It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of barricaded roads and new paths. Maps fade and direction is lost as we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we pass, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Gone are the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.
Big news today from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is the debut of Climate.gov, a central place for news and information relating to the Earth’s climate. That sounds interesting, but go ahead and look at the site and tell me – is there really much of anything new in what’s offered there, besides formatting?
1. Broke the law,
2. Violated the constitution and
3. Lied in order to
4. Obtain Americans’ phone records
5. Without a warrant, in order to
6. Find and stop the source of embarrassing leaks to the media.
This is Watergate-level stuff we’re talking about here. It’s as if the zombie of J. Edgar Hoover were reanimated and put back at his desk. But this time around, nobody seems to care. Nobody has written about the scandal in the papers this month, even though the same FBI that broke the law on phone records now wants access to your web-surfing records. What will it take for the American media and the American people to be roused on this subject? The introduction of a dancing bear?
And what will it take for the House and Senate Judiciary committees with jurisdiction on the matter to take steps toward bringing the FBI to account? In the House, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers has issued a brief press release calling for “more to be done”, nothing more by his committee has been done. If there are to be any developments in Conyers’ committee, look for them to come out in this week’s hearing on “Sharing and Analyzing Information to Prevent Terrorism”, happening Wednesday at 10:00 am. There has been no witness list or hearing agenda released by the committee, but the declared subject matter makes it a highly appropriate venue.
Over in the Senate, Patrick Leahy’s Judiciary Committee has done even less than its House counterpart. There are no hearings on the subject scheduled now or into the future. Instead of dealing with the unconstitutional and illegal seizure of Americans’ phone records by the FBI in order to ferret out whistleblowers, the Judiciary Committee will proceed apace with hearings on the nomination of Audrey G. Fleissig to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri.
It is a chilly and windy morning out there, and my face is chapping from walking my kids uphill both ways in the snow to their bus stop. That’s weather, our daily experience of the atmosphere as it swirls about us, variously cooled and heated as the sun and seasons come and go. Despite the perennial surprise of editorial cartoonists, those of us who don’t live on the Equator can expect winter to be colder than the summer, just as those of us who don’t live above the Arctic Circle can expect night-time to be darker than the daytime.
Then there’s climate, the long-term trend in temperature, humidity, and other conditions that transcends the weather of the day or the season. With another year passed and another year’s worth of data collected, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center has released its annual State of the Climate Global Analysis. NOAA finds that for direct temperature measurements over the past 130 years, the following ten years have been the hottest for our globe:
Odontocetophiles of the world, rejoice! The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals has released a new poster, this one featuring 72 odontocetes – whales with teeth. These toothy whales all share something in common too. They’re in trouble.
No, they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s we humans who are at fault, actually. According to the group’s newest report, toothed whales are still being killed by fishing nets in large numbers. They’re having to look for alternative sources of food as well, because human beings have hauled so many of their prey species of fish out of the oceans.
Pollution is also to blame for some of the decline of the toothed whales, and is behind the saddest story on the poster: The whale that no longer exists. The first whale shown on the poster, the Yangtse river dolphin, Lipotes vexillifer, has not been found at all on the last several expeditions to count its numbers. It is probable that this species of whale has gone extinct.
That’s sad, but there are still many species of toothed whale left to celebrate, ranging all the way from the adorable little Dall’s porpoises, through the weird Stejneger‘s beaked whale, up to the macrocephalusest, the sperm whale. Enjoy the poster, download it, and share with the people you know who need to be reminded that there are remarkable animals underneath the waves that are worth saving.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources has announced its species of the day, and it’s a beautifully weird one. Its scientific name is Erioderma pedicellatum, but what is it?
It’s not an animal, nor is it a plant, exactly. It’s a lichen, which is a mingling of plant and fungus. Its common name is boreal felt lichen. It grows only on the branches of trees in the arctic forests of a certain parts of Arctic America, where logging is so extensive that the lichen is now in decline.
The IUCN writes that efforts to protect the lichen’s habitat are “hopefully giving the Boreal Felt Lichen a brighter future” – only not literally. Hopefully, the lichen will be enjoying a shadowy and moist future.
Now that we’ve reached the end of this article, there is some cause to celebrate: I made it through this entire article without making a pun using the word “lichen”.
While a couple of dozen steroid-filled multimillionaires prepared to take to the field this Super Bowl Sunday, their every movement watched by hundreds of millions of couch potatoes with eyes, a hundred or so tobogganers and another hundred or so spectators without sponsorships or contracts or monetary gain to drive them gathered on the side of Ragged Mountain in Camden, Maine to race down a chute onto the frozen ice of a pond. It’s called the National Toboggan Championships because they don’t know of any other place in the country that runs a race down a toboggan chute.
This is the other pole on the spectrum of American athleticism.
Right now, down in Miami, two groups of grown men who earn money by playing ball all year long are running up against each other, grabbing each other, and throwing each other down onto the grass. Besides the marketplace for sublimated homoerotic fantasies, who are they benefiting? Well, they’re helping big corporations to get people to look at their advertisements, but that’s about it.
If you want to see a real super bowl, head on over to Ten Thousand Villages, which has a great collection of fair trade bowls, like the one that you see here. It’s made in Peru, and brought to the United States through an arrangement that ensures that the original maker is given fair pay for his or her work, instead of being exploited for pennies an hour, in the way that most corporations who advertise during the Super Bowl do.
A bowl like this does quite a bit. It’s both useful and beautiful in your home, and it helps to provide an income to an artisan who might otherwise be living in poverty. Can the team of announcers on television tonight say that about the big game?
If you’re in the United Kingdom and are looking for something a little more utilitarian, but still fair trade, check out these bowls from Fair Wind.
I guess down here that’s some southern sweet tea, and you know up in Alaska, we have a smaller version of Tea Party up there, and we call it iced tea, and I am a big supporter of this movement, believe in this movement, got lots of friends and family in the lower 48 who attend these events and, across the country, just knowing that this is the movement, and America is ready for another revolution, and you are a part of this.
If Sarah Palin is calling for a revolution, the Tea Party Nation is paying her handsomely to do so. With Palin getting private air accomodations and $100,000 for her 40 minute and 20 second speech, she was paid at a rate of $41.32 per second. Sarah Palin was paid $1,033.06 just to share that beautiful thought you read above. But behind the scenes, Tea Party Nation is already rolling out the counter-revolution. The organization declares on its website that:
* it is a corporation which has trademarked the phrase “Tea Party Nation” and will sue anyone else who uses the words.
* “You can and will be banned for being a liberal.”
* “Tea Party Nation reserves the right to ban anyone for any reason we feel necessary”
* “Trashing of TPN will not be tolerated.”
* “Questions regarding TPN posted in the public forums or blogs on the site will be deleted.”
* “It is not a forum for… calls for militant uprisings.”
* “Tea Party Nation’s strict No Tolerance policy will not make exceptions… if you see such postings, you immediately report them”
While Tea Party Nation’s speakers call for a revolution for the cameras, any actual revolutionary behavior or dissent will be result in swift dismissal. That’s an interesting combination.
I keep waiting for Sarah Palin to fade off the political stage, but she just won’t do it. Yet again this weekend Palin said she just may run for President in 2012, and with so many Republicans lapping up her words as if they were Chardonnay, we’ve got to pay attention to what she says. Watching Sarah Palin give a speech this weekend over C-Span, I was astonished to hear her latest foreign policy complaint (minute 14):
“Around the world, people who are seeking freedom from oppressive regimes wonder if Alaska is still that beacon of hope for their cause.”
Don’t cry for me, East Talkeetna. The truth is I never left you.
Don’t like crude oil or unclean coal? Fossil fuel companies had an answer for you – clean, safe natural gas. Of course, burning natural gas still creates air pollution, including large amounts of greenhouse gases, but what the heck – it’s better than other fossil fuel alternatives, right?
Until the natural gas explodes, yes, it’s much better. Until it explodes, as it did today in Middletown, Connecticut, injuring at least 100 people, and killing an unknown number.
The power plant was run by the Kleen Energy Systems. Strictly speaking, the site is still Kleen, even though it definitely isn’t clean.
To be fair and balanced, of course, we have to acknowledge the deadly wind and solar power disasters… of which there have been precisely none.
You tell us. Which of the following have you done to prepare for another revolution?
__ Had a family conference to arrange for brother to fight against brother
__ Stockpiled guns to go run off and fight in a militia for one side or the other
__ Enough food and water set aside in case of seige
__ Guest room set aside for lodging soldiers
__ Dollars converted into rebel Tea Party currency for when the revolution is over
__ Don’t Tread on Me flag ready to be unfurled
Perhaps I’ve missed some aspect of this revolution, though. Is there something else you’ve done to get ready to revolt?
The International Polar Year of focused scientific study ended a while ago, but results are still coming in, and adding new information to discussions about global climate change. One recent addition comes from the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, which measured the extent of ice on the Arctic Ocean.
The group found that reduction of Arctic sea ice is “happening much faster than our most pessimistic projections”. As a result of their findings, the group is revising predictions of when the Arctic Ocean will melt completely, warning that the ocean will be completely ice free in the summertime within 20 years from now, but perhaps 2 years from now.
Cell phones are convenient, but they consume a great deal of electricity, when they’re all added up.. Increasing demand for electricity is the causing for a push for more nuclear power plants and burning of dirty old coal.
Americans could reduce the demand for these dirty energy technologies if they didn’t stick their cell phone chargers into wall sockets quite so often. Does that mean that they would need to talk less on the phone? Not necessarily.
A company called Easy Energy has introduced a device called the Yogen that allows people to translate their muscle power into an electrical charge for cell phones and other mobile devices. It works with a pull cord, which the user yanks on with a motion similar to starting a lawn mower, but smaller. The energy created through this pulling is then transferred through a flywheel, creating an electrical current which then charges a mobile device. The Yogen is hand-sized, so it’s mobile, just like your cell phone itself.
In development by the same company: The Yogen MAX, a foot pedal that will be able to provide power for laptop computers.
I keep waiting for Sarah Palin to fade off the political stage, but she just won’t do it. Yet again this weekend Palin said she just may run for President in 2012, and with so many Republicans lapping up her words as if they were Chardonnay, we’ve got to pay attention to what she says. Watching Sarah Palin give a speech this weekend over C-Span, I was astonished to 
