanks much for this very interesting item. Is this information going to become more widespread? If commercial beekeepers build hives that are too big, wouldn't they soon see that it might be in their best interest to keep the bees healthy, even if they don't get as much honey? Besides, don't they earn most of their income from pollination services?



We restorationists have been very aware that feral colonies are not afflicted with the woes of commercial honey bees. There is at least one bee tree on Mt Sutro and three in Glen Canyon. They have all been there for many years and are thriving.

Dear Jake, I expect that if it you distribute this information via Nature News it will become more widely known... I don't know what your readership is, but I expect that a lot of what you publish gets passed on to thousands of people all over the world.



Re the beehives being too big, it's not the hives themselves, but the size of the individual cells of the honeycombs that matters. The Varroa mites seem to be able to sneak up next to bee larvae in brood cells if the diameter of the cells is 5.4mm, but if the cells are slightly smaller, the nurse bees are able to detect them and kill them.



Re We restorationists have been very aware that feral colonies are not afflicted with the woes of commercial honey bees -- Fascinating, this is a fact that definitely needs to be more widely known. Do you know of any scientific studies that have been done on feral colonies? I wonder if these feral colonies are "africanized" bees that are apparently now present in CA, or have africanized genes? As you know, the africanized bees have great resistance to the parasites and diseases that plague european bees.

Ian: I think I understood your point, although possibly not entirely. I assumed from your report that the bees know this, and that they construct the cells in a way that protects them. Did I misread you?



As to your questions about feral colonies: No, I don't know of any studies, and I shouldn't make statements such as "We restorationists have been very aware that feral colonies are not afflicted with the woes of commercial honey bees", because it is based on my limited observations. There has been speculation that commercial honeybees are afflicted with various maladies because they are stressed from working and travelling all the time. I don't believe this has been documented, but I have a prejudice that there is a connection, and that's why the feral colonies I've seen are free of it. So I should retract that statement until it has been documented. After all, why should there be varroa mites in San Francisco? My superficial understanding of Africanized bees is that they may never get into this part of California.



At least one recipient of my newsletter will doubtless challenge my statement; he was a former president of the SF Beekeepers Assn, and a natural skeptic.



Dominik Mosur:

RE: the owl hooting on Mt. Sutro. It was very likely disturbed by your presence. Good thing you didn't try to approach any closer, Great Horned Owls on nests have been known to attack curious humans.



Siobhan Ruck:

Jake, sorry for the miscommunication on the Economist piece. My response was intended as a response to their words. I didn't see where you'd indicated that you included the first paragraph for context and acknowledged the distortions - I'll have to re-read the newsletter. All I saw was the article presented without comment, which to me implied agreement. And that had me... surprised.

The good news is that if you're getting all this grief from your readers, it means we're actually reading rather than "delete on sight" like so many other newsletters that end up in our mailboxes.

Well, I guess I can't expect people to always understand when I'm posting something for context, provocation, or whatever, rather than reflecting my own opinion, so I should take the pains to be clearer. I like the magazine so much that I was embarrassed by that paragraph. I debated posting it, but needed it for context. The second of the journal's paragraphs, however, does reflect my thinking. My fear is that the Democrats will get carried away with being in power, and fail to take the temperature. Although the GOP is in disarray--even suicidal--never underestimate the ability of Democrats to blow it. We're good at that.





Mark Shields (several years ago): It took the Congressional Democrats decades to fall victim to hubris. It has taken the Republicans two years to become terminally arrogant.



Alex Lantsberg:

RE: 8. A dangerous state: The Californication of the Democratic Party

the economist is not exactly the best rag to rely on to either advise the democratic party or for that matter to comment on california. the proof is in the pudding of their analysis which leaves out the gorilla of the conservative veto on government and our 30-year marination in anti-tax zealotry - regardless of who controlls the legislature.

Well, Alex, I partially agree with you. I winced when I read The Economist's first paragraph, which had a number of inaccuracies and distortions. I have long been aware of its biases, which are based on ideology, not greed. It describes itself as liberal, and, according to the classical definition--free markets, open borders, &c)--it is. It has been consistent in that POV since its founding in 1843. It has traditionally felt more comfortable with the Republican Party. However, it has been mostly fair in its criticism of those it disagrees with, and it has not been happy with the rightward lunge of the party. It endorsed Obama. I find it stimulating and provocative, even when I don't agree with it, which is often.



The meat, however, was in its second paragraph, reproduced below. We would do well to pay heed to this. The congressional election of 2006 was interpreted by many liberals as a mandate to go leftward and to pull out of Iraq immediately. It was no such thing, as even a casual inspection of the results would reveal. The 2008 election and the present situation are much more complex to interpret than the 2006 one, and it doesn't lend itself to easy analysis. But California is indeed very different from most of the nation, and we would ignore the magazine's words at our peril.

The biggest risk is overreach. Many Californian liberals are as far to the left on cultural issues as the southern Republicans were to the right. Many of them also draw their support from two groups that have limited appeal to the rest of the country, particularly to the “bitter” voters that Mr Obama had such trouble wooing in November; the fabulously rich and public-sector activists. All this suggests that one of Mr Obama’s most delicate tasks, if he wants to prevent his party from being captured by the “left coast” in the same way that the Republicans were captured by the South, will be to contain the Californian barons.

i'll disagree you on the caricature of the left coast - particularly the "public sector advocates" (which i'm interepreting as people who believe in government, the public sector, and our common assets). i think the polling has been quite positive in terms of people believing that government ought to play a bigger, more supportive role in society, particularly in terms of economic support, education, and health care.



i'm not going to dispute the notion that our general openness to gay marriage and alternative families can be easily swallowed in the middle of the country, but there is a big difference - and i think people generally agree with this - between the progressive notion of expanding personal liberty with the southern relioous conservative belief that we all need to live our lives the way they think we should.



the last point about "bitter" voters is fundamentally a ruse that was overblown and distorted by the right-wing media complex. it became very clear when i was calling central and western PA during the campaign and people who disagreed on my choice of president generally agreed that they look to the constants in their lives - religion and culture - when shit hits the fan as it has in their communities. obama may not have said it elegantly but there's no denying that central truth about how humans react to traumatic exogenous change

As I expected, Alex, the subject is getting way too complicated for an email debate, so this will be the end of it for me. As for the last paragraph (above), your focus on the right-wing media allows you to dismiss thoughtful statements. I'm sorry that we're not communicating. However, I didn't have high hopes of that in the beginning, because I am finding out late in life that communication is very difficult--and communication via email is virtually impossible, except for information and data transfer. So I'll pull the plug on this one. Someday, over a beer, we could continue this, where body language and vocal inflection and intonation gets points across that are outside emails' ability.



Peter Brastow:

Re the californication:

More narrow in scope right-wing media dribble from a magazine, that, while often informative, still principally serves as the most respected apologetic mouthpiece for unfettered capitalism.

Between the lines of the excerpt one can read that they would have us choose between "the environment" and "the economy."

You are largely correct in this last sentence. When it comes to environmental issues, I sometimes grip the edge of my chair when I beginning reading, as they are largely uneducated in regard to biological/ecological issues. I value them for other things, for their foundation in history, their thoughtfulness and fairness. I do wish that they had ecological sense, but I doubt that will happen.



But I wish you would be less eager to label it as "right-wing dribble" coming from the magazine. It cannot be called right-wing and its thoughtful (occasionally inaccurate) statements deserve listening to. Its philosophy is free markets, open borders, and the less interference by government the better. But that it "principally serves as the most respected apologetic mouthpiece for unfettered capitalism" it is not. And it endorsed Obama.

Robert Hall:

On the Economist debate: Please keep sprinkling their articles throughout your newsletter. I have so much to read throughout the week I don't have time for every periodical. Your newsletter fills in the gaps or me. Thanks for sending out this email publication. I really look forward to it each week. In the digital media business you're referred to as an aggregator. This is a big trend and where media is going these days. If this newsletter were online you may be able to enjoy mega-ad revenue dollars. Which means you could be awash in expensive organic produce. Take care and keep up the great work.

Thanks a lot, Bob. I truly appreciate feedback, as it is the only way of knowing whether it's worth doing. Ironically, I opened a website about a year ago, and have made periodic stabs at working on it, but I haven't the time to make it operable. I still have hopes, but they seem slim. And I'll skip all the ad revenues. I give most of my money away.



Marnie Dunsmore:

Thanks also for the ode to Alison des Forges. As a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and admirer of Romeo Dallaire, as well as someone who lived for several years in Ghana, I was shocked by the Rwandan genocide, but more shocked by the lack of response or outrage. With pathos did I hear that Alison Des Forges had been killed in the Buffalo crash.

My motivation for posting this story (secondarily, the fact that it is a dramatic and interesting story per se) is because it shows clearly for those strong enough to face it, how the world works. The hard realities in the paragraph pasted below should make any of us uncomfortable, as we are all complicit to some degree. This is not an isolated incident; this type of problem is repeated over and over in the world--sometimes in our name. Some of it is because of innate problems of communication, which are more difficult than people realize. Some of it is because hard facts are often inconvenient and clash with other concerns.



Alison Des Forges knew what was happening, she had credibility, but even the African experts in the State Dept could not get the attention of those able to do something--there were too many other problems and conflicting concerns. It did not fit the agendas of overworked and/or ambitious functionaries. This sort of thing goes on every day. It is a harsh and bitter truth, but we need to be aware of it, because it goes on in our name.



Roger Mascio:

I enjoy your newsletter. But it appears on my monitor to wide on some articles and is very diffucult to scroll right then left. Whats up? Help.

Has this been going on long? I occasionally experience that in my computer, and it is very vexing, to say the least. I copy the offending text and paste onto another program, such as Word or Text Edit, and usually I manage to set it right. When I send it out from here, it seems to be free of the problem, so I don't know what to say. Every great once in awhile I get that complaint--but so far only two. I don't know whether the problem has persisted with them, but I haven't heard further from them.



I hope this doesn't continue with you. If I had a clue what the problem is and what to do I'd tell you. I am a complete electronic innocent.



Arnie Thompson:

Hi Jake, Our chief Arastradero preserve steward and permaculturalist William Mutch is of the opinion that miner's lettuce competes favorably with oxalis and will eventually displace it. Your comment seems to imply the opposite. Do you know of any research that has been done in this area? My garden is overrun with oxalis, much to my dismay. I would love to attack it with out risking the health of other plants. I also find that even with an application of roundup, it will eventually regrow from sources in the neighbors' yards.

I do not keep up with research, nor do I wait around until someone decides (years, even decades, later) to research what to me is an urgent topic. I go by my observations, and I've watched oxalils--and/or ehrharta--year by year slowly squeeze it out. Miner's lettuce does have a fairly effective strategy of germinating abundantly with the first autumn rains, putting out lots of leaf biomass, and smothering smaller competitors. However, the oxalis has that stored energy in the bulb that allows it to put its foliage above the miner's lettuce, and those bulbs offset so much that eventually the miner's lettuce is unable to compete. I would love to be proved wrong.



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18. Save the date



Title: The Presidio and Bayview-Hunter's Point: Is one Superfund site cleaner than the other?

Date: March 25, 2009

Time: 7:30 p.m.

Place: CounterPULSE



Description: Superfund sites in San Francisco? Come find out whether people and nature are being treated appropriately and fairly in these two well known but very different communities and environments.



Is the Presidio Trust fulfilling its commitment to protect and restore the natural resources of this great urban National Park? Are the Navy and the City of San Francisco taking the best care of the residents and their environment at Hunter's Point Shipyard? San Francisco is blessed with significant remaining natural areas and biodiversity, and these two places - the Presidio and Bayview-Hunters Point - each harbor an important share. Comparing and contrasting the two areas helps us consider with more focus what our goals should be for taking care of people and our environment. Come learn about ArcEcology's recent report that illustrates brand new and exciting alternatives for the Bayview-Hunter's Point Redevelopment. Are these better than Lennar's? How is Candlestick Point State Recreation Area affected? Also, find out about the Presidio's environmental remediation program, and then make your own decision about whether they're making the right decisions! And given that these two communities are very different socio-economically, is one being "cleaned-up" better than the other?



Speakers: Saul Bloom (ArcEcology), Doug Kern (Urban Watershed Project and Presidio Restoration Advisory Board).

Contact: steward@natureinthecity.org, 415-564-4107



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19. Financial/economic miscellany



Rogue Economics: Capitalism’s New Reality, by Loretta Napoleoni



Italian economist, journalist and author Loretta Napoleoni argues that recent events on Wall Street indicate a much larger upheaval and could “signal the end of the ‘Roaring Nineties,’ nearly two decades of easy money, cheap credit, and soaring global debt.” It’s an argument Napoleoni develops in her latest book called Rogue Economics: Capitalism’s New Reality.



http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/31/loretta_napoleoni_on_rogue_economics_capitalisms

______________________

Miscellaneous quotes on the economic situation:

Obama is walking a gossamer-thin tightrope. And there's no safety net. (Headline)



"Global markets are increasingly fearful that governments are not getting hold of the core of the problem."



"There is no common understanding of why this crisis is so intractable and no shared recognition of its profundity."



"There's an old saying, 'Today's lows will be tomorrow's highs." Bart Barnett, head of equity trading at Morgan Keagan, on being asked if the new low for the Dow could be the market bottom.



LTE: Each piece of gloom referred to by (your column) sounds like good news for the world - less heavy industry, fewer cars, fewer electrical goods, less travel - sounds as if the feckless financiers may yet save us all. Grahame Wise, Vaucluse, NSW, Australia

______________________



(I have sometimes wondered how the big-time, mega mega CEOs can apparently keep their cool in a crisis situation--I don't mean a garden-variety crisis, but one like the present one where it is obvious that no one--either in government or in the financial/corporate world--has any understanding of what happened and where this is going. Here's one (CEO of Bear Stearns) who was unable to hide the fact that he didn't know whether to shit or go blind:)



In his final weeks at the helm, before being shunted aside in a high-level mutiny, Mr Cayne cut a hapless figure, mingling awkwardly with his traders, trying half-heartedly to get a grip on the bank’s assets; he always had more time for bridge than bonds. On a crucial call with analysts, Mr Cayne reportedly clammed up “like a deer in the headlights”, forcing colleagues to pretend he had left the room.



Mr Cohan (the author) handles his material deftly, portraying Bear as symptomatic of an industry that had come to believe its own hype and had lost sight of how inherently unstable it really was. Bear’s crash marked the moment when a delirious Wall Street was knocked to its senses. As one executive put it at the time, in terms that Mr Cayne might appreciate: “You can’t fly like the eagles and poop like a canary.”



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20.

150th anniversary of Sholom Aleichem: Born 2 March 1859 (old calendar, 18 February 1859)

One of the great Yiddish writers, he is best known for his humorous tales of life among the poverty-ridden and oppressed Russian Jews of the late 19th and early 20th century. A folk artist who faithfully recreated the "shtetl", village life of Russian Jews before modernity, anti-Semitism, and war destroyed that world forever. His funeral procession was witnessed by 100,000 mourners.



Some quotes:



"No matter how bad things get you got to go on living, even if it kills you."



"Gossip is nature's telephone."



"Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor."



"A bachelor is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction."



"The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger."



When Mark Twain met Sholom Aleichem he told him that people called him the American Sholom Aleichem. Aleichem replied that in Europe they called him the Jewish Mark Twain.

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21.

This is the International Year of Astronomy, the 400th anniversary of Galileo's turning his telescope on the night sky for the first time. People were asked to vote on which object the Hubble telescope would view. Here is the website--unfortunately, voting concluded on March 1--where the winner and the first six objects are pictured and described: http://youdecide.hubblesite.org/

________________



If A Tree Falls In The Forest, And No One Is Around To Hear It, Does Climate Change?

Special to Bayview Hill-Jake Sigg's Nature News

1. Gardening for wildlife: butterfly and moth caterpillar needs - Thursday 5 March

2. See 100 different kinds of birds at Heron's Head Park - Saturday 7 March

3. Plants: oxalis and ehrharta grass vs miner's lettuce

4. March 13 - International Day of Action for Rivers

5. Botany training--in Grand Canyon

6. For Farley/Phil Frank fans: exhibition in Bolinas

7. Feedback

8. A dangerous state: The Californication of the Democratic Party

9. Naturalist notes: rare butterfly/great horned owl/Comet Lulin/how dictators solve water shortages

10. Raw foodies: beware

11. Death of a heroic woman, Alison Des Forges--and a lesson for us all



1. California Native Plant Society meeting - free and open to the public

MARCH 5, THURSDAY

Butterfly and Moth Caterpillars Feeding on California Native Plants

7:30 pm, Speaker: Dr. Jerry Powell

Plant Identification Workshop - 6 to 7:15 pm, Leader: Kirra Swenerton

San Francisco County Fair Bldg

9th Av & Lincoln Way in Golden Gate Park



Our speaker is Dr. Jerry Powell, Emeritus Professor of Entomology and Entomologist in the Agricultural Experiment Station, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, Division of Insect Biology, University of California, Berkeley, as he shares his knowledge and experience concerning our native lepidoptera. After giving us a brief overview of his life’s work, he will share his knowledge and his amazing photographs to emphasize the diversity of caterpillar feeding types and to show representative images of the adults (which do not feed on plants except to take nectar). Jerry tells us he first became interested in moths and butterflies at age 13 when he was “sentenced” to a summer course for junior naturalists at the San Diego Natural History Museum. By summer’s end he was an incurable lepidopterist. He began to specialize on the so-called microlepidoptera in his senior year at UC Berkeley, “probably because nobody else in the west was so gullible.” He is best known by non-entomologists for the popular California Insects (UC Press 1979). Dr. Powell received his B.S. (1955) and Ph.D. (1961) from UC Berkeley. He has spent his long career at the University and he currently holds the titles of Professor of the Graduate School and Director Emeritus of the Essig Museum of Entomology.



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2. Heron's Head Park

Public tours, 10 a.m.–noon at Jennings Street and Cargo Way, 2 blocks south of Pier 96.

Sponsored by San Francisco Nature Education



The final tour will be held on Saturday, March 7th of 2009.



This field trip is a first time opportunity for the public to observe the 100 birds that visit the exciting wetland known as Heron’s Head Park. Come and experience the wonder of observing and learning about waterfowl, shorebirds, and wading birds that call Heron’s Head Park home in the winter. San Francisco Nature Education has trained six Lowell H.S. students to serve as interns and lead birding tours of this wetlands known as Heron’s Head Park in Hunter’s Point. For more information, www.sfnature.org or 415-387-9160



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3. Wild plants: One goodie--and two baddies

Two invasive plants are becoming increasingly noticed along the California coast, ehrharta and yellow oxalis. They are the bane of wildland managers, but they are now beginning to frustrate home gardeners, who find them difficult to manage.



Yellow oxalis (a few people still use an old name, Bermuda buttercup), Oxalis pes-caprae, is arguably the most difficult weed the gods have devised for the California coast. It is active only in the rainy season, and goes dormant shortly after the rains cease, dying down to the bulb, which is several inches underground. The bulb produces a prodigious number of offsets and and it also sends out deep lateral runners, by means of which it colonizes new ground rapidly. This reproductive mechanism is highly successful, and it doesn't need to produce seed. (None of the plants in California reproduce sexually!) Traditional weeding methods are of little use, as removing the top-growth causes it to send up another shoot. If you persist, you can exhaust the bulb, but most people become exhausted before the bulb does. If you are unable to devote the time to removing by hand, spraying herbicide (Roundup will do it) is usually effective at killing the bulb. However, if you accidentally spray nearby desirable plants they will be killed also.



Baddie #2 is ehrharta, Ehrharta erecta, a perennial grass. It spreads by seed--and does it spread! It forms a stout and deep root system. It can start out in low-light conditions--sometimes in light so dim that you would have trouble reading. It slowly gathers its strength and sends out a flowering culm with tiny florets. These often poke out, porcupine-like, from shrubbery, such as groundcover junipers or clipped hedges.



Oxalis and ehrharta, once they claim territory, never yield it to any other plant. They are only irksome to the home gardener, but their effects on the California coastal ecosystems is devastating, a problem that we are going to be sorry we neglected.



The goodie

The plentiful appearance of miner's lettuce may be deceiving. It formerly grew in every little niche it could find: vacant lots, under shrubs, wherever there was a patch of exposed soil. Now it is being displaced by the aggressive yellow oxalis and ehrharta. It is only a matter of time--alas, a very short time--before the delightful miner's lettuce will be a thing of the past in San Francisco and much of the coast. I would encourage people to plant it in their garden. Likely it will persist on its own if the conditions are half-way favorable--and you keep out oxalis and ehrharta. It reseeds itself abundantly, especially if there is cool shade and not a lot of competition from taller plants. It is a cheerful plant--and edible.



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4.

Demand Water for Life, Not for Death

The 12th Annual International Day of Action for Rivers

Every year thousands of people around the world take action to celebrate and protect rivers.

Here in Berkeley, we're holding an International Rivers Film Festival: Lights! Camera! Action! on March 13.

Visit our website to see other exciting events planned for this year.

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5. Combine the Grand Canyon, botany, and learning:

http://www.gcvolunteers.org/trainings_botanists.html Budding Botanists



Colorado Stratification

Layer by layer

History revealed--

Hungry river writes exposé!

Ernest A. Peterson



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6. For Phil Frank fans



The Bolinas Museum is hosting a special exhibit featuring the rarely-seen assemblage boxes by Phil Frank from March 7th to April 26th, 2009, from 3:00 to 5:00 on the afternoon of Saturday the 7th an opening will be held in the main gallery. To learn more about the exhibit details, read the press release and view a PDF of the show catalogue please visit our News page link: www.farleycomicstrip.com/news.html

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7. Feedback



Antonio Piccagli:

If I am not mistaken, the reason that some vegetables are sweeter has to do with resisting the cold. In order to resist freezing, as temperatures drop, vegetables store more of their energy in sugar form. The sugar helps them stay structurally sound by lowering the freezing point of the water in them. I can't explain why some plants are better at this process than others. Perhaps slow growth is another piece of the sweetness puzzle, but I am not totally convinced.



I neglected to paste this (ahem, delicious) item last newsletter, so, in order to give it context, I am re-pasting part of it: 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?

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?



Mei Ling Hui:

Hi Jake, It took me a couple tries to find the right combo of words in my favorite search engine to find this - but yes! There is scientific evidence to support carrots tasting better in cooler temps! Though I was dead wrong about my sugar guess.



Apparently, though the carrots actually have more sugar when grown in hotter temperatures, they also have more terpenes, and terpenes mask sweet flavors with a bitter, green, or earthy taste. Wikipedia reports that the word "terpene" derives from the word "turpentine" because turpentine is made from resin, of which terpenes are a major component.



Here's a link to the abstract where I got his information:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/97517461/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0



I don't think this is more specific to root veggies though, I think it would relate more closely to those that prefer cooler growing temperatures. I did a little more searching, for info about taste and growing temperatures for kale, but didn't come up with any scientific studies. (They must be out there! Ensuring best quality of product is itself a huge business!) Though I did find a few mentions here and there of how minerals in the soil are more readily available for absorption by plants in different soil temperatures, which may also affect taste.



Thanks for the interesting distraction!



TANKLESS WATER HEATERS

Allan Ridley:

We keep a bucket in bathroom to collect the cold water in the supply line before the hot arrives to shower & sink. There is usually enough in the bucket to flush the toilet. The kitchen sink line water is used to water house plants.

Maggie Robbins:

Hi Jake, On long pipe runs for hot water... one thing about those big water tanks is we put them in basements because they eventually burst or leak. And they're very heavy and large and so we put them out of the way. "Tankless" hot water heaters can be installed in a much smaller space and are not going to dump 60 gallons on the floor if they do leak. They can be put into a cupboard near the kitchen and bath, vented outside. Some can even be installed mounted on the wall outside the house, so you could put it adjacent to the kitchen and bath. Of course if you're simply replacing your dead conventional big-tank hot water heater then you may not want to re-plumb your house now, but in some cases it could be pretty easy.



I put tankless in quotes above because the one I had did have a small tank. The tank was quite small, maybe 5 gallons. Water in that tank was heated and circulated for the heater (hot water radiators) and a spiral tube ran through the tank that was then used to heat the domestic hot water for the shower, etc. Because this small tank was always hot, it provided "endless" hot domestic hot water because that spiral tube turned cold water into hot water in the seconds it took to go through the tank.



In my flat in London, as was common there, the hot water tank (whether large or of these new almost-tankless types) were installed in the kitchen. They were easy to access so you could switch them off when you went on vacation. Whatever heat they do give off goes to heating the kitchen rather than the basement or the outdoors. In a cool climate like SF, that works just fine. Maybe not so fine in Bakersfield, I suppose.



Robert Nelson:

Dear Jake: A recent client of mine put a tankless water heater in not so much to save water or energy, but to free up the space that a

tank type water heater occupies. As detailed in the parenthetical note to your mention (not the first time in Nature News...) of tankless water heaters, water can be wasted while running the cold water out of the line. Some clever engineer invented a system to allow "instant hot water" by recirculating the cold back into the system until the hot arrives. I don't know how well the system works or how reliable it is at this point, but some information can be found here:



http://www.taco-hvac.com/uploads/FileLibrary/100-49.pdf



Jane Martin:

Hi Jake RE: tankless water heaters – if you have a long supply line you’ll end up wasting as much if not more water waiting for hot. I suggest you look at shortening the plumbing run by locating the tankless closer to the faucet. I have installed these at my building (and am an architect for what that’s worth) so let me know if you want a consultation. Also, for multi-unit buildings or anywhere hot water, especially small amounts (eg. hand washing) is in high (frequent) demand, a tankless may not make much sense. Some say that tankless wastes water – because it’s “endless” hot, whereas with a tank when the water starts to go cool people elect to discontinue use.

I would be interested in a consultation, Jane, although there's one big obstacle: I couldn't bear for you to see my basement. Oh, the humiliation! It's been manana, manana, for years, but it never seems to come. Instead, I just get busier and busier, and the basement gets more dysfunctional.



John Anderson:

Jake, Thanks for the sections on plastics and the Pacific gyre. I’ve wondered when reading about this: when I was a child reading children’s science book (e.g. “All Aout the Oceans”) they talked about the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic, and what a special part of the ocean it is (or was), because the currents tend to concentrate floating objects there. So it seems to me those gyres must have (or had) some specialized roles in the ocean’s ecology. I wonder if there are studies on that, or if it is too late to find out. Thanks again for the newsletter.



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?)

I wonder why they didn’t make the headline “Bitter bovine bullies Boulder biker”?

John: Newspapers pay people to think up clever headlines--eg, one of my friends, who worked for the SF Examiner in the 1950s, wrote the headline "Mutiny on the high C's" in regard to one of Maria Callas's tangles with the law. So, should I recommend you for a job with High Country News?



Frank Noto:

RE: Drawing of legislative districts--I am a continued fan of your newsletter, Jake, so please take no offense when I point out occasional discrepancies. FYI, voters last year took away the drawing of legislative districts in CA from the State Legislature. That means that districts are much more likely to be competitive, and districts are far less likely to be one-party districts. Gerrymandering is out the door.



But be careful what you wish for: More competititive districts are generally a good thing for big business and other wealthy special interests. Democratic legislators who normally would vote their constituencies (and generally vote for the environment) will need to lean more toward business interests who may oppose environmental actions that appear to cost them money. In the longer-term, it may also increase the likelihood of anti-environment Republicans winning control of one or both legislative houses (again, partially for the same reason, more campaign money from business), not to mention Congress. We won't know what impact it will have in the next election after re-districting (2012) until we understand the political (and economic) climate then, but in the short term it will start hurting environmental causes in California soon, though probably only slightly.

Take offense? Certainly not, Frank--I love it when people give different points of view, particularly when they're provocative or give one pause, as yours has done.



For starters, I was thinking that Prop 11 was defeated, but maybe you're right. It seems the election night returns see-sawed for awhile, and I thought it had been defeated. As to the dangers you point out, again, you may be right, and I do need to think about that some more, although I am not totally convinced. I am well aware of money's ability to mold opinion: eg, this note in the newsletter item you're reacting to:

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.

You'd think that this would command voter attention, but those two Republicans will be reelected easily.

I don't know if your scenarios will happen that way or not, but they may, and I will take your advice to heart.



Louise Lacey:

Thank you for this, Jake: www.savestrawberrycanyon.org



And I always read what you have to say about population. The subject is even more important to me (my boook LUNACEPTION) than my native plants.

And I'm sure I don't need to tell you that without arresting population growth, there won't be many native plants or animals anywhere on earth.



Mary Keitelman:

Re the aspartame item-- there is plenty of corroboration elsewhere, but, I did get this feedback on the rense website:



Rense - one of the most notorious Nazi sites on the internet. Congratulations on become a total dupe.

http://rensewatch.blogspot.com/



Marci Scileppi:

Chinatown is being invaded by CCSF. What do the inhabitants of Chinatown think of that?



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8. A dangerous state



...The Californication of the Democratic Party carries all sorts of risks. The most obvious is that California has the most dysfunctional politics in the country. The Golden State has one of the highest unemployment rates in America, at 9.3%, thanks to its high taxes, its unions, its anti-business climate and its gigantic housing bubble. Some 100,000 people have fled the state each year since the early 2000s. More would follow if they could sell their houses. A second risk is party disunity. The rise of the Californians has already produced bloodshed: Mrs Pelosi beat Martin Frost, a Texan moderate, for the leadership (Martin Frost? Pelosi beat Steny Hoyer for the leadership. JS), and Mr Waxman dethroned John Dingell, from Michigan, for the chairmanship of the energy committee. Sherrod Brown, a senator for Ohio, and Debbie Stabenow, a senator for Michigan, have both worried aloud about overzealous environmental legislation and the coastal bias against manufacturing.



The biggest risk is overreach. Many Californian liberals are as far to the left on cultural issues as the southern Republicans were to the right. Many of them also draw their support from two groups that have limited appeal to the rest of the country, particularly to the “bitter” voters that Mr Obama had such trouble wooing in November; the fabulously rich and public-sector activists. All this suggests that one of Mr Obama’s most delicate tasks, if he wants to prevent his party from being captured by the “left coast” in the same way that the Republicans were captured by the South, will be to contain the Californian barons. Excerpt from Lexington in The Economist

"America is built on a tilt and everything loose rolls toward California." Mark Twain



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9.

Naturalist notes

Locally rare butterfly

In early February local naturalists and Nature in the City members, Matt Zlatunich and Liam O'Brien, sent a letter to Dr. John Burns from the Smithsonian Institution, regarding an unusual discovery at the Presidio. The butterfly in question was of the genus Erynnis.

Matt wrote, "Although the host plants of both E. tristis and E. funeralis are present at the site, any Erynnis is extremely rare in San Francisco county, and we believe this lone individual to be a vagrant. Opinions of local lepidopterists have varied, and none have been conclusive."

Dr. John Burns replied with a positive identification: "Matt, this is without question an example of Erynnis funeralis (and, if it's of any interest, it's a male).... Your photographs are good and the skipper itself is in good condition. I think that E. funeralis is probably more mobile than other species of Erynnis."



Great horned owl

I was walking Mt Sutro's Historic Trail when I heard a great horned owl hooting at me. I looked up, and there it was peering down at me from its nest in the top of a giant eucalyptus. Every time it hooted it got a response from somewhere nearby, presumably its mate. I returned after a couple hours working and it repeated its performance. I speculated that it was nesting, and that my presence was disturbing to it and it was scolding me, or that it was communicating a fact to its mate. Anyone know?





Watching The Skies For Comet Lulin (copied from NPR's website):



NPR's All Things Considered, February 23, 2009 · Comet Lulin, a two-tailed green-colored comet, can be seen in the eastern sky all week, but is closest to the Earth Monday night.



"After it gets dark, look for two bright stars near the horizon: one is the planet Saturn, the other is Regulus, the star, and for the next few nights, Lulin will be somewhere between them," says Kelly Beatty, senior contributing editor of Sky & Telescope magazine. Beatty says there's a good chance of spotting the comet with binoculars pointed in that general area.

(NPR didn't make it clear what Monday it was talking about, but I assume it was Monday the 23rd. If so, the comet may be dimming beyond binocular capability. Damn clouds.)

__________________



Forest planned to change climate

The Turkmenistan president, Saparmurat Niyazov, has ordered a forest to be planted to change his desert nation's climate - the latest of the autocratic leader's elaborate projects, which include an artificial lake and an ice palace. From Guardian Weekly March 06 2008



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10. Most of your food should be cooked



http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pennisi_99.html (Wrangham)



YOU are what you eat, or so the saying goes. But Richard Wrangham, of Harvard University, believes that this is true in a more profound sense than the one implied by the old proverb. It is not just you who are what you eat, but the entire human species. And with Homo sapiens, what makes the species unique in Dr Wrangham’s opinion is that its food is so often cooked.



Cooking is a human universal. No society is without it. No one other than a few faddists tries to survive on raw food alone. And the consumption of a cooked meal in the evening, usually in the company of family and friends, is normal in every known society. Moreover, without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body’s energy) could not keep running. Dr Wrangham thus believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.

Click here



In fact, as he outlined to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in Chicago, he thinks that cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity’s “killer app”: the evolutionary change that underpins all of the other—and subsequent—changes that have made people such unusual animals.



Humans became human, as it were, with the emergence 1.8m years ago of a species called Homo erectus. This had a skeleton much like modern man’s—a big, brain-filled skull and a narrow pelvis and rib cage, which imply a small abdomen and thus a small gut. Hitherto, the explanation for this shift from the smaller skulls and wider pelvises of man’s apelike ancestors has been a shift from a vegetable-based diet to a meat-based one. Meat has more calories than plant matter, the theory went. A smaller gut could therefore support a larger brain.



Dr Wrangham disagrees. When you do the sums, he argues, raw meat is still insufficient to bridge the gap. He points out that even modern “raw foodists”, members of a town-dwelling, back-to-nature social movement, struggle to maintain their weight—and they have access to animals and plants that have been bred for the table. Pre-agricultural man confined to raw food would have starved.



Start cooking, however, and things change radically. Cooking alters food in three important ways. It breaks starch molecules into more digestible fragments. It “denatures” protein molecules, so that their amino-acid chains unfold and digestive enzymes can attack them more easily. And heat physically softens food. That makes it easier to digest, so even though the stuff is no more calorific, the body uses fewer calories dealing with it.



...Dr Wrangham is relying on a compelling chain of logic. And in doing so he may have cast light not only on what made humanity, but on one of the threats it faces today.



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11.

Obituary: Alison Des Forges

Alison Des Forges, a witness to genocide, died on February 12th, aged 66



Two plane crashes bookmarked Alison Des Forges's life. The first was nearly 15 years ago, when a luxury jet carrying two African presidents was shot down by missiles over Rwanda. The second was last week, when a cramped commuter plane crashed in icy weather near Buffalo, New York, killing 50 people. The first crash served as the pretext for the swiftest genocide in history. The second silenced its most dogged witness, a tiny American lady with silver hair.



On April 6th 1997, Mrs Des Forges was at home in Buffalo. The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were assassinated at 8.30 pm that day, which was lunchtime in Buffalo. Twenty minutes later, a friend telephoned Mrs Des Forges from Kigali, the Rwandan capital. "This is it. We're finished," said Monique Mujawamariya, a fellow human-rights monitor.



Mrs Des Forges call her every half-hour, late into the night. She heard her describe steadily more alarming scenes--militiamen going from house to house, pulling people out and killing them. Eventually, they came to Ms Mujawamariya's door. Mrs Des Forges told her to pass the telephone to the killers. She would pretend to be from the White House, she said, and warn them off. "No, that won't work," said Ms Mujawamariya. Then she added: "Please take care of my children. I don't want you to hear this." And she hung up.



...She made calls, sent faxes and frantically gathered information. By April 17th she was convinced that a full-blown genocide was under way. She was one of the first outsiders to say so. But everyone who mattered ignored her. Africa specialists at the State Department wept with her when she described what was going on, but who listens to Africa specialists? The top bureaucrats at the UN were concerned mostly with evacuating foreigners. President Bill Clinton was anxious to avoid another Somalia (where, the previous year, 18 American soldiers had been killed during a humanitarian mission). Mrs Des Forges could not even persuade the Pentagon to jam the radio broadcasts that co-ordinated the slaughter. It would have cost too much.



...She then wrote the definitive account: nearly 8000 pages of scrupulously footnoted horror. Future historians will depend on it. Her testimony helped put several of the perpetrators behind bars. And she made it impossible to argue, as many did at the time, that the genocide was a spontaneous explosion of ancient tribal hatred. She read the plans. She saw the receipts for half a million machetes...She took extraordinary risks, rushing to the scenes of massacres and questioning killers when their blades were barely dry. She left out none of the ghastly details: the wives forced to bury their husbands before being raped; the baby thrown alive into a latrine.



...What drove her? One story is revealing. In Burundi, Rwanda's neighbour, tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in 1993. The Western media barely noticed. Hutu officers in Rwanda concluded that they could do the same thing, and no one would give a damn. Mrs Des Forges wanted to document such atrocities so meticulously, and publicise them so persistently, that people would have to give a damn. Her book was called, after a killer's cry, "Leave None to Tell the Story". She knew that story-telling matters.



Excerpted from The Economist 21 February 2009



Guardian Weekly adds (excerpts):

...Even as she was alerting the world, she was desperately trying to help Rwandan friends. After she had failed to persuade Bill Clinton to intervene, the president's national security adviser, Tony Lake, told her to "make more noise". She understood he meant that the constituency of people who cared about Rwanda was so small it had little influence in Washington. Painstaking research led her to conclude that governments and the UN "all knew of the preparations for massive slaughter and failed to take the steps needed to prevent it".



...Last year, they banned her from Rwanda. "Her work on the abuses being committed by the Rwandan government today made her something of a sknk at a global garden party," said...the associate director of Human Rights Watch.