One-Way Gate of Praise
From the ticker: “McCain credits Bush for recent $10-a-barrel drop in oil price.” But of course he didn’t blame him for any of the rise in that price. The story notes that McCain believes it is the psychological effect of Bush’s lifting the ban on offshore drilling that did the trick–in spite of the fact that it would be almost twenty years before any oil from those wells hit the market. Funny that the recent news about gigantic oil reserves in Brazil didn’t prevent the rising prices of late.
City folk come in droves (to be where the action is)
“City folk come in droves to once-isolated White Rock Lake [in Dallas, Texas]. Some come to picnic, sail or fish, some just to be where the action is.” (April 1972)
Item from [NARA] Record Group 412: Records of the Environmental Protection Agency, 1944 - 2000.
An Inconvenient Sock
The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre discuss global warming.
the most ridiculous commute
A Swedish dude who drove 650 feet to work each morning and then a few hundred feet more to lunch has won a bicycle as prize for a “most ridiculous commute” contest his girlfriend signed him up for.
the value of a statistical life
The EPA has downgraded the monetary value of an American life.
The “value of a statistical life” is $6.9 million in today’s dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May — a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago.
The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analysis over more than a dozen years.
Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.
Hard times, friend.
Heck of a Job, Asshole
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
Dear Clusterflock
What do you grow that you eat? (Besides fingernails)
Urban Adventure
For the past six years I have been fascinated by the idea of ecological footprints. So, in advance of the three URBAN EARTH walks this summer I decided to walk the radius of one city’s ecofootprint.
More (via Russell Davies)
Kenichi Horie’s Wave Powered Boat
A Japanese sailor has crossed the Pacific in a wave powered boat.
“When waves were weak, the boat slowed down. That’s the problem to be solved,” the adventurer told reporters Saturday from aboard his catamaran Suntory Mermaid II off the Kii Peninsula in western Japan.
The 9.5 metre (31-foot) boat is equipped with two special fins at the front which can move like a dolphin’s tail each time the vessel rises or falls with the rhythm of the waves.
Stealth Gardeners
And it isn’t weed:
Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that’s not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo “seed bombing” runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts.
Part beautification, part eco-activism, part social outlet, the activity has been fueled by Internet gardening blogs and sites such as GuerrillaGardening.org, where before-and-after photos of the latest “troop digs” inspire 45,000 visitors a month to make derelict soil bloom
reverse graffiti
via Neatorama
Herron Hill
Looking toward Herron Hill from the Lawrenceville flats in Pittsburgh. (I’ve also drawn this water tower from other angles.)
The Unforeseen — Recommended
Cindy and I saw this documentary at the Angelica in Dallas yesterday. It’s great for those who have an Austin connection–and great for those who don’t. If it’s not showing in your area you might want to add it to your Netflix list.
One of the things I like best about this documentary is the inspiration it offers for those who want to confront the economically powerful. It very clearly makes the point that everything that stimulates the economy is not therefore positive in nature: a train wreck generates the need for clean-up hires and for orders for new train cars to be built. Here you will see the problems that result when short term ambitions collide with trans-generational values. And the film is very well edited: it shows a vast range of desires and the human weaknesses–and courage– that attend the fight to realize them.
Things are NOT fine and they’re getting worse, in case you’re wondering
Everything seemingly is spinning out of control:
Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
Like Kottke, I first thought this was an Onion headline. Then I realized it wasn’t. Then I realized it must not be very hard to get a job as an AP beat writer.
(via reddit)
Dehydration (Lidos of London)
From the Summer 2008 issue of Polar Inertia: Gigi Cifali’s photographs of drained, abandoned pools, via Pruned.
Oil 2.0
LS9, a Silicon Valley company doing energy research, has found a way to modify a nonpathogenic strain of E. coli so that it creates the equivalent of crude oil as a byproduct of eating agricultural waste.
Bird balls prevent urban cancer water
LA’s Ivanhoe Reservoir contains millions of gallons of drinking water for LA residents. In the summer, however, problem presents itself: the water can potentially become contaminated with bromate (depending on daily outbound flow rates, one would presume), which is a natural reaction between solar light, chlorine (a treatment chemical) and naturally-occurring bromide.
Seeing how chlorine is a necessary treatment additive and the bromide is a natural element within the water, Ivanhoe officials got creative and decided to keep sunlight away from the water by dropping over 3 million black spheres (called bird balls) into the reservoir. This effectively created an opaque layer atop the water that serves as a solar shield, which eliminates the solar component of the reaction. Problem solved. Yay, right?
Check out a video of the action here.
But allow me to think out loud for a second: Ivanhoe is preventing the formation of a carcinogen by interrupting the photochemical reaction that forms bromate, the threat in question. But is anyone thinking about the potential toxicity of millions of plastic balls leeching into the drinking water supply, especially millions of black balls that take the beating of the LA sun all summer? To me, this seems like you could be trading one problem for another.
A bunch more photos at Curbed.
(via Unfiltered)
Rethinking what it means to be green
à la Wired:
Winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism’s sacred cows. We can afford to ignore neither the carbon-free electricity supplied by nuclear energy nor the transformational potential of genetic engineering. We need to take advantage of the energy efficiencies offered by urban density. We must accept that the world’s fastest-growing economies won’t forgo a higher standard of living in the name of climate science — and that, on the way up, countries like India and China might actually help devise the solutions the planet so desperately needs.
My favorite suggestion: Embrace Nuclear Power.
Pattern Tales
(via swissmiss)
I’m Voting Republican
(via Cyn-C)
Mr. Wind
(thanks, Mike)
For Aaron: Operation of the Kings River Flume
The Kings River Flume was a marvel of ingenuity. It spanned the deep rocky gorges and cliffs of Kings Canyon and was supported by numerous trestles.
The operation of the flume was maintained by “flume herders” stationed at various locations along the flume’s route. These men were given the responsibility of ensuring the steady flow of lumber and water throughout the flume’s length from Millwood to Sanger. These men occasionally had to visually inspect the flume by boat, although this was considered extremely dangerous.
More on the operation of the Kings River Flume here.
Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months
Daniel Burd, a sixteen year old high school student from Waterloo Ontario, figured out how to decompose a plastic bag using landfill dirt, yeast, and tap water. No word yet whether he’s figured a way to calm the opposing narratives I hear when asked paper or plastic.
bird
Liberty Avenue, in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
The Driftless Region (Where I Live)
Camera-phone snap. Galena Territory. Jo Daviess County (Illinois). Driftless region.