"Save State Parks"-Special to Bayview Hill Association Jake Sigg

1. Governor to close 80% of state parks. Please take action
2. Job opportunities
3. Field trip Saturday 30 May to Ring Mountain in Marin County
4. Animal Investigators: the First Wildlife Forensics lab, Saturday 30 May at 4 pm
5. Feedback
6. Bird diversity lessens human exposure to West Nile Virus
7. San Francisco Butterfly Count Wednesday 3 June
8. Bank swallows return to Fort Funston; your help needed
9. Ted Kipping's meditation on French broom
10. Roger Raiche's grape cultivar 'Roger's Red' mystery cleared up
11. Two from Denise D'Anne
12. Nominations open for 2009 Leopold Conservation Award
13. Registration open for Cal-IPC 2009 Symposium
14. Oaktown Native Plant Nursery Sale May 30 - June 13
15. Break with the Age of Entitlement?
16. The greatest wonder of the world: the living cell
17. Astronomy miscellany: Galileo, International Year of Astronomy, et al

1. Governor proposes closing 4/5 of state parks!

From Neighborhood Parks Council:

We have just learned the details of Governor Schwarzenegger's budget plan that if approved will close at least 80% of California's entire state park system.

Beginning July 1st, the Governor will cut the parks core funding in half and then eliminate all core funding (ie, General Fund monies) in twelve months. Without this money, there will be no choice but to close the majority of our park system.

Your elected officials need to hear from you now! These budget decisions are being made right now and your voice is critical to help California's most treasured resources. Get the facts and take action TODAY! Click here: www.calparks.org
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2. Job opportunities

Muir Beach Biological Monitor

The Parks Conservancy and GGNRA are implementing the restoration of Redwood Creek at Muir Beach. During construction and revegetation efforts, a team of biological monitors will be hired to oversee activities to protect the site's listed species and ensure compliance with other Best Management Practices relevant to the project.

Go to http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment.asp?job=3020 for more information.

Mori Point Biological Monitor

The Parks Conservancy in partnership with the GGNRA is implementing a trail enhancement project at Mori Point that includes the conversion of an existing road to an elevated trail through sensitive habitat for the California red-legged frog and San Francisco garter snake.

Go to http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment.asp?job=3019 for more information.

Project Information Coordinator
The Project Information Coordinator (PIC) provides park users and local community members with project updates during project implementation. This includes providing on-site public engagement support to build community awareness and address concerns, maintaining public engagement statistics, illustrating trail and access alternatives, and maintaining perimeter fencing and signage.
Go to http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment.asp?job=3018 for more information.

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3. Field trip

Ring Mountain, Marin County
Saturday, May 30, 1 pm
Sponsored by California Native Plant Society Santa Clara Valley Chapter

Join Kevin Bryant as we explore this serpentine treasure that is picturesquely perched above San Francisco Bay. We hope to catch the very rare Tiburon Mariposa lily Calochortus tiburonensis in bloom, plus lots of other serpentine species. This is the only place in the world C. tiburonensis has ever been found growing in the wild. The hike is approximately 3-4 fairly easy miles, and should last about 4 hours.


Directions: For a no-host carpool, meet at Edgewood Road Park and Ride off Hwy. 280 at 11:30 am. Cross the Golden Gate Bridge and continue on Hwy. 101. In Corte Madera, exit at Paradise Drive. The previous exit is Tiburon Blvd./Mill Valley. Go right on Paradise Drive about 1 mile past all the houses and a school on the left to the wide gravel pull-off just past Westward Drive. Look for the Marin County Open Space entrance sign, which is where we will meet.


For more information, contact Kevin at (408) 353-8824 or mtngreen17@verizon.net. A link to County of Marin Open Space Preserves with a map of Ring Mountain can be found at www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/PK/Main/os/osdring.cfm.

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4. Tomorrow, Sat, 30th, at 4PM on BookTV (on CSPAN2) will be aired a 53 minute discussion by Laura Neme: "Animal Investigators: the First Wildlife Forensics lab, solving crimes , saving endangered species, etc."

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5. Feedback

Don French:

Regarding the Onion and their jabs at presidents, this article ranks as my favorite Onion piece of all time: . Such perfect pitch! I laughed until I cried. www.theonion.com/content/node/38718

Onion will do that; it's very a-peeling.

Don French:

The periodic table of videos is spectacular! Thanks so much for letting us know about it. The first one I watched, Iron, includes a great story about some Berkeley pranksters and a tram (possibly BART).

The period table of videos led me to a similar site, also from the University of Nottingham, the sixty symbols of physics and astronomy: http://www.sixtysymbols.com/#. I really like this stuff but maybe that is because chemistry, and especially physical chemistry, was my major in college. Still, I recommend these videos to everyone. They are interesting and informative, and the presenters are really charming people, as are most scientists that I have had the privelege of knowing.


Alice Polesky:

This is a fascinating BBC piece about how rooks, a member of the corvid (crow) family, not only choose the appropriate tool for a given task without thought, but can quickly figure out and create a tool on the fly. What's even more interesting is that they don't do this in the wild, because they don't have to.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8059688.stm


ML Carle:

Hi Jake, PBS featured Dan Ariely, behaviorist economist, last week, in a pseudo debate between a behavioral economist and a neoclassical economist. His book just came out, and I think I may spring for a retail hardback. The chimp article seems like it may be a part of his argument. ML


Jeanne Koelling:

Hi Jake: After an absence of a few weeks, today I revisited the Duncan and Castro Open Space and, as Don Bailey described, the northeast facing slope is chock-a-block full of Ithuriel's spears. Beautiful: A purple blanket covers the slope. Don and his group have done a great job holding back most of the invasive weeds in the area where the Ithuriel's spears are blooming. The allium seems restricted to the lower part of the slope.

(About Triteleia laxa)
The common name Ithuriel's spear comes from a story in Milton's Paradise Lost written in 1667. In that story, the angel Gabriel asks the angels Ithuriel and Zephon to search through the Garden of Eden for "...some infernal spirit...who escaped the barrs of Hell on errand bad..." They search and find Satan disguised "...like a toad, close at the ear of Eve." He is trying to influence her with "discontented thoughts..." Ithuriel touches the toad with his spear and Satan returns to his own likeness in a great flash, since "...no falsehood can endure the touch of...." Ithuriel's spear.

In Edith S. Clement's book Flowers of Coast and Sierra, she states that the plant is "Fancifully likened to the spear borne by the Angel Ithuriel, because of its straight slimness of stem...."

Quoted from Edgewood Explorer Dec 2000 article by Bob Young

Ron Maykel:

As always, thanks for Nature News.


Your info on comets is thought provoking. On comets? You may find reading about the wormwood (comet) star being prophesied to bring the end to earth, interesting. It may give one good reason to indulge in absinthe!

Someone ought to initiate a Doomsday Project, just to keep tabs on all of the End-of-the-World scenarios. Sort of like bookkeeping. It would keep some cyber-nerd busy.


On a wild flower note. I discovered a meadow colored with yellow mariposa lilies and Ithuriel's spears. It is my understanding that California poppy, Matillja poppy and mariposa lily were the nominees for a official California State flower in 1890? The C. Floral
Society was entrusted with the task to vote on one of the three. The C. poppy winning with a vast majority, the mariposa lily got three votes with the Matillja poppy getting no votes. Apparently the C. poppy was not legislatively designated the state flower until 1903.


Would you happen to know why the California poppy was so popular over the other contenders?

I can only guess, Ron. Point 1: What's not to love about this plant? Although there are some serious rivals (two of them named in your citation), it's hard to beat the poppy--plus it has a long season of bloom. Point 2: The poppy grows up and down the state, so would be widely known, whereas the mariposa lily is less often seen and has a short period of bloom. Point 3: It grows very readily from seed, and people have been scattering seed around since Day One, so it's a constant companion. Beautiful as is the Matilija poppy, its range is very restricted, being confined to a few southern California canyons, so it would not have been as commonly known. Although I wouldn't say it is difficult to raise, it is a little tricky, and would not have been nearly as widely known in 1890.

And our much-loved botanist, John Thomas Howell, says it all:

No poet has yet sung the full beauty of our poppy, no painter has successfully portrayed the satiny sheen of its lustrous petals, no scientist has satisfactorily diagnosed the vagaries of its variations and adaptability. In its abundance, this colorful plant should not be slighted: cherish it and be ever thankful that so rare a flower is common! John Thomas Howell, Marin Flora

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6. From Cornell site:

Chemical-free pesticide: http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2009/04/barn_owls_israel.html

Study: Bird diversity lessens human exposure to West Nile Virus:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/wuis-sbd100608.php

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7. The next SF Butterfly Count

Wednesday, JUNE 3rd, 2009. 9am - 5pm. This intense, one-day inventory of all the species in our county will begin at the Randall Museum (199 Museum Way) before heading out to assigned sites. Don't be intimidated -- you'll always be with someone who knows their stuff ****Bring Your Lunch*** A $3.00 participation fee goes towards habitat conservation. It looks good that each person will also receive a brochure I've been working on with Nature in the City -- "The Butterflies of San Francisco" to help you focus just on what you should see that day. This event is sponsored by Nature in the City and the North American Butterfly Association. We broke the record last year with 21 species...come help us do it again! Info: Liam O'Brien, liammail56@yahoo.com

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8. Bank Swallows at Fort Funston
The swallows have recently returned from South America and are digging new burrows. This federally threatened species is under high levels of disturbance at Fort Funston. On weekends and hot days, hundreds of beachgoers and their roaming dogs, kites, fireworks, etc. can be found on the beach and the cliffs above the colony. This really is a special, sensitive, and threatened bird and one of the greatest treasures of the Bay Area.


The GGNRA is looking for volunteers who would be willing to spend an hour or two below the colony on weekends (even a single visit would be helpful) for the next three months. This is an opportunity for a birder (or non-birder) to observe the interesting and entertaining social dynamics of this colony. Volunteers would also be extra eyes and ears (advocates) for the swallows and could report disturbances to nearby park rangers and the natural resources office. They could also share their knowledge with the public.


**If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact:
J. Patrick Furtado
Wildlife Biology Intern
Golden Gate National Recreation Area, National Park Service
john_furtado@nps.gov
Office: (415)331-0729 (no answering machine)
Cell: (203)889-7784 (cell phone is best as messages can also be left there)
www.nps.gov/goga/

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9. Meditation on French broom

Standing by the side of a road in Marin County this Spring awaiting a part for my work van, I looked over at a cut-over hillside of French broom. All seemed quite OK with that treatment. The bush closest to me had simply sprouted 15 new stems. Each stem had an average of 15 secondary shoots which each averaged 15 tertiary shoots. Each of these averaged 5 lovely and fragrant yellow pea flowers which in turn averaged 5 seeds to the pod. Since California, unlike Montpellier, France, lacks the myriad of broom seed herbivores, all of these should be viable. Doing the math [ 15x15x15x5x5=], led me to the appalling realization that just this one shrub could produce up to 84,375 seeds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Look out California! - Ted Kipping

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10. From Roger Raiche: Mystery of the grape cultivar 'Roger's Red' solved

I just got off the phone with Jerry Dangl, a researcher at the Plant Services department at UC Davis, and he has finally resolved the origin of the ‘Roger’s Red’ selection, once thought to be the native grape, Vitis califronica. Indeed, as many suspected, it is not pure Vitis californica. His DNA analysis shows that it is a first generation hybrid (F1) between the native V. californica and a wine grape (Vitis vinifera) cultivar known as ‘Alicante Bouschet’. This grape, ‘Alicante Bouchet’, is unusual in that it has both red skin and red flesh – most red grapes and red wine gets its color from the skin only.

Jerry Dangl, plans on doing some more analysis before officially releasing his findings, and probably the two of us will produce a short article intended for either or both Pacific Horticulture magazine and Fremontia (the journal of the California Native Plant Society). But I wanted to get the word out to those who grow or propagate this vine (Roger’s Red), as many of you have been asking for years what the ‘story” was on this selection. This selection has been grown and sold now for nearly 25 years, with the assumption that it was an aberrant fall leaf color form of the native grape, and probably thousands have been planted in yards, etc. throughout the state and beyond. This email is just the initial attempt at correcting this naming error.

However, the upside is that it is half native, and not a fully European grape selection that seeded into the wild. And for those who don’t care if their grape is 100% native or not, it is still the same beautiful and fruitful selection that it was yesterday. However, in the future, it should never be sold as Vitis californica, as it is a hybrid grape. Those of you on this list who are connected with botanical, horticultural or nursery institutions, should take a moment to correct your records to reflect this new information.

I do apologize for my initial mis-identification error, especially to those who strive to have a completely native landscape/garden. However, I have received so many letters and comments from folks who have been thrilled by this grape and the joy it has brought them, their families, their neighbors and their wildlife, that I don’t actually feel that bad about making this selection. Further, I myself questioned the full nativity of this plant as far back as 1990, but was not able to get the Botanical Garden to move on certifying its identity. But that is all “water under the bridge”, and at least now we have the correct identity of this vine.

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11.
Two from Denise D'Anne:
BEYOND CHRON - May 27, 2009

Dear Editor: The Earth does not have the capacity to contain the trillions of tons of waste created daily in our so-called civilized society. Extending out in the future the present accumulation of waste from electronic devices, packaging material, plastic storage containers, automobile parts, toxic batteries and other devices, we will have to consider looking to outer space for another planet where we can repeat the pattern that is destroying our present planet.

We should not delude ourselves that we will be able to recycle our way out of this predicament. Partly, because, many items are not recyclable, most people will not recycle and there are limited markets for such material. Also, to be considered the transportation costs and the pollution created by reconstituting any material.

One-solution: charge high taxes on manufacturers as a disincentive in producing things our society consumes.

(An irony of the present struggle to work our way out of the present economic difficulties is the universal nostrum: "We've got to get the economy moving again." That is, we've got to put people back to work making things that we don't need, just like we were doing before--and which will mostly end up in landfill. It consumes finite resources and it pollutes, but it stimulates the economy. Is there another way? JS)

YOU GOTTA LOVE SOCIALISM
President George W. Bush, the leading proponent of socialism, through tax cuts,in 2001 gave those making over $100,000.00 a year tax cuts of $4,754.57 and those making under $100,000.00 a year cuts of $158.61. YEP, everyone got tax cuts with the help of 1/3 of the Democrats. Socialism knows no distinction between parties.

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12.
“Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.” Aldo Leopold

2009 Leopold Conservation Award


The Leopold Conservation Award recognizes private landowners' commitment to responsible environmental stewardship and land management. The award underscores the fact that many ranchers, farmers and foresters are on the front lines of conservation and should be recognized for protecting the environment. So often, voluntary conservation by private landowners provides a more effective, efficient, and durable means of protecting land, water, and species than the government’s regulatory programs.


As in past years, finalists in 2009 will be selected in part based on their commitment to responsible and sustainable land management, the overall health of their land, implementation of innovative practices and dedication to community outreach and leadership. The Leopold Conservation Award Review Panel will evaluate properties in two categories: (1) Nurseries & Crops, and (2) Livestock.


The grand prize of $10,000 and a crystal rendering of Aldo Leopold, author of the "Sand County Almanac," will be presented at the California Farm Bureau Federation's annual convention in December. Runner-up prizes of $1,000 will also be presented.


The deadline for nominations is July 10.


For more information and a nomination form, visit Sustainable Conservation or contact us at (415) 977-0380.


"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."
Aldo Leopold

“The most important characteristic of an organism [including the land organism] is that capacity for internal self-renewal known as health.” Aldo Leopold

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13. Cal-IPC 2009 Symposium - Visalia October 8-10

Registration Now Open

October 7 - Advanced Herbicide Control Field Course, Kaweah Oaks Preserve, 7 miles East of Visalia

October 8-10 - Symposium, Visalia Convention Center, Visalia


Join us at the Visalia Convention Center, the Gateway to the Southern Sierra. Our 18th Annual Symposium promises a great line-up of talks, posters, and activities. This year’s keynote speaker will be Rich Minnich, UC Riverside, discussing his new book, California's Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions. The book casts new light on the historic prominence of forbs in the state's ecosystems and the devastating impact of invasive's plants throughout California.

Our invited sessions address wildland weed management on the leading edge, including leading edge projects, climate change and new tools and techniques. Confirmed speakers are listed on our website: http://www.cal-ipc.org/symposia/index/php
Other activities include Saturday field trips and our new field course on Advanced Herbicide Control Methods. Field trips will take a Grand Weed Tour throughout Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, visit Kaweah Oaks Preserve and Atwell Island, and interact with a park naturalist regarding winning public support beneath the world renowned giant sequoias. Attendees of the pre-Symposium field course will gain deeper understanding of herbicide formulations,modes of action, selectivity, application methods and safety.

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14. Oaktown Native Plant Nursery Sale - 25% off until Saturday June 13!!

Saturday May 30
Tuesday June 2
Saturday June 6
Tuesday June 9
Saturday June 13
After that we will open on Tuesday only (except by appointment ) until after Labor Day. Check out our up to date inventory on line http://www.oaktownnativenursery.info/

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"I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor."
-- King George III of England

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15. Institutions share same delusion, by Madeleine Bunting

The Age of Entitlement has been discredited. A new, green life will require us to make a break with the past

One would hardly expect a revolution to be plotted in a discussion in Carlton House Terrace...let alone incubated in a government-appointed Sustainable Development Commission (SDC). But these are times of unprecedented political exhaustion with the mainstream, and with that comes a fast-growing appetite for radicalism and an abrupt break with the status quo.

In the latter category is a bold paper, Prosperity Without Growth, by the SDC economist Tim Jackson. It asked if we could imagine a capitalism without economic growth. Capitalist economies grow by creating and promising to fulfill new desires; without growth they are plunged into crisis. It has been deeply built into the system as a way to generate rising incomes and employment. All governments see their primary task as growth in GDP - this is perceived as the primary measure of progress. But that cannot continue if we are to have any hope of making the kinds of cuts in carbon emissions to which the UK is committed.

This is the kind of politics no mainstream politician dares address. It requires abandoning a half-century of political assumptions: your children will not be better off than you and may be worse off; car use will have to be dramatically curtailed; working hours will have to be reordered to share employment; foreign holidays will be rarer; cheap food a thing of the past. And along with these unpalatable home truths will be the need for intervention in the minutiae of people's lives: how much you heat your home or use water; how you move and eat.

The role of state intervention will be huge; people's choices will have to be "edited", admits Anthony Giddens in his recent book, The Politics of Climate Change. Leaving individuals to find the moral strength to resist the cultural pressures will simply not be effective. Our lives will have to be regulated in ways that we can't imagine. Consumer advertising will have to be curbed to prevent it exploiting insecurity to create new markets. The Australian government's banning of all light bulbs that are not low-energy is a glimpse of what is required.

What will be difficult is the governance of these changes: what kind of state will be required to push these changes through and what powers will it need? Giddens suggests that there will have to be a return to small self-reliant communities and perhaps they will have to have a role in carbon allocations. Crucially, how will we weigh the loss of personal freedoms against the hope of survival of human beings?

Equally difficult will be the massive cultural revolution required to reorient a set of values rooted in an entitlement to an unfair proportion of the planet's resources. The illusion of a good life conceived in terms of individual material advancement has to be exposed as an advertising con; rising affluence has not produced rising levels of wellbeing but a dispiriting scrabble for advantage, argues Tim Jackson.

The light at the end of the tunnel is Jackson's insistence that it is possible to imagine a way of life with less wealth that could actually be far more sustaining of human wellbeing. The problem is that we need politicians brave enough to start taking us down that road - and we have discovered that they are riddled with the very disease we need to cure.

Excerpted from Guardian Weekly 22.05.09

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16. Beautiful building blocks of existence

How We Live and Why We Die, by Lewis Wolpert

"Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clearer view again," Alex Tan once claimed. That is just the half of it. When we cry, we do a lot more than just clear up our vision. We improve our health. Tears, it transpires, help us fight infection. They contain lysozyme, a chemical that can cleave the sugar chains in the walls of invading bacteria. Thus washed with tears, a bacterium simply bursts open and dies. So a good cry has its advantages.

Lysozyme, we should note, is just one of the thousands of chemical workhorses whose combined efforts keep our cells healthy and active, a set of observations that takes us to the core of this intriguing examination of the basic unit of life: the cell. These tiny entities - named from the Latin, cella, for small rooms - are, quite simply, "the most complex objects in the universe", according to Lewis Wolpert.

And given that all living things on our planet are made of cells, any attempt to understand how and why we live and die obliges us to study cells, their components and the forces that maintain and destroy them, argues Wolpert. As he says: "It is only from cells that we can find out what life is."

Cells cover us in skin, carry nerve impulses, absorb food, fight infections and move oxygen around. Each of us has about 200 different types of cell in our bodies. Yet despite their diverse functions, all cells are similar. Each is, in effect, a ball of "watery salt" that contains a nucleus that holds two metres of genetic material. This, in turn, directs the manufacture of proteins from which new cells are made.

In addition, a cell is covered with a delicate membrane that carefully controls what passes in and out of it; possesses tiny power packs, called mitochondria; exploits chemical scissors called enzymes to assemble complex chemicals or to split them up (as lysozyme does); and uses microscopic pumps to keep concentrations of sodium and potassium ions at their correct levels.

For good measure, all this highly sophisticated machinery operates at an extraordinary rate. Enzymes act on about 1,000 molecules a second. thus we can think of ourselves as collections of cellular sweatshops in constant, feverish operation. Two million red blood cells, which carry life-sustaining oxygen around our bodies, are manufactured every second in our bone marrow while billions of nerve impulses constantly travel through billions of the nerve cells inside our brains. Even on the outside, there is plenty of activity: the outer layers of our skin are replaced a thousand times during a normal lifetime, for example.

Yet, as Wolpert notes, all these cells in our bodies - and in the bodies of all other creatures - operate independently. "There is no overall controller of this cellular society: it is a true co-operative," he says. And this is one of the most extraordinary features about life on Earth: its individual members are composed of units whose assemblage arose through blind chance and that cooperate without any central control. (Our brains have limited control over only a few cells, such as muscle, and no influence at all over skin growth, liver function or heartbeat.) For Wolpert, a civil engineer turned biologist, that functioning is simply "miraculous". Thus he has devoted his professional life to an object of such sophistication that it "almost always turns out to exceed one's expectations".

And, by and large, he has done his tiny charges justice in this succinctly argued work. There are no florid touches or biographical interludes, just straightforward accounts of cells in action. The overall impact is perhaps a little too dry for my liking. On the other hand, Wolpert has had the sense to tell a good story with minimum fuss and allow nothing to divert attention from what he believes is the greatest wonder of our world: the living cell.

Review by Robin McKie in Observer, 05.09

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17. Astronomy miscellany

The Galileoscope: An International Year of Astronomy 2009 Cornerstone Project

The Galileoscope is a high-quality, low-cost telescope kit developed for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 by a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers, and science educators. No matter where you live, with this easy-to-assemble, 50-mm (2-inch) diameter, 25- to 50-power achromatic refractor, you can see the celestial wonders that Galileo Galilei first glimpsed 400 years ago and that still delight stargazers today. These include lunar craters and mountains, four moons circling Jupiter, the phases of Venus, Saturn's rings, and countless stars invisible to the unaided eye. The Galileoscope costs just US$15 each plus shipping for 1 to 99 units, or US$12.50 each plus shipping for 100 or more.

(AND you can even see them sometimes in San Francisco! Last night on my way home I saw the crescent Moon hanging ever so beautifully and clearly in the western sky, shortly before the fog rolled in. The Moon played a very important role in Galileo's upsetting discoveries when he saw mountains, ridges, valleys, shadows on what had been considered a perfect sphere, a belief that shattered classical ideas--including religious ones regarding the perfection of the heavens. It played a role in Galileo's difficulties with the church.
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...The long-standing misunderstanding between Galileo and the church led, in 1979, to a request by Pope John Paul II that the case be reopened with an eye toward reconciliation. The papal commission reviewing the Galileo affair encountered numerous difficulties, however, and the pope's official concluding statement in 1992 fell far short of his original goal. Although it is widely held that John Paul "pardoned" Galileo, he simply regretted the "tragic mutual incomprehension" that had persisted between science and faith.

Excerpt from Science News 23 May 2009
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Celebrating astronomy's illumination of the mind

Astronomy is a special science.

As the French mathematician Henri Poincare observed more than a century ago, it was astronomy that inspired the origins of science in general. In ancient times, people observing the night sky saw that its "multitude of luminous points is not a confused crowd wandering at random, but a disciplined army," he noted. Such observations provided a clue that nature's chaos concealed order that humans could discern. It was astronomy, in other words,that taught humankind that the world obeys natural laws that people are capable of discovering.

"Under heavens always overcast and starless, the Earth itself would have been for us eternally unintelligible," Poincare wrote in The Value of Science. "The stars send us not only that visible and gross light which strikes our bodily eyes, but from them also comes to us a light far more subtle, which illuminates our minds. Astronomy...has given us a soul capable of comprehending nature."

...the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope fully warrants this year's International Year of Astronomy celebrations. All this attention to astronomy stems from its attachment to the curiosity infused in the human spirit, not from practical uses like those expected from other sciences. Not that astronomy is useless--historically, it has been fertile with applications, from aiding the earliest calendar makers to navigation guides for ships in the dark. But mostly astronomy's usefulness is not its applications, but its inspiration. "Astronomy is useful," Poincare wrote, "because it raises us above ourselves."

Excerpted from editorial in Science News 23 May 2009
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The Hubble Ultra Deep Field has imaged galaxies as far as 13.4 billion light years away, only .3 billion (300 million) light years from the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang. The UDF can depict objects as faint as the glow of a firefly on the moon.

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A reflection while shaving on the finite speed of light

Stars are further than we comprehend.
We view at last the news they send
and read the past. This face I see
is out of date, a counterfeit, a sham-
someone I was looking out at who I am.

Graham Walker


"The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a machine.
Sir James Jeans (1877-1946)

Jake Sigg's Nature News Special to Bayview Hill Association

Brian O'Neill, Superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area for many, many years, has died following recent heart surgery

1. Celebrate Endangered Species Day Friday May 15
2. Mt Sutro fire mitigation project meeting Monday 18 May
3. SF Planning Commission update Recreation & Open Space Element of General Plan. Hearing Thurs 14 May
4. Wildflower burst on Pacifica State Beach/mallard cannibals?
5. CNPS field trip on San Mateo coast Sunday 16 May
6. Good information on bugs of San Francisco
7. A Single Swallow: Following an Epic Journey from South Africa to South Wales
8. Wanted: Candidates for board of directors, California Invasive Plant Council
9. Energy-hungry internet threatened by its own success
10. Machiavelli and Obama
11. Native oysters return to San Francisco Bay/Jack London was an oyster pirate
12. SF Examiner story on restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley/hypocrisy of Bay Area politicians
13. Feedback: May 19 election propositions/Harry Truman, Matthew Algeo/Groucho
14. UC and Jepson Herbaria on Facebook
15. It's getting wetter on world coastlines/that doesn't stop developers
16. Living physics: plants and animals exploit quantum phenomena
17. Last screenings of Joseph Campbell's final lectures
18. East Bay gardener gave painless lessons in grammar and syntax
19. International Space Station erector set

1. Celebrate Endangered Species Day and our nation's amazing wildlife and wild places. Celebrate Endangered Species Day on Friday, May 15th, 2009!

Endangered Species Day Multi-District Elementary School Art Exhibit
May 16, 2009, 1-3 pm
Don Edwards SF Bay NWR Visitor Center
2 Marshlands Rd, Fremont, CA 94536

Come to the refuge and celebrate Endangered Species Day! Meet and greet artists from elementary schools in the Fremont, Newark, New Haven, and Ravenswood School Districts who entered the 27th Annual Endangered Species Poster Contest. All artists’ work will be ondisplay on this special day.
Refreshments will be served. For more information, call Cara at (510) 745-8695. www.fws.gov/desfbay/

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2. A public meeting has been scheduled to inform those interested in Mt. Sutro issues about two proposed fire mitigation projects which would take place in the Mt. Sutro Open Space Reserve.

Attend the public meeting and become informed on this next Mt. Sutro project and about our continuing efforts to preserve, restore and improve the viability of this significant Open Space area.

Monday, May 18, 2009 - 7:00 p.m.
St. John Armenian Apostolic Church, located at 275 Olympia Way.

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3.
San Francisco Planning Commission meeting
Recreation and Open Space Element of General Plan
Thursday 14 May - 1.30 pm (I don't know when the item comes up)

The Recreation and Open Space Element (ROSE) provides the goals, objectives, and policies that will guide open space acquisition, preservation and priorities for San Francisco over the next 25 years.
G. REGULAR CALENDAR (S. DENNIS PHILLIPS (415) 558-6314)
11. RECREATION AND OPEN SPACE ELEMENT UPDATE - Informational presentation of the draft for public review of the Recreation and Open Space Element of the City's General Plan. The Planning Department, the Mayor’s Office of Greening and the Recreation and Parks Department have been working with the Mayor's Open Space Task Force and the community at large to develop a comprehensive framework for the future of open space in San Francisco. A major component of this framework is an update to the Recreation and Open Space Element (lasted updated in 1986), which provides the goals, objectives, and policies that will guide open space development, acquisition, preservation and priorities for the City over the next 25 years. This presentation will introduce the major themes of the update to aid in Commissioner and public review; subsequent hearings will be scheduled for further discussion and revisions to the draft through the summer and fall. No action is required at this time.

http://sfgov.org/site/planning_page.asp?id=104006

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4.
From Clark Natwick:
Have you seen the wildflower burst on the north end of Pacifica State Beach?

Morning glories, beach primrose, sand verbena, Indian paint brush, beach sage, dune grass and on and on.

Ryder Miller:
A Mother's Day wildlife observation from RWM:

Stopping at a lake while walking through Golden Gate Park I saw a bunch of Mallard ducks and there were also some baby duckings there as well. The interesting thing was that the mother of the ducks was chasing all the males, those with the green heads, away for the ducklings who were on their way into the lake. The male Mallards looked on from a distance. Some animals are cannibals.

(Is it cannibalism or is it desire to kill another male's offspring, giving another male the chance to mate and pass on his genes?)

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5.
(Note: Toni Corelli will also present this talk to the CNPS Yerba Buena Chapter in San Francisco on August 16.)

The Amazing Plants of Coastal San Mateo County
A presentation by Toni Corelli
Friday, May 15th at 7:30 pm
Half Moon Bay Library


The San Mateo Coast runs along the Pacific Ocean for over 71 miles and has acres of public land with over 25 parks and state beaches. Until now much of the flora has not been documented, but for the past two years with the help of volunteers over 600 taxa have been listed for the public lands along the coast. This presentation will highlight the parks and plants “west of 1” and also show how volunteers in collaboration with State Parks are helping to restore native habitat on the coast. Learn about the diverse plant communities and spectacular wildflowers that occupy this slender stretch of Highway 1. Then join us for walks May 16th and June 14th. Toni Corelli is a longtime member of the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and has lived and botanized the local flora of the San Mateo County coast for 20 years.


Directions: from Hwy. 280 take Hwy. 92 west to Main Street (Half Moon Bay); turn left (south) on Main Street, then right (west) on Correas. The Library will be on the left (south) side of the street. It should take you less than 20 minutes from Hwy. 280 to Half Moon Bay.


Is it a Native? Come early for our plant ID clinic. Experts will be available starting at 7 pm to help you identify naturalized plants (those growing without human care) that have been collected with proper permit or landowner permission.


Saturday, May 16, 10 am
San Mateo Coast Walk


Join Toni Corelli for a walk to three different areas along the San Mateo Coast. Meet at Wilbur’s Watch (Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) property) along Hwy. 1 near Pigeon Point Lighthouse. The areas we will visit will be easy trails with diverse plants through coastal habitats, and beautiful vistas of the ocean. The walk is expected to end at 3 pm. For more information, contact Toni Corelli at corelli@coastside.net or (650) 726-0689.


Directions: From Hwy 92 or Hwy 84, take Hwy 1 south past Pescadero. Immediately across from Pigeon Point lighthouse, turn left onto Pigeon Point Rd., and follow as it curves around to the right. You'll see the ramp to the parking area on your left 0.8 mile from the Hwy 1 junction.


For more information, go to www.cnps-scv.org.

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6. Bug information

Mike Sullivan:

Jake – do you have any suggestions for good books or websites or other sources for information on native BUGS of San Francisco? I have become quite knowledgeable about the bugs that one is likely to find under logs in Mt. Sutro, GGP and Buena Vista, as my son Joe is very fond of the bug hunt. I would really like to know more about the rolly-polly’s, red centipedes, beetles, etc. that I’ve begun to recognize on my treks with Joe. Any good books/source materials? Mike

(I responded by directing him to the horse's mouth, Leslie Saul):

Leslie Saul:
"The Firefly Encyclopedia of Insects and Spiders" by Christopher O'Toole or his other book the older "The Encyclopedia of Insects" is a good illustrated book for children about all insect and arachnid life. The best guides for local fauna are the amazingly inexpensive "Golden Guide to Spiders and their kin" and the "Golden Guide to Butterflies and Moths" which has illustrations of both caterpillars and adults. There are bigger and fancier guides now (Field Guide to Western Butterflies by Paul Opler for serious butterfly watching) but these small guides are still rather good. For general insect guides that's a bit tougher. National Wildlife Federation has a newer "Guide to Insects and Spiders" and or the Simon and Schuster's "Guide to Insects". Both get good reviews and have lots of photographs but are a bit more adult-oriented.

Mike Sullivan:
Thanks – this is all great. We are mostly interested in bugs that can be found under rocks and logs, as that’s where the odds are the best, we find! We spent an hour collecting on Sunday, and took our little critters to the education center in the Academy Sunday afternoon. We were told that “Vic” was out, but the staff helped us anyway. Our little black beetles are apparently darkling beetles, and the soft little bugs that jump around a lot, which my son calls “jumpy-bugs”, are as yet unidentified. Red centipedes are, well, red centipedes, although I’m still curious about the specific species. We also found a very large millipede, which was pretty exciting. It’s funny how after just a little bit of exploration and practice, you encounter the same kinds of insects over and over, getting to know them, and getting excited when you see something new and different.
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7.
Migrating swallows
Spring bringers

A Single Swallow: Following an Epic Journey from South Africa to South Wales, by Horatio Clare

Sixteen million migratory birds fly to Britain every year from sub-Saharan Africa in a flurry of wing beats that herald the spring. Of the 50 species that make the journey, the best loved are swallows.

Known by an array of magical names—golodrina in Spain, the bird that thaws the snow; svala in Sweden, to console; and in Africa inkonjani, the lightning bird, nyankalema, the bird that never gets tired, or giri giri, a magical charm—swallows have lived alongside humans for thousands of years. The Minoans painted them on the walls of their houses in 1600BCE. Their images decorated Greek vases a thousand years later and they are mentioned in the poetry of Virgil and Ovid. The Austrians believe swallows built the sky and myth says they pulled the thorns from the head of Christ: how else did they get their blood-red cheeks?

In his latest book, which is not so much a work about swallows as an African travel adventure built around them, Horatio Clare sets out to follow the migration route of the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) from the reed beds of Bloemfontein in South Africa to the eaves of his family’s barn in south Wales. Mr Clare, who portrayed his unconventional upbringing on a Welsh hill farm in an earlier memoir, “Running for the Hills”, sees his journey as a way of separating “the boy-man I was from the man I wanted to become”.

Travelling by any means he can find, he crosses nine African countries, meeting along the way the power-crazy, the kind, the mad and the desperate. Although his tight schedule means he rather pelts through the continent, his eye for detail and his elegant pen give a flavour of each country he crosses: great veldts and high plateaux, Congo’s “green vastness”, the “sandy seas” of the Sahel and, finally, the fertile plain of the north African coast.

Swooping exuberantly above him are the swallows, skimming over rooftops, across rivers and valleys, blue backs glistening, forked tails dancing behind them as they curve trajectories in the sky, a graceful reminder of the inspirational and unending power of nature.

The Economist 9 May 2009

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8. The California Invasive Plant Council is seeking potential candidates for its board of directors. Please consider whether you or someone you know would make a good addition. The board meets quarterly to set program direction and maintain its financial stability. Board members serve as links to its network of 1,000 Cal-IPC members throughout the state's weed-worker community. It's a fun and productive bunch, and they help make the organization what it is. [See http://www.cal-ipc.org/about/staff.php for info on current board members.]

Please pass along expressions of interest or informal nominations to Wendy West, board development chair, at wkwest@ucdavis.edu by June 1. She can provide more details on duties and expectations.

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9. Energy-hungry internet is threatened by its own success

The internet's increasing appetite for electricity poses a major threat to companies such as Google, scientists and industry executives say.

Leading figures have told the Guardian that many internet companies are struggling to manage the costs of delivering billions of web pages, videos and files online and the pressure to deliver could even threaten the future of the internet itself. "In an energy-constrained world, we cannot continue to grow the footprint of the internet...we need to rein in the energy consumption," said (a vice-president of Sun Microsystems).

...With more than 1.5 billion people online around the world, scientists estimate that the energy footprint of the net is growing by more than 10% each year...One site under particular scrutiny is YouTube, the world's third-biggest website, but one that requires a heavy subsidy from Google, its owner...an analysis...suggested the site could lose as much as $470m this year, as it succumbs to the cost of delivering power-intensive videos over the internet.

While the demand for electricity is a primary concern, a secondary result of the explosion of internet use is that the computer industry's carbon debt is increasing drastically. From having a relatively small impact just a few years ago, it is leapfrogging other sectors such as the airline industry that are more widely recognised for their negative environmental impact.

...despite efforts to achieve greater efficiency, internet use was growing at such a rate that it was outstripping technical improvements--meaning that US data centres could account for as much as 80 billion kwh this year. "Efficiency is being more than overwhelmed by continued growth and demand for new services. It's a common story...technical improvements are often taken back by increased demand."

Among the problems that could result from the internet's hunger for electricity are website failures and communications disruption costing millions in lost business every hour - as well as power cuts and brownouts at plants that supply data centres with electricity...

Excerpted from Guardian Weekly article by Bobbie Johnson, 08.05.09

(JS: A very small item, but one that I have wondered about: Standard practice for most people, in my experience, it to hit the Reply button, thus sending the entire contents of the email they're responding to. For example, when people give me feedback on this newsletter, the entire newsletter is sent back, sometimes with a brief "Thanks for item 2". Also, when there are multiple cc's--eg, perhaps >100--all of them receive another copy (sometimes including photos), with a simple message: "Thanks"!

I'm sure the energy involved is minuscule in the total picture referred to in the above article, nevertheless it's not nothing. Should I be concerned about this?)

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10. LTE, The Economist
Sir - Your article on Barack Obama's foreign policy cited Machiavelli's axiom that it is often better to be feared than loved. In fact, Machiavelli said it is better to be loved than feared, but if a prince cannot be effective and loved he should consider being effective and feared. It seems Mr Obama is both effective and loved by most people across the world. He does not have to be feared to be taken seriously.
Alexander Tregub, San Jose, California

(As often occurs, the public image of Machiavelli is wide of the truth. I may dilate on this another time, but for now, this:
Take a look at his times (15th, early 16th century Italy). Brigandry was not only common, it was certain if you were travelling or hauling goods for trading between Florence and nearby cities. Democracy cannot take root in such conditions, and strong rule is required. Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) advises rulers that the acquisition and effective use of power may necessitate unethical methods. He was a lover of classics but he knew that civilization cannot endure instability, which was rife in Italy in his time. The American Founding Fathers paid close attention to Machiavelli in drafting our founding documents.)

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11. From newsletter of The Watershed Project:

They're Back!
Native Oysters Return to the Bay

The San Francisco Bay was once brimming with oysters. Enough in fact to support the largest oyster industry on the West Coast. Yet, by the early 1900s, California's population and industrial growth led to a degradation of water quality in the Bay and by 1939 the last of the native oysters in San Francisco Bay were commercially harvested. Today, The Watershed Project leads an effort to monitor and restore native oysters to the San Francisco Bay. Our "Oysters on the Half Shell" Program involves three interconnected approaches: restoration, monitoring, and education.

Read More
Pearly White Beaches

A Brief History of Oysters in the San Francisco Bay

Jack London was an oyster pirate. Before the Bay Area's very own literary hero published any written works, he robbed the San Francisco Bay of one of its most valuable shellfish. London wrote about his oyster high jinks after joining the California Fish Patrol. In one of his stories, London acknowledges that oyster thieves could cash in on "thousands of dollars every year" from stealing oysters straight out of their beds. His involvement in the oyster trade of the late 19th century is indicative of the role that oysters once played in both the San Francisco Bay Area's ecosystem and trade.
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12. From May 10 San Francisco Examiner on efforts to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley:

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/oped_contributors/Why-the-religious-community-should-care-about-Hetch-Hetchy-44617897.html#comments

From a posted comment:
"The real height of hypocrisy are the self-proclaimed environmentalist politicians in the Bay Area who now seek to double-down on the destruction of Hetch Hetchy by building a Peripheral Canal that will destroy the Delta as well. They are just pawns of Bechtel and whoever else is pulling the money strings. Are you listening Senator Simitian (D-Palo Alto)? And where is our green Mayor wannabe Governor Newsom? The silence is deafening."

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13. Feedback

Frank Noto:

Thanks for the Truman items. They fairly accurately depict his pre-presidential years, even if they don't tell the full story, which of course one cannot do in so few words. He actually was a well-regarded US senator by the time he was elected VP, heading an important and highly visible committee charged with overseeing war production, and fighting waste, inefficiency and corruption. That largely countered his previous image as a tool of the Pendergast machine. He also had a distinguished WW I military career.
Thanks again for covering the CA propositions. My attitude is that the perfect is the enemy of the good here. Well, in this case the enemy of the mediocre. If Prop. 1-A and the other revenue measures fail, we will suffer terrible cuts in essential services. Tens of thousands more teachers will be laid off, along with firefighters and health care workers, and our cities and counties will cut parks, clinics and cops to the bone. Needy folks will lose Medi-Cal benefits, we'll continue to have no money for mass transit ... heck, Jake, you know the story, and you know it is true. Voting "no" does not solve a thing, it does not create revenue. I say vote YES for this flawed measure that is better than nothing. If you don't like the cap, or its budgetary changes, then work to change them with subsequent legislation and ballot measures. For now, this is all we have.

Frank: I have no doubt that the consequences you write about will happen. I suspect many voters' thinking is similar to mine, which is that patching up a rickety structure on the verge of collapse will solve nothing, and possibly could make it worse. I have lost confidence in the political and economic system and can see no alternative to letting it crash. Only then can we start building again.

I hope that doesn't sound irresponsible: You're right--the consequences of voting No will be horrible. But that's when you stand a chance of getting people's attention toward addressing problems. Getting attention is very difficult, as you know.

I'm attaching (not attached here) an inflammatory opinion piece from Denise D'Anne. It doesn't necessarily reflect my views, but it's not totally off the wall either. I'm sure it's the way many people are thinking. (She says Vote No on ALL.) She also provides this:

ORIGINS OF SWINE FLU: http://www.narconews.com/Issue57/article3512.html

Nan McGuire:

As you know, the Older Women’s League of which I am a Board member also opposes 1-A plus all the others. It is maddening that the teachers, the League of Conservation Voters and other usually reasonable groups have seen fit to endorse this game of smoke and mirrors by our devious Governor. They completely overlook how damaging this will be to children under five, mental health patients and seniors whose ranks are growing with every stroke of my computer keyboard.


Alice Polesky:

Hi Jake, I took a look at what Sheila Kuehl had to say, and as I think she is really great (came up with a great plan for single payer health care for Californians, which she tried, fruitlessly, to get through a few times), I'm probably going with her recommendations. Here's a link to her website, in case you're still up for more thoughts -- basically, the only prop she supports is 1C. But her rationale sounds good: http://www.sheilakuehl.org/

1-C -- ugh!! It drew derision in our neighborhood meeting for allocating $1 million per year to help people who are problem gamblers! The people we are enticing to part with their money are mostly poor people, and we're making it easier for them to part with it. So we create some more problem gamblers, and a million dollars to help them. Pinch me, am I dreaming?

I was against the lottery to begin with, and I'm as opposed as ever. The world's sick.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." — Groucho Marx

Lynne Sloan (of KGO):

I notice your reference to Matthew Algeo (Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure). He will be our guest for an hour to discuss this excellent book on May 24 at 5am. (810 am or www.kgoradio.com) I thought you might like to know. Love your newsletter.

The audio archives are available on our website for one week following broadcast so you can listen at your leisure - or your fan (me) at the station can make a copy of it for you.

Alice Polesky:

I thought you might enjoy Groucho singing what was probably his keynote song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtMV44yoXZ0

(His keynote song is "I'm against it.") So am I, Alice. I am truly becoming a grouch. I find myself more and more opposed to almost every proposal to build something. My only regret is that I didn't start opposing them earlier; I look around and think "Did I vote for this?" and "My god, we shot the wrong architect."

I have joined CAVE-men (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).

There, I've said it, and now you know.

Tony Gantner:

Jake: Is there any way to put signs at the bases of the GG Bridge w/o impairing aesthetics, etc.--during the spring (at minimum)---warning boaters/ships?

I thought you might have some ideas-or possibly have info on the matter--perhaps heard suggestions re warnings to boaters etc. The email is intended for the people being cc'd (Sierra Club & Mirkarimi's aide).


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From University and Jepson Herbarium

We want to announce that you can now find us on FACEBOOK! It is an easy way you can keep up with what is going on here - we'll announce news about TJM2, new treatments that are on-line, botany lunch topics at the Herbarium, Jepson Workshops news - photos from our trips, workshops that have been added to the schedule, etc!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Berkeley-CA/University-and-Jepson-Herbaria-UC-Berkeley/92158086132

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15. From SPUR newsletter:

It's getting wetter around here
A new report by the Pacific Institute reveals that a 1.4 meter sea level rise will inundate thousands of acres in California and impact almost half a million people by 2100. Hardest hit will be low-income people and communities of color, the Bay Area in general, and critical infrastructure like ports, railways and water treatment facilities.

(Do you become dizzy or experience stress and confusion when you read an item like this? Do you know what 1.4 meters is? It's 56 inches, or almost 5 feet! It sounds almost casual when you're writing off many coastal cities (including parts of San Francisco), such as New Orleans, New York City, and dozens of others, not to mention whole countries like Bangladesh and The Netherlands. If the 1.4 meters prediction is accurate, doesn't that mean the probable end of civilization? The bulk of the world's population will be directly or indirectly affected; many of them now live in that inundation zone or immediately adjacent.

My confusion deepens when that above item is immediately followed by:)

Reinventing America's cities
New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff presents a compelling argument for reinvestment in cities. "Cities are invaluable cultural incubators," Ouroussof writes, "But for years they have been neglected, and in many cases forcibly harmed, by policies that favored sprawl over density and conformity over difference."

Why reinvest if they're going underwater?

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16. Living physics
From green leaves to bird brains, biological systems may exploit quantum phenomena

Until a century or so ago, nobody had any idea that there even was such a thing as quantum physics. But while humans operated for millennia in quantum darkness, it seems that plants, bacteria and birds may have been in the know all along.

...On one level, it seems perfectly natural that quantum mechanics would serve a function at life's foundation. After all, quantum principles define the properties of atoms, from which living matter is made. And yet the quantum rules, which allow particles like electrons to exist in two places at once and sometimes behave like waves rather than particles, seem an unlikely driver of life's tightly regulated processes. Bizarre quantum properties are supposed to govern objects such as individual atoms, not great clumps of matter like redwoods or robins.

...In green plants, light particles are absorbed by pigment molecules--primarily chlorophyll--found in leaves. An incoming light particle, or photon, boosts an electron in the chlorophyll into a mobile state. Once excited, the electron is quickly shuttled from the chlorophyll to a nearby "acceptor" molecule, setting off a series of electron transfers. Moving from one molecule to another, the electron ultimately reaches the "reaction center," where the energy is converted into a form the cell can use to make carbohydrates.

It's these initial, near instantaneous energy transfers that are so remarkably efficient--scientists estimate that more than 95% of the energy in the light hitting a leaf reaches the photosynthesis reaction center. Although each of the biochemical steps that follow adds a loss in energy efficiency, the first steps in the process closely approach the ideal of one photon leading to one electron transfer.

Previous models of photosynthesis assumed that the light energy stored in excited electrons found its way to the reaction center via random hops, particles moving in a step-by-step manner to successively lower energy levels. But some scientists seeking to explain plants' superefficient energetics have considered the notion that plants may have a way to exploit the quantum behavior of electrons.

In the odd quantum world, particles can behave like waves. Rather than simply moving from one chlorophyll to another, electrons can exist as whirling clouds of energy, jostling back and forth between the molecules. In this wavelike state state, the electrons become connected, or coupled, and act in a concerted manner so the excitation is actually "sloshing around" between the molecules.

Scientists theorized that this and other quantum effects could allow for more efficient movement of energy but were faced with a problem in trying to capture evidence of such effects in the lab. In the classical world, either molecule A or B is excited, and scientists can track the transfer of excitation by measuring changes in the molecules over time. But in the quantum world, things appear to exist in a multitude of states, making measurements more complicated. Besides measuring changes of excitation in A and B over time, the scientists needed a way to measure simultaneous excitations of A and B--a signature of a quantum effect called coherence.

...Fleming's team, publishing in Nature, noted that quantum coherence could explain the extreme efficiency of photosynthesis by enabling electrons to simultaneously sample all the various potential pathways to the reaction center and choose the most efficient one. Rather than hopping from one molecule to another in a step-by-step manner, the electrons could try various routes to find the path of least resistance.

Going for a spin
...Birds may give scientists another pair of eyes in which to view quantum effects in living cells. Studies suggest that migratory birds about to embark on their seasonal journeys may tap into a quantum property called spin to help them "see" Earth's magnetic field using photosensitive proteins in their eyes...evidence for the theory is mounting.

...Discovering how quantum effects play out in photosynthesis and bird navigation may point scientists to other examples of the quantum in biological systems.

"Photosynthesis, after all, is one of the oldest processes around. If we see that nature learned at the very beginning, when they were still bacteria, to control quantum processes, there's no reason why nature should have forgotten that in the future for more complex things" (says a researcher.)

Excerpted from Science News 9 May 2009

Ever splitting the light! How often do they strive to divide that which, despite everything, would always remain single and whole. Goethe

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17. Screenings of Joseph Campbell's Final Lectures

The Presidio Interfaith Center will host Screenings of Joseph Campbell’s Final Lectures at 7 pm on several upcoming Mondays: April 13, 27, May 11, 18, June 8, 22. During the final years of his life, Campbell embarked on a lecture tour in which he drew together all that he had learned about what he called the “one great story” of humanity. The lectures were filmed for the Mythos series, hosted by Susan Sarandon. Robert Walter, long-time Campbell colleague and now president of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, leads discussions afterwards with special guests. On Monday, April 13, the opening session features a one-hour documentary about Campbell’s life and contribution. For more information, including guest bios, please visit the website. (THIS SITE DIDN'T WORK FOR ME: JS) Suggested donation: $20 per screening; no one turned away. See a brief excerpt of the film.
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18. Excerpted from article 'Gregory Whipple, Garden Legend', by Stephen Edwards in Manzanita, newsletter of Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Spring 2009

Greg Whipple, who died last year, lives on at the garden in many ways, not the least being the formative influence he had on the use of language by the garden's three successive directors, all of whom he tutored in proper English. Understanding does not reduce to language by any means; nevertheless to perfect the language is to perfect the understanding, and clarity of expression, leading to understanding, has been critical to the writings that have long helped to explain the garden's mission and achieve its educational and conservation goals. Greg served as copy editor for all three directors, and finally as assistant editor for (the garden's publications).

Gregory's help with grammar was not confined to editing. He was quick to correct all his fellow workers in day-to-day conversation. These corrections were never resented, for he offered them patiently and with good humor, and he usually explained the rule, and the reason for the rule, so we were illuminated. He genuinely wished not to reproach, but to make us better speakers of the language, for our own good and for the sake of preserving the culture.

Greg is the one who taught me to lie on the grass, rather than to lay on it. (You lay the book on the table, but lie on the lawn.) This was a very significant distinction for a young man. He explained error in number: "Someone left their hat in the car." (Who are "they?") I hope I am cured of dangling participles: Having said that, the matter is settled. Unfortunately, though, the problem of split infinitives remains as intransigent as ever: It is proving impossible to definitively address this problem. All our network news anchors seem to be determined finally to eliminate this time-honored but largely stylistic rule.

Greg had a deep voice, sometimes stentorian, and he spoke with perfect, clear diction and impeccable grammar. Members of the public encountering him for the first time would ask us, "Who's that English guy?" But he had no English accent at all, it was Turlockian with a touch of Stanford. These visitors simply had not yet heard good English spoken by an American.

Gregory and his wife Anne also liked to play with the language. Lewis Carroll was one of their heroes, and Greg could recite Carroll's most famous poem from memory: "...One, two! One, two! And through and through the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!...And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy!"

...Playing with the language also involved Carrollian word creation. Thus Greg often called me a "thrombulent protovortipule." When I became garden director I was much relieved to learn that I was now "ineffably bulbous," a term of praise and affection especially fitting in a garden paying increasing attention to Liliaceae. However, my grammar immediately came under much stricter control, for Greg now had the reputation of the garden to protect. I loved every minute of that.

...(jumping to the final paragraph) But there was also a serious quotation, taken from the Greek poet Pindar, by which we meant to honor him: "For every one good thing, the immortals deliver to men two evils. Men who are as children cannot take this becomingly. But the manly do, turning the brightness outward."

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19. International Space Station comes together:

Update-May