1. Heron's Head Park work party tomorrow, Saturday 8
2. Disappointing departure from Fish & Game Commission
3. Disappointing appointment to SFPUC
4. Soil foodweb workshop August 10
5. Owls of California August 13
6. Roland Pitschel dies
7. Talk about evolution needs to evolve
8. Good news/bad news on carbon reduction
9. More fire, less water in far west
10. The Culture of Fire on Earth
11. The power of a name: Would you rather eat slimehead or Orange Roughy?
12. Oral tradition of medicinal plant botany being lost
13. Bicycling for water awareness
14. Brothel discount for arrival by bicycle or public transit/Thank you for flying Pet Air
15. 100th birthday of C. Northcote Parkinson (Parkinson's Law)
16. Fossil light from universe's beginning now arriving
17. There's a scientific name for that blabbermouth
1. Heron's Head Park (Pier 98)
Saturday August 8, 9 am - 12 noon
Things are fluttering and buzzing at HHP during our foggy summer months. Native Bees, Butterflies, and Dragonflies are zipping around. Come join the HHP family and put in some workercise and support the same things that support you. We will be increasing native habitat, pulling invasives and mulching, getting a handle on those invasive blooms, and prepping for fall plantings. While we are at it, check out the amazing progress of The EcoCenter!
800 Innes Ave., Unit 11 San Francisco CA 94124
415 282 6840 tel | info@lejyouth.org | www.lejyouth.org
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2. From Eric Mills:
SOME SAD/BAD NEWS TO REPORT: Cindy Gustafson, President of the five-member State Fish and Game Commission, resigned unexpectedly this past Friday, citing "conflict of interest" issues, as advised by the Attorney General's office.
It's in the August 1 SAN DIEGO UNION. For some reason, I'm unable to forward the piece via e-mail. So GOOGLE NEWS "california fish and game
commission" and it should pop up.
This will really put a kink in the Commission's efforts. Ms. Gustafson was seen as the tie-breaker on a number of issues, and now there'll doubtlessly be many 2:2 votes. Ugh. In my opinion, Ms. G. was one of the brighter lights on the Commission in recent years. She's smart, and she listened and asked good questions, unlike some of her predecessors. She'll be sorely missed by many.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Write to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and urge him to appoint an equally-qualified member to the Commission ASAP, to protect our
beleaguered wildlife and the environment. (NOTE: Another woman would be nice: there've been only TWO females on this good-old boy Commission in
the past 100+ years. And a non-hunter would be a nice change, too.)
GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, c/o The State Capitol, Sacramento, CA 95814.
And if you'd like to send Ms. Gustafson a thank-you note for her past efforts, she may be reached c/o The State Fish & Game Commission, 1416 Ninth Street, Sacramento, CA 95814, email - fgc@fgc.ca.org
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3. From Jeff Miller, Alameda Creek Alliance:
Former General Manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Anson Moran has been nominated to fill the 5th seat on the Commission. Despite the Alameda Creek Alliance and Save Our Sunol opposing the nomination, a Board of Supervisors subcommittee in July approved Moran’s nomination.
Moran, who was general manager of the SFPUC from 1993-2000, has been no friend of Alameda Creek: during his tenure the SFPUC approved a flawed Alameda Watershed Management Plan, approved a controversial quarry expansion in Sunol north of Highway 680, and actively opposed restoration of steelhead trout to Alameda Creek.
Though SFPUC policy regarding Alameda Creek steelhead restoration has changed, the SFPUC is currently pursuing major infrastructure projects in the watershed without adequate consideration of fisheries issues. Many of the issues of stream management for steelhead will be before the Commission in the near future and Mr. Moran will hold a critical swing vote on the Commission.
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4. Soil foodweb workshop w/ Dr. Elaine Ingham
August 10TH – 14TH, 2009, CASTRO VALLEY, CA
COST: 2-day Intro class: $ 265.00;
1 day Compost and 1 day Compost Tea class = $ 135.00;
Light Microscope class = $ 160.00
Get more information at: http://commonvision.org/programs/courses/soilfoodweb/soilfoodweb.php
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5.
San Francisco Naturalist Society - free and open to the public
Thursday, August 13, 7.30 - 9 pm
Owls of California.
Randall Museum
We'll take a brief look at owl taxonomy, with a focus on eight Bay Area species, and overviews of six other species found elsewhere in the state. We'll also discuss some unique and amazing adaptations that owls have evolved.
Craig Nikitas is an urban planner for the City of San Francisco. He has a life-long love for birds in general, and raptors in particular. He is beginning his sixteenth season as a volunteer bird bander at the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory. For more information, contact Patrick at jkodiak@earthlink.net or (415) 225-3830.
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6.
Many readers of this newsletter knew Roland Pitschel, a quiet stalwart of the California Native Plant Society and of his Bernal neighborhood. He died Saturday, August 1, from cancer.
His self-effacement almost obscured a wise and patient man. He made innumerable but invisible contributions to the world; consequently his absence will be keenly felt.
Barbara and Roland did not need ritual in their lives, and they will have their own way of celebrating his life. For those who would like to join the celebration, let me know and I will make certain you are notified. It will not be soon--likely months rather than weeks.
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7.
Accept it: Talk about evolution needs to evolve
Interview by Eugenie Scott
August 1st, 2009; Science News Vol.176 #3 (p. 32)
So you urge scientists not to say that they "believe" in evolution?!
Right. What your audience hears is more important than what you say...What [people] hear is that evolution is a belief, it's an opinion, it's not well-substantiated science. And that is something that scientists need to avoid communicating.
You believe in God. You believe your sports team is going to win. But you don't believe in cell division. You don't believe in thermodynamics. Instead, you might say you "accept evolution."
How does the language used to discuss new discoveries add to the problem?
To put it mildly, it doesn't help when evolutionary biologists say things like, "This completely revolutionizes our view of X." Because hardly anything we come up with is going to completely revolutionize our view of the core ideas of science..An insight into the early ape-men of East and South Africa is not going to completely change our understanding of Neandertals, for example. So the statement is just wrong. Worse, it's miseducating the public as to the soundness of our understanding of evolution.
You can say that this fossil or this new bit of data "sheds new light on this part of evolution."
So people get confused when scientists discover things and change ideas?
Yes, all the time. This is one of the real confusions about evolution. Creationists have done a splendid job of convincing the public that evolution is weak science because scientists are always changing their minds about things.
So how do you explain what science is?
An idea that I stole from [physicist] James Trefil visualizes the content of science as three concentric circles: the core ideas in the center, the frontier ideas in the next ring out and the fringe ideas in the outermost ring...
[We need to] help the public understand that the nature of scientific explanations is to change with new information or new theory--this is a strength of science--but that science is still reliable. And the core ideas of science do not change much, if at all.
The core idea of evolution is common ancestry, and we’re not likely to change our minds about that. But we argue a lot about … how the tree of life is branched and what mechanisms bring evolutionary change about. That’s the frontier area of science.
And then of course you have areas that claim to be science, like “creation science” and “intelligent design,” that are off in the fringe. Scientists don’t spend much time here because the ideas haven’t proven useful in understanding the natural world.
You’ve been on talk radio a lot. What’s your sense of what the public understands about evolutionary biology?
The public has a very poor understanding of evolution. People don’t recognize evolution as referring to the common ancestry of living things. Even those who accept evolution often don’t understand it well. They think it’s a great chain ... of gradual increases in complexity of forms through time, which is certainly an impoverished view of evolutionary biology. That view is the source, in my opinion, of: “If man evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?” ... That’s probably the second most common question I get on talk radio.
It’s like saying, “If you evolved from your cousins, why are your cousins still here?” And of course the answer is, well, in fact, I didn’t evolve from my cousins. My cousins and I shared common ancestors, in our grandparents.
What’s the current state of the effort to keep schools teaching evolution?
Sometimes it feels like the Red Queen around here, where we’re running as hard as we can to stay in the same place. The thing is, creationism evolves. And for every victory we have, there’s pressure on the creationists to change their approach. We constantly have to shift our response. Ultimately the solution to this problem is not going to come from pouring more science on it.
What should scientists and people who care about science do?
I’m calling on scientists to be citizens. American education is decentralized. Which means it’s politicized. To make a change ... you have to be a citizen who pays attention to local elections and votes [for] the right people. You can’t just sit back and expect that the magnificence of science will reveal itself and everybody will ... accept the science.
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8.
LTE High Country News and cartoon with following balloons:
1) The good news: Every year more people reduce their carbon footprints.
2) The bad news: Every year--more people.
More children, more carbon
In "Let's Get Small", Judith Lewis writes that "global greenhouse gas emissions have increased 70% since 1970, and our energy-squandering ways are to blame". Note that since 1970, world population has increased from around 3.8 to 6.7 billion people, while the United States has gone from 200 to over 300 million--both increases in the 70% range. Just a coincidence?
Sure, there have been changes in the per capita energy use--more electric appliances and computers, more fuel efficient vehicles--but the net per capita carbon footprint is, apparently, roughly the same as it was 40 years ago. This would lead one to conclude that the growth in carbon emission is basically due to population growth.
Anyone who looks at this problem seriously knows that at least a good part of the global-warming solution has to be a strict population policy--perhaps one similar to that already in effect in China. To be sure, certain politicians and religions will lambaste any such plan, but if we refuse to address the population problem, it makes little sense to worry about matters such as the size of our power plants.
Larry Glickfeld, Cashmere, Washington
(JS: Rather than take China's draconian measures, come to terms with immigration now. Without immigration--legal and, mostly, illegal--the U.S. population would be stable. I do not favor eliminating legal immigration, but tightening it with the goal of stabilizing population. We could stabilize, and possibly slowly reduce, numbers by an education program and by supporting family planning services. To those who will object that the rest of the world's population will still burgeon, I reply that we can't do much about the rest of the world, but we can address the problem within our borders.)
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A disturbing note from The Economist:
A link between wealth and breeding
It was once a rule of demography that people have fewer children as their countries get richer. That rule no longer holds true.
(Full story next newsletter)
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9. Life in the far west
Alaska’s burning (literally): As we write this, the Railbelt fire complex has scorched 482,766 acres, and the Crazy Mountain fire complex 372,837 acres, bringing Alaska’s total acres burned this year to 2.2 million. The mainland West is also spewing smoke. Some of it is from fires that are “used for resource benefit” (let it burn), including tens of thousands of acres burning in Arizona and New Mexico’s Gila National Forest.
Portland, Seattle and Phoenix are also burning (figuratively): Portland’s high temp hit 103, then 106 twice in a row in late July. Seattle’s mercury hit 103. And Phoenix suffered through its hottest July on record: The average high was 109.5 degrees; the average low was 87.1 degrees (about ten degrees hotter than the average low a century ago).
And it may get drier and smokier over the next century. University of Colorado in Boulder scientists recently found that climate change could dry up the Colorado River by mid-century. Another paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research predicts that the area of forest destroyed by fire will increase by 78 percent in the Pacific Northwest, and 175 percent in the Rocky Mountains.
High Country News online
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10.
“The annual federal firefighting budget is threatening to top $2 billion by 2009. Each year this figure grows, as does the number of homes built in the wildland-urban interface.” Forest magazine, Spring 2008
World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth by Stephen J Pyne, excerpts
Fire in California
Each year, and for long periods of every year, fire can propagate somewhere everywhere. Humans ensured that ignition remained more or less constant. California nourished an intricate melange of native tribes, none of which, interestingly enough, practiced agriculture. Instead, with fire for plow, rake, and ax, they harvested the native flora and hunted the resident fauna. Fire use was most intense and the fires smallest near settlements, particularly abundant in grasslands, oak savannas, or ecotones of grass and chaparral, precisely those sites most amenable to anthropogenic burning. Some sites burned annually; others, as needed. Probably the most frequented mountains had their slopes dappled with chaparral and grass, the signature of an anthropogenic economy.
Colonizing Spaniards arrived in the eighteenth century, and found the native fire regime not to their liking...
[After the American acquisition and the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, programs] to control fire and grazing promptly appeared...To the attrition of fire that accompanied the disintegration of aboriginal and Hispanic society, the new colonists promoted active fire suppression...
Active suppression changed all this [the old pattern of smaller fires], much as levees and channelizing could eliminate nuisance floods but lead to more frequent large floods. Fire control could, by deferment, contain the wildfire menace for several decades...
Not everyone accepted fire control as necessary or practical. No less a figure than William Mulholland, architect of the Los Angeles water system, refused to send men to battle fires that raged in the mountains in 1908 and again in 1919. Big fires, he insisted, were "beyond the power of man to stop". Those big fires were dangerous, and putting them out was, over the long term, no less dangerous. It was better, Mulholland insisted, to "have a fire every year" that burned off a small plot than to wait several years "and have a big one denuding the whole watershed at once"...The greatest check on unrestricted fire exclusion, however, was simply the lack of tools, men, and money. That began to change during the New Deal, and the sense of limits--limits of any kind--appeared to vanish completely with World War II.
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11. From Center for Biological Diversity
At-risk Fish Caught With Tasty Names
Would you eat anything called "slimehead"? How about "Atlantic jackass morwong," "Patagonian toothfish," or "whore's eggs"? Most people wouldn't -- and according to a new study, if these former fish names were still in place, the species that bore them would likely be a lot better off. The study, released last Thursday in the journal Science, found that 63 percent of the world's fish stocks are below healthy levels -- conspicuously, mostly for fish with dressed-up names that make them gastronomically appealing. The slimehead, for example, plunged in numbers after it was re-christened "orange roughy" in the '70s; after goosefish became "monkfish" in the mid-'80s, harvests jumped and its populations fell. The study's lead author, Boris Worm (chew on that name, if you will), declares that hope remains: About half of depleted fish species might still recover with enough protection. (Perhaps names like "reeking vomitfish" and "poopscales" would help.) But with an appetite for fish burgeoning along with the human population, it's unclear just how much "enough" protections might be.
Worm's important study also failed to factor in one of the top threats to fish worldwide: global climate change. (See articles above for the many ways the Center's not missing the big climate picture.) Global warming and ocean acidification could soon devastate the entire ocean food chain -- whether you're a junk fish like the Antarctic toothfish or the renamed "catchy" Chilean sea bass. Thanks to work by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Protection Agency recently announced steps to evaluate the threat of ocean acidification under the Clean Water Act.
Read more in the Washington Post
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12. Collectors on the edge
The influence of Kew Gardens reaches far. In the heart of Botswana, Tim Adams meets the leaders of its Millennium Seed Bank Project
"...(Kew Gardens botanist Paul) Smith believes there are 30,000 critically endangered plant species in the world, as opposed to 3,000 currently on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List. These plants are threatened by intensive farming, deforestation, urban advance and climate change. They represent a unique global resource. There are approximately 90,000 tree species in the world; we have a close knowledge of only a few hundred. We know that 30,000 species of plant are eaten by people, but that 80% of the world's food is derived from just 12 plant species. Of all the medicinal plants in use, perhaps a fifth have been scientifically examined. The kind of oral tradition of botany that Lux Peke demonstrates is replicated in indigenous communities all over the planet. That knowledge is rapidly being lost as those societies fracture and young people migrate to the cities. Seed collectors and plantsmen move at an easy pace, but there is an urgency in their quest, too."
Excerpted from Guardian Weekly 31.07.09
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13. From Mel Pincus:
With your interest in water preservation, you should sign into this blog. A dedicated conservationist (Rudy Van Prooyen) is cycling across the country to raise "water awareness". He is the same man who last year participated in an around the world run to promote awareness of water needs throughout the world.
It's a most amazing venture.
From the website http://www.tourdewater.blogspot.com/
On July 28 my solo bike ride gets under way from San Francisco, to take me on a 2,200-mile cycling adventure. My mission is to raise $20,000 for the blue planet foundation thereby helping others with access to safe drinking water, which symbolically translates into $10 per mile.
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14. Brothel offers wheelie deal
The Germans have always been one step ahead when it comes to the environment. They are champions when it comes to wind power, recycling rates and the like.
So it should come as no surprise that a German businessman has pushed the concept of green rebates to the next level: Thomas Goetz, owner of a Berlin brothel called Maison d'Envie, is offering a discount to any customer who arrives by bicycle or public transport.
"The recession has hit our industry hard," Goetz told Reuters. "We hope that the discount will attract more people. It's good for business, it's good for the environment--and it's good for the girls."
Any punter who arrives by bike or who can prove they've travelled by public transport qualifies for the discount. Goetz says the offer is attracting three to five new customers every day, and has helped to reduce traffic and parking congestion. Guardian Weekly 31.07.09
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Thank you for flying Pet Air
One trip for their Jack Russell terrier in a plane's cargo hold was enough to convince Alysa Binder and Dan Wiesel that pet owners needed a better solution.
So this month, the first flight of Pet Airways, the first-ever all-pet airline, took off from Farmingdale, New York.
Binder and Wiesel used their background in consulting to found Pet Airways in 2005 and have spent four years designing their fleet of five planes to suit animal travellers. They are "overwhelmed" with the response, with flights booked up for the next two months.
Pet Airways serves New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles, and charges from $149 for a one-way fare, comparable to pet fees charged by the top US airlines.
Dogs and cats will fly in the main cabin of a freight plane that has been re-arranged and lined with carriers. The animals will be escorted to the plane by attendants, who will check them every 15 minutes.
The pets get pre-boarding walks and "bathroom breaks". At each of the airports it serves, the company offers a pet lounge for animals waiting to board. The company, which will begin with one flight in each of its five cities, hopes to expand to 25 destinations. Associated Press
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15. Guru
C. Northcote Parkinson
C. (for Cyril) Northcote Parkinson (1909-1993) was not a guru in the traditional sense. Rather, he stands in the line of Laurence Peter and Scott Adams (of “Dilbert” fame) as the author of a humorous glance at management life which rang true in all four corners of the earth. Parkinson’s first calling was as a naval historian, and his PhD thesis at London University was entitled “War in the Eastern Seas, 1793–1815”. For the rest of his life he continued to write naval history and a number of fictional stories set at sea, in much the same genre as C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian.
But it is for his non-naval book, Parkinson’s Law, that he is best known. The book expanded on an article of his first published in The Economist in November 1955. Illustrated by Britain’s then leading cartoonist, Osbert Lancaster, the book was an instant hit. It was wrapped around the author’s “law” that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. Thus, Parkinson wrote, “an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis … the total effort that would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.”
Parkinson’s barbs were directed first and foremost at government institutions—he cited the example of the British navy where the number of admiralty officials increased by 78% between 1914 and 1928, a time when the number of ships fell by 67% and the number of officers and men by 31%. But they applied almost equally well to private industry, which was at the time bloated after decades spent adding layers and layers of managerial bureaucracy.
The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.
Gary Hamel commented more than 40 years after the book was written: “Yes, I know that bureaucracy is dead … we’re not slaves to our work, we’ve been liberated … right? Well then, why does a rereading of ‘Parkinson’s Law’, written in 1958 at the apex of corporate bureaucracy, still ring true?”
Parkinson’s Law has been applied in many different contexts. There is the IT version, for instance: “Data expands to fill the space available for storage.” Or the road transport version: “Traffic expands to fill the roads available for it.”
Married three times, Parkinson travelled widely. He lived and worked in Malaysia in the 1950s before spending time as a visiting professor at Harvard and at the universities of Illinois and California at Berkeley. He never ceased to be amused by the celebrity status that the book subsequently gave him. For instance, Ronald Reagan, when governor of California, asked him to explain why the number of painters on San Francisco’s Oakland bridge increased from 14 to 72 once a labour-saving paint sprayer had been introduced.
Economist online
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16. Most distant star blast
Astronomers have spotted the most distant blast ever. The gamma-ray burst, triggered by the collapse of a massive star, occurred some 13 billion light-years from Earth. NASAs Swift satellite detected the radiation blast April 23, 2009. The record-breaking explosion occurred when the universe was only 630 million years old, a mere one-twentieth of its current age. Astronomy, September 2009
(And the news only just now reached us. We are accustomed to fossil bones and other objects, but this is fossil light. Take 186,271 times how many seconds are in 13 billion years. If that doesn't fry your brain, try this: From the vantage of the light corpuscles doing the traveling, no time has passed! The moment of emission and the moment of absorption are the same. That's what Mr Einstein says, and he's been proven right over and over.)
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17.
logorrhea |ˌlôgəˈrēə; ˌlägə-| ( Brit. logorrhoea)
noun: a tendency to extreme loquacity.
(Now you can sound more learned--instead of saying "he's got diarrhea of the mouth".)
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