Dexter's Lab

funny how it all falls away

2008-07-01T18:43:00.009-06:00

The Lab is closed.

Dex continues to blog here.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-06-27T22:59:00.002-06:00

Jenny, the Doctor's Daughter (in more ways than one).

because nothing happens, everything happens

2008-06-27T13:17:00.009-06:00

Is this post emo enough for you yet?

I have been spending most of the summer thus far in my boiling apartment, trying to get comfortable on my loveseat-cum-replacement-for-a-bedbug-ridden-mattress, waiting for a phone call from one of the four temporary staffing agencies I've interviewed with to drop a job in my lap so that I can start paying for things like electricity, or my Norton subscription, or the GRE.

With much too much time on my hands, interspersed with bouts of disappointment and inconvenience of varying degrees - if you would have asked me six months ago, I would have told you that by now I would be having a great love affair, that by now I would have a job and oh-my-God-money, that by now I would have a master's degree and I would be a Learned Person with Prospects Working Hard to Save the World, that by now all that I had sacrificed back in Baltimore, going on seven bloody years ago now, all that I ditched to get out here was well worth it - it's been all too easy to start seeing the outlines of this year's weird trajectory reflected back at me in the news, mainly the discomforting ones, the ominous ones, as proof that the proverbial bottom I'd so carefully planned and tended falling out is in fact part of a larger story. No, no - I don't mean a conspiracy, but evidence of a decline, like flags on a map.

This is also supposed to be the place where the chance for wisdom and growth occurs. Pema Chodron says,

You can think of the groundlessness and openness of insecurity as a chance that we're given over and over to choose a fresh alternative. Things happen to us all the time that open up the space. This spaciousness, this wide-open, unbiased, unprejudiced space is inexpressible and fundamentally good and sound.

It's scary, though. And the more I think about it, the sadder it makes me, too. "What's the point?" never used to enter my head, but now - now, I look in the mirror, and I just see someone who is getting older much too fast, and I look out the window, and I see a planet that is getting much too warm - and "What's the point?" sounds like a viable option. Sometimes it sounds like the only option, especially when it's late and I'm wondering how much it costs to have the television on and whether or not someone will call me with a job tomorrow and if I'm ever going to be in love again because I'll just fuck it up and is it really me, how much am I to blame for all of this, and besides, fucking glaciers, fucking coal-fired power plants, fucking Blackwater, those cocksuckers - "What's the point?"

"Normally of course," says Chodron, "we want to get away from that uncomfortable feeling.

It just seems reasonable, except for the fact that you may have noticed that it doesn't really work. We've been trying the same ways of getting comfortable for as long as we can remember, and yet our aggression, our anxiety, our resentfulness don't seem to be getting any less. I'm saying that we need to develop an appetite for groundlessness; we need to get curious about it and be willing to pause and hang out for a while in that space of insecurity.

So panic, apparently, like pleasure-seeking and anger, is just another escape route. Just another dodge. I always thought that "crisis=opportunity" thing was a cop-out, was a way to duck responsibility. I like the idea of creating spaciousness better, that the impetus to act with good intention in spite of crisis begins with the space I choose to make in the midst of fear, or of insecurity. Again and again and again.

Another teacher, Naropa U founder Trungpa Rinpoche, wrote that "Because nothing really happens, everything happens." So work may not come this afternoon, or tomorrow. The coal-fired power plants keep getting built. And fucking Blackwater, those cocksuckers. But there is no end to all of this. Not hope, exactly - hope is a wish. Hope is like believing in magic. But there is now. Everything happens now. I can make space to act now. And now. And now.

well, all day long I hear how great fisa is at this or how wonderful fisa did that!

2008-06-26T11:54:00.003-06:00

FISA, FISA, FISA!

Arthur Silber:

And what now consumes the liberal and progressive bloggers? FISA, FISA, FISA, FISA, FISA, always, always FISA. Never Iran.

david lynch thursday!

2008-06-26T09:53:00.005-06:00

It's David Lynch Thursday over at Cap Hill's coolest group-movie-blog-and-bullshit-penned-mostly-by-aging-hipsters-and-video-clerks. Click on over for your fix, and while you're there, check out some movie-bloggy-goodness.

get yr starve on

2008-06-25T10:25:00.004-06:00

Please sir, can I have some more? No? Well, piss off then, ya bloody stupid cahnt!

There's a broad-ranging piece on Grist right now covering the ag-related impacts of the Mississippi flooding, and what might happen in the marketplace. As they say on the big blogs, go read.

Aside from the prospect of having to pay that much more for what little I buy at the Oats with money I still don't have this summer, this little bit though, is what caught my attention:

With the recent deluge, a bad situation has turned worse. The rains have not only damaged crops, they've also washed away untold tons of fertilizer, which leach into groundwater and eventually flow through the Mississippi clear down to the Gulf of Mexico. There, the fertilizer won't feed crops; instead, in a double blow to food production, it will nourish a vast algae bloom blotting out sea life that would otherwise have contributed to a once-bountiful fishery.

By my count, this is the second major hit this region of the States has taken in the last five years; I have to guess we'll start actually seeing some effects of these pollution wash-offs (rather than merely hearing about them, which unfortunately can only be described to us - no melting glaciers here) sooner than later.

It seems like this summer, this year, really, we've begun to pay down the heavy-duty borrowing we've done on the biosphere. Over-exposing our soils to chemical fertilizers - which also render them unable to process carbon and other greenhouse gases, activating yet another positive feedback loop in the cycle of planetary warming - is one of these big fat loans we've taken out, maybe the most awful thing we've done to the health of our ecosystems as we've pushed them intoindustrialization. There's still time to change, though. This summer also represents a great opportunity for us, so there's still time. Well, a little bit, anyway.

remember, tuesday is soylent green day

2008-06-24T00:01:00.000-06:00

Whattabout the captains of the Soylent Green industry? Doesn't Congress know it's made of people?

Guardian Yoo-Kay:

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, [on Monday] call[ed] for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

[snip]

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated. Hansen's speech to Congress on June 23 1988 is seen as a seminal moment in bringing the threat of global warming to the public's attention. At a time when most scientists were still hesitant to speak out, he said the evidence of the greenhouse gas effect was 99% certain, adding "it is time to stop waffling".

If there are still history books around to be read and written 100 years from now, James Hansen will be one of remembered as one of this era's great heroes.

shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits

2008-06-23T01:45:00.001-06:00

George Carlin, 1937-2008.

your teevee hates you and wants you to die

2008-06-22T09:41:00.007-06:00

You're ready for prime time, America!

With California sweltering on the left coast and much of the midwest underwater, Democracy Now! spent a segment or two last week highlighting the global warming disconnect in the coverage of flooding along the Mississippi and this summer's ominous, emerging weather patterns - what television news has been calling "extreme weather."

The good folks at DN! are right to point a finger - mostly in the direction of teevee - for neglecting the Big Story, even when while the networks and the cable talking heads have been running footage on the hour of reporters standing alongside sunken levees, or the feds issue reports which say the very things that have been happening over the last week will be the new normal in a post-global warming America.

But teevee news eats the context necessary to tell these kinds of stories. Because context equals time, and television news is hemmed in by a need to cram as many ads into the half-hour as possible, a lack of context therefore is what keeps the industry going. Thus, in the world described by television news, there is no real group narrative, no actual community the viewer belongs to. Things happen, and then other things happen, and then some other things happen, and these things may have a who or a what or a why and a how, but are validated only by the fact someone is around to point a camera or I-phone at them, nothing more. Nothing connects them, or the viewer to them, beyond this.

Global warming is about shifting our present circumstances away from what it's been for the last few thousand years into something new entirely (or old, depending on your point of view); a change in context. In the meantime, outside of a very shallow, very narrow perspective, television news can't even tell us what's going on now.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-06-20T08:59:00.000-06:00

Christopher Ryan as the excellent General Staal, from "The Sontaran Strategem" and "The Poison Sky."

don't worry, sir(s), he has a cunning plan

2008-06-19T07:08:00.005-06:00

"The solution to the impacts and challenges of a peak-oil century is to give more money to oil companies."

(cf)

blue monday

2008-06-16T16:51:00.003-06:00

Allen Ginsberg, Florence, Italy, 1957.

My Sad Self

To Frank O'Hara

Sometimes when my eyes are red
I go up on top of the RCA Building
and gaze at my world, Manhattan -
my buildings, streets I've done feats in,
lofts, beds, coldwater flats
- on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,
its ant cars, little yello taxis, men
walking the size of specks of wool -
Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,
sun go down over New Jersey where I was born
& Paterson where I played with ants -
my later loves on 15th Street,
my greater loves of Lower East Side,
my once fabulous amours in the Bronx
faraway-

paths crossing in these hidden streets,
my history summed up, my absences
and ecstasises in Harlem -
- sun shining down on all I own
in one eyeblink to the horizon
in my last eternity -
matter is water.

Sad,
I take the elevator and go
down, pondering,
and walk on the pavements staring into all man's
plateglass, faces,
questioning after who loves,
and stop, bemused
in front of an automobile shopwindow
standing lost in calm thought
traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks
behind
me
waiting for a moment when...

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to
the romantic war news on the radio
...all movement stops
& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,
tenderness flowing thru the buildings,
my fingertips touching reality's face,
my own face streaked with tears in the mirror
of some window - at dusk -
where I have no desire for bonbons - or to own the dresses or Japanese
lampshades of intellection -

Confued by the spectacle around me,
Man struggling up the street
with packages, newspapers,
ties, beautiful suits
toward his desire
Man, woman, streaming over the pavements
red lights clocking hurried watches &
movements at the curb -

And all these streets leading
so crosswise, honking, lengthily,
by avenues
stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums
thru such halting traffic
screaming cars and engines
so painfully to this
countryside, this graveyard
this stillness
on deathbed or mountain
once seen
never regained or desired
in the mind to come
where all Manhattan that I've seen must disappear.

---Allen Ginsberg, New York, October 1958

stan winston

2008-06-16T15:14:00.000-06:00

1946-2008.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-06-13T09:06:00.001-06:00

Here's a sneaky peak of what's in store for the end of Series 4!

david lynch thursday!

2008-06-12T15:46:00.003-06:00

Click on over to the Denver Projection Booth for your Thursday puff!

(I also have a new batch of mini-reviews up at Teh Booth, so please, click on through and expand the film portion of yr brains)

more awesome

2008-06-11T10:05:00.005-06:00

Why won't you be my friend on Facebook, Ward? Why?

Not David Tennant kind of awesome, but pretty awesome just the same:

If I’m going to drink Irish whiskey, which I do from time to time, like every 3 or 4 months I have a couple of shots, it’s going to be John Powers. The night I did the interview with Labash was rather exceptional, however. He offered to buy shots of anything I wanted to drink at a fairly upscale Berkeley bar, so I sampled three pretty exotic whiskeys at $20-30 a pop, compliments of William Kristol.

contrary to the trust

2008-06-11T09:12:00.004-06:00

I ask you, my fellow americans, would even the loathsome President Skroob perform as poorly?

From the articles of impeachment read out by Congressman Dennis Kucinich yesterday:

ARTICLE XXXII
MISLEADING CONGRESS AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, SYTEMATICALLY UNDERMINING EFFORTS TO ADDRESS GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE.

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, ignored the peril to life and property posed by global climate change, manipulated scientific information and mishandled protective policy, constituting nonfeasance and malfeasance in office, abuse of power, dereliction of duty, and deception of Congress and the American people.

President Bush knew the expected effects of climate change and the role of human activities in driving climate change. This knowledge preceded his first Presidential term.
1. During his 2000 Presidential campaign, he promised to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

2. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global body of hundreds of the world's foremost experts on climate change, concluded that "most of observed warming over last 50 years (is) likely due to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities." The Third Assessment Report projected several effects of climate change such as continued "widespread retreat" of glaciers, an "increase threats to human health, particularly in lower income populations, predominantly within tropical/subtropical countries," and "water shortages."

3. The grave danger to national security posed by global climate change was recognized by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Planning Research Projects Agency in October of 2003. An agency commissioned report "explores how such an abrupt climate change scenario could potentially destabilize the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints such as: 1) Food shortages due to decreases in net global agricultural production 2) Decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions due to shifted precipitation patters, causing more frequent floods and droughts 3) Disrupted access to energy supplies due to extensive sea ice and storminess."

4. A December 2004 paper in Science reviewed 928 studies published in peer reviewed journals to determine the number providing evidence against the existence of a link between anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and climate change. "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

5. The November 2007 Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report showed that global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses have increased 70% between 1970 and 2004, and anthropogenic emissions are very likely the cause of global climate change. The report concluded that global climate change could cause the extinction of 20 to 30 percent of species in unique ecosystems such as the polar areas and biodiversity hotspots, increase extreme weather events especially in the developing world, and have adverse effects on food production and fresh water availability.

The President has done little to address this most serious of problems, thus constituting an abuse of power and criminal neglect. He has also actively endeavored to undermine efforts by the federal government, states, and other nations to take action on their own.

1. In March 2001, President Bush announced the U.S. would not be pursuing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, an international effort to reduce greenhouse gasses. The United States is the only industrialized nation that has failed to ratify the accord.

2. In March of 2008, Representative Henry Waxman wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson: "In August 2003, the Bush Administration denied a petition to regulate CO2 emissions from motor vehicles by deciding that CO2 was not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. In April 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled that determination in Massachusetts v. EPA. The Supreme Court wrote that 'If EPA makes a finding of endangerment, the Clean Air Act requires the agency to regulate emissions of the deleterious pollutant from new motor vehicles.' The EPA then conducted an extensive investigation involving 60-70 staff who concluded that 'CO2 emissions endanger both human health and welfare.' These findings were submitted to the White House, after which work on the findings and the required regulations was halted."

3. A Memo to Members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on May 19, 2008 stated "The record before the Committee shows: (1) the career staff at EPA unanimously supported granting California's petition (to be allowed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, consistent with California state law); (2) Stephen Johnson, the Administrator of EPA, also supported granting California's petition at least in part; and (3) Administrator Johnson reversed his position after communications with officials in the White House."

The President has suppressed the release of scientific information related to global climate change, an action which undermines Congress' ability to legislate and provide oversight, and which has thwarted efforts to prevent global climate change despite the serious threat that it poses.

1. In February, 2001, ExxonMobil wrote a memo to the White House outlining ways to influence the outcome of the Third Assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The memo opposed the reelection of Dr. Robert Watson as the IPCC Chair. The White House then supported an opposition candidate, who was subsequently elected to replace Dr. Watson.

2. The New York Times on January 29, 2006, reported that James Hansen, NASA's senior climate scientist was warned of "dire consequences" if he continued to speak out about global climate change and the need for reducing emissions of associated gasses. The Times also reported that: "At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone."

3. In December of 2007, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report based on 16 months of investigation and 27,000 pages of documentation. According to the summary:

"The evidence before the Committee leads to one inescapable conclusion: the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming." The report described how the White House appointed former petroleum industry lobbyist Phil Cooney as head of the Council on Environmental Quality. The report states "There was a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change by editing climate change reports. CEQ Chief of Staff Phil Cooney and other CEQ officials made at least 294 edits to the Administration's Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties or to de-emphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming."

4. On April 23, 2008, Representative Henry Waxman wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. In it he reported: "Almost 1,600 EPA scientists completed the Union of Concerned Scientists survey questionnaire. Over 22 percent of these scientists reported that 'selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome' occurred 'frequently' or 'occasionally' at EPA. Ninety-four EPA scientists reported being frequently or occasionally directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document. Nearly 200 EPA scientists said that they have frequently or occasionally been in situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned from or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings."

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

What do you think: along with leading the country into invading and occupying a hapless foreign country, does neglecting - nevermind exacerbating - catastrophic climate change constitute an impeachable offense?

awesome

2008-06-10T13:26:00.002-06:00

Truly, he is the Best Doctor Ever.

(Full toon here.)

get yr impeachment on

2008-06-10T08:09:00.004-06:00

Nevermind McCain, Dennis is my man crush. Well, and Elizabeth, too.

Via (pdf!), the first ten articles read out by Congressman Kucinich:

Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq

Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of
Aggression

Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War

Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States

Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression

Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114

Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter

Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor

Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes

more than words is all you have to do to make it real

2008-06-09T07:45:00.004-06:00

Cos George Lakoff already knows.

Cognitive linguist and liberal strategist George Lakoff (Moral Politics, Don't Think of an Elephant, Thinking Points, Whose Freedom?, and Dex's thesis) will be speakin' and signin' at the Central Presbyterian Church (1660 Sherman) from 6:30 in the P.M. to 8:30. Word is he's got a new book out, so I imagine he'll be chatting up the implications of his research and current events. And I'll be there, making an ass of myself somehow. What more could you want on a Monday, liberal scum?

(he's back) guess who's back

2008-06-06T11:49:00.001-06:00

It's a natural fact that Norbizness is back!

friday doctor who blogging

2008-06-06T08:27:00.001-06:00

We plead the Fifth (Doctor)!

when its summer in siam (or capitol hill)

2008-06-03T10:36:00.008-06:00

And the moon is full of rainbows.

In spite of this nasty bout of joblessness, I have managed to find myself behind on a number of summertime projects - most of them are school-related, though I am promised to post a few reviews and what I think might be a pretty cool essay on torture n' revenge movies and Bush time for the Denver Projection Booth (I'll cross post it here just for you, Labrateers. All for you, Labrateers!).

So I'm off, attempting to be responsible and mindful of my duties for the next coupla. In the meantime, dig that Washington Post columnist and Fox News flack Charles Krauthammer is not only a vicious warmonger, but ignorant about global warming, too (it's puzzling that nearly all deniers who pretend some knowledge about the topic think they present alternative theories like sunspots or orbital wobble or whatever, without actually taking the time to see that all of that's been researched and documented pretty thoroughly already); why it's important to present continuing coverage of a bill that will probably be vetoed, much less ever get out of the Senate; and the role of anger in the '08 primary season.

hang up the coal habit, hang it up daddy

2008-06-02T12:33:00.003-06:00

Dems, don't go out like Stuntman Mike!

Via the mighty mighty Grist, Dems make big Pikachu eyes at "clean coal" ahead of the Montana primary.

Since the Clinton campaign has gone straight kamikaze, it's no surprise that both candidates are making far-fetched promises about milk, honey, and independence from foreign oil, but to quote Burgess Meredith, the thing of it is, though, the thing of it is is that there's no such thing as clean coal. It's the energy-policy equivalent of "humanitarian intervention" - total bullshit, a lie good liberals tell themselves to help them get through the night, a notion so vague that it doesn't even pass muster as a campaign promise and is just a smokescreen which allows politicians to appear pro-growth and pro-environment at the same time (see here and here for Lab rundowns on the politics of coal and the controversy around carbon sequestration, respectively).

Primary-day-poll-humping aside, the bigger issue is that the sheer scale of global warming supercedes the spirit of compromise that defines politics - particuarly the kind of sliding scale that lets Paleolithic industries like power companies that burn coal to continue to party-hardy for 20 more years the atmosphere doesn't have - and it looks like no one's getting this.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-05-30T08:23:00.000-06:00

The Doctor takes a call from Ms. Martha Jones in "The Sontaran Strategem."

david gregory does such a good job

2008-05-29T09:11:00.003-06:00

Journalism!

hunter

2008-05-28T11:01:00.006-06:00

This has been a dumb summer - a dumb year, dumber than I'd expected - both here at The Lab and out there in the world.

I miss Hunter. It used to cheer me that I could look up and know that was the same sky Doc saw. I think a lot about what he would've written about 08; lately I find myself casting around for some sanity, in politics, in life, and that's hard to do without him and his writing around.

utah phillips

2008-05-27T09:09:00.001-06:00

1935-2008.

remember, tuesday is soylent green day

2008-05-27T07:22:00.003-06:00

Maybe peak oil prices will make us rethink our reliance on Soylent Green - because it's made of people!

Guardian Yoo-Kay:

Several theories were emerging yesterday over the environmental effects of oil at $130 a barrel or more. In the green corner were the optimists, who believe that the shock will force people to cut their energy use, invest in renewables and energy conservation, downsize their cars, take fewer foreign holidays and reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Others fear that oil prices at this level for any length of time will usher in a new bleak period where governments turn to extracting coal, growing biofuels and deforestation.

There was evidence of both trends yesterday. As Honda announced it was increasing output of its hybrid cars because of high fuel prices, Barrie Johnstone, chief executive of Solartwin.com said inquiries about his company's solar panels to heat water had risen by more than 50% in five months.

[snip]

Tom Burke, environmental scientist and visiting professor at Imperial College London, said that in the short term the oil price rise would cause a rush to exploit oil tar sands in Canada and Venezuela, and possibly deforestation in the Amazon to clear space for biofuels.

"We have passed the peak of cheap oil. I do not think it will slow down Indian and Chinese vehicle use. It will really hit the aviation industry and could cut the ground under the push for the third runway at Heathrow. It could also strengthen the localisation movement." The majority of companies, he said, had already done a lot already to reduce their energy use.

Environmental consultant and former -director of Friends of the Earth Charles Secrett said the lesson of history in high oil prices was that it was an opportunity for change. "In the years after the 1973 oil shock, energy efficiency soared, but governments did not step in with policies to encourage alternatives energies to flourish. They have the real choice now."

sydney pollack

2008-05-26T20:52:00.001-06:00

1935-2008.

and now two minutes, five seconds with post-grad school survival specialist julee cruise

2008-05-26T07:54:00.005-06:00

Diligence, persistence, foul chemicals, and throwing many of my personal belongings away have apparently kept the Lab's recent infestation of bed bugs at bay, though we are not out of the woods yet: the new temp agency keeps promising work, but I haven't seen anything yet, and come the beginning of June I will be officially out of cash, while tax and loan payments loom.

Fortunately, there is a new loveseat bed-thingy which looks like something from a spry young Dane's bachelor pad, a stack of fine books from the DPL, the Spurs won game three, and my new thesis advisor rocks, so it looks like I will in fact have a 50-page case study come the fall that will save us all. Though the Dharma says we should abandon hope, things aren't exactly hopeless either: a thesis, library books, the Spurs. And there is Julee Cruise.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-05-23T08:21:00.001-06:00

Second Doctor Pat Troughton, the incarnation many say Best Doctor Ever David Tennant has the most in common with.

"these aren't the metaphors you're looking for...move along..."

2008-05-22T08:05:00.006-06:00

Only a Sith thinks in absolutes. Even about global warming.

Full-text of Lieberman-Warner "Climate Security Act" has emerged in the last coupla; full doc here, for the time-constrained, Barbara Boxer's outline may be found here. There's a lot about off-ramps, dollar levels, and cap-n-trade that I even have a hard time keeping straight, so here's two reviews by the mighty mighty Grist on what it's all about, Alfie.

What I find myself most curious about regarding the bill is the name: "Climate Security Act." The body-planet analogy is the one I hear scientists like E.O. Wilson and James Lovelock use most often, the metaphor that's obviously the most workable. So why not the "Climate Health Act," or "Climate Therapy Act," or "Climate Restoration Act," or "Strengthening Our Planet's Health Act"?

It might be that in the current climate (no pun intended) of a War on Terror, something with a crisp, military sound to it would be most liable to attract votes from both sides of the aisle - to make the pols without internet access or who slut around with oil, gas, coal (and labor) feel as though they're contributing to the mostly-vague notion of energy independence (aka, "independence from foreign oil"). Very possible; we all know that image, timing and theatrics mean a great deal in politicking.

But that name - "Climate Security Act" - also speaks volumes about how America's political class frames global warming: the climate is threatened, "insecure," perhaps even "under attack" from an entity or thing called global warming, and that, much like we now take steps to "secure the homeland" (gah - I can't even stand typing that), we have to "secure the climate."

It's a bold approach, and one I don't entirely disagree with - whatever gets us to the other side of a post-global warming world mostly intact. And as Lakoff reminds, frames don't equal facts. But there's a big problem. First, we've never won any of the Wars on Abstract Nouns, as Terry Jones might say, that we've declared, like the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and now the War on Terror (indeed, in most cases, they've gotten worse). And to paraphrase Jones, how will we know when we've won? Does global warming surrender at some point? Where do we gather to sign the armistice?

Second, and maybe more importantly - no, most importantly - using war and security metaphors negate our responsibility for global warming. There are two sides (well, ostensibly, there are two sides, anyway) in a war, the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. We're always the Good Guys, of course, and so it's up to us to "win" and the Bad Guys - global warming, and hurricanes or something, I suppose - to "lose." But war metaphors remove us from the equation, and we're the ones who started the fucking thing, literally: the United States and just the United States continues to pump more CO2 into the atmosphere then much of the rest of the world combined (though China is close to besting us). Who, then, are we securing the climate from?

Stay tuned. In the meantime, you can find a summary and track the progress of the bill here, and check out some criticism from Greenpeace here.

more than a feeling

2008-05-20T08:47:00.008-06:00

Christian recording artist Crystal Lewis apparently Gets It.

A cadre of conservative Christian chieftans, celebs, and groups have organized under a new global warming and poverty campaign, the oddly titled "We Get It!" (which sounds less like an affirmation and more like a complaint, like, "We Get It Already, Fucking Lay Off, Okay?") that attempts to nod in the general direction of climate change but wags a stern Christian finger at mitigating potential catastrophe with a muddle of talking points cribbed from industry-supported confabs and the proclamations of right-wing academics working in highly industrialized economies.

It's a shame, really - We Get It reveals less about the very real call Christians have, especially evangelicals, to working on behalf of the poor here and around the world and more about what the group's signatories fail to comprehend about science or current events. It's more like a campaign about a generalized feeling or unease with economic regulation inre: core conservative principles. Thusly, the messaging works on two levels here: first, it quite deliberately connects "stewardship" - service on behalf of the Lord for His Creation, which is in fact a strain of Christian environmentalism, something Mike Huckabee talked a lot about during his brief flirtation with GOP frontrunnerdom - with "dominionism," or power over God's earth (since we were created in His image). Second, said stewardship, as well as service to the poor, is intertwined here with the story of access to free markets: that is, uplift of the unfortunate 'round the world will one day look like Longmont or Westminster, and lo be the enviro, Christian or otherwise, who fails to see that (per Lakoff) Property is Freedom; a caretaker is in a position of authority, and thus is in a position to know best.

Onto the arguments. From We Get It's "Quick Facts":

The science is not settled on global warming. Alas, it has been. The disagreements which remain deal with the intensity of the change. There is not a scientific consensus that global warming is man-made, and is likely to be catastrophic. Qualifying the term "catastrophic" is a little problematic, sure, but I'll let James Lovelock take care of that for me. Many qualified scientists with expertise in climatology, meteorology, and other related fields question the media-driven “conventional wisdom” on climate change. More than 400 were recently highlighted by the staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Hundreds of scientists and researchers have signed the Manhattan Declaration stating “human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.” Lordy, lordy.

According to the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, even “full and perfect compliance” with the Kyoto Protocol on global warming would mean the average global temperature in 2050 would be only 0.2° F lower than it would be in the absence of emissions controls. But its impact on Black and Hispanic communities in the U.S. could cost minorities 1.3 million jobs in 2012. There's a weird sort of emphasis on Kyoto for the We Get It folks; Kyoto was never intended to be a silver bullet, but to serve as a platform for further greenhouse gas reductions. We're pretty much in a post-Kyoto period, at this point. But since they brought it up...as far the big fat job losses among America's diverse populations, it took me forever to track that down, but those figures have been touted by Dobson for the last ten years, which in turn had been pulled from this - a report put out by the Energy Information Administration back in 1998. You may view said report here, keeping this in mind - it also predicted a rise of 53% in gasoline prices with implementation of Kyoto (a gallon of gas cost about a buck back in 1998), and global warming skeptics are well-represented in it's acknowledgments section.

Efforts to cut greenhouse gases hurt the poor. By making energy less affordable and accessible, mandatory emissions reductions would drive up the costs of consumer products, stifle economic growth, cost jobs, and impose especially harmful effects on the Earth's poorest people. Stunning. First, not everyone measures progress and health by using the free market as a yardstick - not very Christian at all, frankly - but nevermind that. Okay - the effects of global warming notwithstanding, there simply isn't enough oil to share with the two big emerging economies of China and India. We all want development, we all want to raise the standard of living among the poor, whether they're here in Denver or in Shanghai, but oil's for squares, daddy-o, get with the new style (nevermind the myriad externalities of business as usual, again, global warming notwithstanding). As far as costs go, a 2006 paper by the Brit-backed Stern Review reported that one percent of total world GNP dedicated to mitigating the effects of global warming could mean avoiding a world-wide economic crash. Each of the series of increasingly expensive treaties being proposed to fight global warming would cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year, with the multiple treaties gobbling up many times more every year than the estimated one-time price of providing sanitation and clean drinking water to the nearly 2 billion poor people in the world who lack them now. See below...

A panel of eight of the world’s most distinguished economists, including four Nobel laureates, examined various proposals for dealing with climate change by reducing carbon emissions. The expert panel, in what has come to be known as the "Copenhagen Consensus," regarded these proposals as "bad projects" and "having costs that were likely to exceed the benefits." The Consensus here belongs to the Economist, which recently accepted the facts of global warming, and Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptic's Skeptic; this is kind of like me saying that the best videostore in town is the one I work at on the weekends, and I managed to arrive at this conclusion by convening a panel of the store's clerks and customers who come three times a week.

there is no cure for hot and cold

2008-05-19T09:20:00.006-06:00

"Western Paradise" (Taima Mandala), Japan, Endo Period (1700s-1800s). On display at the Denver Art Museum, Asian Art Department.

The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face. When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and its heaviness. When we feel resentment because the room is too cold, we could meet the cold and feel its iciness and its bite. When we want to complain about the rain, we could feel its wetness instead. When we worry because the wind is shaking our windows, we could meet the wind and hear its sound. Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves. There is no cure for hot and cold. They will go on forever. After we have died, the ebb and flow will still continue. Like the tides of the sea, like day and night - this is the nature of things. Being able to appreciate, being able to look closely, being able to open our minds - this is the core of [loving kindness].

When the rivers and air are polluted, when families and nations are at war, when homeless wanderers fill the highways, these are traditional signs of a dark age. Another is that people become poisoned by self-doubt and become cowards.

Practicing loving-kindness towards ourselves seems as good a way to start illuminating the darkness of difficult times.

Being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.

-- Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-05-16T08:19:00.000-06:00

The Doctor and Donna do the "Planet of the Ood."

fear

2008-05-15T07:33:00.005-06:00

I hear stories about directors who scream at actors, or they trick them somehow to get a performance. And there are some people who try to run the whole business on fear. But I think this is such a joke - it's pathetic and stupid at the same time.

When people are in fear, they don't want to go to work. So many people today have that feeling. Then the fear starts turning into hate, and they begin to hate going to work. Then the hate can turn into anger and people can become angry at their boss and their work.

If I ran my set with fear, I would get 1 percent, not 100 percent, of what I get. And there would be no fun in going down the road together. And it should be fun. In work and in life, we're all supposed to get along. We're supposed to have so much fun, like puppy dogs with our tails wagging. It's supposed to be great living; it's supposed to be fantastic.

Instead of instilling fear, if a company offered a way for everyone in the business to dive within - to start expanding energy and intelligence - people would work overtime for free. They would be far more creative. And the company would just leap forward. This is the way it can be. It's not the way it is, but it could be that way so easily.

-- David Lynch, "Catching the Big Fish."

remember, tuesday is soylent green day

2008-05-13T10:33:00.005-06:00

I know we'll never have Clean Soylent Green - because it's made of people!

ENN, via Reuters:

CLEAR FORK, West Virginia (Reuters) - Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are talking more about "clean coal" and less about global warming as they woo voters in West Virginia and Kentucky -- two states that sit at the heart of the nation's coal economy.

In a bid to draw voters ahead of Democratic primaries in West Virginia on Tuesday and Kentucky on May 20, both candidates are playing up the ascendant role of commercially untested and so far economically nonviable ways of converting America's plentiful coal supplies into electricity without spewing massive quantities of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

"We need some big investments right now in figuring out how to capture and store carbon dioxide from coal," Clinton told a rally in the rural town of Clear Fork on Monday.

To get there, she took a windy road through the Appalachian Mountains that passed at least four big coal mines cut into the mountainside.

Not to be outdone, Obama's campaign has distributed flyers in Kentucky stating that "Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal." The flyers show a picture of giant barges carrying coal down the Ohio River.

Coal-fired power plants generate about half of U.S. electricity supplies, and account for about 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions -- the biggest single industrial source.

Clinton has a plan to require U.S. industry to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, but she hasn't brought that up in numerous appearances in West Virginia and Kentucky in recent days.

But America has 250 years worth of coal, and will likely remain the backbone of its power generation system for decades. "I know how important coal is to West Virginia," Clinton said last week in the state's capitol rotunda in Charleston. "Coal is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future."

Candidates' support for clean coal indicates a tension between their need to bring along delegate-rich coal states like Pennsylvania and Illinois and their global warming platforms.

"There is no such animal as clean coal," said Brent Blackwelder, president of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. "We shouldn't be placing our bets on coal to bail us out. We need to be looking at getting rid of coal plants."

Among Eastern U.S. states, West Virginia and Kentucky lead the pack in coal production and employ about half of U.S. coal industry workers -- about 39,000 people.

Both candidates support legislation that could be debated by the Senate this summer that would require U.S. industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70 percent by 2050.

Coal states don't hold the same clout as Farm Belt states who control about a quarter of U.S. Electoral College votes and have pushed for higher government mandates to boost U.S. consumption of ethanol -- made mostly from corn.

But "Big Coal" states are not to be ignored on the electoral map. And as the Democratic presidential process comes down to the wire, coal plays prominently in three of the six remaining primaries including Montana on June 3.

This is the sort of thing that makes a blogger wanna vote Nader: for starters, coal in West Virginia and coal in Montana are different things. In West Virginia, coal extraction is an extremely intrusive process that utterly ruins the local ecology; elsewhere, though not exactly a healthy thing, it's in essence a matter of turning the ground over. In addition, coal isn't "just coal" - because of Clean Air Act provisions, some coal is usable here in America, and some is not. On top of this the whole 250-years-of-coal thing is totally false. The U.S. may have 250 years of coal, but much like the problem presented by peak oil, you have to get to it first, then move it out, etc. And then there's the Clean Air provisions, which cuts down on the actual amount of coal that can be developed.

West Virginia has been attempting to organize its' economy around coal for the last 150 years. Politicians back then wondered aloud why that state had not reached the economic and cultural level of economic centers like New York or Boston. This was at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, when there was ostensible "room" for coal in this country; pandering to a beaten down electorate that believes one more smashed mountaintop or one more dangerous mineshaft will finally, finally put the state right - in a period of human history, not just national history, where we have no choice but to phase the stuff out of our lives - is sad.

get yr hansen on

2008-05-12T07:11:00.002-06:00

Climate-fu master James Hansen.

Head of NASA's Godard Institute for Space Studies, your friend and mine, James Hansen has just put out what Grist describes as a layman-friendly paper on where our climate's at: "Tipping Point, perspective of a climatologist."

friday doctor who blogging

2008-05-09T08:17:00.000-06:00

Ood art!

get yr survey on

2008-05-08T08:57:00.004-06:00

The lovely Sienna Miller has nothing to do with surveys.

National Geographic's Greendex Survey is making some news in some corners of the Internets; a full report may be found here (pdf), and you may take the survey yrself right here.

I'm kinda wondering just how robust the instrument is - though I scored relatively high, I had to pause and ruminate over more than few questions, not because they were provocative or anything, but they weren't exactly appicable to how I live and what's available to me. For example, one question asks whether or not you have a fuel efficient vehicle, such as a hybrid. I do have a particularly fuel efficient vehicle - a bike - but is that the same as a hybrid, even for the purpose of this survey? Do I answer no (and the follow-up is, would I get one soon)? Check it out and drop a comment about what you think.

you can't win

2008-05-07T07:26:00.008-06:00

Above: discovered beneath Dex's bed over the weekend.

Posting will probably be light over the next week, maybe longer: For the last month or so I have been temping at an apartment leasing office for Section 8 residents which was suffering from a long-term bed bug infestation, and late Saturday morning, after numerous assurances to the contrary, I discovered that in all likelihood I brought some home with me (I'll never be able to look at brown rice the same way again). So not only do I not have a job as of this post - again - I have also chucked my bed and have had to throw down for a bunch of giant plastic tubs to keep my clothes and things in, resulting in a true feat of econo-fuckery by which this temp thing will end up costing me more than I actually made in the first place.

There is probably something very valuable for me to see or learn from sleeping on the floor and wondering how I'm going to pay for food, at least in terms of meditation practice or karma or something, but I'm not fucking seeing it, Siddhartha, you ass.

Anywho. While I try to piece things back together here at the Lab, check out local blogging big wig Wash Park Prophet's keen observations on local and national political races; the political economy of deforestation and weather in Southeast Asia; looking back at HRC in PA with Taibbi; and the anatomy of a firing (with bonus best line EVER: "There is all this mystique about dioxin...Just because it's there doesn't mean there is an imminent health threat.")

because apparently, it's just not enough to commit outrages against things that walk on two legs or four

2008-05-03T09:30:00.005-06:00

This? This is heartwarming. This? Riddled with heart disease.

A Buddhist might say that one of the problems with attachment - that is, with being attached to things, or people, or ideas - is that it you can never be attached enough - that no matter how tightly you may be holding onto a thing, you'll always be dead certain you could be holding on tighter. I'm pretty sure this is called neurosis.

At some point - say, when your attachment to the notion of the ultimo executivo and the privilege campaign contributions purchase comes at the cost of the last few surviving members of an entire species of whale - this stops being neurotic and starts being tragedy.

This sucks for me, because I have real trouble being compassionate for seriously tragic motherfuckers, and this fucks up my meditation practice. Fucks it right up. So help me by clicking on through for some background. It's dated, but I'll bet that maybe a friendly call or email or two might make a world of difference.

otis in action

2008-05-02T14:48:00.006-06:00

Monk ponders Shoun Otis' next big move.

I have been meaning to get to this for like the last three weeks, with no excuses for mentioning it sooner, so here goes: long-time-friend-o-the-Lab and Capitol Hill's underground art and publishing ronin, Shoun Otis (nee Flynn), has a slick new photo and text mag out called Growing Strange. I don't have the links to the site for purchase in front of me, but you can go here to take a look at issue one, or head over to Shoun's MySpace page, drop a note, and dollars to donuts he can give you the hookup.

world's finest?

2008-05-02T09:52:00.005-06:00

The Lab's winning ticket.

Obama - A Man of Steel, or The Dark Knight?

I suppose the follow up would be: America - Metropolis, or Gotham City?

friday doctor who blogging

2008-05-02T07:39:00.002-06:00

Donna and the Doctor making the scene in "The Fires of Pompeii," showing tonight on SciFi.

smiles we left behind

2008-05-01T09:06:00.006-06:00

Memories,
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were

Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? could we?

Memories, may be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So its the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember...
The way we were...
The way we were...

in the future, news stories about lefty black preachers and partially-nude teen stars will be carbon neutral

2008-04-30T09:04:00.004-06:00

The future - we're waiting for you!

Just in case you missed it:

* Poison, poison, everywhere, but apparently, no one bothers to check anymore;

* more and more proof that the emerging, tricked-out, and totally futuristic green economy so highly touted by the two Dem candidates for president may be a total hustle;

* and the Arctic? Yeah, that shit is still melting. Fast.

I am hardly one to scold, however; I have spent most of the last two weeks holed up here in the Lab and watching basketball and mourning broken relationships with girls I thought I was going to get married to.

remember, tuesday is soylent green day

2008-04-29T08:18:00.004-06:00

What about the criminality of soylent green? Doesn't the U.N. know it's made of people?

ENS:

GENEVA, Switzerland - The United States and the European Union have taken a "criminal path" by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food said today.

At a press conference in Geneva, Jean Ziegler of Switzerland said that fuel policies pursued by the U.S. and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis.

Ziegler was speaking before a meeting in Bern, Switzerland between UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of key United Nations agencies.

Ziegler said that last year the United States used a third of its corn crop to create biofuels, while the European Union is planning to have 10 percent of its petrol supplied by biofuels.

The Special Rapporteur has called for a five-year moratorium on the production of biofuels.

Ziegler also said that speculation on international markets is behind 30 percent of the increase in food prices.

He said that companies such as Cargill, which controls a quarter of all cereal production, have enormous power over the market. He added that hedge funds are also making huge profits from raw materials markets, and called for new financial regulations to prevent such speculation.

The Special Rapporteur warned of worsening food riots and a "horrifying" increase in deaths by starvation before reforms could take effect.

But nevermind the "horrifying" starvation, here's the big fat profit margin.

i am dreaming that rush limbaugh eats one too many viagra and gets a blood clot or an erection that lasts four hours or more

2008-04-25T14:26:00.007-06:00

Sometimes a cigar is a cigar, just as an incitement is an incitement.

Now, I am not inspiring or inciting Rush Limbaugh to eat one too many viagra and get a blood clot or an erection that lasts four hours or more. I'm dreaming.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-04-25T08:11:00.002-06:00

Happy Series Four Day!

Best Doctor Ever David Tennant's 3rd outing officially begins tonight on SciFi. Click up there somewhere for a peek at what this season has in store.

all those delegates will be lost in time, like tears in the rain

2008-04-23T14:24:00.003-06:00

"More Democrat than Democrat, that's our motto."

People who are way smarter than I am have made the case that Saint Nader's runs in '00, '04, and now '08 are delusions of his ego: efforts on his behalf to punish and hurt, if not destroy the Democratic Party.

If that's the case, then what the hell happened last night? Can all this be really good for the Dems? Who's rolling the dice with the Party now?

...and now back to your regularly scheduled environmental catastrophe

2008-04-23T08:16:00.002-06:00

Can't wait for all those after-Earth Day bargains!

Toronto Star:

New Arctic sea ice is now so perilously thin on average that it melts under the sunshine of clear summer skies it once could survive, American researchers conclude in a study published today.

"When we had similar weather patterns in the past, they didn't appear to have as strong an effect on sea ice," said Jennifer Kay, an atmospheric scientist who led the U.S. research team.

"Now because the ice is thinner you can have a chain reaction of runaway melting with a reduction in cloud cover," she said.

Research has linked the thinning of Arctic ice to warmer average temperatures caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases from human activities. Readings from U.S. submarines indicate a widespread reduction in sea ice thickness of 40 per cent since 1960.

The melting is also increased because the darker surface of open water absorbs the sun's rays as heat rather than reflecting them back into space like ice and snow.

There's still time, though, to shop and save the planet.

happy earth day

2008-04-22T08:50:00.002-06:00

A blast from the past:

The terrible snow-storms which sweep over the northern portion of Eurasia in the later part of the winter, and the glazed frost that often follows them; the frosts and the snow-storms which return every year in the second half of May, when the trees are already in full blossom and insect life swarms everywhere; the early frosts and, occasionally, the heavy snowfalls in July and August, which suddenly destroy myriads of insects, as well as the second broods of the birds in the prairies; the torrential rains, due to the monsoons, which fall in more temperate regions in August and September -- resulting in inundations on a scale which is only known in America and in Eastern Asia, and swamping, on the plateaus, areas as wide as European States; and finally, the heavy snowfalls, early in October, which eventually render a territory as large as France and Germany, absolutely impracticable for ruminants, and destroy them by the thousand -- these were the conditions under which I saw animal life struggling in Northern Asia. They made me realize at an early date the overwhelming importance in Nature of what Darwin described as "the natural checks to over-multiplication," in comparison to the struggle between individuals of the same species for the means of subsistence, which may go on here and there, to some limited extent, but never attains the importance of the former. Paucity of life, under-population -- not over-population -- being the distinctive feature of that immense part of the globe which we name Northern Asia, I conceived since then serious doubts -- which subsequent study has only confirmed -- as to the reality of that fearful competition for food and life within each species, which was an article of faith with most Darwinists, and, consequently, as to the dominant part which this sort of competition was supposed to play in the evolution of new species.

On the other hand, wherever I saw animal life in abundance, as, for instance, on the lakes where scores of species and millions of individuals came together to rear their progeny; in the colonies of rodents; in the migrations of birds which took place at that time on a truly American scale along the Usuri; and especially in a migration of fallow-deer which I witnessed on the Amur, and during which scores of thousands of these intelligent animals came together from an immense territory, flying before the coming deep snow, in order to cross the Amur where it is narrowest -- in all these scenes of animal life which passed before my eyes, I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution.

And finally, I saw among the semi-wild cattle and horses in Transbaikalia, among the wild ruminants everywhere, the squirrels, and so on, that when animals have to struggle against scarcity of food, in consequence of one of the above-mentioned causes, the whole of that portion of the species which is affected by the calamity, comes out of the ordeal so much impoverished in vigour and health, that no progressive evolution of the species can be based upon such periods of keen competition.

[snip]

Several works of importance were published in the years 1872-1886, dealing with the intelligence and the mental life of animals (they are mentioned in a footnote in Chapter I of this book), and three of them dealt more especially with the subject under consideration; namely, Les Sociétés animales, by Espinas (Paris, 1877); La Lutte pour l'existence et l'association pout la lutte, a lecture by J.L. Lanessan (April 1881); and Louis Böchner's book, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, of which the first edition appeared in 1882 or 1883, and a second, much enlarged, in 1885. But excellent though each of these works is, they leave ample room for a work in which Mutual Aid would be considered, not only as an argument in favour of a pre-human origin of moral instincts, but also as a law of Nature and a factor of evolution. Espinas devoted his main attention to such animal societies (ants, bees) as are established upon a physiological division of labour, and though his work is full of admirable hints in all possible directions, it was written at a time when the evolution of human societies could not yet be treated with the knowledge we now possess. Lanessan's lecture has more the character of a brilliantly laid-out general plan of a work, in which mutual support would be dealt with, beginning with rocks in the sea, and then passing in review the world of plants, of animals and men. As to Büchner's work, suggestive though it is and rich in facts, I could not agree with its leading idea. The book begins with a hymn to Love, and nearly all its illustrations are intended to prove the existence of love and sympathy among animals. However, to reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour -- whom I often do not know at all -- which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy -- an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life.

We're all in it together. It's how we were made.

28 megabytes later

2008-04-21T19:02:00.004-06:00

Not only did the virus make everyone into mindless cannibals, they got all crazy, went on shopping sprees, then started shipping all of our old DVD players to the 2/3rds World, too.

Toronto Star, via UN Newswire:

Have you ever wondered what became of your VHS player? How about that old computer with the black and green monitor, or your first cellphone that was the size of a loaf of bread?

With people constantly upgrading their computers, TVs and cellphones, electronic waste, or e-waste, has quickly become the fastest growing component of solid waste. Compounding the problem, e-waste is often extremely toxic.

Despite international agreements that prohibit the import and export of hazardous waste, shipments of broken electronic devices continue to pour into the harbours of Kenya, India and China.

The reason is strictly financial. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates it's up to 10 times cheaper to export e-waste than to dispose of it domestically.

Mercury, barium, lead and cadmium are just a few of the dangerous elements that can be found in discarded devices. Many more toxic materials are used in the salvaging process that recovers the gold, silver, copper and other valuable metals found in computers, cellphones and TVs.

Harper's chewed on the possibility of a no-growth future in last month's book review section (pdf), an idea economists (some economists, at least) seem ready to entertain.

open your thread to me

2008-04-15T12:10:00.002-06:00

Doing an alleged grad school thing this week. I stress alleged.

In the meantime, it's what's-on-yr-nightstand open thread: As an alleged environmental studies student, I've been trying to catch up on enviro books, so I've got Mike Davis' avian flu book Monster at Our Door queued up; a pair of peak oil books: The Party's Over (mostly for teh thesis); Internal Combustion (mostly for my brain); and David Brock's Blinded by the Right (not so enviromental-y).

What's in yours?

friday doctor who blogging

2008-04-11T08:07:00.001-06:00

Wrapping up Peter Davison and "Four to Doomsday." And don't forget, SciFi premeries 'The Sarah Jane Adventures,' tonight at 5:30 pm (MT).

Man, Nyssa was cute.

warm it up, yo

2008-04-10T08:16:00.004-06:00

Global warming is so wickety-wickety-whack!

The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization:

The American West has warmed 70 percent more than the planet as a whole, according to a new analysis in a report released today by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The West’s most pronounced temperature increase is in the Colorado River basin, which has warmed more than twice as much as the global average, with effects that put at risk a major water supply for over 30 million people from Denver to Los Angeles.

According to the report’s new analysis of temperature data, the last five years, 2003 through 2007, in the 11 western states were 1.7 degrees warmer than the region’s 20th century average. That is 70 percent more than the global increase of 1.0 degree, measured in the same way. The West’s warming has been greatest in the Colorado River basin, covering parts of seven states, where the last five years were 2.2 degrees warmer than the 20th century average. That is the greatest increase in temperatures in the United States outside of Alaska. Across the West, the increases in temperature are linked to less snowfall, smaller snowpacks, and earlier snowmelt, affecting the 70 percent of western water supplies that come from snowmelt. Particularly vulnerable is the Colorado River, which is the major source of water in the West’s arid and semiarid interior.

“Scientists have been saying that heat-trapping gases will make the West hotter and drier, and our analysis shows that the changes are already well underway,” said Stephen Saunders, president of RMCO and one of the report’s principal authors.

“Global warming is hitting the West hard,” said Theo Spencer of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “It is already taking an economic toll on the region’s tourism, recreation, skiing, hunting and fishing activities. The speed of warming and mounting economic damage make clear the urgent need to limit global warming pollution.”

Summary report may be found here (pdf).

the way of the bodhisattva (excerpt)

2008-04-09T08:54:00.000-06:00

May all beings everywhere
Plagued by sufferings of body and mind,
Obtain an ocean of happiness and joy
By virtue of my merits.

May no living creature suffer,
Commit evil or ever fall ill.
May no one be afraid or belittled,
With a mind weighed down by depression.

May the blind see forms
And the deaf hear sounds.
May those whose bodies are worn with toil
Be restored on finding repose.

May the naked find clothing
The hungry find food;
May the thirsty find water
And delicious drinks.

May the poor find wealth,
Those weak with sorrow find joy;
May the forlorn find hope,
Constant happiness and prosperity.

May there be timely rains
And bountiful harvests;
May all medicines be effective
And wholesome prayers bear fruit.

May all who are sick and ill
Quickly be freed from their ailments.
Whatever diseases there are in the world,
May they never occur again.

May the frightened cease to be afraid
And those bound be freed;
May the powerless find power
And may people think of benefiting each other.

--- Shantideva

in case you were wondering

2008-04-07T13:49:00.003-06:00

Joe Biden (weirdly enough, an early presidential favorite of the Rolling Stone blog) is still an incredible asshole. With ridiculous hair.

bush admin to women: rape? too "complex"

2008-04-04T10:11:00.003-06:00

A DOJ spokesman responds.

Mister Scott Horton:

The really astonishing thing about this case, the Jones case, and scores of others like them is the attitude of the U.S. Department of Justice: it is one of official indifference to crime involving American contractors–even when American contractors are the victims. When pressed to explain its inaction, Justice Department spokesmen typically respond with complete silence, or they mutter semi-incoherent gibberish about “inadequate resources” and “legal complexities.”

But the Justice Department commands massive resources and how it chooses to allocate them is in the hands of the Department’s political overlords. And their attitudes can be wonderfully exemplified by the fifty-plus agents assigned to assist in the raid of a Michigan law office under suspicion of violating campaign finance rules in raising money for a Democratic presidential contender. One of the FBI agents involved, shaking his head, says he was recalled from important field work in Iraq for the political caper. Or by assignment of a large crew of agents to stake out the Mayflower Hotel to cover a Valentine’s Day tryst involving Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer. At the same time that resources were being lavished on a politically-inspired effort to show that Spitzer used prostitutes and to shake-up the Albany statehouse, the Justice Department apparently concluded it wasn’t really interested in looking into the rape and mistreatment of Lisa Smith.

Yes, very complex indeed.

More before from Horton here.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-04-04T08:09:00.000-06:00

More Peter Davison in "Four to Doomsday."

reason #4,102 to bring the lone gunmen back

2008-04-03T14:38:00.004-06:00

'The Lone Gunmen' has never been popular with Guantanamo Bay torture squads, but '24' apparently is.

ashes of time

2008-03-30T10:44:00.005-06:00

Natalie Portman requests you keep hope alive until Dex returns.

The weirdness continues; I won't be back until later this week, if at all. See if you can connect the dots between the ramblings of Bjorn Lomborg and Copenhagen, the perversity of hope, H.P. Lovecraft and the prehistory of mitochondria, and the fact that taking up issues doesn't always mean approaching solutions.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-03-28T06:57:00.001-06:00

Get your Davison on!

campaign dexter 2008: "a shannyn sossamon in every home!"

2008-03-24T18:46:00.006-06:00

There's got to be a Shannyn Sossamon waiting for me at the end of all this. Or at least the employment equivalent thereof.

I keep joking with one of my classmates that it's becoming more and more obvious advanced degree = job only if you're into building bombs. Apparently, it's not just sour grapes.

Another weird week; I don't know if I'll make it back before some Doctor Who blogging this Friday. In the meantime, take a look at this.

friday doctor who blogging (early bird edition)

2008-03-20T20:33:00.004-06:00

I don't quite know where I'm going to be tomorrow - that's Friday - so we're going to check in with the Doctor Five episode, "Four to Doomsday" a little earlier than usual. And here's some fine news, some very fine news.

because all you of earth are idiots

2008-03-20T09:14:00.002-06:00

"Stupid, stupid!"

The aliens of Indian Country.

arthur c. clarke

2008-03-19T10:06:00.000-06:00

1917-2008.

remember, tuesday is soylent green day

2008-03-18T11:40:00.004-06:00

I know Soylent Green hurts my feelings - because it's made of people!

PR Watch:

A pair of agriculture groups has temporarily suspended about $1.5 million in grants to the University of Minnesota to protest a controversial study by U scientists earlier this month about biofuels and global warming," reports Tom Meersman. The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, which funds university research into soybean use, cut off the funds after university scientist David Tilman published a study that found that dedicating huge amounts of land to grow corn, soybeans, sugarcane and other food crops for fuel could drastically change the landscape and worsen global warming. "The university hurt the farmers' feelings, OK? That's probably the best way to say it," said Jim Palmer, executive director of the two soybean groups.

doom, doom, doom, doom

2008-03-17T10:17:00.007-06:00

Don't know much about the economy...

Counterpunch has two good posts on today's happy happy joy joy economic news, first on teh bailout, second on that nasty trade deficit. Based on everyfuckingthing that's happened since 2000 as well as the fact that they share a great deal of responsibility for the swinging economic outlook, I kinda somehow doubt that Our Insect Overlords will be acting in good faith and with keen insight and judgement; but who knows, maybe Congress...blah blah or something.

I do know two friends, both with big techie backgrounds - one is still jobless and living off savings, the other just took a job as a cab driver. Another two are just out of grad school and discovering that the word "adjunct faculty" is actually French for "we'll pay you $1500 for four months' work, please try living off of that." And then there's me: I took off from a contract job about this time last year that was costing me around $2,000 every tax day. I figured that by this time, I'd have a halfway decent position befitting someone who's borrowed as much as I have to pay for a master's degree, ho ho. Instead, I spent last Thursday morning at a temp agency downtown, and this week I may have a tryout with a local organizing group, organizing being something I in fact have very little talent for. I didn't think it was possible, but this morning I've actually found a new little reservoir of loathing for this president and his minder for fucking up the job market I was supposed to be reentering. That, and I've been experiencing whole new waves of fear I've never felt before - loan payments, catfood, homelessness. That motherfucker can keep his $300 - I want a fucking job, man (but of course, there's this piece of cheer, so maybe it doesn't matter what I'm doing for a living).

The upshot, anyway, is that I've discovered you can dry out a coffee filter, use it again, and a lot of time there's like a whole half-scoop you can get out of it after it's all dried out.

More doom here (with a healthy dose of Spitzer), here, and here (via teh Shrill).

the saudia arabia of updates to link-dumping posts

2008-03-17T09:52:00.005-06:00

More Alec Guinness for your money!

Just to add to the post below: an energy future that's highly localized would also bring that portion of the economy "home." I'm reading up on the Sagebrush-style protests that took place in the Klamath Basin in Washington (to compliment another I wrote last semester on the active metaphors among Earth Liberation Front members), and while there's a lot of gibberish and paranoia and just plain wrong-headedness in their worldview (especially as it pertains to environmentalism), there's a really vivid disconnect there. Though many of these people can't envision a new politics of community, one that would join or marry "the city" with "the farm," they also point out that people in places like Denver haven't much of a clue where their food comes from (regardless of whether or not farmers like the ones in Klamath honestly believe they're really "feeding" America).

It's the same with energy. It's still a black box to us. A massive shift to a decentralized energy - well, for a lack of a better word - grid would change all of that. Just think of how differently we'd locate ourselves within our communities, and what roles we'd take on. I mean - I rent, right (from a total schmuck, btw)? How different would that interaction be if you'd need to consider how you'd be lighting or warming that room or rooms?

the saudi arabia of link-dumping

2008-03-14T11:28:00.002-06:00

Today your neighbor, tomorrow your friendly neighborhood sheik.

Happy Friday, Labrateers: so maybe the future isn't going to be President's Committees, cartels or conglomerations but garage-based start-ups, neighborhood associations, and co-ops.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-03-14T10:52:00.004-06:00

The Best Doctor Ever gets intense with the Sexiest TARDIS Crew Ever.

There's more TGIF coolness over at Denver's - nay, the World's - Best Group Movie Blog Ever**.

**Best Group Movie Blog Ever that's run by video store and ex-video store clerks.

too sexy for your special prosecutor

2008-03-13T12:31:00.003-06:00

So sexy/it hurts the national interest

Scott Horton, over at Harper's excellent No Comment blog, just speculatin' about a hypothesis:

The Bush Justice Department complains it has no resources to investigate or deal with the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, a woman from Houston who was gang-raped, brutalized and held hostage by American contractors in Iraq. It claims it has no resources to deal with dozens of similar cases involving rape and assault by or against U.S. citizens. It has no resources to deal with hundreds of cases involving massive contract fraud, tallying into the billions of dollars, in Iraq. Its prosecution of white-collar crime across the country has fallen through the floor. But this same Justice Department allocates millions in resources to ensnare a prominent Democratic politician in a sex tryst at the Mayflower Hotel. This evidences an extremely curious set of priorities—priorities which are suspiciously driven by a partisan politics, not a sober and responsible interest in law enforcement.

remember, tuesday is soylent green day

2008-03-11T20:12:00.003-06:00

The real dead zone is that swath of the Gulf choked with Soylent Green - because it's made of people!

Reuters, via CD:

Growing more corn to meet the projected U.S. demand for ethanol could worsen an expanding “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico that is bad for crawfish, shrimp and local fisheries, researchers reported on Monday.

The dead zone is a huge area of water — some 7,700 square miles — that forms above the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico every summer. It contains very low levels of oxygen.

The dead zone starts in Midwestern corn country when farmers fertilize their fields with nitrogen. The fertilizer run-off flows down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, making algae bloom on the surface and cutting oxygen to creatures that live on the bottom.

The low levels of oxygen in the zone make it difficult for crustaceans and bottom-feeding fish to survive, said Simon Donner, who worked on the study published the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Crustaceans will likely struggle to stay alive, Donner said by telephone. Fish will swim out of the zone, potentially devastating local fisheries, he said.

“We’re already at a point where recommendations have been made that nitrogen levels in the Mississippi River have to decrease by up to … 55 percent in order to shrink the dead zone,” said Donner, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

“And now with this incentive to produce more corn and use more fertilizer, we’re pushing in the other direction,” Donner said. “The two policies are just completely incongruous.”

The change candidate, while pretty good on the environment, is nonetheless a big supporter for getting creative with corn.

what's the buzz/tell me what's a-happening

2008-03-10T10:15:00.004-06:00

Rockin' good news? Or 'Ghost Rider' lame?

Sayeth teh Times:

Signaling a significant departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on global warming, 44 Southern Baptist leaders have decided to back a declaration calling for more action on climate change, saying its previous position on the issue was “too timid.”

The largest denomination in the United States after the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, with more than 16 million members, is politically and theologically conservative.

Yet its current president, the Rev. Frank Page, signed the initiative, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change.” Two past presidents of the convention, the Rev. Jack Graham and the Rev. James Merritt, also signed.

“We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice,” the church leaders wrote in their new declaration.

A 2007 resolution passed by the convention hewed to a more skeptical view of global warming.

In contrast, the new declaration, which will be released Monday, states, “Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed.”

Strong stuff. Thing of it is, though - the thing of it is, is that enviros and the newsies jump all over this, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lotta follow up. Some might say that the dominant paradigm for journos is that evangelicals = God, guns, gays, that they conveniently and consistently ignore Good Works, and that there's little impetus to really flog it like it needs to be flogged. Others aren't sold, and point to the fact that the nexus of groups and interests that make up the Christian Right, like any good special interest, will going to continue to go with what is most effective.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-03-07T10:08:00.002-07:00

Cue the synth and put on your neon shoelaces: Friday's feeling so mid-80's with the Sixth Doctor and Peri.

maybe only the fourth doctor knows for sure

2008-03-05T17:57:00.005-07:00

"The answer may be over there somewhere..."

The jury, apparently, is still out on that super-fancy Norwegian seed bank hidden away in the Arctic (and backed by something a little more substantial than my weepy, post-break-up, no-job-havin' blogposts).

So: seeds of hope? Or seeds of doom?

gary gygax

2008-03-05T17:53:00.001-07:00

1939-2008.

smells like more stupid

2008-03-04T14:01:00.002-07:00

The truth - it is like marbles in my mouth!

It seems as though stupid is the watchword in environmentalism this week. Via ThinkProgress:

Last night [03/03/08] on his CNN Headline News show, Glenn Beck exclaimed that he’d be covering the Heartland Institute’s global warming denier conference “like it was the second coming of Jesus himself.”

[snip]

...Heartland’s sham conference has created quite a media stir. The New York Times has published two separate articles on the conference, and the Times’ John Tierney has written about it on his blog.

Other mainstream press outlets that have covered the conference: the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, the New York Sun, and Reuters.

In fact, getting the media to cover the real science behind climate change is sometimes more of a challenge. As the League of Conservation Voters recently pointed out, the leading Sunday political talk show hosts have dedicated 0.1 percent of their 2,275 questions to global warming.

Via the mighty mighty Cursor, the debunkers are, in fact, teh debunked.

And my God, Glenn Beck again. In a sane world, the closest this guy would've gotten to success in television would've been as Kooky Cook Cookie's wig wrangler. That motherfucker makes me wonder what I'm doing in grad school if he can get three hours on teevee every weekenight.

halloween came early this year

2008-03-03T13:31:00.002-07:00

Mind, tricks on me, etc., etc.

Doom, doom, doom.

those who can't, blog

2008-03-03T12:42:00.002-07:00

My angry, childish attack on mumblecore is up on Denver's coolest new group blog, the Denver Projection Booth.

What is mumblecore? Why should you care? What's all this about projection booths? Click on through and find out...

memes, memes, the musical fruit

2008-03-03T11:53:00.003-07:00

Above: smelt it, also dealt it.

USA Too-day:

The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.

The '70s was an unusually cold decade. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and National Geographic published articles at the time speculating on the causes of the unusual cold and about the possibility of a new ice age.

But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.

The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

"A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales."

"I was surprised that global warming was so dominant in the peer-reviewed literature of the time," says Peterson, who was also a contributor to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report.

Scientific reports in the past decade, most notably the U.N. panel's Nobel Prize-winning efforts, have warned that human activities are warming the planet by increasing the release of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases into the atmosphere.

You can stand a-thwart history and yell all you want. History don't care, yo.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-02-29T09:31:00.002-07:00

The Fifth Doctor starts the weekend off right.

mind you, i don't know if you've ever considered the advantages of clicking on the encyclopedia of life link

2008-02-27T11:33:00.003-07:00

Eric Idle shows us how easy it can be to sell an Encyclopedia of Life.

Grist is reporting that the (loosely) E.O. Wilson-conceived "Encylopedia of Life" is up and a-running, but a click on through to the other side and it looks as though they're having server trouble. Methinks you should explore the site anywho, as it may be the coolest thing going on the internets - like a Trekked-out, updated version of those National Geographic flashcards you got when you were six.

remember, tuesday is soylent green day

2008-02-26T11:34:00.004-07:00

I hope they don't plan on keeping Soylent Green at this seed bank - because it's made of people!

ENN:

LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY — The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened today on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries. With the deposits ranging from unique varieties of major African and Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and sorghum to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, the first deposits into the seed vault represent the most comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds being held anywhere in the world.

At the opening ceremony, the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, unlocked the vault and, together with the African Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai, he placed the first seeds in the vault. The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and a host of dignitaries and agriculture experts from around the globe deposited seeds during the ceremony. A variety of Norwegian musicians and choirs also performed in the opening ceremony held 130 metres deep inside the frozen mountain.

Built near the village of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen, the vault at its inception contains 268,000 distinct samples of seeds—each one originating from a different farm or field in the world. Each sample may contain hundreds of seeds or more. In all, the shipments of seeds secured in the vault today weighed approximately 10 tonnes, filling 676 boxes.

The opening of the seed vault is part of an unprecedented effort to protect the planet’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity. The diversity of our crops is essential for food production, yet it is being lost. This “fail-safe” facility, dug deep into the frozen rock of an Arctic mountain, will secure for centuries, or longer, hundreds of millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today. As well as protecting against the daily loss of diversity, the vault could also prove indispensable for restarting agricultural production at the regional or global level in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster.

Contingencies for climate change have been worked into the plan. Even in the worst-case scenarios of global warming, the vault rooms will remain naturally frozen for up to 200 years.

“With climate change and other forces threatening the diversity of life that sustains our planet, Norway is proud to be playing a central role in creating a facility capable of protecting what are not just seeds, but the fundamental building blocks of human civilization,” said Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

I happened to catch this bit on CNN when I woke up. Maybe it was my mood - most mornings I typically tune into CNN (after watching Democracy Now!, of course) for about 10 or 15 minutes in the vague hope that the Dow and the Nasdaq are doing well enough that the good news will trickle down to job posts on Cragslist - but I couldn't help but feel like this had the faint whiff of gloomy, dystopian resignation to it, like it was truly not meant for "us" in any sense of the word we can grasp.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-02-22T11:55:00.002-07:00

Okay, so, the mighty Dex-o-puter is back, and I'm only $300 poorer for it.

This has been a really lame semester, yo: I can't find sane women to date, the thesis has been delayed to the point where I might not graduate until the summer, my birthday sucked and sucked and sucked, people keep wanting to take money from me I don't have, and no one else wants to give me a job. Life around the Lab is teh blargh right now...

Anywho, regular blogging to begin again soon. In the meanwhiles, enjoy some Best Doctor Ever. He keeps me 'appy. I hope he does the same for youse.

i'm here but baby come back sometime

2008-01-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

The Dex-o-Tronic 5000 crashed for ominous reasons Sunday night, putting both my thesis as well as daily newsgathering in jeopardy . Since I have no idea how long I'll be, I'm going to take this oppo to call a brief blogging hiatus. Ready, go...

blogging to go

2008-01-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

Oh my God, yes oh my God.

Light posting for the next week or so - I've got a third draft of a thesis-lit-review-that-won't-just-fucking-die to bust out, job interviews, and a seminar all of the next seven days or so.

While I go out of my mind, please enjoy:

* how out-of-work CIA men and women score a buck;

* Coal is Hell (and is also fronting dollars and cents for all those damn debates on CNN);

* why dirt matters;

* and finally, Barbara Ehrenreich, the female body, and the economy...

teh reason for teh season

2008-01-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We need to find an inner peace which makes it possible for us to become one with those who suffer, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters, which is to say, ourselves. I know many young people who are aware of the real situation of the world and who are filled with compassion. They refuse to hide themselves in artificial peace, and they engage the world in order to change society. They know what they want, yet after a period of involvement they become discouraged. Why? It is because they lack deep, inner peace, the kind of peace they can take with them into their life of action. Our strength is not in weapons, money, or power. Or strength is in our peace, the peace within us. This peace makes us indestructible. We must have peace while taking care of those love and those we want to protect.

--- Thich Nhat Hanh, "The Sun My Heart"

a coal miner's blotter

2008-01-18T12:28:00.000-07:00

God gave us a heart to forgive the coal industry.

Via Ezra, Grist's David Roberts posts on the strange saga of Kathleen Sebelius.

Also, ignore the idiot comments - sadly, Grist commentators seem to rank right down there with the so-called peaceniks over at CommonDreams who babble on about making revolution in the streets or ominously suggesting that so-and-so official off themselves so that Dennis Kucinich can be president - and take a mo' to scroll down to the reply titled, "big coal in Kansas."

On very loosely related matters, another David reminds that teh Bush is still teh preznint.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-01-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

More 'Time Crash'-y goodness.

tales from the snarkside

2008-01-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

But...there is another world...one that's just as real, but not as brightly lit - a snark side!

WaPo:

Two dozen scientists swarmed over Capitol Hill this week mad as vespinae ( hornets) at what they say is Bush administration meddling in environmental science.

Organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Endangered Species Coalition, the rumpled researchers won time in the offices of more than 20 lawmakers. They are protesting what Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, calls "the systematic dismantling of the Endangered Species Act through the manipulation and suppression of science."

On a dash from the House to the Senate, Grifo said the group wants hearings and better congressional oversight of the Interior Department, where Bush appointees control the fate of threatened and endangered species.

The scientists say political appointees at Interior, or those who report to them, have been altering their reports recommending "critical habitat" preservation to favor industries whose interests conflict with the findings.

They singled out decisions by Julie A. MacDonald, former deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks. She was criticized last year by Interior's inspector general for repeatedly instructing scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to change recommendations on safeguarding plants and animals from oil and gas drilling, power lines, and real estate development. MacDonald, who had no science background, resigned in April.

Interior Department spokesman Shane Wolf said Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett met for two hours with the scientists and is committed to maintaining the integrity of endangered species decisions. In July, Scarlett requested that career officials review hundreds of decisions that may have been inappropriately influenced, and eight were found to warrant possible revision.

Many of the scientists on the Hill yesterday were new to Washington ways.

Kim Nelson, a research wildlife biologist based in Corvallis, Ore., is more at home in the woodsy habitat of the marbled murrelet than in the marbled lair of the gray-thatched speechmaker. The murrelet is a small seabird that flies inland to lay its single egg on the moss-covered branches of large trees also coveted by loggers. That habitat, Nelson says, could be all but wiped out by Interior.

"I had no idea just how complicated it is that each congressman or committee has their charge, and they can't overstep their charge unless some colleague comes in and asks them to," Nelson said.

Sciencey stories are obvious to people who speak the language - people who know what it means to a population of endangered species, and very possibly, entire ecosystems if the Deparment of Interior merely tweaks the meaning of "critical habitat" - but they lack meaning for a reader if the power dynamics aren't emphasized by the writer, something I'm willing to bet that's made totally plain in pieces on the IRS: being stomped on by government tax collectors is something we can feel, something we can fear, but having your nest swept away by an oil company or big-shot logger because some partisan bureaucrats a thousand miles away sent an internal memo around to the right people last summer isn't something we have a handle on.

Rather than write downward snark about rumpled scientists and sunburnt biologists who don't know the Byzantine ways of DeeCee, maybe something a reader could get a grip on, with an understanding of why it's important to them and the environment, might be more meaningful.

friday doctor who blogging

2008-01-11T11:41:00.000-07:00

"Whatever you do, don't blink!"

never let a little thing like scandal get in the way of assembling the finest whatever team on whatevervision

2008-01-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

Above: Never played footsie with Jack Abramoff or Enron.

In the spirit of bi-partisan something something that wafting through CNN's studios, we here at Dexter's Lab have welcomed The Master onto our team of election night analysts.

Yes, we realize that The Master was elected as Prime Minister of Britain only by using a system of satellites to broadcast a low-level signal to hypnotize the British electorate and then attempted planetary genocide using a convoluted time-bending scheme in order to bring back his home world of Gallifrey, but at least he didn't skim money out of a Jack Abramoff slushpot or try "humping corporate accounts" at the expense of the religious people's strong beliefs about gambling. Any teevee network that hired a guy like that would be making a mockery of the notion of credibility.

remember, tuesday is soylent green day (thursday edition)

2008-01-10T10:26:00.001-07:00

As long as these new crops aren't shiny Soylent Green! Because it would still be made of people!

To be filed under why-the-hell-not:

Worried about climate change? Well worry no longer because a University of California-Irvine team has come up with a solution: shiny crops.

The idea is just one of many recent ideas proposed by geoengineering, the science of modifying Earth’s environment on a large scale. In the last couple years, geoengineers have proposed several unique solutions to the global warming problem including stationing mirrors in space, dumping large amounts of iron into the ocean and creating artificial volcanoes. They propose to use these methods to solve global warming if greenhouse gas emissions are not controlled and the predicted consequences of global warming begin to materialize.

The shiny plants idea is part of the larger group of climate change solutions that involve making the Earth’s surface more reflective. Other suggestions in this vein include planting more leafy trees instead of conifers and painting roads, roofs, and other skyward facing surfaces white. The concept is based on the fact that more reflective surfaces, such as the white polar ice caps, reflect more sunlight, and therefore heat, than darker and less reflective surfaces.

Solution? Probably not. Negative feedback loop? Probably (hopefully) so.

bathhouse, campaign trail, or teevee studio, viggo mortensen will kick your sorry ass

2008-01-07T10:36:00.000-07:00

Bad-ass actor, bad-ass politics!

Nichols, via CommonDreams:

With Mortensen at his side, Kucinich actually earned what he was denied when ABC News excluded the congressman from Saturday night’s Democratic debate between Obama, Edwards and Hillary Clinton: serious attention from the cable and broadcast networks that have all set up shop in Manchester.

Kucinich and Mortensen even appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” show for an extended segment that say the congressman engage in an extended discussion about fair tax policies and a single-payer health care system

Of course, conservative Sean Hannity took a few swings. But Mortensen struck back at the dark lord of talk television.

After complimenting Mortensen’s film performances, Hannity said, “In spite of everything, I’m going to forgive your politics…”

“You don’t have to,” said Mortensen. ” I’m not going to forgive yours.”

get yr cronyism on

2008-01-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Above: Slim Cessna, Jello Biafra, and Munly all loathe right-wing cronyism, especially on New Year's Eve.

While the Gristies may be right about the lack of outrage over the "EPA papers," a finer point to add in the light of the jadillionth scandal of Dubya Time might be that a working media which was not obssessed with UFO sightings and other trivia would take this story as a jumping off point and pose to the present slate, particularly a field of Republicans who generally can't say enough good shit about the last eight years, how they would go about reversing the cronyism that has profoundly crippled important agenicies like the EPA.

official holiday (and samantha morton) blogging

2007-12-20T14:07:00.001-07:00

Happy holidays, Labrateers. I'm out for the next coupla. Be safe and well and enjoy yrselves.

In the spirit of the season, please enjoy the X-mas party scene from the Lynne Ramsay adaptation of Lab fave Alan Warner's "Morvern Callar."