September 2007 archive

When I walk around Midtown Manhattan with the Midwestern tourist, I truly am lost in the supermarket of cultures. I can no longer shop happily. So of course my inclination was to do the slugliest of articles called: “The Time of Their Life: A Day in the Life of Midwestern Tourist in Times Square.” But the more I thought about it the more I was unable to write it. Who was I to say that their ability to stare up straight into the sky like turkey in a rainstorm was not an asset? Who is to say what is right or wrong in this day and age? Why, with all our modern ideas, and products!

I did a lot of soul searching about if I was being judgmental and condescending against these simple rotund  beasts. Since the closer you are to a problem the harder it is to view it clearly, other New Yorkers were not much help. This is mainly  due to the basic image these tourist generate for themselves by their actions while moving in herds on the busiest of streets.

So I knew I had to reach out to an old Instant Messenger Buddy and luckily he was on-line. So I had an impromptu to IM session with him. A few basic changes were made to the grammar to make it more readable, but here is the unedited version of my chat session with God.

Greetings, literature-loving Dharmiacs! (or whatever you’re called)  Last week we danced with the Dame of Amherst and found that she had a few crafty tricks up her embroidered sleeve.  This week we’ll continue with our theme of mind-twisting literature, but we’ll first relocate to a slightly warmer climate:

The setting is Buenos Aires, the time is the 20th century.  A blind seer is guiding us around the labyrinthine National Library, spinning yarns on everything from gauchos to Gargantua.  But how much of it is true, and how much of it is a devilish game?  Have we been wandering around a library with no exit?…

Follow me below through the twisted paths of Argentina’s most famous fabulist.

Some horse sense from a kid:

Also posted at Truth & Progress

The Copper Salmon Wilderness

Oregon’s 4th district congressman Peter DeFazio and Senator Ron Wyden have introduced bills to create the 13,700-acre Copper Salmon Wilderness in southwestern Oregon.

Hallelujah.

This one’s for you, LoE:

“Now that the Republicans no longer control the Congress, there’s a possibility of doing a meritorious wilderness bill,” DeFazio said Monday. He said former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who was the gatekeeper for wilderness bills before he lost re-election last year, “hated wilderness with a passion.”

The proposal is enthusiastically supported by virtually every local official, the local chamber of commerce, Governor Kulongoski, and hunting and fishing groups. And for good reason. The area is home to one of the most productive salmon spawning grounds in North America. Its loss would be yet another blow to both the commercial and sport fisheries.

Friends of Elk River presents the case:

In effect, the adjacent 17,200-acre Grassy Knob Wilderness is being doubled. Click on the map above to expand it and see the location.

The bills are not yet available at THOMAS. When they are, Wyden’s will be S. 2034 and DeFazio’s H.R. 3513.

Four stories in the news at 4 o’clock. Simple, huh?

1. While Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker continue with the White House ‘stay the course’, ‘just a little be longer’ rhetoric today while facing skeptical Senators who will, undoubtedly, turn around and vote for more “emergency” funding for Iraq, an analysis in the Los Angeles Times quotes a Mideast specialist that “Bush has found his exit strategy,” bequeath Iraq to successor. Meanwhile, “Newsweek has learned that a separate internal report being prepared by a Pentagon working group will ‘differ substantially’ from Petraeus’s recommendations… An early version of the report, which is currently being drafted and is expected to be completed by the beginning of next year, will ‘recommend a very rapid reduction in American forces: as much as two-thirds of the existing force very quickly, while keeping the remainder there.’ The strategy will involve unwinding the still large U.S. presence in big forward operation bases and putting smaller teams in outposts.” Senior Pentagon officials, including Petraeus’ commander, Admiral William Fallon, want to “draw down faster”.

2. Yesterday’s Four at Four reported a brief bit of good news for whales, but today’s the bad whale news returns with a Los Angeles Times story, Gray whale recovery called incorrect. “The success story of the Pacific gray whales’ full recovery from near-extinction is wrong, according to a new genetic analysis that pegs the current population at only one-third to one-fifth of historical levels. ¶ By examining subtle variations in DNA taken from 42 modern whales, scientists have concluded that between 78,500 and 117,700 gray whales lived before the heyday of commercial whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries. ¶ That finding, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the about 22,000 gray whales now swimming along the California coast remain a depleted population.” Unfortunately, it gets worse.

   The results counter what had been a predominant scientific view that the iconic creatures of the West Coast were so bountiful that they were overgrazing their traditional feeding grounds. Instead, the findings provide further evidence that this year’s abnormally high number of skinny whales is a sign of deterioration of the vast ocean ecosystem that stretches from Baja California to the Bering Sea.

   “If the oceans a few hundred years ago could support 100,000 gray whales, why can’t the oceans sustain 20,000 whales today?” said Stephen Palumbi, a Stanford University marine sciences professor and senior author of the study.

3. The oceans are trying to tell us something. From The Independent today is the ominous story that climate change will harm life on the deep ocean floor. “A study of the most remote forms of life on Earth has found that their splendid isolation on the deep seabed will not protect them from environmental catastrophes on the surface. ¶ Scientists used to believe that a global disaster that wiped out most of the life on Earth would not touch the unusual organisms that live around the mineral-rich vents on the sea floor. But research by a team of British scientists has found that even these deep-sea creatures which live in total darkness and survive on the chemical energy oozing from mineral vents on the seabed are not immune from the seasonal changes above.” In addition, the change has already started. In a diary at Daily Kos, jbalazs writes that the National Snow and Ice Data Center has found the melting polar ice caps are changing ocean circulation.

4. Lastly, this report from Reuters, Biofuels may harm more than help. “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said biofuels may ‘offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal’. ¶ ‘The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits,’ the OECD said. ¶ ‘When acidification, fertilizer use, biodiversity loss and toxicity of agricultural pesticides are taken into account, the overall environmental impacts of ethanol and biodiesel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel,’ it added.” Their advice? Cut consumption. “‘A liter of gasoline or diesel conserved because a person walks, rides a bicycles, carpools or tunes up his or her vehicle’s engine more often is a full liter of gasoline or diesel saved at a much lower cost to the economy than subsidizing inefficient new sources of supply,’ it said.” Also OECD suggest encouraging “developing countries that have ecological and climate systems more suited to biomass production” to become producers.

One more story below the fold…