big on love, tolerance, and the human potential
A Chat With George W. Bush’s Conscience, Leon Kass.
The Chief against stem cell research, hiding in an office near Lynne Cheney and perhaps from Lynne Cheney, he calls “children of unwed parents bastards” and is against “the loss of female modesty” and tells White House cronies, “I do not come from a school of thought, nor do I have an ideology.” Exactly.
As high as he’s become, another of his dart board concerns is euphoria. What? Not rapture?
There’s a strong case to be made for trees in the city because air conditioning is one of our chief demands for new power plants.
The urban heat island is a serious challenge. There so much excess heat in our cities that the Terra satellite found the growing season is at least two weeks longer than farmland.
Cooling Los Angeles by 4 degrees by planting trees over 5 percent of a city and re-coloring black rooftops would have the same effect as turning all our vehicles into electric cars!
This is so huge, nothing else compares.
The University of Manchester calculated that a mere 10% increase of green space reduces temperature by as much as 4°C – the predicted rise from global warming!!
Our cities are being planned for greater density, favoring a reduction in commute distances, but increasing demand for lighting and air conditioning while stripping trees from parks, residential lots and open space.
The first story we tell ourselves is that we are not telling ourselves a story. – Kaila Colbin
Livestock – predominantly cattle – are responsible for an astonishing proportion of global warming gases – 18 per cent of the total to be precise:
- a fifth of all emissions which is more greenhouse gas emissions than all the transport on earth
- seventy per cent of all agricultural land is used to raise animals – that’s a third of the land surface of the entire planet
- over a third of all cereal production goes to feed those animals
- animal methane is more destructive than industrial CO2
- 296 times the global warming power of carbon dioxide, sixty five per cent of human related emissions of nitrous oxide are from the nitrogen in animal manure.
The Department of Primary Industries (DPI) staff jointly with University of Melbourne scientists have made a breakthrough in reducing bovine emissions by feeding an extract from the bark of black wattle (Acacia mollisima ).
The scientists found that feeding the crystallised powder not only reduced methans but also nitrogen emissions, and increased milk production.
DPI “Greenhouse in Agriculture” team leader Dr Richard Eckard said in an interview “A tannin in the bark combined with nitrogen in the rumen making it easier to digest and giving more benefit to the animal. The nitrogen goes out in the dung and then released slowly into the environment. The tannin stopped the nitrogen going into the bloodstream, where the animal had to work hard to process it.
The cattle might spend the energy equivalent of one litre to 1½ litres of milk to excrete the nitrogen in their urine. There is evidence that tannins reduced methane and it was now necessary to develop a method easily to feed the supplement to the cattle. [via AllAboutFeed]
before condemning meats and becoming a vegan, consider these points from Ben Smith:
A critical point that is being missed is where this carbon comes from.
Cars, ships, etc.:
This carbon comes from carbon that has been buried deep underground. It is unearthed, burned, and then released into the atmosphere. Therefore, any carbon released is added to carbon already present in the atmosphere = global warming.Cows, agriculture:
This carbon comes from the atmosphere. The plants take up the carbon dioxide. Livestock then eat the plants and release the carbon back into the atmosphere. Therefore, any carbon released by the cows was already in the atmosphere to begin with (carbon neutral) = no global warming.The problem isn’t the re-releasing of carbon that was already in the atmosphere (livestock, agriculture), but the unearthing of new carbon sources (gas and coal) and then adding these to the atmosphere.
The Guardian reports on a new pill to trap some of the energy from the methane, which is naturally produced in the fermentation process when a cow digests grass and is later mostly burped out through their mouths.Cut down on flying, sell the car and recycle your bottles. But if you really want to tackle global warming, you should stop your cow from burping.According to scientific estimates, the methane gas produced by cows is responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions. [previous post]
meditative
After 15 years, I think that I can now see the outline of an unexpected answer to this question. In order to solve our toughest problems peacefully, in order to address our most complex social problem situations, we have to learn to be bilingual. We have to learn to speak fluently two paradoxically different languages: the language of power and the language of love. By power I mean the drive to act, to achieve purpose, to effect real change in the real world. And by love I mean the drive to re-connect, with each other and with our world and what it needs of us. What I have learned from my experiences is that until we are able to exercise power and love together – to exercise power with love – we will never be able together to create new realities.
Many of us fail to notice we can be devastated merely failing to change lanes on the way downtown. We fail to notice we can be hammered each day merely by glances and comments. We manage tiny details and fret about ourselves to build a bit of confidence. We are not so strong.
Hemingway said,
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that it will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
So it is a cruel place here. To stand with children reconciling death and diluting death in the cup of your heart? We are not built for this. It is an imperfect world we make better in our good ways. You have been this courage.
Graham Greene said,
‘Oh,’ the priest said, ‘that’s another thing altogether—God is love. I don’t say the heart doesn’t feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn’t recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us—God’s love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn’t it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.’
We are tender things, flying inside a nuclear star, shielded by little. You are this courage.
It is a simple world too. Great complex things may not happen here. It might be that only ordinary things can exist under this cosmic storm pressed to dirt by gravity!
A glimpse says we are honored. Another says we have touched a heart. A friend is tender or we are tender with a friend. A spring warmth begins us again. We were brave and did not notice winter.
There is another thing. Love. Oh why is this omitted from every Constitution? There’s nothing in us but love. It is our cellular engine, some say, and burst the Universe days ago, some believe, and is our quest under the onion’s peel. We haven’t said much of it. Oh why is our love not the entire curricula? It is what we know too little of and what we most require. We are all siblings here, with you; not one of us is finished in this schooling.
What can be said? “Grant me the abandon to be a fool in this loving moment! I demand to revel in this loving moment! Do not dare to take this loving moment!” Our next day a necklace of these stubborn jewels, some pearls on the floor, and some links broken, and some love to never be… to have loved and lost and a’ that…. We’re fools for it, nuts for it, lost in it, breathing bliss and blues….
Hillel says,
If I am for myself only, what am I?
If I am for others only, who am I?
If not now, when?
I’m saying we will always be nervous, incapable, foolish…. And so what? They say the difference between a good dancer and a bad dancer is the good dancer isn’t paying attention to themselves but to dancing.
I don’t know what provoked me to pause and read this story except I’m concerned about the poor economic news recently as we all are.
I do know why I’ve taken the time to post this story.
“Ontario’s homeless enclave becomes regional haven“.
The newspaper reports,
ONTARIO – Nobody knows the exact population of Tent City, but the area has swelled beyond expectations.
The dusty, undeveloped city-owned parcel at Cucamonga Avenue and Jefferson Street is filled with tents, campers and makeshift shelters.
Mayor Paul Leon moans, “It took on a life of its own. It didn’t occur to us it would grow to this size this fast, which reflects the need.”
The city provides water and bathrooms, and picks up trash. Churches regularly provide food. Councilman Jason Anderson said the property was always considered a temporary refuge for the homeless….
[but this] “…population explosion is evidence that people are streaming in from all over the region.”
County Supervisor Gary Ovitt plans to have a meeting with other mayors to find a solution.
“We’ve pledged to help in any way we can when the city figures out how it will handle things. It is an unfair burden to Ontario.”
The article points out that police would typically harass homeless sleeping on the streets. A resident points out,
“I understand something needs to be done for these people, but I don’t think the answer is Tent City. You’re just asking for sickness, violence or other problems.”
Toward the end of the article in the San Bernadino area newspaper The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the burden on the city is summarized as
“…the city can’t go it alone when it comes to the homeless.”
I’m now expecting to see 100s of acres of huddled homeless!! What on earth can be causing such alarm in this city of more than 200,000 and for
the Mayor,
the City Council,
County officials,
elected officials,
other Mayors,
nearby officials,
parole officers,
police,
regional police,
church members,
food banks and
the city’s residents?
Will we ever be confident our society is capable of managing the incredible burden of such an “alarming Tent City” with so many leaders and officials helpless about the homeless?
Analysis of privacy vs. security, rather dignity vs. excess:
Bush’s Director of National Intelligence is proposing to monitor all — that’s right, *all* — Internet communications for security purposes.
Bruce Schneier replies that this is “an idea so extreme that the word ‘Orwellian’ feels too mild”.
Punditry on fuels blended for analysis:
Africa is the continent with the largest sustainable bioenergy potential.
It can produce more bioenergy than all the oil currently consumed world-wide, while providing enough food, fiber and forest products to its growing populations, and without negative impacts on the environment.
From Biopact
Is it a plane on fire? No, it’s a trawler deploying a drag net lifting sediment that drifts into the sea.
It adds up,
altering temperature, distributing particulates, unsettling toxins….
Skytruth has satellite images and a tour of sediment plumes at Trawling Impacts. The gallery of satellite pictures reveal only the tip of the iceberg because “most trawling happens in waters too deep to detect sediment plumes at the surface”.
The drag nets scour the sea bottom, plowing the seafloor in each coastline of the world’s oceans, leaving a persistent dust along the coastline and within ocean currents.
From the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Dragnet: Bottom Trawling symposium revealed severe damage, the world’s most severe and extensive seafloor disturbances.
“Until recently, the impact was basically hidden from view. But new tools – especially Internet-based image sites, like Google Earth – allow everyone to see for themselves what’s happening. In shallow waters with muddy bottoms, trawlers leave long, persistent trails of sediment in their wake.”
“Overfishing has eliminated 90 percent of the world’s large predatory fishes and is devastating marine ecosystems.”
“What is amazing is the level of damage these types of animals have suffered, after the cod fishery in Canada was closed. We immediately started trawling deeper with no restrictions, and continue to do so.”
“There are ways to catch fish that are less harmful to the world’s vanishing marine life. We need to start protecting the seafloor by using fishing gear, besides bottom trawls, especially in the deep sea. It’s the only thing left.”
“For years marine scientists have been telling the world that fishing has harmed marine biodiversity more than anything else. And it’s clear that trawling causes more damage to marine ecosystems than any other kind of fishing. Now, as the threats of ocean acidification and melting sea ice are adding insult to injury, we have to reduce harm from trawling to have any hope of saving marine ecosystems.”
“Just four percent of Earth’s oceans are still pristine.”
A NOAA biologist says interactions among species, the effects of climate change, and the effects of human impacts such as harvesting are factors in an ecosystem-based fishery management plan. Conventional fishery management practices concentrate on individual species rather than a holistic approach that looks at the bigger picture.
Wired and Science Magazine are reporting about a groundbreaking new map showing human impact on oceans at a global scale. It is the “first comprehensive analysis of human impacts on marine ecosystems” showing that we’ve affected nearly half of the world’s oceans. Coral reefs, seagrass beds, rocky reefs and continental shelves have been particularly hard hit. [tip to Kaila Colbin]
8.5 billion gallons per second
Well over half of the planet is water and the use of tides and currents for the production of electricity could be endlessly renewable. The world’s first field of underwater turbines, using currents of the East River, will be in New York City.
I was promoting ‘current’ turbines during the 1980s and 90s with TR International, including an integrated rapid deployable port with Baker Engineering.
There are 1000s of low impact power generation sites.
Nokia’s global market share is 40 percent and it intends to “reshape the Internet” by providing services that are more relevant and powerful. [eetimes]
CityofSound is stepping back from the street
In the beginning was the logos and the logos enjoyed the unwashed… that’s a comfortable view of the universe, tho’ it doesn’t reconcile horror or death.
Kevin Kelly is receiving hits for this essay exploring the web’s hive [the unwashed] and whether it will provide adequate substance without intervention from vigorous and inspired leaders. Is our future up from the bottom?
Putting the base back in baseball, Nonist notices Major League Baseball struggled to clean up the game in other times,
Today the league is having some serious public relations problems wrestling with the use of performance enhancing drugs, in the 1890’s, when the document in question was issued, they were having serious public relations problems of another kind.
They are playing a game. They are playing at not
playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I
shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game. – R. D. Laing
Food safety organizations are warning that plastic food packages used for margarine, soup, takeout containers, trays of pre-packaged meals, and even bread bags, break down and release unhealthy gas and particles when heated more than once.
Many folks re-use packaging in a microwave. That’s not smart.
No more needed to say what’s needed:
Banks tend to have very strong controls to prevent people from stealing from the institution, but much weaker controls to prevent people from stealing for the institution.
When the rich steal from the rich, it’s Good Business;
When the rich steal from the rich for the poor, it’s Noblesse Oblige;
When the middle steal from the middle, it’s Corruption;
When the rich and the middle steal from the poor, it’s Fiscal Responsibility;
When the poor steal from the rich and the middle, it’s Crime;
When the poor steal from the poor, it’s Tough Luck.
– BH
Tristan Loraine is a retired airline pilot. After years of research, he’s campaigning to make us aware of poor air quality in commercial aircraft. Though he knows the next generation 787 will provide clean air, current aircraft do not.
His book Toxic Airlines highlights hidden scandal that I believe will one day lead to [story]
Fun, concise, excellent writing at this blog, The Blog Brothers; stories crossing today and yesterday.
In the beginning the music was formless and void,
and a great emptiness went forth across the airwaves.
All that could be heard therein was Patti Page,
Theresa Brewer and Frankie Laine.
Then God said, “Let there be rhythm, let there be blues!”;
and His spirit went forth across the airwaves
in the form of Chuck Willis, Ray Charles and LaVerne Baker.
And God saw that what he had made was good, very good;
and He began to replace the old with the new.
Thus God had provided man with soul,
and from that day forth, man and his descendants
would groove upon the earth. Then God rested,
for He had grown weary from all the dancing He had done.
It must be difficult for younger people who’ve lived their entire lives in the aftermath of that glorious earthquake to have any sense at all of what it was like living in a world without Soul, an entire universe void of Rock and Roll.
It must seem to them as though it had always existed, but it didn’t. There was a time…
Pondering and prospecting the great wonder of us… etc etc… this guy’s life, a classic Horatio Alger story, “except that he was black”.
Almost no one today knows who he was, but he was a major figure in 19th-century black America, as well as being a critically important person in British Columbia’s first decade.
Summarizing his achievements is a challenge:
- Abolitionist agitator and a worker on the underground railway in Philadelphia.
- Shoeshine boy, boot merchant, and newspaper publisher in gold-rush San Francisco.
- First competitor with the Hudson’s Bay Company in gold-rush Victoria.
- Builder of B.C.’s first railway, in the Queen Charlotte Islands.
- Victoria city councillor and acting mayor.
- Member of the Yale Conference for B.C.’s entry into Canada.
- America’s first elected black judge, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- U.S. Consul in Madagascar in his 70s,
- and founder of a bank on his return.
Mifflin Wistar Gibbs died rich in 1915, aged 94.
Sorry. I’m worried. I’ve not had time to learn to trust Russia. I’ve had too many years learning to distrust Bush.
The BBC quotes Putin. He’s saying other countries were spending far more than Russia on new weapons.
“It is already clear that a new phase in the arms race is unfolding in the world.” but Russia would always respond to the challenges of a new arms race by developing more hi-tech weaponry.
“We have still not seen any real steps towards finding a compromise. In effect, we are forced to retaliate, to take corresponding decisions. Russia has, and always will have, responses to these new challenges.”
Russia
Mr Putin said.He said
, he said.
Military muscle
Referring to Nato’s activities in Central and Eastern Europe, Mr Putin said “there are many discussions on these, but… ” he said.
Clinical psychologist Dan Kindlon has been researching children and adolescents for over 20 years and argues that the psychology of American girls has radically changed in recent years owing to the effect of feminism and increased equality.
Harvard Magazine has an article on what he calls ‘alpha girls’ in his new book – confident girls and young women with high expectations and high self-esteem.
“The psychological demons that used to affect girls and women in this country just don’t affect today’s girls in the same way.”
Bravo!
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched telemedicine as a requirement for manned space flight, squeezing a stream of images into radio audio circuits and later for telephone lines.
Telemedicine consultation was used over Intelsat after the devastating 1989 earthquake in Soviet Armenia. In addition to assist scans, technique allows transmission of x-rays, nuclear scans, ultrasonic imagery, thermograms, electrocardiograms or live views of patient. Also allows conferencing and consultation among medical centers, general practitioners, specialists and disease control centers.
Much of the progress at JPL relied on the work of Glen Southworth’s several patents and equipment that he developed at his firm Colorado Video, such as his 1970 camera and scanning processor.
“Paper and pencil are wonderful inventions, watercolors and oil are cheap. But let’s look at it closely – these techniques are millennia old and we’re in an electronic era. Video image creation and manipulation is fast, fascinating, and capable of effects never dreamed of by daVinci or Michelangelo.”
Glen Southworth enjoyed birdwatching and turned his cameras toward the sky to chart bird flight activity.
He wrote about his patent,
“I’ve had more fun with this device than anything else that I’ve worked with and I continue to find new ways of looking at the world.
“Use a television camera to look at the sky, and watch what’s going on with a TV monitor. We’re no longer restricted to those nice summer days, but can be puttering around the house, or even be at work if you have a window and a view of the sky.”
JPL’s 1984 spinoff with Southworth’s Colorado Video introduced business and industry to teleconferencing, cable TV news, transmission of scientific/engineering data, security, information retrieval, insurance claim adjustment, instructional programs, and remote viewing of advertising layouts, real estate, construction sites or products.
“Why waste time at the airport and rack up travel expenses when you can hold that business meeting over the Internet?” Another pioneer at NASA, Elliot Gold says, “Teleconferencing isn’t just for replacement of travel,” emphasizes Gold, noting that reading books wasn’t replaced by radio, radio wasn’t replaced by TV, TV wasn’t replaced by other video technologies. Teleconferencing, quite simply, he says, “is for holding certain types of meetings that couldn’t be held by any other means.”
I’ve just noticed that Glen Southworth passed away in 2006. Glen has been acknowledged for his efforts, receiving several awards including the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Engineering Award.
In the early 1980’s I worked with Bruce Sullivan, an officer of the pioneering text service called “The Source”, who introduced me to Colorado Video. We pioneered ‘slow scan’ video as “telestrategic industry”, showing workable remote visual connections using unfiltered phone lines and radio. We demonstrated the technology all over California.
During the oil embargo of the 70s, the National Science Foundation predicted that as much as 20 percent of business travel could be displaced by teleconferencing. Video conferencing has since vastly improved and today a web meeting is more than a curiosity. Companies that provide equipment and service for remote conferencing are thriving.
It seems to take forever, but a new infrastructure is emerging, partly to enable IT and Internet transactions and increasingly to improve communications and reduce both costs and the excess use of fossil fuels.
Writing about Green Thinking on his blog, David Tebbut says “I think the bottom line is for everyone to start thinking in terms of input-process-output. (Sound familiar?)
“In a fractally sort of way, this can be applied from macro to micro level.
“From the company looking at what it’s doing right down to an individual, they are all capable of looking at what resources they draw on, how they exploit them and what outputs result, both good and bad. IT can raise its game…
But, to radically reduce costs and alter our environmental impact, we don’t just need to reprogram our computers. We actually need to reprogram our brains.”
Tom Cruise On Stage Addressing Throngs of Scientologists
Hacker group Anonymous has launched an all-out assault against Scientology and vowed that this is the beginning of the end of the cult in its current form. In addition to launching DoS attacks on Scientology servers, they have acquired and released lots of supposedly secret data including this video.
There’s much information in this lead sentence:
It took US Army interrogators at Guantánamo Bay five years to reach the conclusion that Adel Hassan Hamad was exactly who he claimed to be: a hospital administrator in Pakistan.
What happened next?
On Dec. 11, 2007, they put him back on a military cargo plane, hooded and handcuffed, and sent him back….
What is the released prisoner saying now?
“We don’t want animosity, we just want to respect America again.
“The American conscience and the American people need to return to the great concepts established by the Founding Fathers, of freedom, democracy, equality, and justice.
“All these values and even the justice system are being shaken, played with.”
Are we teaching cruelty?
Scott Baldauf writing for the Christian Science Monitor points to many former inmates of Guantánamo telling stories of torture and abuse that have become so common as to lose their shock value.
[His] treatment was “inhumane”.
Every unimaginable transgression was committed, including beatings and torture.
“We used to look to America as a model for human rights.”
“But now, after 11th September, US policy has given dictatorships in the third world the right to do what they want. Now they use America as a model, and what happens at Guantánamo is the same as what happens in third world prisons.”