Thursday, November 29, 2012

Bruno Manser - Laki Penan

I first learned about Bruno Manser maybe 15 years ago when I saw a story about him on CBS 60 Minutes  The Swiss born Manser was showcased as a strident advocate for the Penan people of Malaysian Borneo.  Manser spent 1984-1990 living in remote settlements with the Penan, writing a journal of his experiences. Manser was in Borneo when the forests the Penan have occupied for millennia  came under assault from commercial loggers. It turns out the massive logging operations that were stripping trees from Penan territory were owned substantially by high ranking Malaysian politicians. 


Bruno Manser

Manser became a fearless champion of the Penan people, taking their story of  political exploitation and ecological destruction to a global audience.  The Malaysian government banned him from entering the country.  The high ranking Malaysian government officials behind the logging and the rapacious industry leaders they were in cahoots with put a price on Manser's head. 

Bruno Manser was last seen in a remote village in Borneo in May of 2000.  He is presumed to have been murdered sometime after that. The mystery of his dissappearance remains unsolved. He was declared dead by a Swiss court in 2005.  

Bruno Manser understood the threats against him, yet he plunged forward undeterred. Many would argue that he was reckless in his pursuit of justice for the Penan people. Maybe, but he deserves to be remembered as a hero, who gave his life defending the indigenous people and the tropical forest landscape that he loved. Hats off to Bruno Manser. He was an extraordinary human being.


Here is a link to the website for Bruno Manser - Laki Penan, a film done about Manser's life and death in Borneo...  http://www.brunomanser-derfilm.ch/p/manser_en.htm

Here is a link to aa You Tube presentation of a part of that film, with English sub-titles...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8RqHqdLVh8

Here is a link to the Bruno Manser Fund that carries on his work on behalf of the Penan and other indigenous peoples around the world.
http://www.bmf.ch/en/



Sunday, November 25, 2012

Treeless Paper

Paper is made mostly from fibrous cellulose that comes from trees. To print one edition of the Sunday New York Times, it takes 63 thousand trees.   When you consider how many newspapers are printed around the world, how much toilet paper is consumed, and add to that all the product packaging, shipping materials, and paper we write on and and use in our computers, it's no wonder deforestation is a very serious problem. 

Forests are essential to the health of the planet.  They absorb carbon dioxide, the principle greenhouse gas created by human addiction to fossil hydrocarbon energy sources like coal and oil.  Trees  expire oxygen in the photosynthetic process.  They provide food, shelter, and a lot more to the insects, birds, and animals that are adapted to live in them. The more trees we have, the better off we all  are. 

Fortunately, a lot of factors are at work to reduce demand for paper from trees. Technology has evolved to a way that is replacing newspapers, magazines, and books printed on paper with electronic versions available on smartphones and tablet computers. Paperless communication is an idea that has arrived and is here to stay.

Packaging that once depended to a high degree on cardboard and paper is evolving rapidly. Plastics have taken over a lot of the burden from paper, and now more and more of the plastic packaging  we use is made of biodegradable, plant derived materials that are relatively benign to the environment.

There is always going to be a requirement for paper, but cutting down old growth forests and reducing them to pulp to make toilet paper makes no sense at all.   The cellulose plant fiber used in paper can be readily provided by seasonal crops like switch grass, begasse from sugar cane, kenaf, and industrial hemp.  Instead of taking years to grow, these plants grow over a matter of months into a form that is readily harvestible and easily processed into paper. 

It used to be, we depended on forests for building materials and for making furniture. These days, we have environmentally friendly substitutes that serve those same purposes. 

Biofuels have become an important part of the equation for replacing oil and coal.  Cellulosic biofuels can be made from corn stalks and other waste materials that are part of growing food crops.  Stripping trees from forestland to make bio-fuels is not cost-effective and it cannot be justified in any way when the raw materials can be acquired from fast growing cultivated crops.

We have reached a point in evolution when we can no longer take from our environment without consequence. We.must embrace our proper human role of stewardship. We must be the nurturers of our biosphere.  The transition to treeless paper is a big step in the right direction.






Saturday, November 24, 2012

My Favorite Dance Image

Digital photography is a creative outlet I thoroughly enjoy. The other day, I was fortunate to do a session in my home studio with a young woman named Tiarra Lynn. She is a dancer and a bodybuilder.  I haven't had a chance to photograph many dancers, so working with Tiarra was a treat.

Here is my favorite image from that session.








Friday, November 23, 2012

The Red Mistress

Here we have a dance video, an exquisitely rendered dance video, directed by visual artist Benjamin Von Wong.  If you're a fan of the dance, you will love this work by Wong and his creative collaborators.





The video is less than four minutes long. If you're like me, you'll find yourself compelled to watch it more than once.

Here is a link to Benjamin Von Wong's dance video,  The Red Mistress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ydkblES5QoY

I am a big fan of Von Wong's photography. You can see more of it at the following link...http://www.flickr.com/photos/iintrigue/



Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Profile in Courage - Veronique de Viguerie

So,  I was cycling through the channels this night before Thanksgiving, and I came across this HBO documentary called, Witness.   It followed a French photojournalist named, Veronique de Viguerie.   She's in the south part of the Sudan, one of the most dysfunctional nations on Earth. She was traveling around,  getting a sense of the cruel life of the people living there.  We're talking subsistence farmers, struggling to survive, with the added weight of the constant threat of violence from an armed group of thugs called the LRA, led by the infamous Joseph Kony. For years, Kony and his band have assaulted one village after another, murdering people, kidnapping women and children,  burning and pillaging the landscape.

With virtually no protection from the Sudanese army, the locals launched their own militia, calling it the Arrow Boys.

So here's Veronique, this young, attractive blond woman,  following the armed Arrow boys as they traipse through the bush, searching for Kony and his band.  It's amazing television.  She's  capturing the moment with her camera, putting herself very much at risk of being caught in the crossfire of a deadly confrontation with Kony's thugs. On top of everything else, Veronique was pregnant while fully engaged in this physically demanding adventure in the South Sudan.  That's who she is.


Veronique de Viguerie

Veronique de Viguerie has embedded herself with the Taliban in Afghanistan and with muslim pirates in Somalia.  She's put herself in harm's way in Iraq, Niger, Mexico, Guatemala. Libya, and Pakistan.

On 10/31/12, I wrote another Profile in Courage blog entry. It was about Corrine Dufka, also a photojournalist.   What these two women share is a relentless focus.  Courage is obviously a big part of who they are, but with Veronique and also Corrine,  the thing that seems to drive them is a determination to deliver a result worthy of the story they are covering.   I admire them, and appreciate all that they do to reveal ugly human conflicts that don't get nearly enough media attention.


Here's a link to an article written about Veronique in The Daily Beasthttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/12/veronique-de-viguerie-fearless-photographer.html

Here is a link to Veronique's photo gallery  .http://vero-de-viguerie.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

Here is a link to a video taken from Veronique's time in the South Sudan.http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2012/11/witness-south-sudan.html




Tuesday, November 20, 2012

World Toilet Day

Yes, it's a crappy subject.  Toilets are something that we in the developed world tend to take for granted. Finding a place to 'go' is rarely an issue.  Why then do toilets merit their own global day of recognition.   Turns out that 2.6 billion people around the world do not have access to even the most basic toilets.  Thus, November 19th is World Toilet Day.




Hundreds of millions of people are living in urban slums,  literally immersed in their own raw sewage.  Dealing with human waste is a huge issue no one likes to think about.  What we have now are major urban areas, particularly in lesser developed nations, in which the waterways are choked with turds and garbage of every description.  We're talking about slums with thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of humans with no infrastructure for handling waste at all. 


 

Ever driven by a dairy farm or a cattle feed lot when the wind is blowing your direction?  Imagine living with that kind of stench 24/7.    That's the life for a very large portion of humanity.

Fortunately, there are people who are working to make a difference. The Gates Foundation is putting money into developing low cost waterless toilet systems that can be mass produced to help aleviate this problem.  All such efforts inevitably bump up against a hard reality.  There are more than seven billion humans on Earth. Every year, another 75 million are added to that number. We're talking the equivalent of a dozen cities the size of Los Angeles added evey year to the human population, mostly in the poorest, most dysfunctional parts of the world.

World Toilet Day is an important day of recognition, because people who have to live in their own shit have no dignity. If ever there was a human right, it should be the right to live with at least a modicum of dignity. In 2012,  nearly a third of the world's people do not have even that basic kind of dignity.

On this special day of recognition for human sanitation, let's thank the good people who have chosen this arena for their activism.  My source of information on this subject is Michael Campana, a hydrologist at Oregon State University. I'm sure Dr. Campana feels a bit like Sisyphus  when he talks about the lagging  response to the need for toilets around the world.  The good news is, people like him and those focused on this challenge at the Gates Fondation are trying to make  headway.

It's hard to be optimistic about resolving the world's toilet troubles as long as we fail to deal with the root issue, which is population growth.   The solution to the sanitation problem starts with universal reproductive choice and guaranteeing that all couples have access to contraception. 

Here is a link to Michael Campana's webpage http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/

Here is a link to Bill Gates' inspiring, 'Reinvent the toilet challenge' http://twistedsifter.com/2012/08/bill-gates-reinvent-the-toilet-challeng/









Monday, November 19, 2012

Cradle to Cradle

That's the title of a book published in 2002. One of the most interesting things about this book by architects William McDonough and Michael Braungart is that it was printed on biodegradable plastic.

The subtitle of Cradle to Cradle is 'Remaking the Way We Make Things'.  

Here is a diagram that presents the Cradle to Cradle principles.





Cradle to Cradle is a design philosophy that boils down to 'waste equals food',  In essence, it's a repudiation of our throw away society in which billions of tons of  materials that could be reused end up discarded in landfills around the world.  McDonough and Braugart see a future in which everything is recycleable and almost nothing is thrown away. It's a beautiful concept, and a lot has happened since the book came out that reflects its life affirming ideals.  These days when old buildings come down, the brick, steel, concrete, wiring, and mechanical systems are now recycled more often than not.  Moreover, new buildings are being designed purposefully with end-of-life recycling and reuse in mind.

Waste is literally becoming a dirty word. That is a very good thing.




 

 
"What your people call your natural resources, our people call our relatives."
                                                   Oren Lyons - Faith Keeper on the Onondaga




Here is a link to William McDonough's website...
http://www.mcdonough.com/



Saturday, November 17, 2012

The 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time

Sometimes a quirky gem appears out of nowhere. I ran across one today on You Tube.  It's a relentless compilation of motion picture insults. The greatest examples of cursing and vile comeuppance ever seen in the movies.  Enjoy.

Here is the link to the 100 greatest movie insults of all time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSEYXWmEse8&feature=related



Friday, November 16, 2012

Ingrid Visser - Champion of New Zealand's Orca

In New Zealand, a marine biologist, Dr. Ingrid Visser has focused the last 20 years of  her life on studying and protecting the orca whales that spend their lives along the coastline of that island nation in the South Pacific.

Ingrid Visser, PhD, with wild orca


Orca is a more scientific name for the whale species commonly called killer whales.  People who appreciate their exceptional intelligence and generally benign relationship with humans prefer to call them orca.



On August 21st, I published a blog entry titled Great White Versus Orca.  One fact in that story was that sea lions and seals are the principle diet of the orca based locally off the Northern California coast. Apparently, they also kill and eat sharks.

The New Zealand orca whales have a very different diet.  Ingrid Visser, who was the first person to study New Zealand's resident orca, discovered that they depend to a large degree on hunting, catching and eating sting rays that they find very often in shallow inlets along the New Zealand coastline.

Sting ray

 People may recall that the well-known TV naturalist, Steve Irwin, was killed a few years ago while swimming in shallow water by a sting ray hiding in the sand.  Rays have a sharp barbed extension atop their tails that they use to defend themselves.  Ingrid Visser discovered that the New Zealand orca  have evolved a very effective technique for hunting sting rays, while avoiding the deadly tail barb.  The orca work together. When they locate a sting ray hiding in the sand, one whale seizes the ray by its tail so it can't use its deadly dangerous barb, and the other whale bites the ray, killing it. Then the two whales and sometimes their friends share the meal.



Orca with freshly caught stingray

Because many of the places where the whales hunt stingrays also serve as industrial harbors, Ingrid Visser was concerned that toxic chemicals like poly-chlorinatred biphenyls (PCP) left over from human industrial activity could be present in the resident sting rays. That posed an even bigger threat to the orca, because PCPs tend to accumulate in the fatty tissues of predators ingesting tainted fish.

Long story short,  Ingrid Visser used tissue samples from locally caught sting rays and also from one of the resident orcas to prove the rays were indeed carrying high levels of PCPs and other toxic industrial chemicals.   

Ingrid Visser is more than a marine mammal scientist. She is also a champion for New Zealand's orca and her nation's  marine environment in general. She founded the Orca Research Trust to advance her work and to report it to the public. She also successfully petitioned the New Zealand government to change its designation for its resident orca to critically endangered.




Because of  Ingrid Visser's tireless efforts, the people of New Zealand know a lot more about the marine mammals that live close at hand with them. Because of Ingrid Visser,  prospects for New Zealand's resident orca are far better than they would likely be othewise.  In my book, that makes Ingrid Visser a hero of the highest order.

Here is a link to Ingrid Visser's webpage.
http://www.orcaresearch.org/



Thursday, November 15, 2012

Energiewende in Germany

I'm pasting in below an article just out by Thomas Hedges about Germany's emerging transition to clean, renewable forms of energy.  At the moment, Germany gets 25% of its energy from clean, renewable sources like wind and solar. By 2050, it will be 80-100%  powered by clean renewables.  No other advanced nation comes close.  The only reason the U.S. isn't in the same place, doing the same thing is politics pure and simple. In Germany, energy policy is based mostly on what's best for it's citizens and their quality of life. In the US, energy policy is controlled by big oil, coal, and nuclear.  It's no wonder we have no cogent energy policy.

Germany's example proves we can do a whole lot better.


__________

Published on Thursday, November 15, 2012 by TruthDig.com

How Germany Is Getting to 100 Percent Renewable Energy


 
There is no debate on climate change in Germany. The temperature for the past 10 months has been three degrees above average and we’re again on course for the warmest year on record. There’s no dispute among Germans as to whether this change is man-made, or that we contribute to it and need to stop accelerating the process.
 
 
Solar panels cover the rooftops of a German farming village. (InsideClimate News/Osha Gray Davidson)
 
 
Since 2000, Germany has converted 25 percent of its power grid to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass. The architects of the clean energy movement Energiewende, which translates to “energy transformation,” estimate that from 80 percent to 100 percent of Germany’s electricity will come from renewable sources by 2050.
Germans are baffled that the United States has not taken the same path. Not only is the U.S. the wealthiest nation in the world, but it’s also credited with jump-starting Germany’s green movement 40 years ago.
 
“This is a very American idea,” Arne Jungjohann, a director at the Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation (HBSF), said at a press conference Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C. “We got this from Jimmy Carter.”
 
Germany adopted and continued Carter’s push for energy conservation while the U.S. abandoned further efforts. The death of an American Energiewende solidified when President Ronald Reagan ripped down the solar panels atop the White House that Carter had installed.
 
Since then, Germany has created strong incentives for the public to invest in renewable energy. It pays people to generate electricity from solar panels on their houses. The effort to turn more consumers into producers is accelerated through feed-in tariffs, which are 20-year contracts that ensure a fixed price the government will pay. Germany lowers the price every year, so there’s good reason to sign one as soon as possible, before compensation falls further.
 
The money the government uses to pay producers comes from a monthly surcharge on utility bills that everyone pays, similar to a rebate. Ratepayers pay an additional cost for the renewable energy fund and then get that money back from the government, at a profit, if they are producing their own energy.
 
In the end, ratepayers control the program, not the government. This adds consistency, Davidson says. If the government itself paid, it would be easy for a new finance minister to cut the program upon taking office. Funding is not at the whim of politicians as it is in the U.S.
 
“Everyone has skin in the game,” says writer Osha Gray Davidson. “The movement is decentralized and democratized, and that’s why it works. Anybody in Germany can be a utility.”
 
The press conference the foundation organized with InsideClimate News comes two weeks after one of the biggest storms in U.S. history and sits in the shadow of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would unlock the world’s second-largest oil reserve in Canada. The event also comes one day after a report that says that the U.S. is on track to become the leading oil and gas producer by 2020, which suggests that the U.S. has the capability to match Germany’s green movement, but is instead using its resources to deepen its dependency on fossil fuels.
 
Many community organizers have given up on government and are moving to spark a green movement in the U.S. through energy cooperatives.
 
Anya Schoolman is a D.C. organizer who has started many co-ops in the district although she began with no experience. She says that converting to renewable energy one person at a time would not work in the U.S. because of legal complexities and tax laws that discourage people from investing in clean energy.
 
Grid managers in the U.S., she explains, often require households to turn off wind turbines at night, a practice called “curtailment.”
 
“It’s a favor to the utility companies,” she says, which don’t hold as much power in Germany as they do in the United States.
 
Individuals and cooperatives own 65 percent of Germany’s renewable energy capacity. In the U.S. they own 2 percent. The rest is privately controlled.
 
The largest difference, panelists said, between Germany and the U.S. is how reactive the government is to its citizens. Democracy in Germany has meant keeping and strengthening regulatory agencies while forming policies that put public ownership ahead of private ownership.
 
“In the end,” says Davidson, who spent a month in Germany studying the Energiewende, “it isn’t about making money. It’s about quality of life.”
 
This article was made possible by the Center for Study of Responsive Law.
 
 ______________

Germany is a European nation with far fewer renewable energy resources available than we have in the United States.   In Europe, cloudy days are far more common than sunny days.  In the US, we have large stretches of land, especially in the Southwest, where the sun shines far more often than not.  Yet, Germany's energy policy as made it one of the world's most prominent adopters of solar PV. 

We do not have an energy policy in the United States.  We need one desparately. We need it to be focused on transitioning our country away from dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power to a portfolio of emerging clean, renewable resources.  The one missing ingredient is political will. Let's hope the newly re-elected President Obama will seize the moment and provide much needed leadership.



 
 
 
 

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Michael Stritzki's Hydrogen House

About ten years ago, I got acquainted with a guy named Michael Stritzki, who lives in Hunterdon, New Jersey in a house that is heated and gets all its power from hydrogen. When I first met  Mike, the work on the house was just underway. In 2006, it was completed.   Mike calls it the Hopewell Project.  




Mike Stritzki is an engineer and a champion of solar-hydrogen energy.  With the support of government grants and about $100,000 of his own money,  he designed and built a sytem that generates electricity from solar panels,  converts that electricity to hydrogen, then stores the hydrogen for use on demand to heat and air condition his home as well as provide all its electricity needs.


Mike Stritzki


Mike has also converted two cars to run on hydrogen that he produces with his home energy system.


 
 
What Mike Stritzki has done is a reflection of the way most people may be living by mid-century.  An enormous amount of work is being done to refine the technologies integrated into Mike Stritzki's house. It cost about $500,000 to get the Hopewell Project up and running.  As the technologies evolve and begin to be mass produced, the cost will drop to a fraction of current levels.  In fact, it's likely that home solar-hydrogen energy systems will actually feed surplus electricity produced into the power grid, creating a revenue stream for the home owner.
 
A future with people living in homes that produce enough clean energy to meet all their own needs and then some also means a future with rapidly declining levels of  greenhouse climate change pollution going into our Earth's atmosphere.  Bottom line: A transition to clean energy homes like the colonial Mike Stritzki lives in with his wife and three kids in Hunterdon, New Jersey  is something everyone can get excited about..
 
Here is a link to a video of Mike Stritzki showing off his Hopewell Project.
 
 
 
 






Monday, November 12, 2012

Panda's Giant Problem

Who would argue that the giant panda bear, native to China, is one of the world's most endearing creatures. Due primarily to habitat loss caused by human encroaachment, the giant panda is an endangered species. The government of China maintains a substantial program for captive breeding pandas.  There are thought to be something like 2,000 wild pandas remaining and about 250 in zoos and in  captive breeding facilties in China.



One very unusual part of the giant panda's life is its near total reliance on bamboo as a food source.  That dependence on bamboo could well turn out to be the panda's ulitmate undoing.   Studies on the impact of climate change on wild bamboo just published indicate that most bamboo species could be wiped out by higher temperatures and draught caused by a warming planet. 

We humans are doing a pretty good job of messing up the planet for ourselves and for other species like the panda. The best way to assure a future for wild pandas would be for humans to aggressively embrace proper stewardship of the natural world.



Sunday, November 11, 2012

Veteran's Day

So, it's another Federal holiday; a day set aside to remember and honor our miltary and all the veterans who have lost their lives as well as those who risked all to defend our nation. I am proud to have served for more than six years in the U.S. Army, on active duty in Germany and later in the Army Reserve.

I strongly support our government's efforts through the Veteran's Administration to provide healthcare and access to jobs and  education for the men and women who stood tall in defense of America.  These good people deserve our respect and must never be forgotten.

I have to say that I believe the wars we waged in Iraq and also in Afghanistan did a terrible disservice to those in uniform. We know now that the Bush/Cheney Iraq war should never have happened.  The case for that war was fabricated by politicians, who used false claims of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' that never existed to justify American military action.  Even now, the cost of this folly has not been fully calculated.  Thousands of Americans and perhaps a million or more Iraqis died in that war that should never have been.  More than a trillion American tax dollars were squandered  on a war that, in the end, served no one other than oil oligarchs and defense contractors fattening their bank accounts callously at the expense of the American people and the soldiers who were sent into harm's way.

Likewise, the war in Afghanistan has gone very badly and never should have happened, at least not in the way it did.  Going after Bin Laden and his terrorist band was certainly right and worthwhile.  Evolving the mission into one of nation building was a mistake from the get-go.  

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cabal of sociopathic neocons bear total responsibility for these two wars and their lasting consequences.  History is already judging them very harshly for the extreme harm they did to America and its people, as well as the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

I am thankful that President Barak Obama has ended the war in Iraq and our military presence there, and is on track to removing the last of our troops from Afghaistan in 2014.  Extracting our military from war is a lot harder than getting ourselves into that kind of conflict.

At this point in history,  we need a complete review and reordering of American military doctrine.  Right now, the Federal budget is still weighted down by annual military expenditures that exceed $700 billion.  That's more than the defense budgets of all the rest of the world's developed nations combined. There is absolutely no justification for that.  The only area where more money should be spent is in Veteran's care and services. We don't need more Navy ships. We don't need more expensive missiles and war fighting aircraft.  Enough already. We have more of that kind of broad front war fighting hardware than we will ever use.  It makes no sense to break the economy to buy military capability we are highly unlikely ever to need.  A strong economy is the best defense against the kind of conflict we deal with these days.

The best thing we can do for American Veterans is to committ ourselves to keeping them out of harm's way unless our country is truly threatened. A step in the right direction would be to recognize a jingoistic fool running for congress when we see one and avoid voting for him.



Friday, November 9, 2012

The New Face of Education

I spent twelve years in public schools, then another seven years in university.  I am a product of an educational system that worked for generations.   All those years, I sat in classrooms, absorbing knowledge delivered by a teacher.  That was the only option. Not anymore.

Much has changed about the education process.   Now you can buy interactive learning apps for your smart phone on a wide variety of subjects. Interactive learning allows students to absorb knowledge at their own pace with learning interfaces that can be incredibly engaging and fun.


Sal Khan


Sal Khan started recording byte sized 'You Tube' learning modules to help his kids with their homework.  He took that idea and, with the help of the Gates Foundation, has turned it into the Khan Academy, a website with thousands of free, byte sized learning modules.

My niece, Lindsey, is getting her masters in education at Harvard.  She's also working part time at a company that develops interactive learning systems.  This is clearly a growth industry, and not just for those of us fortunate to live in a deveoped nation. There are tens of millions of children in the world's poorest places that have no little or access to education.  Girls especially find roadblocks to learning in many cultures.  Cheap laptop and tablet computers tuned to interactive learning have the potential to change that in a very profound way. 

Education is essential to building a future that is sustainable.  I think of the children in the Eastern part of the Congo in Africa, an area that is plagued by lawless genocidal violence.  How much better off they would be if they could learn to read and write, and about how nature works, and about how they fit into the whole scheme of life.  

The emergence of interactive learning is the foundation of a revolutionary new era in eucation.  Young people these days face challenges that did not exist during my formative years.   The best thing I can say about that is they also have direct and often free access, through their computers and cell phones, to  knowledge and understanding that required a much more formal education process for previous generations. 


Thursday, November 8, 2012

Obama Wins! What to do now...

Obama secured a second term as President on Tuesday, November 6, 2012.  I suspect, given the challenges that confounded his efforts to win a second term, his election will be seen as a major event historically. He prevailed despite obscne amounts of unregulated campaign funding, enabled by the right leaning Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. 

Given the political atmosphere, Democrats made remarkable gains.  They increased their majority in the Senate. One of my great hopes is that the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, will enact filabuster reform, denying the minority Republicans the ability to easily block any legistlation or political appointment hat doesn't suit them. The filabuster has been used 371 times since 2008.  Majority rules. That's what the Constitution says. That's the way it should be in the Senate.

It's true, the House is still in Republican control, but some of the most toxic tea party zealots where defeated at the ballot box and will not be back.  House Republicans can still be a mighty destructive force if they choose to be.  Let's hope the moderates in the Republican caucus decide its time to cast aside the tea party mantle, and work productively with their adversaries.

So, hear is how I would like to see the President expend the fresh politfcal capital he gained by winning a second term.

1.  Put our fiscal house in order. Allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. Retain current income tax levels for people earning under $250,000; allow those making more to pay more.  Enact a transaction tax on every trade done on Wall Street.  Retain capital gains tax at current 15% level,  but  boost that number to 30% for capital gains that exceed  $5 million annually. Retain social security and medicare as they are.  Strictly oversee and aggressively enforce the rules and regulations focused on banking and the financial system.

2. Speed up troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, with all of our people out by the beginning of 2014.  Put Pentagon spending on a substantial diet. 

3. Become a leading voice for global efforts to deal with climate change.   Enact a comprehensive system of government spending and incentive as well as regulations encouraging the phaise out of nuclear power and fossil fuels and the emergence of clean energy alternatives.  It will take decades to achieve this. A clearly stated progressive energy policy would be a very good place to start.  It should be the centerpiece of Obama's jobs strategy.   Much of America's energy infrastructure is aging and needs replacement. An internet-like smart-grid that is compatible with a broad range of energy sources, including the old that's already in place and the new, pollution-free renewable forms that are now emerging. You want to stimulate the economy, this is a great way to do it.

Of course, there are many many other things one could hope for under Obama's second term leadership. I would be very happy if we could just get some serious attention and action on the three big ticket items listed above.




Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Daredevil Pilots of Columbia

We're not talking about thugs who fly cocaine out of the jungle.  This little video showcases professional pilots who fly ancient, twin engine Douglas DC-3 aircraft delivering supplies and passenger service in and out of grass strips in the jungles of the western Amazon. 




First flown in the 1930s, the DC-3 is a remarkable airplane. Tens of thousands were built for the war effort.  There are probably several hundred of them still in commercial service. In places like Coumbia, few aircraft can match the DC-3 in serving that nation's remote communities.  The conditions in which Columbian pilots operate regularly are daunting to say the least.

Here is a link to the video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-F-cBF5ZbQ&feature=watch-vrec




Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The Most Beautiful Animal Species

What is the most beautiful of all animal species?  A judgement like this is obviously very subjective.   If being photogenic is the primary criteria, my vote goes to the Snow Leopard. Not only is this medium sized cat beautiful to look at, it's also a creature of incredible grace, wonderfully adapted to  the sheer rock faces of the high Himalayas, above 10,000 feet. Snow leopards have massive paws and very thick fur, with a color pattern that blends perfectly with the snowy, high altitude environment. 





Snow Leopard's are rare, and are seriously threatened by habitat loss and the Asian fur trade.  Until a few years ago, there was virtually no video of a snow leopard hunting in its natural habitat.  Then, the BBC sent a crew to Mongolia; it's sole mission was to get video footage of snow leopards.  After a few weeks of waiting, the BBC crew was rewarded with some spectacular footage of a snow leopard chasing a young mountain ibex down the craggy face of a near vertical rock cliff.

Here is a link to that snow leopard video on Discovery's 'Planet Earth' minseries     .http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Snow_Leopard#p00378k9

Alan Hunt, a well-known and much admired wildlife artist, has painted the Snow Leopard multiple times. We have a limited edition print of the one below hanging in our home.


Nomad by Alan Hunt

Here is a link to the  Snow Leopard Trust http://www.snowleopard.org/





Monday, November 5, 2012

The Amazing Switch LED Bulb

Incandescent light bulbs were invented by Thomas Edison. They replaced gas lamps, and served society well for a century. Trouble was they used too much electricity.  A proper reading light required a 100 watt bulb.

Then, about a decade ago, we got compact fluorescent bulbs. They used less than half the power of an incandescent bulb to get the same amount of light.  Problem is compact fluorescent bulbs are expensive and they are filled with toxic gas.

Light emitting diodes have also been around for a while, but they had limited use because the technology resisted being scaled up to match the light delivered by a 100 watt incandescent bulb. Fortunately, a lot of smart people have been working the problem, and now, a company called Switch was come out with a series of LED bulbs designed to fit in standard lamp sockets.  They start with a 40 watt incandescent equivalent on up to the just announced 100 watt equivalent bulb.  The latter is the holy grail.  Using only 15 watts of power, the Switch 100 is dimmable to 20%, and lasts about 20,000 hours. It's ingenious design allows its components to be broken down completely for recycling. 


Switch 100


According to the government's energy information administration, about 202 billion kilowatt hours were used for residential lighting in 2010.   That's about 40% of all energy required for lighting in the United States.  Imagine if you could cut that by 85%.  That's what bulbs like the Switch 100 deliver.  Would that mean we could get rid of all nuclear power.  I think so. I hope so, given what we've seen about the consequences of nuclear power from Chernobyl and Fukushima.  The massive amount of efficiency gained with LED bulbs also means fewer power plants running on fossil fuels, reducing pollution of the atmosphere which is the best way to combat climate change.

I checked with Batteries Plus, the only outlet locally that carries the Switch bulbs.  The Switch 100 is not available yet.  A Switch 60 costs about $50.  Though they last a long time, that is a lot of money. This is where we need the government to step in with a tax incentive to encourage early adopters.

Here is the link to the Switch website...http://www.switchlightingco.com/index.html



Sunday, November 4, 2012

A Hoax You Say...

How many more devastating hurricanes like Sandy must we endure before people recognize that such storms, which had long been considered a once in a century phenomenon,  are now a regular part of life's fabric.  Hurricane Sandy is the most costly natural event in American history.  The Jersey shore, Staten Island, and the lower part of Manhattan in New York City are a wreck.  The damage is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

Storms like Sandy are becoming all too common, and the reason why is not complicated.  We are responsible.  The warming of the atmosphere is driven largely by our consumption of hydrocarbon fuels.  The physics is not complicated. 

It is natural for the sunlight to enter the planet's atmosphere. It is also natural for a large portion of that solar energy to be reflected back out again.  The amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere depends on many factors, including cyclical and seasonal weather patterns.  The amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere is closely correlated to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) lingering in the upper atmosphere.  If you look at a graph of CO2 alongside average temperature, you find that they rise almost in lockstep




When you burn oil, coal, or natural gas, what comes out of the exhaust is CO2, and a whole bunch of other nasty hydrocarbon pollutants.  That's not theory. That's a fact. When you pump billions of tons of dirty exhaust into the atmosphere, you enable the conditions warming the atmosphere. More pollutants translates to higher average temperatures. It causes glaciers to melt. It causes the arctic icecap to melt.  It perturbs weather patterns, causing unprecedented extremes.  There are not two sides to this. There is one truth.  It's physics.  It's a fact.  The amount of extra energy attributable to human activity that gets into the atmosphere every single day is equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs.

Hurricane Sandy hammered the East coast with a storm surge that caused jaw dropping destruction.  Hurricanes are a natural phenomenon. Storms like Sandy and Katrina are beyond normal because of their power.  That additional strength starts with elevated ocean temperatures.caused by human induced global warming. The temperature rise in the Gulf of Mexico that propagated the unprecedented damage caused by Hurricane Katrina was less than two degrees fahrenheit. On a global scale, humanity has never faced anything close to the challenge of climate change. Sandy and Katrina are the tip of the iceberg to use a bad pun; a harbinger of much worse things  to come.

Climate denial has become a growth industry, funded by companies like Exxon Mobil and billionaires like the Koch Brothers, who are heavily invested in Canadian tar sands.  Conservative climate deniers sell the line that the jury is still out about climate change; that at worst its a hoax and at best it has not been proven.  Groups like  the Heartland Institute employ a small cadre of academic shills who, in effect, have sold their professional credentials to cast doubt on human induced climate change.  The confusion these so-called scientists create enables the fossil energy giants to continue 'doing the dirty', business as usual.

Literally thousands of climate scientists stand together affirming unequivocally that human uinduced climate change is real. On the other side, there are a handful of naysayers 'scienitsts', most or all of whom are being bankrolled by the fossil energy giants.  Along with media outlets like Fox News, these 'hired gun' obfuscators sew skepticism about climate change.

Unfortunately, it seems we're going to have to endure more mega-scale weather disasters before the public wakes up sufficienty to face our self-generated, and very daunting climate change reality. I find it deeply unsettling.