Nature News from Jake Sigg
1. Job opportunity in Watsonville
2. Governor Schwarzenegger needs to hear from you on a raft of bills
3. Historian Greg Gaar will be presenting a slide show on the natural history of San Francisco October 13
4. Pacifica disgraces itself on Sharp Park
5. Ecology 101
6. Mixed signals from Washington on Bay-Delta/Dianne Feinstein sells out endangered species
7. Ken Burns' magnificent national park series/Hetch Hetchy
8. Food and farming: Wendell Barry's wisdom
9. Conservation grazing technical workshop October 30
10. Siemens: Used slave labor in Third Reich, now aiding Holocaust denier
11. Nutrition items: Importance of potassium-rich foods
12. Feedback
13. The Rebirth of Environmentalism
14. Dammed Crazy: What Do California's Water Woes Teach Us?
15. Newly-discovered waterfall in Pacifica: field trip this Saturday 10
16. Ospreys in action
17. This year's Ig Nobel Prizes
18. The problem with government conspiracies is that bureaucrats are incompetent and people can’t keep their mouths shut
19. However, the Moon landings were faked, and Daylight Savings Time is responsible for climate warming
20. Is our galaxy running out of gas?
21. Park steward CD being sold at SF Symphony Store
22. It's against the law in Tennessee to....
1. Watsonville Wetlands Watch seeks Environmental Education Specialist
Watsonville Wetlands Watch seeks an Environmental Education Specialist to coordinate and facilitate outdoor wetland-based activities for youth of the Pajaro Valley. The ideal candidate will be bilingual in English and Spanish, have experience coordinating and providing environmental education to youth ages 8-18 and will have a background in wetland ecology and inquiry-based learning. Watsonville Wetlands Watch provides a fun and supportive work environment and we are looking for a team player who is creative, passionate about the environment, and loves working with children. Desired qualifications include bachelor’s degree in an environmentally-related field plus two years experience, excellent organization and teaching skills, the ability to take initiative and work independently, and experience designing student activities. Work will include recruiting program participants, scheduling and coordinating activities, leading field trips, training and supervising teen staff and volunteer docents, and maintaining program files. This position requires own transportation and insurance and must be able to drive a minimum of three students to field trip sites. This is a part-time 20 hours/week position and pays $16/hour- sick, vacation and holidays. To view the full job description please go to http://www.watsonvillewetlandswatch.org. Please send a cover letter and resume by October 6th to Noëlle Antolin at noelle@watsonvillewetlandswatch.org or by mail to P.O. Box 1239 Freedom, Ca 95019
Noëlle Antolin Education Director Watsonville Wetlands Watch t (831)728-1156 f (831)728-6944
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2. From California League of Conservation Voters
Key legislation is now on the governor's desk that, if signed into law, would reduce global warming pollutants in the state, guarantee access to clean drinking water, reduce our exposure to toxins, safeguard our state parks, and more.
These bills will have little to no cost to the state but will contribute to a safer, cleaner, greener future for Californians.
When faced with decisions on environmental legislation in past years, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has landed squarely in the middle of the road by siding with industry nearly as often as not. Since 2003, he has signed little over half of our priority legislation -- a record that he can improve this year.
You can help us overpower the deep pockets of industry lobbyists by adding your grassroots voice to ours. Please take action and urge Governor Schwarzenegger to sign high-priority environmental bills by next Sunday, October 11 (the deadline for him to sign bills passed in 2009 into law).
Take action today:
Please call or fax Governor Schwarzenegger, urging him to sign the following bills (click for more info on each):
• AB 1404, to reduce global warming emissions at home
• SB 757, to reduce our exposure to toxic lead
• AB 1242, to guarantee Californians access to healthy water
• SB 372 & SB 679, to protect California's state parks
• SB 14 & AB 64, to strengthen California's Renewable Energy Standard.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 445-2841, ext. 0
Fax: (916) 558-3160
Note: A call is one of the most valuable ways to make your voice heard. Though hold times can be up to a few minutes, the immediate public feedback to the governor's office makes a big difference and receives more consideration than an email.
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3. Historian Greg Gaar will be presenting a slide show on the natural history of San Francisco at the Glen Park Association Fall Meeting, Tuesday, October 13, 7:00pm, Glen Park Recreation Center. His presentation will show historic photos of the native sand dunes, grasslands, trees, lakes, creeks and bay shore with emphasis on Glen Park, Mt. Davidson and Twin Peaks.
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4. Ellen Edelson reports:
This Thursday,evening Oct 8, at the SF Naturalist Society's meeting (http://www.sfns.org), Brent Plater, environmental lawyer and director of Restore Sharp Park, will give a talk called "Twain's Frog & the Beautiful Serpent"--on the history of and current concerns about Pacifica's Sharp Park golf course and its endangered resident red-legged frog and SF garter snake. The talk will be held at the Randall Museum in SF (www.randallmuseum.org) and starts at 7:30 pm.
I urge all of you to attend and bring others with you. He has new material and it is important that we keep up with this important issue. Moreover, after the experience of last Friday night in Pacifica, we need to show Brent a massive outpouring of support and appreciation for his hard and dedicated work to save those imperiled animals from "extinction by a thousand cuts".
I attended the talk by Brent and Dr Carlos Davidson at the Pacifica Community Center last Friday night, hosted by the Santa Clara Valley CNPS. I was not surprised by the presence of the golfers,but their unruliness and disrespect was taken to new heights. Worse, Pacifica city councilman (and former mayor), Jim Vreeland was there drunk and most belligerent. CNPS host, Arvind Kumar, had to turn on the lights three times during the presentation to ask the thugs to behave or please leave. The heckling got such that Arvind suggested a peace officer may need to be called in. The current mayor sat on her hands and was utterly useless as a leader.
We got through the presentations eventually, but nerves were certainly frayed. I would like to see the house packed on Thursday in a show of support and appreciation for Brent and his hard work for this cause.
I doubt the golfers or the city officials of Pacifica will make the trek to the Randall Museum, but I forewarned Patrick Schlemmer, the SF Naturalist Society leader, just in case.
Let's show that SF can attend a talk on a controversial subject (although not so much here, admittedly) and present ourselves in a courteous and respectful manner. Several (well-behaved!) Pacificans will be there to show their support as well!
Here are some email excerpts post-Friday evening:
From myself (ie, Ellen Edelson):
The heckling and other rude, disruptive behavior by the handful of golfers should also be publicly chastised. I applaud Brent, Carlos and Arvind for keeping their cool and countering the disrespectful outbursts with unreciprocated courtesy and professionalism.
From Ron Maykel;
Thanks for the invite (to the Randall). I must confess the conduct was one of the worst experiences of a public meeting I have had. The out-of-character conduct is not uncommon in this town. I have lived in this town for nearly 40 years and find their to be a paucity of well mannered and sensitive people. But that's another story.
From Brent Plater:
Make sure to get the word out about the unacceptable behavior last night on Riptide, the Tribune, etc. When a city councilmember shows up drunk and truculent at a community lecture, people need to know about it.
I will share my letter to the editor of the (Pacifica) Tribune with any of you who ask.
See you Thursday. (Whether or not you can attend, check out the website: restoresharppark.org,for information.)
_________________
Here is the Pacifica Tribune story: http://www.mercurynews.com/pacifica
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5. Ecology 101
Three hundred trout are needed to support one man for a year. The trout, in turn, must consume 90,000 frogs, that must consume 27 million grasshoppers that live off of 1,000 tons of grass. G Tyler Miller, Jr, American chemist (1971)
“It’s the tiger salamander
And the red-legged frog
Yellow-legged frog
And all the legged frogs
For it’s them that I love
And it’s them that I owe
For it’s their getting by
That’s my getting by.”
Bruce Delgado sung at Cal-IPC Symposium 2007
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6. MIXED SIGNALS FROM WASHINGTON ON FATE OF BAY-DELTA
While the California Legislature continues to work on a comprehensive package of Delta bills, the Obama Administration entered the fray on Tuesday with six federal agencies signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) establishing a Federal Bay-Delta Leadership Committee.
Over the next several months, the Leadership Committee will coordinate with the state and key stakeholders to develop a federal action plan. The plan will look at habitat restoration, climate change mitigation, water efficiency and recycling, and land stewardship programs that benefit the Delta ecosystem.
However, California Senator Dianne Feinstein may hamper the attempt more than help, since she's suggesting that the Endangered Species Act should be waived "as fast as we can" to temporarily transfer Delta water to Central Valley agribusinesses. She has also called for a National Academy of Sciences review of the recent Endangered Species Act Biological Opinions that have helped protect Delta smelt and salmon fisheries.
“Man, biologically considered...is the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species.” William James
“They have poisoned the Thames and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoning of the air, and kill the dwellers on the banks...I almost think it is the destiny of science to exterminate the human race.” Thomas Love Peacock, Gryll Grange, 1860
“To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war. We will have regional conflicts and use of force, but world conflicts I do not believe will happen any longer. But the environment, that is a creeping danger. I’m more worried about global warming than I am about any major military conflict.”
Hans Blix, head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, 12 March 2003
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7. To those who missed Ken Burns' magnificent series on our national parks: beg, borrow, or steal a copy. It was rich and multi-dimensional: not only excellent research and filming of unbelievable--yes, unbelievable, and always will be--phenomena and scenery, but also a history of human actions and interactions. Some may be surprised at the difficulties faced--including extreme hostility--and how much chance came into play, including the maneuvering that brought about San Francisco's shameful drowning of Hetch Hetchy Valley.
We owe so much to so few--but isn't it always that way in human affairs?
Letters to the Chronicle: Friday, October 1, 2004 S.F. scolded for seizing a national treasure
Editor -- Your editorial ("The Hetch Hetchy fantasy," Sept. 29) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein's comments sorely miss a central issue: Yosemite National Park, which includes Hetch Hetchy Valley, was established by Congress in 1890 "for all to enjoy." The entire park legally belongs to the people of the United States, not just San Franciscans.
While politically driven and legally manipulated in 1913 by the likes of Gifford Pinchot, John Raker, Mayor James Phelan and others, the establishment of O'Shaughnessy Dam was clearly a grave mistake, which is not "easy to look back" on. Now is the best time in 80 years to take a hard look forward toward correcting an enormous wrongdoing and finally restoring this once-pristine valley to its rightful owners, the people of the United States.
As Environmental Defense and others have shown the answers are out there, but it will only happen if we have the collective vision and goodwill to find them.
STEPHEN ATTELL, Burlingame
Editor -- Your editorial regarding the restoration of Hetch Hetchy was one-sided. The Chronicle should be providing a comprehensive look at all options.
After the failure of the press over Iraq, you should not fall into place so quickly behind current political leaders.
BART WRIGHT, Oakland
Editor -- Hetch Hetchy Valley does not belong to San Francisco -- it is part of Yosemite National Park, which belongs to all of us.
We would not build a refinery in the Everglades, or an outlet mall at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. A dam does not belong in Yosemite.
Shall we let it be said that people of the Bay Area are in favor of environmental conservation only when it does not inconvenience them? How long will it take before the first charge of "hypocrite" is made?
Saying that the dam was a mistake, but we can't correct it now, is not good enough. If feasible and practical, this is a chance to restore an unmatched scenic treasure to the nation.
MAUREEN FITZPATRICK
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8. From Garden for the Environment newsletter/website:
Wendell Berry's Wisdom
Michael Pollan, The Nation
"The national conversation unfolding around the subject of food and farming really began in the 1970s, with the work of writers like Wendell Berry..."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090921/pollan
This article is adapted from Michael Pollan's introduction to Bringing It to the Table, a collection of Wendell Berry's writings out this fall from Counterpoint.
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9. The Natural Resources Conservation Service and the San Mateo Resources Conservation District are partnering with Peninsula Permaculture to bring to you a very interesting conservation grazing technical workshop.
Don't miss the opportunity to join us October 30th from 10-4 at TOTO ranch in San Gregorio, CA to learn about carbon sequestration, conservation ranching and more.
Agriculture operations can build soils that increase crop and pasture production and help address the growing opportunity for carbon sequestration. This one-day workshop will describe how you can improve your soils and increase the ability to harvest rainwater where it falls using a range of integrated regenerative agriculture techniques such as Keyline Design, Holistic Management, Soil Food Web, Integrated Agroforestry and other carbon farming strategies.
Toto Ranch is located at 20080 Cabrillo Hwy S. Half Moon Bay, CA 94019. The ranch is 9 miles south of Half Moon Bay, on the east side of hwy 1. It is the only driveway between Tunitas Creek Rd. and Stage Rd. There is a large gravel turn out on the west side across from Toto ranch.
For more information visit:
Workshop Details or Contact Susan Osofsky 650.938.9300 x18
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10. "...A textbook example of what democracies should not do was provided last year by a joint venture between Siemens and Nokia. This sold the Iranian regime a sophisticated system with which it can monitor the internet: emails, internet phone calls and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, much used by Iranian protesters. So a German company, Siemens, which used slave labour during the Third Reich, sold a Holocaust-denying president the instruments with which he can persecute young Iranians. Think of that every time you buy something made by Siemens." Excerpt from Timothy Garton Ash article in Guardian Weekly 02.10.09
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11. From Agricultural Research, October 2009
Hairy Vetch Boosts Tomato Phytonutrients
Members of the Vicia genus known as “hairy vetch” are viny, moderately winter-hardy legumes that are often grown to stabilize roadbanks or to serve as forage for grazing animals. Since they fix atmospheric nitrogen, they are a rich source of that critical plant nutrient.
Now research has shown that planting tomatoes in fields of killed and rolled hairy vetch, which serves as a mulch, activates some of the metabolic pathways and genes that make tomato plants more vigorous—and their fruit more tasty and nutritious. The effect is similar to that obtained by inserting the ySAMdc gene into tomato plants, which is known to increase production of polyamines.
How the fruit of regular tomatoes grown in hairy vetch mulch becomes so nutritionally similar to fruit produced by ySAMdc-modified tomatoes isn’t yet understood. But when both modified and unmodified tomatoes were grown in hairy vetch mulch, a buildup of amino acids, choline, and other nutrients and antioxidants was seen to occur in the fruit, and the ySAMdc-modified tomatoes contained even more nutrients—and at much higher levels—than unmodified ones.
Researchers think that the polyamines may act as signaling molecules and steer metabolic pathways so fruits produce more phytonutrients.
Potassium-Rich Foods Preserve Muscle Mass
The typical American diet generates tiny amounts of acid each day. As people age, they develop a mild metabolic acidosis that increases slowly over time and appears to trigger a muscle-wasting response. So researchers looked at links between lean body mass and diets relatively high in potassium-rich, alkaline-residue-producing fruits and vegetables to see whether these foods could influence lean tissue mass. They conducted a cross-sectional analysis on a subset of nearly 400 male and female volunteers aged 65 or older who had completed a 3-year osteoporosis-intervention trial.
The volunteers’ physical activity, height and weight, and percentage of lean body mass were measured at the start of the study and at 3 years. Their urinary potassium was measured at the start of the study, and their dietary data was collected at 18 months.
Regression model results indicated that volunteers with potassium-rich diets could expect to have 3.6 more pounds of lean tissue mass than volunteers with half the higher potassium intake. According to the study’s authors, this almost offsets the 4.4 pounds of lean tissue that healthy men and women 65 and over typically lose in a decade. (See next item for potassium-rich foods. JS)
The following item is from Agricultural Research March 2007
Nutrient-loaded mushrooms
Who'd have though that the often-overlooked culinary mushroom offered consumers key nutrients like copper, potassium, folate, and niacin? That's what nutrient analysis of seven varieties of mushrooms--crimini, enoki, maitake, oyster, portabella, shiitake, and white button--has shown. Samples gathered from markets countrywide have been analyzed for their carbohydrate, fat, fiber, protein, vitamin, and mineral contents, along with ergosterol, a precursor to vitamin D.
Four varieties were analyzed raw, but portabella, shiitake, and white button mushrooms were analyzed after cooking--to determine the effect of cooking on their nutrient content. Most nutrients were fully retained, while a few dropped to 80-95 percent.
All mushrooms were found to provide a significant amount of copper, a trace element that helps the body produce red blood cells and drives a variety of chemical reactions that are key to human health. They also provide significant amounts of potasssium, which helps maintain normal heart rhythm, fluid balance, and muscle and nerve function.
(One portabella mushroom contains more potassium than a banana, another food famous for its potassium, according to another Agricultural Research article. JS)
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A dollar spent in a locally owned business is worth three times as much to the local economy as one spent in a chain store. Sierra, Mar-Apr 2007
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12. Feedback
Ted Kipping:
Dear Jake. Thank you for your Sisyphean environ/blog. As a student in New York at Columbia University, I gave walks about the campus celebrating "Great Moments Revealed In Stone" visible in the facing stone of the buildings as well as the foyer and lobby pavers. Including some fancy fossils as well. A great idea to revitalize for SF!
Re the Ribbon Gum, like yourself, I too am an admirer of the genus and also especially of Eucalyptus viminalis. From a tree huggers viewpoint and especially a climber/arborist's it is a more refined tree in every respect when compared to E. globulus. The latter is in nature an understory tree and therefore an opportunist. That is why it gets greedy in both growth (180-220 feet tall) and reproduction. It's always looking over its shoulder expecting to be overgrown and shaded out by E. regnans ( 300-400+ feet). Ribbonbark is its own climax species and so is not in a big rush to get what it can while it can. I do love many individuals of E. globulus but not the species in the same categorical way I do E. viminalis. Ted Kipping
Thanks, Ted; encouragement is always appreciated. I need it I need it.
I feared that I might get some indignant mail because of praising ribbon gum. It's good to hear from someone who shares my enthusiasm for it. I may yet get mail.
Burton Meyer:
Regarding No. 23 military spending, Not only would we speak German, but Hitler and possibly Stalin and their descendants would be ruling. Many of us would be dead.
Clark Natwick:
Hi Jake, Thanks to one of the postings in Nature News I am receiving relief from severe knee pain. I went to the Blue Bucket Eco Fair for the free compost and visited all the info booths. One booth offered free acupuncture - the Health & Enviroonmental Resource Ctr.
I have had 3 sessions of free acupuncture. All three sessions were helpful. I also received 3 bags of free compost & I am utilizing that also.
Thank you for the amazing Nature News and all its benefits.
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13. Dr. Douglas Bevington has released his new book: The Rebirth of Environmentalism. The book tells the story of the small but highly effective grassroots groups that have achieved remarkable success in protecting endangered species and forests in the United States. Filled with inspiring stories of activists, groups, and campaigns that most readers will not have encountered before, The Rebirth of Environmentalism explores how grassroots biodiversity groups have had such a big impact despite their scant resources, and presents valuable lessons that can help the environmental movement as a whole—as well as other social movements—become more effective.
“The environmental movement is an ecosystem of its own, and Douglas Bevington does a fine job examining the understory that flourishes in the shade of the big green groups. This will be a useful text for those trying to figure out how to build the global warming movement in the years ahead.” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
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14. Dammed Crazy: What Do California's Water Woes Teach Us?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-pottinger/dammed-crazy-what-do-cali_b_307160.html
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15.
Saturday, 10 October 10 am
Pacifica's least-known waterfall (San Mateo County)
Leaders: Ian Butler and Jake Sigg
A spectacular 60' waterfall in the midst of a metropolitan area of a million people--and unknown? Hello?
An occasional fisherman or other curious people may have visited it, so it wasn't completely unknown. But it wasn't until Ian Butler chanced upon it and decided the world should take notice that it was "discovered". Jake was delighted that such a gem existed and has joined Ian in introducing the world to it.
The descent to the bottom of the fall--the only place from which it can be viewed--is very steep and requires a modicum of physical agility. The water flows about 300' to the ocean, and the beach is small, isolated, and frequented by sea birds. The stream and the cliffs harbor at least 26 species of native plants in good health, including liverworts and mosses. A few of the plants are locally rare.
RSVP, and for meeting instructions: jakesigg@earthlink.net 415-731-3028, or Ian Butler, ianbutler@netzero.net.
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16. ospreys in action: http://www.miguellasa.com/photos/sspopup.mg?AlbumID=1001578
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17. 60-SECOND SCIENCE PODCAST: Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded
On the eve of the Nobel Prize announcements, the Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at Harvard, for studies into knuckle-cracking and other vital medical and scientific research
http://cl.exct.net/?qs=c31bd168922ec77988c64020e72eee757a40c695ec378ed853214ea0af8375c5
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18.
….“Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.”
But as former Nixon aide G. Gordon Liddy once told me (and he should know!), the problem with government conspiracies is that bureaucrats are incompetent and people can’t keep their mouths shut. Complex conspiracies are difficult to pull off, and so many people want their quarter hour of fame that even the Men in Black couldn’t squelch the squealers from spilling the beans. So there’s a good chance that the more elaborate a conspiracy theory is, and the more people that would need to be involved, the less likely it is true.
Why do people believe in highly improbable conspiracies? In previous columns I have provided partial answers, citing patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and agenticity (the bent to believe the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents). Conspiracy theories connect the dots of random events into meaningful patterns and then infuse those patterns with intentional agency. Add to those propensities the confirmation bias (which seeks and finds confirmatory evidence for what we already believe) and the hindsight bias (which tailors after-the-fact explanations to what we already know happened), and we have the foundation for conspiratorial cognition.
Examples of these processes can be found in journalist Arthur Goldwag’s marvelous new book, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies, which covers everything from the Freemasons, the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group to black helicopters and the New World Order. “When something momentous happens, everything leading up to and away from the event seems momentous, too. Even the most trivial detail seems to glow with significance”.
…What should we believe? Transcendentalists tend to believe that everything is interconnected and that all events happen for a reason. Empiricists tend to think that randomness and coincidence interact with the causal net of our world and that belief should depend on evidence for each individual claim. The problem for skepticism is that transcendentalism is intuitive; empiricism is not. Or as folk rock group Buffalo Springfield once intoned: Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep ...
Excerpts from Michael Shermer’s Skeptic column in Scientific American September 2009
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. Josh Billings (1818-1885)
The wish to believe, even against evidence, fuels all the pseudosciences from astrology to creationism. Isaac Asimov
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19. Reason and science
Some 15 million Americans believe the moon landings were faked. They never drank the Tang. Millions more are convinced that Elvis lives and that the sun revolves around the Earth, which is approximately 6,000 years old.
Reason and science have their fans, but many Americans find faith more appealing. For example, the National Academy of Sciences has decreed the evidence for climate change unmistakable, but that won't stop Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, R, from declaring it a hoax, and he's not alone.
"I don't think the human effect is significant," says Harrison "Moon Rock" Schmitt, the last astronaut to (allegedly) explore the lunar surface. Global warming skeptics have many crackpot theories. My favorite came from a housewife in Arkansas, who insists that daylight savings is to blame: "It's that extra hour of sunlight." From Randy Udall, High Country News 17 August 2009
(Dont' worry, dearie; Daylight Savings will end in three weeks.)
And an Arizona state senator has faith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtzJhTfQiMA
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Here we have a baby. It is composed of a bald head and a pair of lungs. Eugene Field, American poet/humorist 1850-1895
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20. Is our galaxy running out of gas?
New results suggest the Milky Way is creating so many stars that it may run out of gas in a billion years.
To the most casual observer, the night sky gives the impression that it hasn’t changed since time immemorial. A closer look, however, reveals the Milky Way Galaxy’s ongoing cycles of cosmic death and rebirth.
The plane of our Milky Way is chock full of star-forming regions. Astronomers estimate that, all told, those regions add some 5 solar masses of new stars to the galaxy per year. But that figure may soon have to be ratcheted up…Of the approximately 6,000 stars visible to the naked eye on a dark night, most have significantly more mass than the Sun and are intrinsically luminous. These high-mass stars live fast and die young, exploding as supernovae less than 50 million years after their births. Yet the vast majority of the Milky Way’s estimated 400 billion stars are middle-aged or older and have less mass than the Sun. These cool, reddish stars don’t radiate much visible light. Instead, they generate invisible infrared radiation (heat). So, to learn the details of Milky Way star formation, astronomers need to expand their vision beyond the visible.
That’s just what they’ve done…Results…have started to change scientists’ view of star formation in the Milky Way. Early results hint that the galaxy’s current frenzy of star birth can’t be sustained for more than a billion years.
Excerpt from Astronomy, January 2009
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21. Browsing through the CD/DVD section of the SF Symphony Store, I was pleasantly surprised to find an album by one of our park stewards, Gary Schwantes--the Ultra World X-tet. We've even infiltrated the Symphony!
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22. It's against the law in parts of Tennessee:
To lasso a fish
To sing "It ain't gonna rain no more no more"
For frogs to croak after 11 pm
Scribbled notes from saysyou.net; details may be wrong. I missed the towns that declared these illegal.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
NATURE NEWS from Jake Sigg
1. Job offerings: GG National Parks Conservancy, Americorps in Sierra Nevada
2. Choice program: Bay-Friendly Landscaping and Permaculture - October 1
3. Engaging your community in coastal restoration - workshop on September 24
4. Twain’s Frog & the Beautiful Serpent - October 2
5. 2009 Wildlife Conservation Expo - October 3
6. "From Lawns to Meadows" Oct 1 /Listed-endangered-species fountain thistle restoration Oct 24
7. The Green Hairstreak Project at Randall Museum September 24
8. Birds & Butterflies - Easy Garden Enchantment. Classes start Oct 6
9. Renewable energy crash program vs the desert
10. LTE from a meadow mouse--again!!
11. Feedback: Cayuga Playground/fonts potpourri
12. Bring your garden to life with native plants, pollinators, and birds - Palo Alto Sept 26
13. More animals seem to have ability to count/early risers crash faster than late-to-bedders
14. Power of the press: a sanguine view from 1859
15. Coal Country, a dramatic look at the struggle that is modern coal mining. At SFMOMA September 30
16. Journey to the Stars takes you through time and space to experience the dramatic lives and deaths of stars. Begins Sept 26
17. Notes & Queries: Quantitative easing (some call it printing money)
18. Restroom notes from around the country
1. Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is Hiring!
Marin Stewardship Coordinator, Park Stewardship Program:
http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment/marin-stewardship-coordinator-park-stewardship-program-1.html
SENIOR Volunteer Coordinator:
http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment/senior-volunteer-coordinator-parkwide-group-programs-events.html
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Apply for Sierra Nevada Americorps Program!
Do you love the Sierra? Want to help restore and protect the Range of Light? Do you want to gain valuable environmental professional experience?
Apply today for one of the 27 open positions of the 2010 Sierra Nevada AmeriCorps Partnership!!! We are accepting applications now for positions starting January 18, 2010! To download the 2010 SNAP Application Packet, go to: http://www.sierranevadaalliance.org/programs/profile.shtml?index=1161366201_14778
Applicants are encouraged to send in their applications as soon as possible and 1st round interviews will be scheduled through the end of October. To be considered in the first round of interviews, applicants must submit applications by October 15th.
For more information please contact: Morgan Fessler, Sierra Nevada AmeriCorps Partnership Regional
Coordinator: 530-542-4546 x 312 or snap@sierranevadaalliance.org. Or visit www.sierranevadaalliance.org and the 'program's section of the website.
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2. Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 7:30pm
Program: Bay-Friendly Landscaping and Permaculture in the San Francisco Bay Area
Speaker: Casey Allen
Recreation Room, San Francisco County Fair Building
9th Av & Lincoln Way in Golden Gate Park
Permaculture is a design and planning process that emphasizes using a whole system approach and emulating natural systems. With protracted and thoughtful observations of our projects we can, over time, create systems that need very little human intervention and provide an abundance of resources such as food, habitat, water, soil health, erosion control—the list goes on and on. Permaculture design concepts can be used to design landscapes of course, but also to design anything—businesses, schools, personal life, etc. Bay-Friendly is a local program that all nine bay area counties have committed to implementing. Bay-Friendly gardening is permaculture tailored to the Bay Area and is geared toward moving properties from conventional landscaping to sustainable landscaping. The program emphasizes native plant use in the landscape, as well as other concepts like rainwater harvesting, composting, mulching, drip irrigation, integrated pest management, CO2 reduction, and more. Come to this program to learn how you can reduce your inputs of time and resources and achieve a highly productive landscape in an urban environment. See examples of small urban projects and large-scale projects throughout the city. Casey Allen is a Permaculture Designer and a Qualified Bay-Friendly professional. He co-owns and operates a landscaping company in San Francisco, and has been volunteering at the Alemany Farm, a public food production site near the Alemany farmer's market. Casey also serves on the CNPS Yerba Buena Chapter board, the SF Bicycle Advisory Committee, and he is chair of the Joint Transportation Committee of the Sierra Club.
The building is served by the #71 and #44 lines, is one block from the N-Judah car, and is two blocks from the #6, #43, and #66 bus lines.
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3. Digging Into the Bay Area - Engaging Your Community in Coastal Restoration
WHEN: Thursday, September 24, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm
WHAT: A workshop on volunteer-based restoration and monitoring. Speakers will provide insights, advice, and real-world examples. The California Coastal Commission’s new how-to manual, Digging In: A Guide to Community Based Habitat Restoration will be reviewed.
WHERE: Martin Luther King Junior Regional Shoreline Center at Doolittle Beach, Oakland, CA
Attendants will receive a copy of Digging In and lunch will be provided. A tour of the Martin Luther King Shoreline restoration area and nursery led by SaveThe Bay staff will conclude the workshop.
Space is limited. For more information, email coast4u@coastal.ca.gov or call (800) COAST-4U.
SCHOLARSHIPS ARE AVAILABLE – CONTACT (415) 904-5208.
To reserve a space, mail a $30 check, payable to the Tides Center/Marine Educ. Project, along with your name, phone numbers, affiliation, and email address to:
California Coastal Commission
Public Education Program, Digging In
Suite 2000, 45 Fremont Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
For more information, please visit the Coastal Commission's Public Education website at www.coastforyou.org
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4.
Twain’s Frog & the Beautiful Serpent
Brent Plater & Dr Carlos Davidson
Fri, Oct 2, 2009, 7-9pm
Pacifica Community Center, 540 Crespi Drive, Pacifica
Sharp Park Golf Course, located in Pacifica but owned and operated by San Francisco, is also home to the California red-legged frog and the San Francisco garter snake. San Francisco is considering closing the course and incorporating the land into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Join Brent Plater, Director of restoresharppark.org, and Dr. Carlos Davidson, Director of the Environmental Studies Program at San Francisco State University, to learn about the biology and ecology of the restoration proposal, and how Sharp Park can become a community-centered model for outdoor recreation and endangered species recovery including native plant habitat.
More information available from www.restoresharppark.org
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5.
2009 Wildlife Conservation Expo
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009, 10am-6pm
Mission Bay Conference Center San Francisco
Meet conservation heroes from around the world and hear about the challenges and successes of working on the frontlines of conservation. Visit the exhibits of local and international conservation organizations and purchase wildlife art and crafts from around the world.
$60 per person
Students with ID $30 per person
Learn more and buy tickets at http://wildnet.org/events/expo2009.html.
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6.
Oct 1, 7-8:30 pm
Milpitas Library 160 N. Main Street, Milpitas
"From Lawns to Meadows"
Alexandra von Feldt
Oct 2, 7-9 pm
Pacifica Community Center, 540 Crespi Dr., Pacifica
"Twain's Frog and the Beautiful Serpent" (Sharp Park Restoration)
Brent Plater & Carlos Davidson
Oct 24, 9 am to noon: Fountain thistle restoration and removal of pampas grass at I-280 & Highway 92
Register with Jake Sigg (jakesigg@earthlink.net or 415- 731-3028
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7. San Francisco Natural History Series
Monthly illustrated lectures by expert naturalists.
Presentations begin promptly at 7:30 p.m. in the Randall Museum Theater
September 24
The Green Hairstreak Project is a conservation effort of Nature in the City. Our speaker, Liam O’Brien, explains the program purpose: to connect two of the last remaining populations of a rapidly disappearing butterfly from San Francisco - the Coastal Green Hairstreak .
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8. Birds & Butterflies - Easy Garden Enchantment
(Online registration: class is in the Audubon/Nature Studies category) There are delightful creatures that could call your garden home year round. Learn to set out a welcome magnet for birds, butterflies, native bees, and other beneficial pollinators with California native plants and water-saving, ecological garden management techniques. Play more and work less in your yard. Help migrating songbirds, hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, amphibians survive and thrive. Learn about the relationship between native birds and native plants, why compost is great, how to figure out what plants will really grow in your landscape. Learn how integrate food plants and ornamentals. All levels of gardening experience are welcome, from master gardeners to "plant killers." Inspirational ecology readings, gorgeous slides of native California plants from my garden and from all over the state every week. www.thegardenisateacher.com (Four classes starting Oct 6. One Sat. field trip Oct 31)
To Register, contact Albany Adult School http://www.albany.k12.ca.us/adult/birding.html
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9.
(The September 3 program of the California Native Plant Society Yerba Buena Chapter had an absorbing and dramatic program on the giant program of renewable energy generation in the California deserts. CNPS and all conservation organizations are strong supporters of renewable energy, but, needless to say, it must be carefully planned and thought out. This one--coming from the Obama administration--is not thought out; instead it is on a fasttrack, and promoters are prepared to run roughshod over sensitive areas, including federal- and state-listed rare species habitat. A target of so many megawatts was set--presumably grabbed out of the air--without consideration of anything other than generating lots of power by a certain date. This is a scenario that I painted in my mind years ago. I thought that we might have learned something from history. Apparently not.
The following sites are about this. Kudos to Dianne Feinstein for her move to connect Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park. JS)
Nature Conservancy Magazine - current issue - Autumn 2009
"An Ill Wind? Wind power might slow climate change - but will all those windmills hurt nature?"
... the question is, How Do We Do It Right?
link - http://www.nature.org/magazine/autumn2009/features/?src=m1
The Sacramento Bee, Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2009
My View: Solar gold rush puts public lands at risk - By Bruce Pavlik
link - http://www.sacbee.com/1190/story/1814738.html
Center for Biological Diversity - today - 9/16/09
Senator Dianne Feinstein has boldly supported creating a new national monument in the California desert that would connect Joshua Tree National Park with the Mojave National Preserve, protecting some of the most pristine, ecologically important, and beautiful desert in the world. ••• While a rapid transition to renewable energy is essential to address global warming, we must not destroy vitally needed pristine public lands and endangered species habitat in the rush. Hundreds of thousands of acres of already-degraded lands are available outside the proposed monument that are far better suited for energy development. Please take a moment (really, that's all it takes- MB) to let Senator Feinstein know that you strongly support her proposed monument.
link - http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2167/t/5243/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1444
"The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little is known about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’
If the land mechanism is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not….Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” Aldo Leopold 1949
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10. (Letter to the editor--again!)
Dear Editor,
Meadow Mouse here, writing you once again. You have no idea what excitement your publishing my last letter (see my newsletter of 17 June 2009--sent on request. JS) caused among the meadow mice at Edgewood! We were even thinking of having a public reading, but given that nearly everyone out there finds us tasty, we decided such a large gathering would be unwise.
Speaking of being everyone’s dinner, we recently learned that we, Microtus californicus, are an official Keystone Species. Of course we had no idea what that meant, so we had to look it up. It turns out it means quite a lot. It means that although we are an admittedly small and seemingly insignificant creatures—reviled as a pest by those who don’t consider us a meal—we are not insignificant at all. We are, in fact, indispensable! Apparently, without the multitudinous dinners we provide to so very many species, the entire ecological community of which we are a part would collapse, just the way an arch would collapse if it didn’t have its keystone at the top, even though the keystone itself actually bears the least amount of weight. Apparently, just because we exist, a whole lot of other species exist, too. Which means that should we become extinct, a whole lot of other species would become extinct as well.
As we go, so goes the neighborhood!
Anyway, back to learning new things—while we were looking up the meaning of Keystone Species, we discovered another interesting word that pertains to us—“semi-fossorial’. We thought that must mean we were like fossils or something, since it has been documented that we were here—right here in California—1.8 million years ago! But it turns out that’s not what it means at all. “Fossorial” means that you have limbs adapted to digging, like the mole. So “semi-fossorial,” we are left to surmise, means you have limbs that are sort of adapted to a life of partial digging. In other words, you don’t spend all your time underground digging, digging, digging, like Mr Mole, but sometimes come up- for air to enjoy running through the lovely tunnels you’ve made in the grass, which require no digging whatsoever.
And speaking of tunnels in the grass. On July 8, our relatives in the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve lost all their grass cover to fire! The meadow mice hid from the fire in their burrows, of course, but once the fire was over and they came out of their burrows, there was no grass left and they were totally exposed! Just look at the photos I’ve included with this letter taken by our friend, Mr Jack Owicki, an MROSD Docent, who told us that two days after the burn he “saw a lot of voles along the trail between the main parking lot and the first big westerly turn in the trail. The burn drastically reduced the cover, making the voles a lot more visible.” Oh dear, “a lot more visible” is a lot more tribulation for a dinner-providing species. Our predators must have had a field day.
Good thing we are so good at reproduction. Indeed, whatever else may be said of us, one thing is for sure—we are terrific when it comes to reproduction. Really, really terrific. Our babies take only 22 days to develop in the womb, and our litters average 4 or 5 pups (but there can be as few as 1 or as many as 11), who are weaned in 2 weeks. By 3 weeks of age the girls can start having pups of their own, and by 5 weeks the boys usually start breeding. Meanwhile, the mother can breed again within 15 hours of giving birth. There are conditions that can alter this schedule of events, but for the most part, this is the way it goes. Pretty impressive, don’t you think?
Of course the downside is we don’t live very long, being so tasty. Most of us survive for only a few months; a year at best. That I have lived to the ripe old age of 3 borders on the miraculous, although I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to do so.
So the next time you admire a hawk or an owl or a coyote or a bobcat, just remember, they wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for us, the lowly meadow mice, Microtus californicus, a Keystone Species.
It would seem that sometimes small is not only beautiful, but powerful.
Sincerely yours,
m.m
Edgewood Explorer, newsletter of Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve, September 2009
(Ever wonder why our San Francisco meadow mice never write LTEs? I guess they’re smarter down the peninsula. JS)
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11. Feedback
(The following feedback item from Andrea O'Leary is a response to this item in last newsletter:
7. Two items on SF Recreation-Park Commission meeting on Thursday 17 September:
8. CAYUGA PLAYGROUND AND CLUBHOUSE
Discussion and possible action to approve a conceptual improvement plan for the renovation of Cayuga Playground and Clubhouse. (ACTION ITEM)
(I don't know what this item is, or whether it is nothing more than a routine item. The reason I bring it up is because of the delightful wood sculptures created by its former gardener, Demetrios Braceros. Demmy was given a lemon--in the form of an El Nino storm that blew down a grove of cypress trees in 1988 or 1989, while I was maintenance supervisor for Cayuga Park--and he made lemonade. He steadily created more artwork over the years until his retirement a few years ago. The City should treasure this outdoor museum and celebrate it. JS))
Andrea O'Leary
The community around Cayuga was drug by the nose through the fasted public process for a capital renovation that I have ever seen. Then again, RPD is rushing through most of the 2008 bond capital project conceptual design process and they're trying real hard for us all to think that's "routine." The only reason some of us can come up with is that they're trying to give the impression to the Bd. Supers. and powersthatbe is that there is an imminent need for these bonds to be sold and get that money coming their way when the bond sales have otherwise been postponed.
A project of the size and type that Cayuga is (small neighborhood project under 3 acres) would typically get only $3-4M. Instead it was allocated over $7M from the bond, then BART is throwing in another $1.3M because it is renovating the tracks above - for a total nearing $9M !! It's unreal, but the process was started and ended so fast that the public has no idea what hit them.
30% of that money is being spent on an over-designed clubhouse (from scratch) that will be seen by very few people at the end of this dead-end street. Half of Demi's carvings will be preserved, half will be discarded as unsalvageable. But, one reason for so much attention is probably because of his art pieces. Of course many of them are overtly religious and there is no clear idea what will be done about that.... call it "folk art," I guess.
Jill Fox:
Hi Jake
In response to the odd “type” characters that show up in your newsletter. I also produce a newsletter in Word (for the Department of Children, Youth & Their Families) and then paste it into an email to send. I also paste in content from other sources. I found that it is the “pastes” that throw things off. Try this when you paste from another source into your word document:
Go up to the menu bar, click on EDIT, PASTE SPECIAL, UNFORMATTED TEXT. That should clear out formatting from the source. Then you can add your formatting. Caution: it will also wipe out hyperlinks so you may have to add those back it. Hope this helps.
It does indeed help, Jill--and good to hear from you.
I received a second tip, which was to avoid Word. I compose on Word because I can so easily blow up the font to make it easy to read, then I copy and paste onto Text Edit, highlight, then specify Default, then copy and paste onto email. A little laborious--but that is only the beginning of my cyber woes. Some nights after fighting this *@#*@)&*%@#* -ing thing (I call if effing in polite company) I stick pins in Bill Gates' effigy. He may not have been personally responsible, but somebody has to pay for my suffering.
Vern Waight:
Jake: Please continue your journalistic efforts! One thing that I especially enjoy is the wide variety of fonts insofar as style, size and color. Apparently you simply cut and paste resulting in a potpourri of fonts, far more enjoyable than doing the whole publication in the ubiquitous Arial or Times Roman font.
Good for you, Vern. You corroborate my feelings about using the boring same fonts all the time. Most of the variation in fonts comes from me purposely changing the fonts just because of that.
The particular problem we were talking about is when I paste stuff onto Word document, then onto email. People receiving, especially if they have PCs rather than Macs, receive a garbled version without my formatting. Word is weird, as you may know--at least the version they "designed" for Macs. So I was given tips by a couple of people as to how to cope with this particular problem, and I am going to try it. I hope that that will make the newsletters better looking and readable than has been the case.
I love computer fonts; some are really beautiful. I want to use a particular font that suits the subject--whether dignified, ornate, casual, humorous, or what. I used to use some of the really unusual ones until I was told that some of them were unreadable by the recipient, others were garbled. So I retreated and use what I call the Google 6: Arial, Courier, Georgia, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana. That frustrates me, as I can't use some of those wonderful ones. Sigh.
Ellie Billings:
On a side note, I like Helvetica... even though it is slightly boring. I actually just rented a documentary all about Helvetica and its roots.. I'll let you know if it is any good.
The current Guardian Weekly has a short item "Irked by Ikea's typeface shift" about its shift from Futura to Verdana. Such a fuss people make about it. The final paragraph is "Still, things could be worse. It could be in Helvetica."
Hahah. Ouch.
Well, I watched the documentary (on Helvetica) and it was surprisingly fascinating! People either love it and think it's god's great gift to humankind, or they think it is the devil in disguise. Also, did you know that the word Helvetica is a variation on the Latin word "Sweden"? The typeface was developed in Sweden, thus it was named so. The original name was Neue Haas Grotesk.. which I suppose wouldn't have sold well in the United States.
What about in Minnesota?
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12. "Bring your Garden to Life with Native Plants, Pollinators and Birds"
Learn how to attract native pollinators and other beneficial insects and birds to your garden! Presenters include Jim Howard, NRCS Conservationist and Jaime Pawelek, UC Berkeley native bee expert. Network and browse our outdoor resource tables for books, professional help, and other information as well.
Saturday, September 26, 9:00 am - 12:00 pm (Doors open at 8:30 am)
Community Room, Lucie Stern Center
1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
$20 for Acterra members; $30 general public. [REGISTER NOW]
This is the first in Acterra Stewardship’s new “Earth Friendly Landscape” workshop series. Watch for other upcoming workshops:
* Conserve and harvest water
* Replace your lawn with earth-friendly landscape
For more information about these workshops, please contact Claire Elliott, Stewardship Director at clairee*acterra.org
(Bumperstrip sighted recently: Kill your lawn/Ask me how)
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13.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE: More Animals Seem to Have Some Ability to Count
Counting may be innate in many species
http://cl.exct.net/?qs=5ba6248f276ea69afa02e64f5320a853de8d7febae93e5a0b6e45e613d5fabc2
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND: Early Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late
Night owls belie slacker reputation by staying alert longer
http://cl.exct.net/?qs=137ca59c87d2da3fa92b33c2b574693c944d2cf1cf7bfcaeed819d6a6bb4bb2a
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14. Power of the press
"From ancient history we learn that several nations--Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans--accomplished, at successive periods, great works and became great powers. They exhibited much intellectual and physical activity during their dominance, and then they became sluggish and finally degraded--by reposing on their laurels, they soon sunk into senility. We think no fears of such a result need be entertained in the present age of progress. The printing-press will prevent this; it is the mighty agent which keeps the public mind in fermentation and prevents it from stagnating."
Scientific American, October 1859
(True, and--TA DAH!!, we have Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, San Francisco Examiner, and oh...just so many wonderful things)
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15.
Written, Produced and Directed by Phylis Geller
Executive Producer: Mari-Lynn Evans
Coal Country is a dramatic look at the struggle that is modern coal mining.
The Appalachian Mountains are the oldest in the world and are home to the most biologically diverse forest on the planet. The surface mining practice known as Mountain Top Removal (MTR) has destroyed over 500 of these lush mountains, buried in excess of 2500 miles of streams and headwaters, and created over 100 Billion gallons of toxic waste. Families and communities are deeply divided over what is being done to their land. Many of these families have lived in the region for generations, and most have ancestors or relatives who have or do work in the mines. Coal Country is the most comprehensive record to date of this emotional and at times violent conflict between the mine operators, the state and federal government and responsible agencies, miners, environmental organizations, and private citizens.
Date: Wednesday, September 30
Time: 6:30 pm sharp! (sorry, no late seating). Reception with the filmmakers immediately following.
Location: SFMOMA, 151 Third Street, San Francisco
Cost: Free! RSVP is required! Follow this link http://action.earthjustice.org/earthjusticeaction/events/coalcountrysf/details.tcl or copy and paste it into your browser tool bar.
Seating is very limited! You must RSVP for this special evening by Monday, September 28!
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16. California Academy of Sciences
Morrison Planetarium's second space show, Journey to the Stars, will debut on September 26. Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, Journey takes you through time and space to experience the dramatic lives and deaths of stars. Witness brilliant supernova explosions, dive into the heart of the fiery Sun, and watch it transform into a red giant five billion years in the future. Journey will play 7-10 times a day until Fall 2010.
Note: The Morrison's inaugural show, Fragile Planet, ends on Sept. 25, but it will continue to play at NightLife (ages 21+).
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17. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
What is quantitative easing?
Quantitative easing is merely a way of boosting a country's money supply when its economy is struggling and the normal processes of cutting interest rates are no longer viable, or when interest rates are so low--as is currently the case in the US--that they can't be reduced further.
In order to do this, a country's central bank, like the US Federal Reserve, for example, buys up assets such as securities in exchange for money, yet doesn't even have to print more money to do that. In fact, all that the central bank does is increase the size of the accounts of all the secondary banks held at its bank.
These accounts are called reserves, which all a country's ancillary banks are required to hold at the central bank. Should the secondary banks, however, swap securities for reserves, then their balance sheets shrink while those of the central bank expand.
But does it work, you may well ask? As with any fiscal therapy, that generally depends on a country's economic culture such as a preference for savings coupled with a huge trade deficit like that of Japan or a borrow-and-spend culture like that of the US.
So far, it seems that it hasn't been all that beneficial or even encouraging for either.
Brian Hartley, Christchurch, New Zealand
It is important to distinguish quantitative easing from qualitative easing, because one cannot be understood without relationship to the other. It may well be better to have a small quantity of high-quality easing than to have a large quantity of poor-quality easing.
Ask any cabinet minister. They are expert at generating large quantities of low-quality easing.
Ray Ferris, Victoria, BC, Canada
Finally buying jeans one size up.
Susan Douglas, Vancouver, BC, Canada
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18. Restroom notes from High Country News
No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her shit.
Men's Room Linda's Bar and Grill, Chapel Hill, NC
At the feast of ego everyone leaves hungry.
Bentley's House of Coffee and Tea, Tucson, AZ
Make love, not war.. -Hell, do both - GET MARRIED!
Women's restroom The Filling Station, Bozeman, MT
Express Lane: Five beers or less
Sign over one of the urinals Ed Debevic's, Phoenix, AZ
(Obviously not written by an English major, who would have said '5 beers or fewer'. JS)
You're too good for him. Sign over mirror in Women's restroom
Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills,CA.
A Woman's Rule of Thumb: If it has tires or testicles, You're going to have trouble with it. Women's restroom Dick's Last Resort, Dallas, TX
(Is the restaurant name part of the joke?)
Sounds like Ed Debevic's is a chain, and that it draws interesting customers.
2. Choice program: Bay-Friendly Landscaping and Permaculture - October 1
3. Engaging your community in coastal restoration - workshop on September 24
4. Twain’s Frog & the Beautiful Serpent - October 2
5. 2009 Wildlife Conservation Expo - October 3
6. "From Lawns to Meadows" Oct 1 /Listed-endangered-species fountain thistle restoration Oct 24
7. The Green Hairstreak Project at Randall Museum September 24
8. Birds & Butterflies - Easy Garden Enchantment. Classes start Oct 6
9. Renewable energy crash program vs the desert
10. LTE from a meadow mouse--again!!
11. Feedback: Cayuga Playground/fonts potpourri
12. Bring your garden to life with native plants, pollinators, and birds - Palo Alto Sept 26
13. More animals seem to have ability to count/early risers crash faster than late-to-bedders
14. Power of the press: a sanguine view from 1859
15. Coal Country, a dramatic look at the struggle that is modern coal mining. At SFMOMA September 30
16. Journey to the Stars takes you through time and space to experience the dramatic lives and deaths of stars. Begins Sept 26
17. Notes & Queries: Quantitative easing (some call it printing money)
18. Restroom notes from around the country
1. Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is Hiring!
Marin Stewardship Coordinator, Park Stewardship Program:
http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment/marin-stewardship-coordinator-park-stewardship-program-1.html
SENIOR Volunteer Coordinator:
http://www.parksconservancy.org/about/employment/senior-volunteer-coordinator-parkwide-group-programs-events.html
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Apply for Sierra Nevada Americorps Program!
Do you love the Sierra? Want to help restore and protect the Range of Light? Do you want to gain valuable environmental professional experience?
Apply today for one of the 27 open positions of the 2010 Sierra Nevada AmeriCorps Partnership!!! We are accepting applications now for positions starting January 18, 2010! To download the 2010 SNAP Application Packet, go to: http://www.sierranevadaalliance.org/programs/profile.shtml?index=1161366201_14778
Applicants are encouraged to send in their applications as soon as possible and 1st round interviews will be scheduled through the end of October. To be considered in the first round of interviews, applicants must submit applications by October 15th.
For more information please contact: Morgan Fessler, Sierra Nevada AmeriCorps Partnership Regional
Coordinator: 530-542-4546 x 312 or snap@sierranevadaalliance.org. Or visit www.sierranevadaalliance.org and the 'program's section of the website.
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2. Thursday, October 01, 2009 at 7:30pm
Program: Bay-Friendly Landscaping and Permaculture in the San Francisco Bay Area
Speaker: Casey Allen
Recreation Room, San Francisco County Fair Building
9th Av & Lincoln Way in Golden Gate Park
Permaculture is a design and planning process that emphasizes using a whole system approach and emulating natural systems. With protracted and thoughtful observations of our projects we can, over time, create systems that need very little human intervention and provide an abundance of resources such as food, habitat, water, soil health, erosion control—the list goes on and on. Permaculture design concepts can be used to design landscapes of course, but also to design anything—businesses, schools, personal life, etc. Bay-Friendly is a local program that all nine bay area counties have committed to implementing. Bay-Friendly gardening is permaculture tailored to the Bay Area and is geared toward moving properties from conventional landscaping to sustainable landscaping. The program emphasizes native plant use in the landscape, as well as other concepts like rainwater harvesting, composting, mulching, drip irrigation, integrated pest management, CO2 reduction, and more. Come to this program to learn how you can reduce your inputs of time and resources and achieve a highly productive landscape in an urban environment. See examples of small urban projects and large-scale projects throughout the city. Casey Allen is a Permaculture Designer and a Qualified Bay-Friendly professional. He co-owns and operates a landscaping company in San Francisco, and has been volunteering at the Alemany Farm, a public food production site near the Alemany farmer's market. Casey also serves on the CNPS Yerba Buena Chapter board, the SF Bicycle Advisory Committee, and he is chair of the Joint Transportation Committee of the Sierra Club.
The building is served by the #71 and #44 lines, is one block from the N-Judah car, and is two blocks from the #6, #43, and #66 bus lines.
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3. Digging Into the Bay Area - Engaging Your Community in Coastal Restoration
WHEN: Thursday, September 24, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm
WHAT: A workshop on volunteer-based restoration and monitoring. Speakers will provide insights, advice, and real-world examples. The California Coastal Commission’s new how-to manual, Digging In: A Guide to Community Based Habitat Restoration will be reviewed.
WHERE: Martin Luther King Junior Regional Shoreline Center at Doolittle Beach, Oakland, CA
Attendants will receive a copy of Digging In and lunch will be provided. A tour of the Martin Luther King Shoreline restoration area and nursery led by SaveThe Bay staff will conclude the workshop.
Space is limited. For more information, email coast4u@coastal.ca.gov or call (800) COAST-4U.
SCHOLARSHIPS ARE AVAILABLE – CONTACT (415) 904-5208.
To reserve a space, mail a $30 check, payable to the Tides Center/Marine Educ. Project, along with your name, phone numbers, affiliation, and email address to:
California Coastal Commission
Public Education Program, Digging In
Suite 2000, 45 Fremont Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
For more information, please visit the Coastal Commission's Public Education website at www.coastforyou.org
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4.
Twain’s Frog & the Beautiful Serpent
Brent Plater & Dr Carlos Davidson
Fri, Oct 2, 2009, 7-9pm
Pacifica Community Center, 540 Crespi Drive, Pacifica
Sharp Park Golf Course, located in Pacifica but owned and operated by San Francisco, is also home to the California red-legged frog and the San Francisco garter snake. San Francisco is considering closing the course and incorporating the land into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Join Brent Plater, Director of restoresharppark.org, and Dr. Carlos Davidson, Director of the Environmental Studies Program at San Francisco State University, to learn about the biology and ecology of the restoration proposal, and how Sharp Park can become a community-centered model for outdoor recreation and endangered species recovery including native plant habitat.
More information available from www.restoresharppark.org
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5.
2009 Wildlife Conservation Expo
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009, 10am-6pm
Mission Bay Conference Center San Francisco
Meet conservation heroes from around the world and hear about the challenges and successes of working on the frontlines of conservation. Visit the exhibits of local and international conservation organizations and purchase wildlife art and crafts from around the world.
$60 per person
Students with ID $30 per person
Learn more and buy tickets at http://wildnet.org/events/expo2009.html.
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6.
Oct 1, 7-8:30 pm
Milpitas Library 160 N. Main Street, Milpitas
"From Lawns to Meadows"
Alexandra von Feldt
Oct 2, 7-9 pm
Pacifica Community Center, 540 Crespi Dr., Pacifica
"Twain's Frog and the Beautiful Serpent" (Sharp Park Restoration)
Brent Plater & Carlos Davidson
Oct 24, 9 am to noon: Fountain thistle restoration and removal of pampas grass at I-280 & Highway 92
Register with Jake Sigg (jakesigg@earthlink.net or 415- 731-3028
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7. San Francisco Natural History Series
Monthly illustrated lectures by expert naturalists.
Presentations begin promptly at 7:30 p.m. in the Randall Museum Theater
September 24
The Green Hairstreak Project is a conservation effort of Nature in the City. Our speaker, Liam O’Brien, explains the program purpose: to connect two of the last remaining populations of a rapidly disappearing butterfly from San Francisco - the Coastal Green Hairstreak .
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8. Birds & Butterflies - Easy Garden Enchantment
(Online registration: class is in the Audubon/Nature Studies category) There are delightful creatures that could call your garden home year round. Learn to set out a welcome magnet for birds, butterflies, native bees, and other beneficial pollinators with California native plants and water-saving, ecological garden management techniques. Play more and work less in your yard. Help migrating songbirds, hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, amphibians survive and thrive. Learn about the relationship between native birds and native plants, why compost is great, how to figure out what plants will really grow in your landscape. Learn how integrate food plants and ornamentals. All levels of gardening experience are welcome, from master gardeners to "plant killers." Inspirational ecology readings, gorgeous slides of native California plants from my garden and from all over the state every week. www.thegardenisateacher.com (Four classes starting Oct 6. One Sat. field trip Oct 31)
To Register, contact Albany Adult School http://www.albany.k12.ca.us/adult/birding.html
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9.
(The September 3 program of the California Native Plant Society Yerba Buena Chapter had an absorbing and dramatic program on the giant program of renewable energy generation in the California deserts. CNPS and all conservation organizations are strong supporters of renewable energy, but, needless to say, it must be carefully planned and thought out. This one--coming from the Obama administration--is not thought out; instead it is on a fasttrack, and promoters are prepared to run roughshod over sensitive areas, including federal- and state-listed rare species habitat. A target of so many megawatts was set--presumably grabbed out of the air--without consideration of anything other than generating lots of power by a certain date. This is a scenario that I painted in my mind years ago. I thought that we might have learned something from history. Apparently not.
The following sites are about this. Kudos to Dianne Feinstein for her move to connect Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park. JS)
Nature Conservancy Magazine - current issue - Autumn 2009
"An Ill Wind? Wind power might slow climate change - but will all those windmills hurt nature?"
... the question is, How Do We Do It Right?
link - http://www.nature.org/magazine/autumn2009/features/?src=m1
The Sacramento Bee, Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2009
My View: Solar gold rush puts public lands at risk - By Bruce Pavlik
link - http://www.sacbee.com/1190/story/1814738.html
Center for Biological Diversity - today - 9/16/09
Senator Dianne Feinstein has boldly supported creating a new national monument in the California desert that would connect Joshua Tree National Park with the Mojave National Preserve, protecting some of the most pristine, ecologically important, and beautiful desert in the world. ••• While a rapid transition to renewable energy is essential to address global warming, we must not destroy vitally needed pristine public lands and endangered species habitat in the rush. Hundreds of thousands of acres of already-degraded lands are available outside the proposed monument that are far better suited for energy development. Please take a moment (really, that's all it takes- MB) to let Senator Feinstein know that you strongly support her proposed monument.
link - http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2167/t/5243/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1444
"The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little is known about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’
If the land mechanism is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not….Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” Aldo Leopold 1949
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10. (Letter to the editor--again!)
Dear Editor,
Meadow Mouse here, writing you once again. You have no idea what excitement your publishing my last letter (see my newsletter of 17 June 2009--sent on request. JS) caused among the meadow mice at Edgewood! We were even thinking of having a public reading, but given that nearly everyone out there finds us tasty, we decided such a large gathering would be unwise.
Speaking of being everyone’s dinner, we recently learned that we, Microtus californicus, are an official Keystone Species. Of course we had no idea what that meant, so we had to look it up. It turns out it means quite a lot. It means that although we are an admittedly small and seemingly insignificant creatures—reviled as a pest by those who don’t consider us a meal—we are not insignificant at all. We are, in fact, indispensable! Apparently, without the multitudinous dinners we provide to so very many species, the entire ecological community of which we are a part would collapse, just the way an arch would collapse if it didn’t have its keystone at the top, even though the keystone itself actually bears the least amount of weight. Apparently, just because we exist, a whole lot of other species exist, too. Which means that should we become extinct, a whole lot of other species would become extinct as well.
As we go, so goes the neighborhood!
Anyway, back to learning new things—while we were looking up the meaning of Keystone Species, we discovered another interesting word that pertains to us—“semi-fossorial’. We thought that must mean we were like fossils or something, since it has been documented that we were here—right here in California—1.8 million years ago! But it turns out that’s not what it means at all. “Fossorial” means that you have limbs adapted to digging, like the mole. So “semi-fossorial,” we are left to surmise, means you have limbs that are sort of adapted to a life of partial digging. In other words, you don’t spend all your time underground digging, digging, digging, like Mr Mole, but sometimes come up- for air to enjoy running through the lovely tunnels you’ve made in the grass, which require no digging whatsoever.
And speaking of tunnels in the grass. On July 8, our relatives in the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve lost all their grass cover to fire! The meadow mice hid from the fire in their burrows, of course, but once the fire was over and they came out of their burrows, there was no grass left and they were totally exposed! Just look at the photos I’ve included with this letter taken by our friend, Mr Jack Owicki, an MROSD Docent, who told us that two days after the burn he “saw a lot of voles along the trail between the main parking lot and the first big westerly turn in the trail. The burn drastically reduced the cover, making the voles a lot more visible.” Oh dear, “a lot more visible” is a lot more tribulation for a dinner-providing species. Our predators must have had a field day.
Good thing we are so good at reproduction. Indeed, whatever else may be said of us, one thing is for sure—we are terrific when it comes to reproduction. Really, really terrific. Our babies take only 22 days to develop in the womb, and our litters average 4 or 5 pups (but there can be as few as 1 or as many as 11), who are weaned in 2 weeks. By 3 weeks of age the girls can start having pups of their own, and by 5 weeks the boys usually start breeding. Meanwhile, the mother can breed again within 15 hours of giving birth. There are conditions that can alter this schedule of events, but for the most part, this is the way it goes. Pretty impressive, don’t you think?
Of course the downside is we don’t live very long, being so tasty. Most of us survive for only a few months; a year at best. That I have lived to the ripe old age of 3 borders on the miraculous, although I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to do so.
So the next time you admire a hawk or an owl or a coyote or a bobcat, just remember, they wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for us, the lowly meadow mice, Microtus californicus, a Keystone Species.
It would seem that sometimes small is not only beautiful, but powerful.
Sincerely yours,
m.m
Edgewood Explorer, newsletter of Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve, September 2009
(Ever wonder why our San Francisco meadow mice never write LTEs? I guess they’re smarter down the peninsula. JS)
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11. Feedback
(The following feedback item from Andrea O'Leary is a response to this item in last newsletter:
7. Two items on SF Recreation-Park Commission meeting on Thursday 17 September:
8. CAYUGA PLAYGROUND AND CLUBHOUSE
Discussion and possible action to approve a conceptual improvement plan for the renovation of Cayuga Playground and Clubhouse. (ACTION ITEM)
(I don't know what this item is, or whether it is nothing more than a routine item. The reason I bring it up is because of the delightful wood sculptures created by its former gardener, Demetrios Braceros. Demmy was given a lemon--in the form of an El Nino storm that blew down a grove of cypress trees in 1988 or 1989, while I was maintenance supervisor for Cayuga Park--and he made lemonade. He steadily created more artwork over the years until his retirement a few years ago. The City should treasure this outdoor museum and celebrate it. JS))
Andrea O'Leary
The community around Cayuga was drug by the nose through the fasted public process for a capital renovation that I have ever seen. Then again, RPD is rushing through most of the 2008 bond capital project conceptual design process and they're trying real hard for us all to think that's "routine." The only reason some of us can come up with is that they're trying to give the impression to the Bd. Supers. and powersthatbe is that there is an imminent need for these bonds to be sold and get that money coming their way when the bond sales have otherwise been postponed.
A project of the size and type that Cayuga is (small neighborhood project under 3 acres) would typically get only $3-4M. Instead it was allocated over $7M from the bond, then BART is throwing in another $1.3M because it is renovating the tracks above - for a total nearing $9M !! It's unreal, but the process was started and ended so fast that the public has no idea what hit them.
30% of that money is being spent on an over-designed clubhouse (from scratch) that will be seen by very few people at the end of this dead-end street. Half of Demi's carvings will be preserved, half will be discarded as unsalvageable. But, one reason for so much attention is probably because of his art pieces. Of course many of them are overtly religious and there is no clear idea what will be done about that.... call it "folk art," I guess.
Jill Fox:
Hi Jake
In response to the odd “type” characters that show up in your newsletter. I also produce a newsletter in Word (for the Department of Children, Youth & Their Families) and then paste it into an email to send. I also paste in content from other sources. I found that it is the “pastes” that throw things off. Try this when you paste from another source into your word document:
Go up to the menu bar, click on EDIT, PASTE SPECIAL, UNFORMATTED TEXT. That should clear out formatting from the source. Then you can add your formatting. Caution: it will also wipe out hyperlinks so you may have to add those back it. Hope this helps.
It does indeed help, Jill--and good to hear from you.
I received a second tip, which was to avoid Word. I compose on Word because I can so easily blow up the font to make it easy to read, then I copy and paste onto Text Edit, highlight, then specify Default, then copy and paste onto email. A little laborious--but that is only the beginning of my cyber woes. Some nights after fighting this *@#*@)&*%@#* -ing thing (I call if effing in polite company) I stick pins in Bill Gates' effigy. He may not have been personally responsible, but somebody has to pay for my suffering.
Vern Waight:
Jake: Please continue your journalistic efforts! One thing that I especially enjoy is the wide variety of fonts insofar as style, size and color. Apparently you simply cut and paste resulting in a potpourri of fonts, far more enjoyable than doing the whole publication in the ubiquitous Arial or Times Roman font.
Good for you, Vern. You corroborate my feelings about using the boring same fonts all the time. Most of the variation in fonts comes from me purposely changing the fonts just because of that.
The particular problem we were talking about is when I paste stuff onto Word document, then onto email. People receiving, especially if they have PCs rather than Macs, receive a garbled version without my formatting. Word is weird, as you may know--at least the version they "designed" for Macs. So I was given tips by a couple of people as to how to cope with this particular problem, and I am going to try it. I hope that that will make the newsletters better looking and readable than has been the case.
I love computer fonts; some are really beautiful. I want to use a particular font that suits the subject--whether dignified, ornate, casual, humorous, or what. I used to use some of the really unusual ones until I was told that some of them were unreadable by the recipient, others were garbled. So I retreated and use what I call the Google 6: Arial, Courier, Georgia, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana. That frustrates me, as I can't use some of those wonderful ones. Sigh.
Ellie Billings:
On a side note, I like Helvetica... even though it is slightly boring. I actually just rented a documentary all about Helvetica and its roots.. I'll let you know if it is any good.
The current Guardian Weekly has a short item "Irked by Ikea's typeface shift" about its shift from Futura to Verdana. Such a fuss people make about it. The final paragraph is "Still, things could be worse. It could be in Helvetica."
Hahah. Ouch.
Well, I watched the documentary (on Helvetica) and it was surprisingly fascinating! People either love it and think it's god's great gift to humankind, or they think it is the devil in disguise. Also, did you know that the word Helvetica is a variation on the Latin word "Sweden"? The typeface was developed in Sweden, thus it was named so. The original name was Neue Haas Grotesk.. which I suppose wouldn't have sold well in the United States.
What about in Minnesota?
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12. "Bring your Garden to Life with Native Plants, Pollinators and Birds"
Learn how to attract native pollinators and other beneficial insects and birds to your garden! Presenters include Jim Howard, NRCS Conservationist and Jaime Pawelek, UC Berkeley native bee expert. Network and browse our outdoor resource tables for books, professional help, and other information as well.
Saturday, September 26, 9:00 am - 12:00 pm (Doors open at 8:30 am)
Community Room, Lucie Stern Center
1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
$20 for Acterra members; $30 general public. [REGISTER NOW]
This is the first in Acterra Stewardship’s new “Earth Friendly Landscape” workshop series. Watch for other upcoming workshops:
* Conserve and harvest water
* Replace your lawn with earth-friendly landscape
For more information about these workshops, please contact Claire Elliott, Stewardship Director at clairee*acterra.org
(Bumperstrip sighted recently: Kill your lawn/Ask me how)
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13.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE: More Animals Seem to Have Some Ability to Count
Counting may be innate in many species
http://cl.exct.net/?qs=5ba6248f276ea69afa02e64f5320a853de8d7febae93e5a0b6e45e613d5fabc2
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND: Early Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late
Night owls belie slacker reputation by staying alert longer
http://cl.exct.net/?qs=137ca59c87d2da3fa92b33c2b574693c944d2cf1cf7bfcaeed819d6a6bb4bb2a
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14. Power of the press
"From ancient history we learn that several nations--Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans--accomplished, at successive periods, great works and became great powers. They exhibited much intellectual and physical activity during their dominance, and then they became sluggish and finally degraded--by reposing on their laurels, they soon sunk into senility. We think no fears of such a result need be entertained in the present age of progress. The printing-press will prevent this; it is the mighty agent which keeps the public mind in fermentation and prevents it from stagnating."
Scientific American, October 1859
(True, and--TA DAH!!, we have Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, San Francisco Examiner, and oh...just so many wonderful things)
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15.
Written, Produced and Directed by Phylis Geller
Executive Producer: Mari-Lynn Evans
Coal Country is a dramatic look at the struggle that is modern coal mining.
The Appalachian Mountains are the oldest in the world and are home to the most biologically diverse forest on the planet. The surface mining practice known as Mountain Top Removal (MTR) has destroyed over 500 of these lush mountains, buried in excess of 2500 miles of streams and headwaters, and created over 100 Billion gallons of toxic waste. Families and communities are deeply divided over what is being done to their land. Many of these families have lived in the region for generations, and most have ancestors or relatives who have or do work in the mines. Coal Country is the most comprehensive record to date of this emotional and at times violent conflict between the mine operators, the state and federal government and responsible agencies, miners, environmental organizations, and private citizens.
Date: Wednesday, September 30
Time: 6:30 pm sharp! (sorry, no late seating). Reception with the filmmakers immediately following.
Location: SFMOMA, 151 Third Street, San Francisco
Cost: Free! RSVP is required! Follow this link http://action.earthjustice.org/earthjusticeaction/events/coalcountrysf/details.tcl or copy and paste it into your browser tool bar.
Seating is very limited! You must RSVP for this special evening by Monday, September 28!
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16. California Academy of Sciences
Morrison Planetarium's second space show, Journey to the Stars, will debut on September 26. Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, Journey takes you through time and space to experience the dramatic lives and deaths of stars. Witness brilliant supernova explosions, dive into the heart of the fiery Sun, and watch it transform into a red giant five billion years in the future. Journey will play 7-10 times a day until Fall 2010.
Note: The Morrison's inaugural show, Fragile Planet, ends on Sept. 25, but it will continue to play at NightLife (ages 21+).
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17. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
What is quantitative easing?
Quantitative easing is merely a way of boosting a country's money supply when its economy is struggling and the normal processes of cutting interest rates are no longer viable, or when interest rates are so low--as is currently the case in the US--that they can't be reduced further.
In order to do this, a country's central bank, like the US Federal Reserve, for example, buys up assets such as securities in exchange for money, yet doesn't even have to print more money to do that. In fact, all that the central bank does is increase the size of the accounts of all the secondary banks held at its bank.
These accounts are called reserves, which all a country's ancillary banks are required to hold at the central bank. Should the secondary banks, however, swap securities for reserves, then their balance sheets shrink while those of the central bank expand.
But does it work, you may well ask? As with any fiscal therapy, that generally depends on a country's economic culture such as a preference for savings coupled with a huge trade deficit like that of Japan or a borrow-and-spend culture like that of the US.
So far, it seems that it hasn't been all that beneficial or even encouraging for either.
Brian Hartley, Christchurch, New Zealand
It is important to distinguish quantitative easing from qualitative easing, because one cannot be understood without relationship to the other. It may well be better to have a small quantity of high-quality easing than to have a large quantity of poor-quality easing.
Ask any cabinet minister. They are expert at generating large quantities of low-quality easing.
Ray Ferris, Victoria, BC, Canada
Finally buying jeans one size up.
Susan Douglas, Vancouver, BC, Canada
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18. Restroom notes from High Country News
No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her shit.
Men's Room Linda's Bar and Grill, Chapel Hill, NC
At the feast of ego everyone leaves hungry.
Bentley's House of Coffee and Tea, Tucson, AZ
Make love, not war.. -Hell, do both - GET MARRIED!
Women's restroom The Filling Station, Bozeman, MT
Express Lane: Five beers or less
Sign over one of the urinals Ed Debevic's, Phoenix, AZ
(Obviously not written by an English major, who would have said '5 beers or fewer'. JS)
You're too good for him. Sign over mirror in Women's restroom
Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills,CA.
A Woman's Rule of Thumb: If it has tires or testicles, You're going to have trouble with it. Women's restroom Dick's Last Resort, Dallas, TX
(Is the restaurant name part of the joke?)
Sounds like Ed Debevic's is a chain, and that it draws interesting customers.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Jake Sigg's Nature News Special to Bayview Hill Association
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.)
________________________
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)
***************************
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
*******************
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.
***************************
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
*******************************
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
**********************************
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.
*******************************
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
_____________________
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
*************************
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.)
***************************
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".)
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
**************************
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
***************************
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.
****************************
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
*******************************************
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.
**************************
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.)
________________________
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)
***************************
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
*******************
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.
***************************
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
*******************************
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
**********************************
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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