tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37316271318920690862024-03-18T19:49:30.772-07:00Naturalist NotationsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-66113836246485559212018-01-04T21:53:00.000-08:002018-01-13T14:11:15.320-08:00I'm confused about Measure 101My confusion is that I don't get why it's any more complicated than the following:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Whereas the 2017 Oregon Legislature passed the bipartisan Healthcare Protections Bill (HB 2391); and<br />
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Whereas basic healthcare should be viewed as a human right; and<br />
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Whereas 95% of Oregonians and 100% of children currently have access to healthcare in large part because of Medicaid Expansion; and<br />
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Whereas the bipartisan Healthcare Protections Bill provides funding to maintain healthcare expansion and obtain matching federal funds; and<br />
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Whereas provider assessments are used by 49 states to fund Medicaid, and have the support of healthcare providers and insurers throughout Oregon; and<br />
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Whereas without the Healthcare Protections Bill, Oregon could lose up to $320 million in state revenue, and more than $1.3 billion in federal revenue for providing healthcare, resulting in upwards of 350,000 low-income and working Oregonians losing their healthcare; and<br />
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Whereas Republican- and extremist-backed efforts have succeeded in qualifying a Referendum vote on major parts of the Healthcare Protections Bill for a January 2018 Special Election; and<br />
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Whereas a YES vote on the Referendum will affirm support for the Healthcare Protections Bill; be it therefore<br />
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Resolved that I, Pablo Martos, strongly endorse a YES vote on Measure 101 on January 23, 2018.</blockquote>
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What you just read was cribbed from the Democratic Party of Oregon's official Resolution 2017-015, changed only to drop mention of the Party, the Party platform statement that Healthcare should be a human right, and to refer to Measure 101 instead of Referendum 301, which is what Measure 101 was originally called. I'm registered as a Democrat, if I haven't mentioned, and an active participant at the local level.<br />
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Sorry to be partisan about this, but partisans on one side with weak arguments and lots of foot stamping and some signature gathering are what kicked this to the voters in the first place instead of letting it pass as the bipartisan legislation it was. This Measure will line us up with how 49 other states fund their health care, and LOTS of people you trust are pushing for it to work.<br />
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I don't know who in <a href="http://yesforhealthcare.org/supporters/" target="_blank">this list</a> you don't trust, but between all the firefighters, teachers, hospitals, nurses, doctors, all pushing for it, and the fact that organizations like Kaiser Permanente and Legacy Health also signed on in support indicating they think they'll be able to weather just fine the horror of a tax existing, I'm pretty convinced just by the list. Seriously, go read it, and consider not how many on the list you may be suspicious of (I don't always trust hospitals or healthcare companies, either), but how many listed organizations are plainly and clearly interested in your personal welfare, or how many you can surmise just signed on because they know it's the right thing to do. <br />
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Fine, be suspicious of the SEIU for all I care. But the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters? You gonna tell me Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon and an organization called the Oregon Center for Christian Voices joining with the League of Women Voters and the Working Families Party and the American College of Physicians' Oregon Chapter on this doesn't say something important? It doesn't say something that the Catholic Charities of Oregon and NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon are on the same side of this one?<br />
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Remember this isn't a huge tax. We're talking about small amounts for a small number of entities, and small impacts possible to a small number of people's premiums. This means that several health care providers and organizations will pay a little extra for the next two years, and some people could see a slight increase in their insurance premiums, in order to keep low-income Oregonians insured. <br />
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Opponents of Measure 101 point out that it's a about HOW to pay for Medicaid, not WHETHER to, and then want to nitpick about how until the cows come home. That was the strategy that killed Measure 97, which was and remains desperately needed. They said "this isn't the way to do it, we need to find a better solution, come back to us during the legislative session and we'll work with you and get responsible legislation done," and then they didn't. They continued to stonewall and object and dragged their feet and so we remain unable to fund education, healthcare, and senior services properly. They frame this as taxing health care instead of as providing it.<br />
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I know some people may be shocked by this, but not every tax is bad. Taxation is a funding mechanism to provide for the common welfare, and it makes sense, and we've been doing it forever. I feel ridiculous having to state that so plainly, but here we are in 2018 in 45's America. Putting an assessment on hospitals and insurance companies makes sense because in our present, imperfect system, that's where the money is. The <a href="http://www.kgw.com/news/politics/measure-101-what-you-need-to-know-before-you-vote/493795942" target="_blank">Department of Consumer and Business Services</a> figured out that if the entire cost of this assessment were passed directly to citizens this could amount to an overall cost increase of maybe $5 per person per month. For a program that saves us collectively about $25-$30, on average, per person per month. That's worth it to me. I want tax money to go to providing health care to the neediest among us. Full stop.<br />
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Measure 101 helps stabilize health insurance rates for all of us by providing people with lower cost preventative care, rather than forcing people to get their healthcare in the emergency room where the costs are paid for by all of our insurance premiums. Measure 101 is clear: premiums cannot increase more than 1.5% as a result of the assessment on insurance companies. Bottom line is that if we don't pass this, funding for Medicaid will be cut by between $210 and $320 million, resulting in the loss of potentially $5 billion in federal funding. Oregon families who rely on Medicaid – including 400,000 children, seniors and people with disabilities could end up with diminished benefits or without coverage entirely. <br />
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There will always be imperfections we'll have to fix later in any legislation, in any funding package. That's not the end of the world. But as a parent whose kids have been in and out of hospitals a LOT, I promise you not passing Measure 101 will be the end of someone's world. <br />
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So yeah. I'm confused why anyone doesn't want to vote yes. You should vote yes if you care about your fellow man. Tell your friends to vote yes. If you have it in you to do so, <a href="http://yesforhealthcare.org/get-involved/" target="_blank">get involved</a>. <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN5MGIaUheLpRnYfJj9M0GdhkyFVh4fHVuM1Te0wbGMsfzzw/viewform" target="_blank">Opportunities abound</a>, even opportunities focused on dropping slate cards instead of calling or knocking on doors, so no talking to people is even required. <br />
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We need you. Vote yes, tell your friends, and come help. I'll see you there. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-79647123278951125932017-12-20T19:40:00.001-08:002017-12-20T22:56:03.965-08:00This Tax Bill is Open Class WarfareI don't get the itch to write publicly too often anymore, so this blog is not terribly well maintained, and I haven't updated in a bit. Remember this <a href="http://naturalistnotations.blogspot.com/2017/03/objective-reality-as-civil-disobedience.html" target="_blank">last one</a> I posted? Well, I haven't gotten any less angry. I've been busy, filling my time with activism, knocking on doors and phone banking and trying to be useful to organizers. Been a hell of a year, hasn't it? Yeah, so this <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42429424" target="_blank">tax bill thing just passed</a>, and I've been having a hard time with it, personally. <br>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h2 class="story-body__crosshead">
Who wins and who loses?</h2>
Non-partisan
analysts say the greatest beneficiaries of the package will be the
super-wealthy, multinational corporations and the commercial property
industry. In the immediate future, the plan will see the vast majority of taxpayers having lower tax bills, but those cuts expire in 2025. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
By 2027, the Tax Policy Center estimates the overall change would be negligible. And 53% of taxpayers would face higher bills, many of them in the lower income brackets.</blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhXZfSRHW-1l0OwwPn0xNZqmO46MkDR_D3UL7UFDW31KkwZiojRQWXEGLssW7eHQN2IW-sWRlDWq8WfSISiWz4Ea_nJ42mPcqbjxusvh3W2BO_8Fr7GEIR4Qcaz6UC6xPPHzQ8_9PN7mY/s1600/Tax+Bill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1048" data-original-width="872" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhXZfSRHW-1l0OwwPn0xNZqmO46MkDR_D3UL7UFDW31KkwZiojRQWXEGLssW7eHQN2IW-sWRlDWq8WfSISiWz4Ea_nJ42mPcqbjxusvh3W2BO_8Fr7GEIR4Qcaz6UC6xPPHzQ8_9PN7mY/s320/Tax+Bill.jpg" width="266"></a>It's gonna add $1.5 TRILLION to the national debt. It's gonna screw up a lot of people's ability to get healthcare. It's gonna open up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, which I was knocking on doors to keep from happening in the year 2001. It drops the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and adds a ton of extra juicy loopholes they can exploit. It takes a HUGE step toward widening the already huge gap between the super wealthy and the rest of us by DOUBLING the amount shielded by the estate tax. I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to have a hereditary aristocratic class in this society, but the Republicans want us to have one apparently.<br>
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Worse than that, the $1.5 trillion isn't even the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/12/01/the-gop-plan-is-the-biggest-tax-increase-in-american-history-by-far/" target="_blank">whole story</a>. The tax bill:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-weight: 400;">... gets referred to as only a $1.5
trillion cut because it raises $4.5 trillion in taxes elsewhere. But the
key question is: Who gets a tax hike and who gets a tax cut? Put
simply, the bulk of the tax cut is going toward the rich, while the tax
increases go to everybody else. And so the bill, properly described,
is two things: the largest tax cut — and also the biggest tax increase —
in American history.</span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/dec/18/whats-final-version-tax-bill/" target="_blank">Details are here</a>, if you wanna test what reading it does to your blood pressure. But here's where it gets really mean: This tax bill is a setup for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/opinion/republican-tax-bill-senate-house.html" target="_blank">huge government cuts</a> in how we take care of the downtrodden and disabled.<br>
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The Republicans have already admitted that's their plan, and we know how they plan to do it. Under the 2010 Pay-As-You-Go Act, they can automatically just cut spending on stuff if there isn't funding. Well we know there won't be funding because they just cut taxes! Do you see any way in which the dollar amount needed in government support for the needy is gonna go down with the rich getting richer and the rest of us getting less?<br>
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The economy is not the stock market and the stock market is not the economy. If GDP goes up because the megacorporations are able to ship more decent jobs overseas and pocket their savings on these huge cuts to their taxes, and all the employment growth here is for service jobs (as has been the trend for a while now), we're not getting anywhere good. All they're leaving is retail jobs selling things the workers can't afford to buy, server jobs in restaurants they can't afford to eat in. What happened to minimum wage meaning nobody had to rely on government to provide for them? That was actually the original idea, and we've let it rot as real earnings stagnated while all the wealth in the country trickled to the top from the 70's onward. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliviergarret/2017/02/23/how-to-break-out-of-the-stagnant-wage-growth-trap/#2638396f2bbf" target="_blank">From Forbes</a>:<br>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
From 1948 until the early 1970s, wages rose in tandem with
productivity. However, since 1973, productivity has grown 72% while
wages are up a measly 9%. What’s behind the stalled wage growth? There has been an ever-wider gap in income inequality. The top 5% of
earners saw their wages swell by 60% since 1973. The top 1% reaped a
138% increase. Today, <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fortune 400 CEO’s earn 296-times the average American wage</a>—up from 24-times in 1973.</blockquote>
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It's been a class war for a long time, now. Nowadays we make government work by hiking the cost of tuition at public colleges rather than raise taxes (more money for the money changers that way!). Nowadays we all pay more in taxes for the poor to eat because society has to cover the difference between
minimum wage and what it takes for an earner to eat or pay for their
family to eat, because minimum wage is a joke and paying people enough to survive isn't as profitable. But since Republicans are blowing up the deficit, we are gonna have to cut services because they say so.<br>
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I'mma let you in on something you may not know. My family has survived some <a href="http://medicineandmishaps.blogspot.com/2008/07/for-starters.html" target="_blank">hard days</a>. At one point I'd been laid off and was getting unemployment insurance, and we were using food stamps (SNAP) and WIC, and we liquidated my 401K to pay for the full allowable term of COBRA so my son could get his medically abso-fucking-loutely-necessary surgeries. Barely managed to not lose the house. We were lucky. The $25 BILLION in cuts this tax bill will likely mean for Medicaid is gonna hurt people and end lives, and again, that's just a teensy part of the $1.5 TRILLION they're gonna carve out of necessary support for the most vulnerable among us. <br>
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But you know no discussion of the future would be complete on this blog without mention of climate change. The world is literally going up in flames where it isn't drowning. The flames and water are gonna get worse for decades before they get better even IF we were responsibly treating it as the massive national threat that it is. We've already got infrastructure problems like Flint's water and bridges falling apart and old tech failing on rail lines that serve private profit over public transit, now Puerto Rico needs a new (and more durable) power grid. Can you imagine how much worse it'll get with a few more years of fires and floods like we've had in 2017? <br>
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We are looking at a future of Great Depression-era-level food shortages and economic disruptions around the world, with underfunded programs to provide for the needs of the masses. <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl" target="_blank">Dustbowl</a> ain't got nothin' on Global Warming. Meanwhile, our leadership is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/20/us-take-names-united-nations-vote-to-reject-jerusalem-recognition" target="_blank">bullying the world</a> and isolating the hell out of us, undermining every possible government agency from the EPA to the FDA, and "cashing out." <br>
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It's time to raise taxes on corporations and the super rich. The Koch brothers and the Mercers funding the right wing politicians while pushing austerity on the rest of us need to pay their share.<br>
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I need everyone reading this not just to vote for a Democratic candidate or two and call it done, or just to throw their hands up and say both parties are the same, I need everyone reading this to fight. Get out on the street and knock on doors. Phone bank if the door knocking is uncomfortable. Write letters to the editor or send a letter to your congressional representatives. Contact your senators, your county commissioners, your state representatives, your city counselors.<br>
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We need shelters so the poor don't die in the street like we're living in a goddamn Dickens novel instead of 21st Century USA. We need infrastructure to bring water to Flint and power to Puerto Rico. We need our votes to count, and we need the Republicans who don't mind children dying of starvation and deprivation to fear the angered conscience of a nation of good people. <br>
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Please, if you need ideas for actions you can take, there are resources out there. Let me be one. Look at local groups and what they're working on and ask how you can help. <a href="https://www.indivisible.org/" target="_blank">Indivisible</a> organized a ton of phone banking against this tax bill and has tons of ways for you to get involved locally, wherever you are. <a href="https://www.nwgsdpdx.org/act" target="_blank">Nasty Women Get Sh*t Done PDX</a> has a huge list of actions you can take. The <a href="http://www.dsausa.org/get_involved" target="_blank">Democratic Socialists</a> are active nation wide. My County Democratic Party is fighting right now to get Measure 101 passed to maintain funding for Medicaid/OHP and protect 400,000 children in Oregon, and they're <a href="https://goo.gl/Knafqw" target="_blank">looking for volunteers</a>. Hell, you can text message your way to progressive action by using <a href="https://resist.bot/" target="_blank">ResistBot</a>, and my local Dems even have <a href="https://www.multdems.org/2017/10/17/introducing-amis-actions/" target="_blank">something similar</a> that'll send you a couple news/action items a week. <br>
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There's a lot of work to do, and only 321 days until the 2018 elections.<br>
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Round up your friends. I'll bring pizza. Let's get to work. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-27855877397348596572017-03-01T11:46:00.004-08:002017-03-01T11:50:38.957-08:00Objective reality as civil disobedience<div dir="ltr">
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Just so you know, as happens occasionally, there will be some vulgarity in this post. My kids are not allowed to say certain words even when they feel very strongly about something, but that's more about making sure they are able to communicate with their teachers respectfully at all times and can make themselves understood. But this is my personal blog, and I'm pretty sure I can make myself well enough understood, even on a rambling, not-quite-stream-of-consciousness rant that took weeks to finish like this one. <br />
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You've probably already heard a little about some of this. The bit about Trump <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2016/12/trump-transition-wants-names-of-energy-department-staff-who-worked-on-climate-232424" target="_blank">demanding the names</a> of individuals who worked on global warming, at the same time the GOP is <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/gop-readies-cuts-federal-workforce-trump" target="_blank">shredding protections for civil servants</a>, that was just a warm up. And the whole Alternative Facts nonsense claiming Trump's belief is better evidence than our own eyes. There were those awful hearings where one unqualified crony billionaire after another danced away from legitimate questions by one side and had their asses kissed by the other on their way to take the job leading agencies they've denigrated and fought for decades. But then that walking ego with a comb-over started spreading his stink over whole agencies. <br />
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He basically shut down the EPA for a hot minute there. He's censoring fact because it contradicts the narrative that makes him and his cabinet of billionaires more money. He's demanding that everything the EPA publishes be <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whitehouse/trump-admin-orders-epa-contract-freeze-and-media-blackout/2017/01/24/a3724a14-e293-11e6-a419-eefe8eff0835_story.html" target="_blank">reviewed by his political hacks</a> for conformance with his delusions and there's a hold on any new publications. He <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/27/511983884/trump-reportedly-called-national-park-service-over-inauguration-crowd-photos" target="_blank">personally called the head of the National Parks Service</a> to bitch about the photos tweeted by one National Parks account that showed his crowd size smaller than Obama's. Does that not strike you as a little bit crazy?<br />
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(Side note, Snoop is adorable on tonight's Roast Battle. Yes, I know the show is problematic AF, but it's a ridiculous guilty pleasure that hearkens to the also problematic humor of my adolescence, and I need my <a href="http://naturalistnotations.blogspot.com/2017/01/something-to-make-you-smile.html" target="_blank">giggles</a> these days. I'm watching Snoop get high and hit on a contestant's mother, and in my imagination he's mere hours from another taping of that <a href="http://www.vh1.com/shows/martha-snoops-potluck-dinner-party" target="_blank">show he shares with a convicted felon</a>. Trevor Noah is up next.)<br />
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It looks like the <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/316347-house-dems-trumps-federal-gag-orders-likely-illegal" target="_blank">gag order is illegal</a>, which is good to know, but everyone who wants to keep their job is still forced to largely comply, because the only body of government with the power to rein him in absent a lawsuit is too busy passing their own agenda and covering his ass. Fortunately, he seems to have also inspired some delightful online
guerilla activism, and that's what got me writing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBkh5ZtX7GA1LN1UDVMHi8xJPdS6hiGBlFd3B7zPDs5KUPK2nTfIU6ITlptfbCtED4pjSsn9-YAki9sT3FWVIbJ7nqRd4qlJzheaKFgCOhw5fX4pot-SusYJoHHbupc5CBlgy6PZD-f2s/s1600/Rogue+Nasa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBkh5ZtX7GA1LN1UDVMHi8xJPdS6hiGBlFd3B7zPDs5KUPK2nTfIU6ITlptfbCtED4pjSsn9-YAki9sT3FWVIbJ7nqRd4qlJzheaKFgCOhw5fX4pot-SusYJoHHbupc5CBlgy6PZD-f2s/s320/Rogue+Nasa.jpg" width="261" /></a>People are standing up. The Women's March was an amazing experience to share with my daughter. I was really pleased to see that the web address <a href="http://www.alternativefacts.com/">www.alternativefacts.com</a> had been bought and made to redirect to a page on the abuser's tactic of gaslighting. I was even more pleased to see all the rogue agencies twitter accounts. Since it looks like objective reality is the enemy of Lord Dampnut (an anagram of his name!), asserting the evidence of our eyes, of verifiable reality, is now a form of protest.<br />
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I was relieved to see that people are working like crazy to <a href="http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/26/1625402/-NASA-s-rogue-account-put-out-a-plea-for-help-here-s-how-YOU-can-help-archive-critical-information?detail=facebook" target="_blank">archive data from the official NASA website</a> so it doesn't get taken down because it confirms science on climate change. They're doing the same for the EPA data. I even found science activists working on how to <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/" target="_blank">train statisticians and scientists on the math, geometry, and geography of illegal gerrymandering</a> so they can serve as expert witnesses in legal battles hoping to strike down oppressive and unfair redistricting.<br />
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But what really got me jazzed was the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/02/09/the-march-for-science-is-gaining-mainstream-momentum/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.e1221e3c20dc" target="_blank">March for Science</a>. I've done a lot of reading on it. There've been articles about how if you do a March for Science, you might make science a partisan issue instead of an apolitical one, articles noting that for a very long time scientists have preferred their own sandbox because if you just provide objective data it can't be politicized. But I'm pretty sold on the idea that it has been politicized, and that Trump is demonizing anything and everything that contradicts his agenda. I'm pretty convinced global warming is a global threat that will turn the world upside down in my lifetime by threatening the prosperity and health and safety and food security of literal billions of people. I'm pretty convinced that sitting back and waiting for reason to prevail doesn't work if you've got shitty messaging that doesn't present your case. If <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/" target="_blank">hundreds of scientists pull together to amass a ton of evidence nobody will read</a>, and FOX news reports on it from the perspective of denialism and invites on maybe one proponent to discuss it who is facing a panel of skeptical pundits and whatever oil company shill with a science degree they've managed to dig up, we're fucked.<br />
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Our understanding of the measurable evidence from almost every branch of science you can name is fairly conclusive, and not hard to explain.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy466BKVDVgsSrRkObPC0Ewo4hI44vHtHdjTN5MM7m3SXisOgmLg8loT1yXfcj2Vo3bwTkNB71jax1EOWHr8NupuSmHr8lrSaC673aP14uScQtr81P9H3LmxoCCa3GWZL-G9sNrCzucA0/s1600/tumblr_oi3chku6rF1v53vrbo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy466BKVDVgsSrRkObPC0Ewo4hI44vHtHdjTN5MM7m3SXisOgmLg8loT1yXfcj2Vo3bwTkNB71jax1EOWHr8NupuSmHr8lrSaC673aP14uScQtr81P9H3LmxoCCa3GWZL-G9sNrCzucA0/s400/tumblr_oi3chku6rF1v53vrbo1_1280.jpg" width="335" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0czAUrWYPE9jCgmlUsB4ti52LNs52B0cLe1LME7v4jewlXOrlkFV-TVjutBu8bzwmCy1_6SEri5vE65NsQb5bB244GCXACrEhoZ2S3OycfJE33PGTzsmTlTzZm9uTqJFBBmGIzlobOI/s1600/tumblr_oi3chku6rF1v53vrbo2_1280_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0czAUrWYPE9jCgmlUsB4ti52LNs52B0cLe1LME7v4jewlXOrlkFV-TVjutBu8bzwmCy1_6SEri5vE65NsQb5bB244GCXACrEhoZ2S3OycfJE33PGTzsmTlTzZm9uTqJFBBmGIzlobOI/s400/tumblr_oi3chku6rF1v53vrbo2_1280_2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The basic understanding laid out in that chain of tweets (not sure the images will post correctly/legibly, but giving it a shot anyway) is something I've been able to wrap my head around since high school, but it isn't something you EVER see explained on the news or in the paper, and I'll be the first to admit I've done a poor job communicating it, myself. So I'm trying to recalibrate how I go about it.<br />
<br />
You've got to keep it simple, and you've got to allow outrage into your voice, or nobody will hear you over the smug white smiles of people paid to look pretty and obfuscate. So here it is. I'm angry. I'm really goddamn angry that we, humanity collectively, are getting screwed over for generations for the financial benefit of Saudi princes and oil barons and Lord fucking Dampnut and his cabinet. Climate change and humanity's role in it is pretty much undeniable at this point, and we need to do something about it now. Fight me.<br />
<br />
I've reached out to the organizers of the March for Science asking for how I can help, and I hope some of you do, too. Understand that this March for Science is not really about science. It isn't about funding for science grants or agencies, it isn't about little policy tweaks or the cost of college or peer reviewed journals. <a href="http://www.chronicle.com/article/March-for-Science-/239160" target="_blank">It isn't about the scientists. </a>It's about the public. It's about living in a world where asserting anything about objective reality that we can all see with our own eyes is civil disobedience. The Emperor has no clothes, and Congress has literally <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/congressional-ban-on-gun-violence-research-rewnewed-2015-7" target="_blank">banned research on gun violence</a>. When everything in our lives from healthcare to safety from police abuses to privacy to the future of all our children is so threatened, we have to stand up.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/captainribmanart/" target="_blank">Credit to the Artist</a></td></tr>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-75674279889618817472017-01-26T14:01:00.004-08:002017-01-26T14:03:06.770-08:00Something to make you smile.<br />
I'm about to start working on my thoughts about the rogue twitter accounts started by federal employees in various agencies, but that topic is tangential to a lot of really unhappy things going on right now. I'm in this tornado of sad and angry and flustered and confused, and the news is coming so fast it feels like anything I write will be outdated by the time I get it posted. <br />
<br />
So I thought I'd offer a counterbalance to that beforehand. This video got me giggly, and I want more people smiling in this shitty political climate. Watch all the way through, and I promise you'll be smiling.<br />
<br />
<br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8CnFo7qinng" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
I'll write more soon, I promise. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-13471569687317094932016-12-10T20:32:00.000-08:002016-12-10T20:32:00.505-08:00A letter to a friend, that became a rant and a conversation with my better angels, that became outpaced by events.Hey, readers. A while back, I got an inquiry about the Standing Rock protests. I was linked to a lengthy article that made an argument, and asked for feedback. This was before the news that the Army Corps of Engineers would refuse to grant the easement to the pipeline (YAY!). I suspect this friend was given the article by a conservative loved one
whose opinion was swayed or reinforced by it and offered it to her
during or after one of those civil political conversations I'm
personally so fond of having with my own conservative loved ones. Could be she came across it on her own, just by having enough conservative loved ones on Facebook that it came up.<br />
<br />
However she found it, she shared it with me, and it pissed me off. <br />
<br />
I'm making a conscious choice, by the way, to NOT link to that piece of
garbage in this post. It doesn't need any wider circulation than it got already. <br />
<br />
My first response to my friend was a brief coupe paragraphs:<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="_5yl5">Wow, that's a lot to read. I'll have to check it out in more depth later. My immediate responses, though, are as follows:
I don't care how long a protest goes or how poorly based in fact certain arguments of theirs might be, calling in riot cops from multiple states to protect a private company's ability to profit from a pipeline that is clearly not wanted there, by hosing people down in freezing temperatures and breaking bones, is not gonna win me over. Why the fuck should that behavior be allowed? Second, my interest in the issue is less about how few of the billions of barrels of oil it'll pump may be spilled and more about how the pipeline will enable billions of barrels of oil to be pumped and burned when we're already facing catastrophic climate change. I'm flat out against the pipeline just on those grounds. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="_5yl5">I have literally been site safety monitor on several emergency response actions to pipeline leaks and coordinated several elements of cleanup and restoration work after the fact as well during my work with a consulting firm in California. I worked in mountain passes, marshes, and ports. I know that new pipelines leak less than old ones like those I was called to respond on. But they can still leak, ANYWHERE they exist. And they still perpetuate climate change, and the inertia/momentum of that has already made the death and displacement of uncountable millions of people a certainty. It isn't immediate, but it is inescapable. We need to combat that, not enable it.
These technical and legal arguments about EPA vs Army Corps jurisdiction, how close the pipeline isn't to a drinking water source, the unrelated strawman about the tribe owning casinos, all that comes waaay secondary for me to the climate change issue and the use of state and federal resources to violently secure profits for a private company.</span></blockquote>
<br />
He opens with<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
"I must state up front ... I am a strong proponent of Native American
rights. Too often throughout history America’s early inhabitants have
been treated grossly unfairly ... and worse.<br />
<br />
My initial reaction to hearing about the Standing Rock/Dakota Access
Pipeline protest was to support them."</blockquote>
<br />
But nobody who has a sympathetic bone in their body can start from that premise and argue this hard against people being treated SO poorly. This is the opener of someone who wants to get a formality out of the way. The whole rest of the very lengthy article is arguments against. He throws a mountain of charts about the safety of pipelines, but doesn't mention why building capacity for multinationals to export fossil fuels that often come from public land is in the public interest when we're facing global warming.<br />
<br />
He's appealing to the brains of people who are inclined to listen to his arguments because they confirm previous biases, and counting on the exhaustion of those of us who don't have the time to check his sources and call him on his shit. I don't know whether or not this dude got paid to write that, but Donald Trump won an election, so fuck it. I'm calling him on his shit.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
"So I began to research further, to try to learn more about the facts and claims ...."</blockquote>
<br />
My ass, you did. You dug for what you wanted.<br />
<br />
Damn. I'm angry. That never helps.<br />
<br />
He states<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
"People also need to understand that this is not a small, unsophisticated and beleaguered underdog group ... "</blockquote>
<br />
and a paragraph later goes on to talk about the money made by the owner of the nearest convenience store near the protest site, two fucking miles away, and how that owner is also the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's chairperson, as an "interesting sidenote." This is the definition of an ad hominem. He's not arguing about the about the pipeline, the petroleum, the protestor's treatment, or the treaty arguments, he's making them look shady.<br />
<br />
Can I be angry now?<br />
<br />
<i><b>No, Pablo.</b> </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
He throws around how big the reservation is, and how much they've gotta be making on their two casinos, but can you really run infrastructure for a sizeable population spread over that big an area on the income of a couple casinos? That can't run a small city, to say nothing of an area bigger than some of our states. Is that even how the income on those gets distributed? He talks about the water infrastructure they have as if they have no reason to care that the water on their land is at risk (or, hell, the land itself), but mostly he seems to be looking for an excuse to repeat again and again how many millions the US spent on grants for their water infrastructure, as if that should friggin' bother me. I know how many millions water infrastructure costs, I have an idea of the scale of this in comparison to what it costs just to upgrade existing infrastructure in a small-to-medium sized city. That $40-whatever million doesn't matter. They should've gotten more. They got a reservoir, some treatment capacity, and some pipes, which is pretty amazing for the amount of money they got. In my work, my agency charges a utility company easily 3 or 4 times that for an easement to lay a single line across the Willamette River in Portland (which all goes to the Common School Fund, and god bless the utility companies for supporting that).<br />
<br />
This is for an easement, now, a right to cross property not owned by the utility company, and based on adjacent land values in a city, sure, but it's also completely aside from what they gotta pay to build and install it and for permitting under Federal rules. Depending on scale and complications, permitting alone can cost millions to consultants and lawyers to shepherd a project through all the Clean Water Act and other regulations, and permitting supports the whole industry of environmental and civil engineering consulting, where I used to work. That's good damn jobs, for geologists, ecologists, engineers, surveyors, asbestos cleanup workers and plumbers and a million other hands on trades for the related niches of the industry, all of whom pay their damn taxes to support the government that keeps them safe from fucking pipeline spills.<br />
<br />
<i><b>You're off topic, Pablo.</b> </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Fine.<br />
<br />
So the structure of the whole article and the pretty clear bias against the Tribes makes me suspect the first sentence of his second paragraph is a lie, even if the lines before that was something he's being honest about, and that's where I start digging for details and tidbits. For lies.<br />
<br />
He asserts that no culturally significant sites have been impacted by the pipeline. The tribe <a href="http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/standing-rock-sioux-tribe-reasserts-dapl-destroyed-sacred-places/" target="_blank">disputes that vociferously</a>. I'll take their word for that over his. Further (from that last link): <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
“On Sept. 2, the Tribe provided vitally important documentation regarding a number of sacred sites, including stone features and burials, along a two mile stretch in the pipeline’s path. The following day, Dakota Access sent construction crews to that specific place, and bulldozed the entire area. This terrible and intentional action was taken without consulting with Tribal or State historic preservation officials. The Tribe has strongly objected to this desecration of our sacred sites. And we have called on the State Historical Society of North Dakota to take appropriate action to issue a stop work order to prevent additional harm to sites.”</blockquote>
<br />
The guys running this shitshow are <i>assholes</i>.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Ok, Pablo. You can be angry now.</b></i><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The Tribe also disputes DAPL’s claims regarding sacred sites. There are currently two different maps outlining the locations of historical artifacts: one produced by DAPL and one produced by the Tribe. At issue, says the Tribe, is that DAPL has provided no indication of where its data came from or identified the cultural experts who contributed to the map."</blockquote>
<br />
Nothing shady here, folks. I'm totally gonna trust and believe everything Shmarmy McWhitesplain says now.<br />
<br />
<i><b>You're too angry to go looking for anything else that may be wrong. Breathe, and address your friend.</b></i><br />
<b><br /></b>
So, my friend, to what you found most interesting: You said "The two points he was highlighting was that the tribe had been given opportunity to request changes and didn't, and that the water source that is at risk of being contaminated by the pipeline is due to be shut down sometime in the next few months (and another has already been built)." Fact is, most of the residents of the Reservation get their water from wells, which are still quite endangered by leaks from the pipeline, but everything downstream of where the pipeline crosses can be affected, too. Everything downhill from the pipeline to the sea is getting a certain level of risk, frankly. That's how watersheds work. Why is it ok for Dick Cheney to say even a 1% risk of terrorism resulting from our adventures overseas coming home to roost is too high a risk for us to not spend trillions more in more overseas adventures, but we can't set the same threshold for our health here at home, or even homegrown terrorism from white nationalists bombing abortion clinics?<br />
<br />
Because profiteering Trumps governance. Man, this next four years'll be fun.<br />
<br />
And as is pointed out in the comments below the article, the author, <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"makes the claim that the tribe made no attempts through channels to have their concerns heard. And yet, he totally ignores the very specific allegation contained in their petition to the courts for an injuction to stop the construction. You can find that here: http://rabbitsliketrumpets.typepad.com/gov.uscourts.dcd.180660.6.0.pdf In it, the tribe maintains, in specific detail how their communications were routinely ignored. Perhaps their claim is false, but it is very suspect that no mention of that is made in Mr Gates lengthy screed. Mr Gates does find the time and space to repeatedly and in bold type, say the the key issue is a water intake. He completely ignores another issue, which the tribe claims is more key. The pipeline is being built on native lands granted them by the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. That's quite an ommission on Mr. Gates part, since it would render the entire pipeline construction blatantly illegal. But, hey, there's the one water intake to concern ourselves with, isn't there? Finally there is the very lengthy dissertation on the odds of a damaging spill. Here Mr Gates forgets that odds are something that should only be a concern for people who willingly enter the casino. The Standing Rock tribe has expressed no desire to gamble at all, no matter the odds."</blockquote>
<br />
From what I can piece together about how this actually played out, it looks like they were objecting to the pipeline's very presence endangering their watershed before it started, and through the process, and then late in the process they were invited to provide suggestions on how it can be modified, and "don't build it or go around" wasn't an option on the table so they didn't play ball, and this author tries to suggest they were lazy and uncooperative and are now pitching a fit. It looks to me like they were railroaded, and I hope my readers consider the possibly historically relevant significance of that colloquialism. <br />
<br />
Another points out <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/north_america-july-dec11-blackhills_08-23/" target="_blank">an article</a> noting that the tribes were refusing money (that they were owed by the federal government) for land the pipeline crosses back in 2011 (after a court found the government had illegally violated treaty to seize that land), because they didn't want the money. They wanted their land. And they want it without a pipeline on it.<br />
<br />
That's all the argument I need.<br />
<br />
I'll leave to my readers to decide whether this article from my friend falls better into the "Fake News" category we've been hearing so much about in the news since the election, or the "Propaganda" category. Either way, I'd say the Army Corps did the right thing, here. <br />
<br />
So for now I raise a glass in celebration of their historic victory. However, while we gotta celebrate a solid win, the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/04/politics/dakota-access-pipeline/" target="_blank">fight </a>ain't <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/12/10/standing-rock-people-left-jobs-homes-and-family-join-anti-pipeline-camp/95254588/" target="_blank">over yet</a>. Last I heard, the pipeline company's machinery was still there, and that's why the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/12/10/standing-rock-people-left-jobs-homes-and-family-join-anti-pipeline-camp/95254588/" target="_blank">camp is staying put</a>. Keep reading, people. Keep making phone calls to your representatives, and marching.<br />
<br />
<i><b>And don't always buy what they're trying to sell you. </b></i><br />
<br />
As always, readers, please let me know if you spot something that needs correcting or have info to add. Comments always welcome. For some amazing photojournalism on the latest, <a href="https://mic.com/articles/161149/4-photos-showing-indigenous-activists-celebration-of-historic-standing-rock-victory#.4QGVEE1mi" target="_blank">click here</a>.<i><b> </b></i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-10599772438491649882016-09-28T16:31:00.002-07:002016-09-28T16:31:20.152-07:00TidbitsSo, it occurred to me that not everybody keeps up with environmentally-focused news and developments the way I do. Truth is, I get my info from a lot of sources. There's a lot out there! A good deal of my idle reading comes from stuff I find on Facebook, I'll admit, but some is also scholarly work, links I've come across from professional sources, or even just personal interest stuff I've kept up with for a while.<br />
<br />
So now, I'm going to share some fun little tidbits I've come across recently, just because I think they're pretty cool, or at least worth sharing around, on the off chance anybody reads this. You may recall, it's been a while since I put up my last post like this, <a href="http://naturalistnotations.blogspot.com/2013/07/news-views.html" target="_blank">News & Views</a>. Hopefully this level of posting, where I just give a few thoughts on multiple little tidbits of fun or important info, captures some audience interest.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrvcatSfixLJSWWGabGNCvLtnHNZ_TF8fKpxkOXMDYlg83eQ_hI6_-OUAJ5KzyOVxUXK5h3aQcuK193xGeo3kWBLmbJHG26zhK6a4SOkTZ_mCxhg1yAF6jU1vL3L8mdGOGJbvY0aU2bZI/s1600/The+Bits.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrvcatSfixLJSWWGabGNCvLtnHNZ_TF8fKpxkOXMDYlg83eQ_hI6_-OUAJ5KzyOVxUXK5h3aQcuK193xGeo3kWBLmbJHG26zhK6a4SOkTZ_mCxhg1yAF6jU1vL3L8mdGOGJbvY0aU2bZI/s320/The+Bits.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>How I'd like to imagine my audience's hunger and enthusiasm for the tidbits I'm about to present.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
<br />
Ok, so here goes. First, a little podcast called RadioLab, which I've been in love with for some time now. It isn't always hard science, wandering occasionally into philosophy or speculation, but it always has some great storytelling, and I'd encourage you to <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/" target="_blank">check them out</a> beyond this one 'cast.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="130" scrolling="no" src="https://www.wnyc.org/widgets/ondemand_player/radiolab/#file=%2Faudio%2Fxspf%2F648425%2F" width="600"></iframe>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Not just about trees!</span></i> </div>
<br />
More locally, here's some fairly recent good news. The Columbia River Basin is likely gonna get some serious funding to get <a href="http://www.cbbulletin.com/437530.aspx" target="_blank">cleaned up some</a>!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span class="Article_FullDescription"></span></i><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: small;">The Columbia River Basin Restoration Act would be
administered by the Environmental Protection Agency but adds no new
authorization to regulate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">The purpose of
the Act is strictly to establish a competitive grant program to help local
groups voluntarily clean up, monitor, and reduce the use of toxics within the
Columbia River Basin. </span></span></i></div>
<i></i><br /></blockquote>
So this is pretty cool, because apparently the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership (with other partners) has been working on this for the better part of a decade. I've volunteered with them and attended a few of their conferences, and I can tell you they're a great organization with a solid foundation in the science of what they do. They actually just recently got a <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/dsl/SLB/Pages/2015_slb_awards.aspx" target="_blank">major award</a> for a project implemented in 2015. But there's a lot more to get done, and we haven't exactly gotten our share of funding for it.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> <span class="Article_FullDescription"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: small;">The Columbia River basin remains one of only two major EPA
designated ‘large aquatic ecosystems’ to receive zero funding for clean-up
pursuant to this designation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">Since
2009, ‘large aquatic ecosystems’ including the Great Lakes and Puget Sound have
received a total of over $3 billion in funding to protect and preserve their
watersheds.</span></span></span></i></blockquote>
<br />
We could use a slice of that pie, lemme tell you. I look forward to getting my hands dirty.<br />
<br />
Speaking of which, there's an opportunity coming up that I almost never miss, Clark County Public Utilities District's <a href="https://www.clarkpublicutilities.com/event/make-difference-day/" target="_blank">Make A Difference Day</a>, Saturday, October 22nd. Yes, they used a pic of me at the link, from my volunteering at one of the past Make A Difference Days. They get TONS of people out, bring out some live music and other performers, set up free food for the volunteers, and make a whole fair of it. If you're local, you should go. I promise it'll feel good and you'll have fun.<br />
<br />
Another opportunity I just heard about through the email list for a local ecology-interested meetup thing (which I can never make it to because they are mostly done before my commute is over in the evenings) is this project by <a href="http://www.cascadiawild.org/wolverine-tracking-project.html" target="_blank">Cascadia Wild</a> to get people out surveying for wolverines on Mt. Hood. Snow shoeing. Can you see the glee on my face right now? I don't know that I'll be able to make it, but they seem to have quite a few options for training dates as well as survey dates. Keep your fingers crossed. If I make it out there, I'll tell you all about it in another post.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1aE42mFdii_FD0s8cuCwDZJDe_tbQ67HC7KMl9R4-whGYFnpr5a6s3Vco-PBJeYq2LsOgwt3K1O_IKBjVk8P53UV5CGSQdKjGfIdRiJKhTh6f7BSLI9KGc6DWX8mZBUAVlzzAMalfET0/s1600/Wolverine_in_Sweden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1aE42mFdii_FD0s8cuCwDZJDe_tbQ67HC7KMl9R4-whGYFnpr5a6s3Vco-PBJeYq2LsOgwt3K1O_IKBjVk8P53UV5CGSQdKjGfIdRiJKhTh6f7BSLI9KGc6DWX8mZBUAVlzzAMalfET0/s320/Wolverine_in_Sweden.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"You lookin' fer me, bub?"<br />(Image from Wikipedia, by Jonathan Othén - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40212610)</i></td></tr>
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<br />
And now, to leave you with one last cool bit of imagery. Some climate scientists with the Nature Conservancy have put together a <a href="http://maps.tnc.org/migrations-in-motion/#5/44.277/-110.149" target="_blank">map of the anticipated routes</a> of animal migration as birds, mammals, and amphibians all start to move to cooler climes in response to climate change. While a sad topic, worth a few subsequent essays or research endeavors into what this means for future impacts to agriculture and outdoor recreation and a million other things, it makes for an amazing image. Go <a href="http://blog.nature.org/science/2016/08/19/migration-in-motion-visualizing-species-movements-due-to-climate-change/" target="_blank">read up on it</a>, and take your time admiring the animation, because it represents so much work by some brilliant people. You can zoom in and pan around if you like. I also hope you click through the links, read some cool news, and turn on some RadioLab.<br />
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Enjoy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-80936751800389475082016-07-30T01:20:00.001-07:002016-08-03T10:19:53.976-07:00Shellfish, Ocean Acification, and Global WarmingI target my writing here at the layperson, so it may or may not be obvious to my readers that lots of things are happening to the ocean as a result of anthropogenic climate change, from coral reefs dying to sea level rise to changes in our fisheries to a mysterious "Warm Blob" in the Pacific (an <a href="https://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/news/features/food_chain/" target="_blank">actual</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob_(Pacific_Ocean)" target="_blank">thing</a>!). Today I thought I'd try to tackle one of the causes of a few of those changes, Ocean Acidification. Ocean Acidification is an important point to understand when we're talking about the scale and consequences of global warming, and I hope to impart a bit of perspective on the matter here, if I can.<br />
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There's a lot of chemistry I'm not really gonna go into, but a little of it you have to understand, at least conceptually. First, a quick lesson on pH. I know you've seen that letter combination before, be it on lotion or soap or what have you, maybe you remember playing with pH paper in high school, but the thing to know is that it is a scale of measurement. Simply, it measures how acidic or basic something is, and those are opposite descriptors for the chemistry of a fluid based on the activity of the hydrogen ions in it. The scale runs from 0 to 14, where 7 is neutral, the low half of the scale is acidic and the upper half is basic. Lemon juice, for example, contains 5% to 6% citric acid and has a pH of between 2 and 3 (high acidity). The ocean is at a pH of around 8 (a little basic). <br />
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The thing to understand about pH is that this is a logarithmic scale. Like the Richter Scale used for measuring earthquake intensity, it isn't linear. We're not counting things, we're measuring intensity, in a range that boggles the human brain. A difference of 1 does not reflect an extra orange in a sack of oranges. Each mark on the scale is the previous mark multiplied by a value, not added to by a value. On the Richter scale a difference of one represents about a thirtyfold difference in magnitude. With pH, as mentioned, we're talking about the chemistry of the relative abundance of hydrogen ions, charged atoms. It takes a lot of those to change the pH of a cup of liquid you can hold in your hand. The numbers involved are beyond the capacity of the human brain to comprehend without some sort of shorthand to abbreviate things. You probably know that multiplying something by 2 over and over again gets you to <a href="http://www.singularitysymposium.com/exponential-growth.html" target="_blank">astronomically high numbers really fast</a>. Imagine doing that with a multiplier of 10 and you begin to understand pH.<br />
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So we have solid data to show that the pH of the ocean used to be more like 8.2, around 300 years ago, and over the last 200 years or so (thanks, Industrial Revolution!) it has edged up toward 8.1, which <a href="http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/explore/pristine-seas/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/" target="_blank">National Geographic</a> will also spare you the math on and just tell you is about a 25% increase in acidity. That's a whole damn lot, which, when you think about how very big the ocean is, should scare you a whole damn lot. Because part of the carbon cycle of this planet involves the ocean soaking up CO<sub>2</sub> from the atmosphere, forming carbonic acid (H<sub>2</sub>CO<sub>3</sub>) when it hits the water (H<sub>2</sub>O). This effect of the oceans soaking up our excess atmospheric carbon has definitely helped us by slowing the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that heats things up enough to melt glaciers and tundras, but we've generated so much CO<sub>2</sub>, so fast (think geologic timescales, now), that we're literally changing the chemistry of our planet. And it'll get worse. By <a href="http://e360.yale.edu/feature/northwest_oyster_die-offs_show_ocean_acidification_has_arrived/2466/" target="_blank">one estimate</a>, "if we continue our current rate of carbon emissions, global oceans could
be 150 percent more acidic by the end of the century than they have
been for 20 million years."<br />
<br />
Look, we're not concerned the ocean is gonna turn into lemon juice. But we're pumping enough carbon into the ocean, that the acification is keeping sea life from functioning properly. That's why coral reefs are bleaching worldwide, and why the industry that harvests and sells mussels in Oregon is suffering. The higher acidity inhibits shell growth in marine animals. They literally can't make the chemistry of their bodies in the water function well enough to produce the calcium carbonate that they need for their shells, exoskeletons and other structures. The whole food chain is affected by this, including our fisheries.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Looks like a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dryer-Balls-Count-Assorted-Colors/dp/B004W7GNB2" target="_blank">Dryer Ball</a> to me.</i></td></tr>
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There is so much we don't know about the ocean! We find new and previously assumed-to-be-extinct species, and we have absolutely no idea what <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/mysterious-purple-blob-nautilus-california/" target="_blank">this</a> is! We have no idea what caused <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop" target="_blank">the Bloop</a> (OK, we have some solid evidence to imply it was iceberg related, but still). We're still in the "observation" stage of understanding what the heck is going on with the Blob, as it is way too early to say we understand the process of it's generation even a tenth as well as we get the El Nino formation or what they call the "Pacific Decadal Oscillation." Hell, we can only sorta say we understand THOSE. We've looked at MAYBE 5% of the ocean and its depths, and the budget for NOAA (the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) is less than a quarter of that of NASA. We need more <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36225652" target="_blank">Boaty McBoatfaces</a>. We need more research, not just of what climate change is doing but of what's been out there all this time (my own <a href="http://hmsc.oregonstate.edu/" target="_blank">alma mater</a> is amazing on this front, btw). <br />
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Don't get me wrong, I love NASA. I love the technological marvels they've brought us over the years, and the exploration of space, and I have no desire to see NASA's budget cut, but NOAA definitely needs more, because they work to understand our planet's life support system. If we screw that up, there's no fixing it. Sorry to end on such a downer note, but that's were the science brings us. <br />
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Which is why (and I can say this, because this is a personal blog, and I choose to say it because we're in an election year) I will never vote for anyone who denies global warming. And you shouldn't either. That eliminates about 95% of a particular political party, in case you were wondering. Bear that in mind this November.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-84390303554265638412016-02-27T12:58:00.000-08:002016-08-03T10:23:51.695-07:00Contaminants in our Environment, Biomagnification, and Science Literature<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Or,<br /><br />The Dissemination of Useful Knowledge in the Struggle for Modern Life</span></h3>
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According to the <a href="http://nature.ca/explore/di-ef/wcef_tfw_e.cfm" target="_blank">Canadian Museum of Nature</a>, belugas (<span class="latin">Dephinapterus leucas</span>) and killer whales (<span class="latin">Orcinus orca</span>) may be considered toxic waste in some places when they die. I'm going to do my best in this post to explain how and why.<br />
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So there's this thing I'm gonna introduce as background, called an Ecological Pyramid. This is a simple graphic representation of biomass at multiple trophic levels. Trophic levels being, of course, position on the food chain, from plants to bacteria and little buggies that decompose dead plant matter, to the larger buggies that prey on those, to the grazers that eat the grass that grows in the decomposing material, to the megafauna predators that prey on the grazers. Biomass, being simply the sheer amount of matter that is living, for this purpose categorized by trophic level.<br />
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The idea in an Ecological Pyramid is that only about 10% of the energy in all the biomass of one
trophic level gets transferred/used to the next trophic level, so the apex predators need a ton of biomass and a large territory to support them. Now, this is simplified because it doesn't show food web interactions, so there are a number of reasons it doesn't work out for all situations, and there are a ton of exceptions and inconsistencies, but toss that aside a moment and <a href="http://earth.rice.edu/mtpe/bio/biosphere/topics/energy/40_biomass.html" target="_blank">imagine this</a>:<br />
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So think about this as a way that nature might process some heinous contaminants. DDT, for example. Lead. PCBs. Mercury. Hydrocarbons from petroleum products or oil spills. This stuff gets picked up and processed a little bit at a time by the primary producers, bioaccumulated into that trophic level, but as a ton of primary producers get consumed by the next step up the pyramid, the contaminants don't dilute out. They aren't ever broken down because of how enduring they are, so they biomagnify. That means that a lot of contaminants sucked up out of the environment by the primary producers then end up in the bodies of each herbivore, because the structure of the food web and the biomass pyramid means a LOT of the primary producers are required to support herbivores. The concentration of the contaminant doesn't necessarily actually harm organisms at lower trophic levels, but because it gets more concentrated at each successive level, it can be really harmful to larger animals.<br />
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So if a chemical is mobile in the environment, long lived, and doesn't break down easily, if it is soluble in fats and/or can be considered "bio-available" for uptake by the primary producers, it can biomagnify. DDT was the beginning of our understanding of this phenomenon. <br />
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See, DDT is a nasty chemical, but the broader effects of it aren't immediately apparent. As far as we knew, it was just a really, really effective pesticide. It didn't just kill a few pests, though, it killed the broadest array of insects we'd ever seen. And like whaling or ocean dumping or logging or any number of other natural resource issues, we went overboard. Seriously, kids got hosed down with it in the streets, it was put on food crops everywhere, sprayed over whole forests and ornamental trees in residential neighborhood. We were spraying the stuff like it was going out of style.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">“By their very nature chemical controls are self-defeating, for they
have been devised and applied without taking into account the complex
biological systems against which they have been blindly hurled” -- Rachel Carson, <i>Silent Spring</i></td></tr>
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The more pesticides got sprayed into our environment, the more made their way into the food web, the more it impacted species that had nothing to do with the intended use of the pesticides, particularly apex predators (which, as you know from <a href="http://naturalistnotations.blogspot.com/2012/09/lords-of-nature.html" target="_blank">previous posts</a>, are vital to the health of an ecosystem). <a href="http://www.fws.gov/midwest/eagle/recovery/biologue.html" target="_blank">Bald eagles</a>, for example, were impacted by DDT in such a way as to reduce the hardness of the shells of the eggs they laid, so they were severely impacted, and put on the endangered species list. They were only removed from the list in 2007 after enough time had passed without ongoing continued exposure so that their population could recover.<br />
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Hang in there, I'll get back to whale carcasses in a minute. See where this is going, though?<br />
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Anyway, part of the problem was that the people making decisions to spray were typically pest control officials, largely bureaucrats who found it a cheap way to get a ton of land cleared of pests in a hurry or agricultural producers advised by those bureaucrats on how to dramatically increase their yield in a single season, and not the underfunded wildlife biologists who were seeing the impacts on the rest of nature or the public health specialists who eventually started to see impacts on people. Even otherwise fully healthy people, years after use and exposure.<br />
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See, the problem with a lot of pesticides is that they are fat soluble. Which meant that not only do they get into mammary tissue and breastmilk and harm the most vulnerable of our population, they can accumulate and be stored in fat for years, seemingly harmlessly, until one day a person might lose weight due to illness or injury or even an attempt at improved exercise lifestyle and find their system suddenly overloaded with more pesticide than they could handle, suddenly released from those tissues as their fat cells got used for energy. People can drop like flies, kinda literally, years after any exposure to pesticides.<br />
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To top it off, for quite a while, it seemed like the only way we could find to deal with pests developing resistances to pesticides (a natural evolutionary consequence of pesticide application) was to spray at higher concentrations, and more frequently. This served the interests of the chemical manufacturers quite nicely, and they had armies of lobbyists pushing their product on Congress and on agencies like the USDA. They sold their products as "cheap and easy!" until it wasn't, and then it was just all we knew for a while. <br />
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However, there are alternatives out there. Selective application of pesticides rather than wholesale spraying at incautious concentrations as used to be common is one way. If you use just a little of just the right pesticide at just the right time in a particular pest's lifecycle, you can get away with applying a lot less pesticide, at way less cost, to much greater effect. We've also had great results by selectively importing predators and microbial enemies and other biological controls of pest species, after very careful testing in controlled lab and field tests to find what would work.<br />
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Collectively, these practices are called Integrated Pest Management, or IPM. <a href="http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/programs/Pesticides/RegulatoryIssues/Pages/IPM.aspx" target="_blank">My state</a>, along many others including probably yours, has tons of information and resources on it available for the public (that's you!), for yardwork and gardening hobbyists, for agricultural producers, and for anyone who might be interested. I have vague memories of what my dad did to our yard and house to control an absurdly huge infestation of our dog's fleas when I was a kid, and I wonder what the concentration of those chemicals is in our own fat cells to this day as a result. It's a tough thing to think about, because nobody knew better. To this day, many people don't know better, and still over apply pesticides because they think simply that more is better and don't realize they can be causing problems that won't be seen for years, whether in the health of their family or in increased resistance by the pests to those chemicals. <br />
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Eventually, the voices of biologists like Rachel Carson started to get heard, even over the character assassination attempts of the well financed chemical industry and the politicians who served them. Rachel's 1962 book, Silent Spring, laid out all the evidence and made a convincing case for the application of alternatives and reduction of the use of pesticides. Her book, a labor of love she wrote while fighting cancer in the last days of her life, raised such a ruckus that DDT got banned, and the environment was raised for the first time to the status of a major political issue of interest to all of us. She basically started a major branch of the modern environmental movement singlehandedly.<br />
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I'd encourage you to read it, though I'd understand if you never picked it up, dear reader. I only got around to reading Silent Spring last year, in part just because I was embarrassed that I, an actual ecologist, had never read such an important work. Oh, don't get me wrong, I knew the information it held, and had taken classes that presented the same information with more recent updates to the science, but had never really fully appreciated the grace of Rachel's prose, or the effort she put into her work.<br />
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And that's why I (too rarely, I know) write about this stuff. Not because I consider myself a writer or scientist anywhere near Rachel Carson's eloquence or brilliance, but because so many people don't know this stuff, and sometimes someone might pick up a little knowledge from me. This is all just background information I'm fully aware of as a person with a career in natural resources, but many of my friends and family know almost nothing about it, and I feel like I have to honor the works of <a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/" target="_blank">Rachel Carson</a> and <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/static/smp/undeniable/" target="_blank">Bill Nye</a> and <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-O-Wilson" target="_blank">Edward O. Wilson</a> and <a href="http://www.aboutdarwin.com/" target="_blank">Charles Darwin</a> and <a href="http://www.maryroach.net/books.html" target="_blank">Mary Roach</a> and all the rest of the fascinating and entertaining science literature out there from ages past and present . . . by sharing it. We all benefit from this knowledge, because our neighbors overapplying pesticides in their yards, ignorant through no real fault of their own, affects us and the rest of the world we live in, too. Lots of issues are like that.<br />
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Maybe I'll get back into writing here more just by taking the time to read more, and sharing the experiences I get from my favorite new and classic science writing. Let me know if you like that idea, and encourage me once in a while, and you'll see more submissions from me, I promise. Gimme prompts! If there are questions about ecology or the broader sciences that you've wondered about, let me know. I'll be happy to share my knowledge, and go searching for it if I don't already have it.<br />
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Now: Confession time! I tricked you. Whale carcasses were really just a silly excuse to get me writing, and are hazardous not for the bioaccumulated environmental contaminants, but because Brobdingnagian sized rotting carcasses are a hazard to public health. Also, they have been known to explode without warning as gasses build up within them while they decompose from the inside out. But you learned some cool stuff, didn't you?<br />
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So without further ado, I'm really happy to have created an opportunity to share the following grossness. Enjoy. Oh, and, uh . . . viewer discretion is advised.<br />
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A few Rachel Carson quotes to leave you with:<br />
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“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
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“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength
that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely
healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn
comes after night, and spring after winter.”
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“The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is
wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these
qualities... If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not
because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write
truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”<br />
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(She was primarily a Marine Biologist, FYI)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-6610538226872888752014-11-12T20:58:00.001-08:002016-11-12T10:53:51.941-08:00Just sharing some lovely thoughts that are not my ownEvery once in a while, I find something I need to share that I had no hand in creating (see the bottom of <a href="http://naturalistnotations.blogspot.com/2012/08/i-heart-ecology.html">this post</a>, for example). Well, I have another, and less to say to lead into it.
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This one struck me for its poetry and advocacy, it's rhythm and it's hope. Enjoy. <br />
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For those of you who don't recognize the homage, the phrase "Pale Blue Dot" is a nod to the late, great Carl Sagan, whose shoes the incredible Neil Degrasse Tyson may take his time wearing. <br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-33372932552292691602014-09-24T17:20:00.002-07:002014-09-24T17:20:47.683-07:00Not Really About Science<i>So I know I haven't posted in a while, but I got to journaling a bit in an effort to process a few things I'm going through, and this is what came out. I'm sharing it here because it started with a vaguely sciency bent even though it quickly got way off that track. Enjoy.</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Our senses provide only an </span><a href="http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3491" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">imperfect representation</a><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> of the world around us. With our native ability, we can only perceive a sliver of the information that is truly out there to behold. Not only is the visible spectrum of light minuscule relative to range of frequencies at which photons bombard us, but we can only pick up changes in intensity when you actually slide up or down by something like an order of magnitude. We have to use logarithmic-scale sensitivity to interpret an infinite range of variability. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So how do we make sense of anything? Our brains try to fill in gaps. We take pieces of information and sew them together into a poorly sketched cartoon version of the reality around us. Our brains actually lie to us, telling us that there is sense to be made in the static, that there is a reliable signal when there isn't. We lay that cartoon over the world like a blanket, and sometimes we miss the pitfalls before us, or there's a mound under the blanket where we don't have a picture of anything. It's what makes illusion possible, what makes M.C. Escher paintings so disorienting; we forget, when we really fall into such traps, that the Escher is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional imagining, and our eyes lead us in uncomprehending circles. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When this happens, we have choices. First, we can ignore the discrepancy between reality and our cartoon-embroidered blanket. We can take no action and go on as we were, tripping or falling or stubbing our toes occasionally, and maybe it isn't a big deal because our blankets are comforting and it doesn't happen too often. Second, we can plant a flag to pin the blanket to the mound or draw a circle around the hole, label a thing with our best understanding of what's there, be eternally wary of that spot, perhaps even try to find similarities in setting and context to other spots like it. Maybe we'll even make up a story, draw constellations using stars further apart than they are from us and imagine a connection, or simply say the night's sky is a black sheet penetrated by pinholes that separates us from God's grace. But all that does is create another cartoon. These paths lead false assumptions to become rigid beliefs and can result in cognitive dissonance. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">No, if we want to do the rewarding hard work, we can take the third option. Investigation, analysis, testing. We observe what we can and we circle around to look from other angles; we find things we cannot see using our hands, things we cannot hear using our eyes, and so on. Having such imperfect instruments as our senses, our brains require more to really have an understanding of things. We need use all the tools we have, and make more. We apply the microscope, the telescope, and we cut apart audio recordings. Not good enough! We direct electrons through a vacuum into copper in order to generate radiation, so that we can shine 1% of that light we cannot see through an object onto a backdrop and have a visual representation of variances in density within the thing . . . fractured bones, perhaps, or dental cavities. We need sonar, the oscilloscope, the mass spectrometer, the electron-microscope, magnetic resonance imaging, every tool we can dream up, each an achievement stunning in it's complexity, to help us more fully understand our place in things. But, even with these, our picture of reality is incomplete. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I use all of the above to explain my mindset in how I navigate relationships. It informs my personal philosophy on people. I never really feel like I've reached a conclusion in understanding someone because I understand that my picture of them is a caricature, or a sketch, or at best, a portrait capable of demonstrating how beauty is supported by imperfection. Whatever my picture, I know it lacks a certain depth, and is skewed by my own experiences in like situations and by where I was in my own journey when I painted it. I understand that there's a chance maybe that the proportions of the rough outlines I scribbled down early on, which set the tone for the rest of the piece, were skewed by a bad first impression or by something in me, or maybe a bad experience threw mud across the surface rendering it forever ugly to look upon. So I investigate, I analyze, I test. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When dealing with people, I work hard to assume no ill will unless it is openly stated, but I also must admit that I think most people are horrible, inconsiderate creatures, acting much of the time out of instinct or pride or fear; they are not malicious, but unaware of the harm they can do to others with a careless word or of how much their own selfishness may underlie their motives. But being short-sighted and lacking introspection does not make anyone worthy of unkindness. If you want to improve a rocky relationship, you give more than is fair. You build mutual trust by demonstrating trust. You build mutual respect by demonstrating respect. You do the hard work and you build better tools, learn better ways to communicate about yourself and about what you perceive, better ways to draw out clarity about others' intentions. It is hard work, no doubt, but it is rewarding. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Escher_Waterfall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Escher_Waterfall.jpg" height="320" width="250" /></a><span style="font-size: small;">You might think you understand someone's actions or their perspective, but I guarantee the information you have is incomplete, and somewhere or other you are filling the gaps with cartoons that approximate your understanding. Maybe a friend was close to you for a time and the relationship soured in some way. Maybe you saw what looked like solid evidence that you had been betrayed. But how do you know betrayal was the intent? We tell ourselves stories about people, about what they think of us, about what they thought their actions would mean to us, and how we approach (or avoid) that person forever thereafter is influenced by the stories we tell ourselves. Your assumptions, your false picture, can lead you in circles. For families, this can lead to a devastatingly difficult to buck trend that can last decades. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Be careful in your stories. Be careful in your assumptions. Accept that you are imperfect, that you act sometimes out of instinct or pride or fear more than rationality or altruism, and that words you may not remember saying can leave lasting damage. People mistreat each other enough without our adding to their emotional injuries, so I'd rather we broke the pattern than reinforce it. Be kind to the people around you, and when someone hurts you, take whatever space you need but continue to be kind while you address it, especially if the person is important to you or to others you care about. Understand that some portion of their true story is hidden from your eyes, that their story of you may be a fairground caricature, and do your best to show them their error with gentleness and patience. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The hard work is worth it, I promise you, and t</span>he world will be an unquestionably better place for it. </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-55084927939942530412013-12-03T20:50:00.002-08:002013-12-05T12:30:05.546-08:00Finding Compromise in "Logging Jobs vs. Environment" is the Wrong GoalSenator Wyden has released a <a href="http://www.wyden.senate.gov/priorities/oc-act-of-2013" target="_blank">new plan</a> for management of Oregon & California Railroad trust lands, a plan that I think is intended to replace, update, or supersede the <a href="http://www.oregonwild.org/oregon_forests/old_growth_protection/westside-forests/northwest_forest_plan" target="_blank">Northwest Forest Plan</a> that Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994 for O&C lands. I'm glad new science is being brought to bear on an old problem, but I think the approach is wrong. I disagree with it's broader objectives, and thus with some of the specific things it tries to do. <br />
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Wyden's plan relies on the recent work of two well-regarded scientists, Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin, men who helped craft the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan in the first place. The broad objective is to create a plan whereby these lands can be sustainably logged forever without dramatically sacrificing ecological protections. This is not an unworthy goal. I think we should approach all our resources this way, starting with the question "if we have to use this, how do we make sure we're not using it faster than it replenishes on its own?" But a consistent problem with that idea is that people with a profit-driven interest take an optimistic view of what's sustainable. Fisheries get overharvested because a certain fishery will have a few good years because of factors nobody has any control over, so everyone upwardly revises their idea of what's sustainable, and then our ability to monitor the decline in population lags a few years, so the population crashes in response to the increased harvest and it takes many, many years to recover. The same can happen with forests if managers assume that what's sustainable now will continue to be so five years down the line.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Lewis_and_Clark_River_2148s.JPG/799px-Lewis_and_Clark_River_2148s.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Lewis_and_Clark_River_2148s.JPG/799px-Lewis_and_Clark_River_2148s.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Clear-Cut near the source of the Lewis & Clark River</i></td></tr>
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I'll freely admit, I'm not sure there's anything to doubt in the science of sustainable forestry they're relying on for this plan. The plan has the support of the Pacific Rivers Council and the Wild Salmon Center, solid natural resources protection groups, and it relies on good science, with adaptive management and rigorous scientific review built in. Johnson and Franklin are likely smarter than me, and are certainly more experienced ecologists than myself, and I've only had the opportunity to read a couple of Johnson's academic papers, which I admired for their well-balanced emphasis on both the social and environmental issues raised by forest management, and none of Franklin's. But I think the focus of Wyden's approach to the social matters is misplaced. <br />
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I'm always leery of any reduction in natural resource protections. The Sierra Club, Environment Oregon, and <a href="http://org.salsalabs.com/o/1780/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=14659" target="_blank">Oregon Wild</a> (which I must disclose I have the pleasure of volunteering for) all disagree with the O&C plan. Narrowing the stream buffers that protect the riparian habitats salmon and so many other species depend on, even if only in specially designated areas, is a worrisome idea. Limiting the ability of activist groups to file lawsuits against logging actions is even more worrisome. Allowing clear-cuts, even in selective "variable retention harvesting" patches intended to mimic the natural variability of a fire-prone habitat mosaic, is not necessarily a great idea when global climate change has thrown natural variability out the window.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Wildfire_in_California.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Wildfire_in_California.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Fires get BIG!</i></td></tr>
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Wildfires now regularly reach intensities <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/03/nation/la-na-fire-behavior-20130704" target="_blank">never seen before</a>. As annual snow pack decreases due to changes in global climate, there's less spring melt to feed streams and wet forests, so forests that haven't been logged in some time get more dry and more prone to fire. That's basic fact right now, and I could do a whole blog post just about that. But selective thinning for fuel load reduction is different than trying to create a perpetual, sustainable harvest regime based on what we know of past conditions, in an era when past conditions don't mean anything. We don't know what the wildfire regime is going to look like in five years, we don't know just how habitats and species will change and migrate over the next decade independent of all our best efforts to manage and control. There's an argument to be made that we should use logging to try to artificially force forests to match past natural conditions, but the system is not stable, so stable harvest is not really going to be possible. Fires have been getting bigger and more out of control every year, and we need to protect what we've got, not continue to harvest based on what the fire regime was like in the past. <br />
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It's the wrong kind of sustainability for our present situation. Right now, given climate change, I think conservation is a higher priority than smarter resource extraction for (mostly) private profit. Adaptive management of lands conserved for their own sake is the way to go, and harvest should be allowed to happen as part of that management, not as the main goal of that management. We have to consider whether our public natural resources should even be allowed to be extracted for private profit. Apparently the answer everyone comes to these days is yes, but should it be?<br />
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<a href="http://www.ourforestsforever.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Chips.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.ourforestsforever.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Chips.jpg" width="320" /></a>The lean towards increased logging comes from the idea that logging creates jobs, but that idea is outdated and no longer accurate. In Lincoln County, timber harvest more than doubled from 2009 to 2012, but employment went down. In Lane County, there was a 75% increase in harvest over the same period, but a 14% decrease in wood products manufacturing jobs. Why the disconnect? Because logging in Oregon is a truly <a href="http://www.registerguard.com/rg/opinion/30735204-78/log-exports-forest-oregon-forests.html.csp#" target="_blank">extractive industry</a>, and fully a third of the trees harvested from our forests get exported as logs or as chips for use elsewhere. The logs get extracted from our public lands and shipped to Asian markets, the processing and manufacturing jobs get extracted by increased mechanization and shipping of raw materials overseas to support manufacturing jobs in places where labor is cheaper and tax breaks are higher, and the profits get extracted by owners. Logging just doesn't create jobs like it used to, doesn't benefit Oregon's economy like it used to, and we waste obscene amounts of money <a href="http://www.ourforestsforever.org/private-forests-public-places/" target="_blank">subsidizing the practice</a>.<br />
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In fact, there's reason to believe the reduction in forest harvesting was not such a bad thing. Want to know what happened from 1988 to 1996, when harvests in the Pacific Northwest fell most precipitously? ECONorthwest reported, in a document titled <a href="http://pages.uoregon.edu/whitelaw/432/articles/SkyDidNotFallFull.pdf" target="_blank">"The Sky Did NOT Fall: The Pacific Northwest's Response to Logging Reductions,"</a> that while harvests fell 86% on federal lands and 47% overall in that time, yes, jobs in the lumber-and-wood-products industry fell 22%. But total employment, reflecting a much larger population than just the lumber-and-wood-products subset, increased 27%. <br />
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ECONorthwest proposed two main causes for this, with many contributing factors. Cause one: Logging's importance to the economy had already diminished by a good deal. This is because of the timber industry cutting jobs and wages in union-busting tactics in the 1980's, before the Northwest Forest Plan was even in place. By 1990, the timber industry was only 3.1% of the jobs in the region, and decades of overharvesting had the resulted in predictions that there would be a crash in timber production in the 1990's anyway. It wasn't all about the spotted owl, people. <br />
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Cause two: Un-logged forests became more important to the economy, and this here's the not-so-obvious part. Do you really think Intel or Nike would want to be in Oregon if their headquarters were surrounded by clearcut wastelands and brown rivers that couldn't support any form of recreation, much less salmon? If their employees didn't want to be here, they wouldn't be here. Logging is a messy business that leaves a lot of cleanup and restoration work for others to take care of, it damages the land and the water and the species that rely on a healthy wild ecology, and the fact is, people want to live near beautiful forests. Other jobs came and more than replaced those lost. <br />
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I get that rural counties used to relying on the tax income from the logging industry, and, later, on compensatory payments from the federal government to offset the economic damage of forced reductions in logging, are hurting. Services are being cut, county governments are unable to govern, and people in the government are losing their jobs. Law enforcement has been devastated by the lack of funds, and people are suffering. But another point to note in all this is that many of these counties have dramatically lower property taxes than the rest of the state, rates they were able to maintain because they got funds through logging, and the populations of these counties keep voting against raising the property tax. As <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/mapes/index.ssf/2013/05/financially_troubled_oregon_co.html" target="_blank">one article</a> notes: <br />
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Voters in Lane and other timber-dependent counties have been resistant to raising property taxes in part because they're accustomed to the feds picking up most of the cost of county services and giving them low tax rates. Josephine County residents pay 58 cents per $1,000 of assessed value for county operations, the lowest rate in the state. Curry County follows just behind at 60 cents and Lane County's rate is $1.28, the seventh lowest. In comparison, Multnomah County's rate is $4.34.</blockquote>
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Northern_Spotted_Owl.USFWS-thumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Northern_Spotted_Owl.USFWS-thumb.jpg" width="268" /></a>There are better ways to stimulate local economies than logging, even if that's been their traditional driver. A <a href="http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/national-wildlife-refuges-economic-engines-local-communities/" target="_blank">recent study</a> found that National Wildlife Refuges are economic engines all their own, and pumped $2.4 billion into the economy, supported more than 35,000 jobs and produced $792.7 million in job income for the people who engage in, facilitate, and manufacture products that allow outdoor recreational activities. For every $1 appropriated to the refuge system in Fiscal Year 2011, the refuges contributed $4.87 in total economic output. Not too shabby an investment. <br />
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I'm not suggesting that converting all these lands to wildlife refuges would solve all the county problems, but I am suggesting that it's time to stop blaming the owl, the murrelet, and the salmon. It's time to stop pointing the finger at laws designed to benefit us all, which protect the natural resources that make our state a beautiful place full of wonders that people travel from around the world to see. If this is about jobs, put up a jobs bill. If this is about county funding, find another way: create incentives for companies to move there, earmark a few federal projects to take place in those counties and stimulate things that way, maybe even make the landowners of those counties pay more in taxes for the services they need.<br />
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There's a lot to like in Wyden's bill (<a href="http://media.oregonlive.com/mapes/other/Final%20OC%20Section-by-Section.pdf" target="_blank">summarized here</a>). It takes a reasonable approach that balances a perceived human socioeconomic need with environmental protections. If there was enough data to support the idea that increasing timber harvests would solve the problem, I'd be all for it. But there isn't, and I didn't see anything in my reading on the matter to suggest anyone was seriously proposing we keep some proportion of the logs in Oregon until they're processed into finished products or anything that would really create jobs. What we need right now is more conservation, and logging-industry lobbyists shouldn't be able to convince anyone that the problem will be solved if only a few profiteers at the top can get a compromise on natural resources protections and use low-wage jobs to ship raw materials overseas and then sell a finished product back to the Americans they just deprived of real employment opportunities. That tactic is a different kind of short-sighted, however many times the word "sustainable"appears in the plan.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-46288022199659470552013-12-02T10:16:00.001-08:002013-12-02T10:16:46.256-08:00Spring/Summer Hike: Larch MountainEarly this year, an old D&D buddy of mine (Yes, D&D. Shut up.) contacted me about hiking Mt. Whitney, and asked if I'd like to join. I was excited, and immediately told him yes. Afterward, it dawned on me that it might be a kind of big undertaking, and I realized I was going to have to do a lot of training, ideally with my friend Benji, who agreed to be my buddy-system pairing for the Mt. Whitney hike. This blog post is just gonna be a little about one of those hikes we did as training, with some photos, and a little bit of additional information thrown in for good measure as we go along.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Multfalls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Multfalls.jpg" width="200" /></a>Our first hike was up <a href="http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Larch_Mountain_Hike" target="_blank">Larch Mountain</a>. For those of you who don't know, Larch Mountain is just a little ways east of Portland, and the summit can be reached from a trail that starts at beautiful Multnomah Falls, which really is a tourist destination all its own. It's one of the many waterfalls that cascades down the cliffs of the Columbia Gorge in this region, and is worth visiting in every season. Even if you're not up for the hike up the mountain, even if you're not up for the hike just to see the top of the falls, if you're ever gonna visit Portland, you should go see Multnomah Falls, check out the interpretive center and learn a little about the history of the region, have some ice cream and coffee, maybe even enjoy the restaurant. In any case, the hike up the mountain begins with a hike up those cliffs.<br />
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At the top you can see a great view of quite a few peaks in the region (<a href="http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier" title="Mount Rainier">Rainier</a>, <a href="http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Mount_Adams" title="Mount Adams">Adams</a>, <a href="http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Mount_Saint_Helens" title="Mount Saint Helens">St Helens</a>, <a href="http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Mount_Hood" title="Mount Hood">Hood</a> and <a href="http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Mount_Jefferson" title="Mount Jefferson">Jefferson</a>). Interestingly, there are no larch trees on Larch Mountain. It just got that name because the old-time loggers who were the first Europeans to climb it confused the noble-fir for larch, which only grows east of the Cascades. There's still a lot of beautiful old-growth forest up there, which is surprising for a place so close to Portland and its logging history. Larch Mountain also adjoins the Bull Run watershed, which supplies Portland's drinking water, and after years of fighting, Oregon Wild and other groups managed in 2009 to achieve protections for the Larch Mountain area as part of the Lewis an<span class="highlightedSearchTerm">d</span> Clark Mount Hoo<span class="highlightedSearchTerm">d</span> Wil<span class="highlightedSearchTerm">d</span>erness. A lovely set of maps of that achievement can be viewed <a href="http://www.oregonwild.org/wilderness/new-wilderness/mount_hood_wilderness_campaign" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
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We did it as an out-and-back trip, though there are options for loops
that aren't much longer, and if you just want to see the view from the
top, you can simply drive to the upper trailhead, just a short walk from
the summit. A couple experienced hikers shouldn't have too much a problem with this hike . . . but we were not experienced hikers. First of all, we were woefully underprovisioned. We went up a mountain with full bellies, tons of water, and a couple oranges. Sweet jeebus, we were loopy on the way down. Our blood sugar was demolished. There are a couple spots where you have to cross picturesque streams using even more picturesque log-bridges with a handrail on only one side, and on the trip down the mountain we were starting to get dizzy, so those bridges were mighty menacing. Second, we probably shouldn't have tried to do this monster hike as our first trip out. It's about 14 miles on your feet, and takes most of a day to complete. Our joints were really achy the next day.<br />
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However, we DID get some beautiful pictures. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuA48vmdcygbWmM1ueLcgBUgsxUJmXMlvjUYk_q1PPeA_FmB3GbeP_QNb8iLr0q97G2J5vB24XfmgCF8-rei7qxsS9jQTvIW85jKvvW_JQ7r4Hj_qaBJBIBfzx_Q2hxUbK1TAziuGb81s/s1600/IMG_20130608_112936_621.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuA48vmdcygbWmM1ueLcgBUgsxUJmXMlvjUYk_q1PPeA_FmB3GbeP_QNb8iLr0q97G2J5vB24XfmgCF8-rei7qxsS9jQTvIW85jKvvW_JQ7r4Hj_qaBJBIBfzx_Q2hxUbK1TAziuGb81s/s400/IMG_20130608_112936_621.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of those many, picturesque streams we crossed.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9X5ZQoWSJuPsVzvxwuGL5VLIXc9wGmwBjCYjp4pNEMRtBLyna4c3trsbXdpLLer5LRX900f_DwTdlSSdnTnXiTQmaCgasIqqyPnNJqxKN17vo5GNFdw3lzluLOxWOYZGqglFVYn2IWnk/s1600/IMG_20130608_125653_167.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9X5ZQoWSJuPsVzvxwuGL5VLIXc9wGmwBjCYjp4pNEMRtBLyna4c3trsbXdpLLer5LRX900f_DwTdlSSdnTnXiTQmaCgasIqqyPnNJqxKN17vo5GNFdw3lzluLOxWOYZGqglFVYn2IWnk/s320/IMG_20130608_125653_167.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Western Columbine (<i>Aquilegia formosa</i>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6wtf-oIkGCv3x2RwhyWjIBck8vo0S_kDTfj_GDtzUqZiQm3pZq3Sj5wFjN6FDUo-W1jskbk9NwLqiWU4FiKzb-hrLwZlh9wnj_37F1CFHn6x7KhFEyh1ydhTAaD27UP-fIBEAaE1p4Es/s1600/8677_10102159789955423_949839442_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6wtf-oIkGCv3x2RwhyWjIBck8vo0S_kDTfj_GDtzUqZiQm3pZq3Sj5wFjN6FDUo-W1jskbk9NwLqiWU4FiKzb-hrLwZlh9wnj_37F1CFHn6x7KhFEyh1ydhTAaD27UP-fIBEAaE1p4Es/s320/8677_10102159789955423_949839442_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">VICTORY! (View from the summit, Mt. Hood in the background)</td></tr>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-24134826105390851492013-10-26T13:42:00.000-07:002013-10-26T13:45:09.041-07:00Water Dragons<div>
<a href="http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/280/1/9/kohaku__the_river_spirit_by_mang0l0v3r-d5h2uj8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/280/1/9/kohaku__the_river_spirit_by_mang0l0v3r-d5h2uj8.jpg" width="289" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">I love anime. I really enjoy my Trigun, my Bebop, and my Ranma, and I rewatch them from time to time. One of the better movies to come out in a long time was Spirited Away, by the ever talented Studio Ghibli. This is a fan-art image of one of the main characters, Haku the (SPOILER!) river spirit.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I've heard that some people have no idea why they chose a dragon to represent the spirit of a river. Why not a fish? Why not a bull/man creature like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achelous" target="_blank">Achelous</a> of ancient Greek legend? Is it arbitrary enough that it could as easily have been a unicorn or a griffin, or any creature off <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_from_Japan" target="_blank">this list</a>?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br />How is a river like a dragon? Well, that's a complicated question. I know you come here for ecology reading, and I normally prefer to focus my academic reading in that direction, too, but the confluence (Hah!) of several things has resulted in me writing this piece about rivers and their morphology, and really, geological processes are a major part of how ecology functions, so here goes. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lets talk about erosion for a minute first. Streams and creeks in high mountains often flow directly over bedrock, but as you move down toward the bottom of a watershed, you come across boulders, then cobbles, then smaller cobbles, gravel, then sand and silt. This happens as the the exposed rock of mountains get drenched in rainwater or snow, which later freezes and expands, enlarging cracks. Boulders crack off the side of a cliff face like a calving glacier, and water flows around them. Those boulders, too, crack and shatter, and over time the whole process turns mountains, the jagged, jutting bones of the earth, into rolling hills. Next time you're in an airplane, look out the window at the landscape and think about how the contours of every mound in the earth are shaped by epochs of wear and slumping caused by water. Our world is older than we can wrap our little heads around. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7EYf2skAwD3bevuTUqgkpVpfuO3y_EAKTEQy3vivSDhVe-g2bN1LL1wpT1Rs0XtKM8BiiDqJDiAh5b9zywKRChbjBo2cYdLWpHuFmOXn7igLQ6BMrSzaiU2yB-qCuFWtED5jYGoIa6I8/s1600/Mississippi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7EYf2skAwD3bevuTUqgkpVpfuO3y_EAKTEQy3vivSDhVe-g2bN1LL1wpT1Rs0XtKM8BiiDqJDiAh5b9zywKRChbjBo2cYdLWpHuFmOXn7igLQ6BMrSzaiU2yB-qCuFWtED5jYGoIa6I8/s320/Mississippi.jpg" width="214" /></a>A river, in its natural state, jumps and writhes; it whips back and forth like an angry snake. This image is a drawing of the Mississippi River over geologic time. It changes like that both by its natural flow wearing new bends in its own bed, and also by the effects of periodic flooding and deposition of sediments, which can cause it to jump its own normal banks to a whole new part of the floodplain. How does that work? </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When floods happen, a river swells to exceed its ordinary channel boundaries. It spills over into the floodplain and deposits silt everywhere. Rushing waters knock things around quite a bit, and sometimes an area that was a highly sinuous, meandering reach with slow flow might see a series of avulsions where those meanders get cut off, curves get abandoned, and the channel becomes a straighter, faster flowing reach along a steeper gradient. Imagine rolling a ball straight straight down a steep hill instead of carrying it down a trail with a ton of switchbacks. Rivers do that, and when they do, you get these abandoned channels in the floodplain, you get oxbow lakes, you get geological traces of the monstrosity of the river. Traces that can be mapped. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now check out this sexy beast:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.americanscientist.org/Libraries/images/201211272011209418-2013-01BRevsStallmanFA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://www.americanscientist.org/Libraries/images/201211272011209418-2013-01BRevsStallmanFA.jpg" width="305" /> </a><a href="http://www.americanscientist.org/Libraries/images/201211272011209418-2013-01BRevsStallmanFA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"> </a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To the right, there, that's a segment of the Willamette River, baby sister to the Columbia, yet still the 13th largest river in the US, a more modern, computerized mapping project showing similar change to the image above of the Mississippi. In ancient times, glacial floods from the Columbia, which carved the great Columbia Gorge out of the continent and pushed enough sediment around to create rows of hills across Washington that look like the teensy rows of sandmounds left by retreating waves at the beach, deposited as much as 5 meters of sediment in the southern Willamette Valley, more than halfway across the state from where the Willamette River meets the Columbia. In the northern Willamette Valley, at a lower elevation, closer to where they meet, the sediment deposition was as much as 35 meters deep. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But even in more recent history, the beast has still been deadly. Few early European settlers in the 1850s tried to claim land anywhere near the river, preferring to settle on the upper margins of the densely forested floodplain where they still had access to all that lumber, but some measure of safety from floods. After several decades of almost continuous work by the Army Corps of Engineers and local interests to improve the channel and control flooding, the upper Willamette especially was still prone to frequent channel change. It took until the 1930's for things to stabilize enough that even 50% of the Willamette could be bordered by agriculture.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> If you've read my blog before, you may have come across the post in which I talk about how water flows through the riverbed as much as over it, if not as quickly. One of the results of this is that an awful lot of gravel and sand gets moved around. As long as the river flows, more sand will always be brought down from up high. Fortunes have been made just mining the gravel and sand from rivers. But this also means that rivers require a certain amount of . . . maintenance . . . in order to be reliably usable for commerce. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When the Columbia River was first being used to access the continent, none of this work had been done. The mouth of the Columbia was very wide, and very shallow, and the navigation channel was different every year; sometimes there were four channels a ship could use, sometimes one. It's hard to overstate the danger this posed to early European explorers trying to get through. However well a river pilot thought he knew an area, the channel he'd used last time might not be there anymore, and the ship could run aground without any warning. A typical shipwreck in the 1850s could cost 40 human lives and a whole shipload of cargo, which represented the livelihoods of many tradesmen and businesspeople waiting at the port. It was 1879 before the US Army Corps of Engineers tried to narrow the
mouth of the channel in an attempt to make the flow deeper. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Is it any wonder the spirit of a river can be represented as a dragon? Over the course of eons, the slender claws raked the landscape, gouging ice into the greatest of mountains to wear them down to hillocks, the body writhed across the floodplains and for centuries destroyed all we could hope to build, and the mouth could swallow entire ships whole. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nowadays, we keep our dragons rather tightly chained, muzzled. We dredge and we build levees and seawalls to lock them down into beds we like for them. We chain their power with dams that suck the energy out of them, turning what was once a powerful flow into more a series of lakes.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But, I suppose . . . that's a post for another day.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-58327028452022637032013-07-09T16:41:00.002-07:002013-07-09T16:41:56.107-07:00News & ViewsFor months now, I've been sorta tinkering with a rather large, educational blog post about how rivers work, and haven't been able to tie it up in a nice little bow, and I've been kicking around the idea of a big post on biomagnification and how that works, but haven't made any progress. I've realized these larger projects are just keeping me from writing, and the blog begs for more attention than that. I know I don't have a lot of actual loyal readers, but I want to write more than I actually am anyway, so here goes. <br />
<br />
My news feed is what prompted this post. I got a slew of articles to poke through in my inbox, and I noticed a theme tying three of them together. It was pretty disturbing, actually, but the kicker in the third article is what made me decide to post. <br />
<br />
First was <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/07/key_wildlife_refuge_hit_hard_i.html#incart_m-rpt-1" target="_blank">this piece</a> about the drought hitting the Klamath Basin, and how it's affecting the wildlife refuge there. Turns out the allocation of water between the tribal, ranching, and other interests in the area, doesn't leave a lot for the wildlife refuge. Since there aren't any officially endangered species there that require water be set aside for them, the 54,000 acres of refuge are likely to stay dry until the fall rains hit, which means a major part of the <a href="http://pacificflyway.gov/Documents/Pacific_map.pdf" target="_blank">Pacific Flyway</a> is not going to function as a wetland.when it needs to for all the <a href="http://conservation.audubon.org/pacific-flyway" target="_blank">migratory birds</a> that could really use a pit stop on their long trip.<br />
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The next article was <a href="http://earthfix.opb.org/communities/article/coal-export-public-hearings-scheduled-for-hermisto/" target="_blank">this one</a> about coal exports, and the big crowds expected to protest at the DEQ office meeting today (Tuesday, July 9th). DEQ only wants public comments narrowly focused on the technical role of their permits and what they can authorize in one place, but the public is concerned about all the much larger issues related to exporting energy, to the global warming effects of all that coal being burned regardless of where it gets burned, and to the myriad issues related to transporting all that coal across large swaths of the country to get it to an export terminal. Even the Army Corps of Engineers is refusing to look at region-wide effects. Are they abdicating their authority? Shouldn't someone be responsive to the very clear will of the people in this?<br />
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The last was an article about how scientists are warning of <a href="http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130706/NEWS0107/307060367/1159/1159&nav_category=1159" target="_blank">bigger and badder</a> forest fires. It talks about how the average fire s now 5 times bigger than it was in the 80's, and how all the scientific modelling doesn't predict the crazy huge blazes we've seen because all the models are based on historical data, and the conditions have changed. But what really got me was the irony of the ad placement. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN3bWISjfNCUpoVVE97yyFPQV0nF0ktTP1_8xYZBh39HQb6qdWCj_GM6sBaA0m_f89Rhey0y0ySqOlQsd0Eo9zhRJt1CPJlagsw9aGtjiIcEcqg_ttI5NmdA-3HMHQ7h-w09hF9MDn9Uo/s1600/Suicide+Subdivision.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN3bWISjfNCUpoVVE97yyFPQV0nF0ktTP1_8xYZBh39HQb6qdWCj_GM6sBaA0m_f89Rhey0y0ySqOlQsd0Eo9zhRJt1CPJlagsw9aGtjiIcEcqg_ttI5NmdA-3HMHQ7h-w09hF9MDn9Uo/s640/Suicide+Subdivision.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Oops.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i></i><br />
In case that isn't displaying right, the highlighted text says: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Along with an extended drought and wild weather extremes, fire
profilers have to take into account a new, explosive fuel type on the
Western landscape: houses. By the Forest Service’s reckoning, nearly
one-third of the homes now built in the United States are on the fringe
of settled areas, where timber and chaparral meet stucco and
cul-de-sacs.<br /></i><br />
<i>These houses in fire-prone zones are referred to by
some fire professionals as suicide subdivisions, and their popularity
drives up the cost and complication of firefighting.</i></blockquote>
And the big red arrow points at an ad for a new housing development in Madras, Oregon, which is in a fairly dry part of the state, and located east of Mt. Jefferson.<br />
<br />
Suicide Subdivisions, indeed. I wish someone had put that ad there on purpose, but I know it tends to just be electrons shuffled into place almost at random according to some ad allocation algorithm. If you visit the link, it looks like someone decided to take it down, though. Smart, if a little too late for me to catch a screen capture. Just HAD to share.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I saw these three articles and it worried me how often these days we're seeing stories that are so connected, yet so rarely are the connections drawn. Seeing themes like this in the news will be an everyday occurrence very soon, and the juxtaposition of "more development, more coal, more new neighborhoods" against the global warming-related problems of "bigger fires, drier wildlife preserves, agricultural challenges" will seem an everyday thing. Our natural resources are scarce and delicate, and we're not treating them that way.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-37420906239732707142013-04-28T14:41:00.001-07:002013-04-28T14:41:30.474-07:00California Tiger Salamander: Habitat & ScarcityYeah, yeah, it's been a while since I posted, I know. I've been tinkering with this one (and a couple others) for a while, but decided to break it into two or more posts just to finally get something up, to let any interested readers know I'm still alive. So, since I was asked to talk about about California Tiger Salamanders (CTS) a bit, here goes. I worked on a number of projects with CTS concerns in my years in consulting in California. I learned a lot about them, and I really enjoy talking about ecology, so these guys are particularly interesting to me. <br />
<br />
California Tiger Salamanders are a fantastic example of adaptation to weird circumstances, so before I can describe them and their life cycle, I have to describe their most essential habitat: Vernal Pools. Oh, how I love vernal pools. A vernal pool is a depression in clay, or in regular soils underlain by bedrock, in such a way that it sometimes fills with water and then dries out. The exact timing of that varies from place to place, but a lot of them are like clockwork, flooding every year and staying full for several months before they dry up, regular enough that a whole ecological system has sprung up around the resources they provide.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/images/vernalpic1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/images/vernalpic1.jpg" width="320" /></a>See, when a vernal pool fills with water, plants adapted to that specific type and timing of inundation start to spring up. Plants that want to bloom earlier are in the outer ring, where the water first begins to recede, while plants that like more summery weather bloom closer to the center, or sometimes in the very middle after the pool has entirely dried up. The spring bloom of vernal pools is gorgeous, and you get concentric rings of flowers adapted to different timing, in different colors, spreading across a landscape. Frogs and birds and other creatures are attracted, and the birds often carry in insects or insect eggs. Little egg-like things called "cysts" that have lain dormant in the soil for as long as it took for the pool to become inundated again (in some places this takes years) hatch, and the pool suddenly becomes full of freshwater crustaceans called "fairy shrimp," also specially adapted to vernal pool habitat, and also highly endangered.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/icb344/abstracts/images/vernal-pool-fairy-shrimp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/icb344/abstracts/images/vernal-pool-fairy-shrimp.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Think mail-order sea-monkeys, except you'd get thrown in jail for mailing these.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In some places, the meadows are full of these pools, just because the soils are clay-filled and clay swells to a waterproof muck layer when it gets wet. Whole networks of vernal pools and little swales are formed by one topping its basin and its water flowing downhill to form another. In some areas, the clay layer is fairly thin, and if someone were to dig a hole just a few feet deep in the middle of a vernal pool it would drain like a bathtub and possibly never fill up again. Vernal pools tend to occur more in meadows and grasslands than in forests, because trees can penetrate the clay or break up the rock layer, or just suck up all the water before any creatures can take advantage of it as anything more than a short-term watering hole. If it isn't there regularly enough and long enough, it isn't actually a vernal pool, it's just a puddle, and no vernal pool species can either find their way to it on the backs of animals or evolve adaptations to it. If it's there too long, it's a pond, and you get fish and plants adapted to permanent water. And since meadows and grasslands are prime building, farming, and cattle grazing space, vernal pools got fairly well wiped out. There's not a ton of them left.<br />
<br />
Because the habitat is so rare and delicate, lots of the highly specialized plants and animals adapted to their conditions are endangered. So it is with the California Tiger Salamander. Something you have to understand is that being endangered doesn't mean that the creature lives a lonely life, <a href="http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Cloud_Forest" target="_blank">searching across an empty landscape for a mate</a>. It just means that there's not a lot left, and often this is measured in comparison to the former geographic range of the species. In some rural patches around Santa Rosa, CA, for example, when the right time in the rainy season hits, and they get a good drenching, if you went out for a walk you'd be hard pressed NOT to find a California Tiger Salamander. I've heard people grumble about this. But Santa Rosa just happens to be one of the last remaining areas that hasn't been overly developed, and also happens to have the right kind of clayey soils in a thick enough layering to hold vernal pools, enough so that agriculture and ranching haven't destroyed it.<br />
<br />
The point is, there used to be many, many more places that could support this species. When a species gets winnowed down to just a few populations, even if they're incredibly dense ones, a single bad year can wipe it out. One too many droughts in a row, one outbreak of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycosis" target="_blank">disease</a>, one too many stressors imposed by climate change, and they don't come back. That's why the Endangered Species Act exists.<br />
<br />
Anyway, CTS live in vernal pools for part of their life, and in mammal burrows for the rest, and return later when it's time to breed. That's all I've got for now. Next time I'll tell you all about the life cycle of the species, how the males and females approach mating differently, touch again on their <a href="http://naturalistnotations.blogspot.com/2012/12/gills.html" target="_blank">fantastic gills</a>, all that. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-37866452418377444222013-01-23T16:50:00.000-08:002013-01-23T16:50:11.265-08:00Meandering Thoughts on Science and DiscoveryI occasionally refer to myself as a scientist, but I am not really a scientist. I do not practice science. I do not perform that non-dogmatic, self-correcting investigatory process; who has the time or the funding for that? When I'm being more honest, I call myself an ecologist, but I am not really an ecologist, either. An ecologist is a variant of a scientist, a subclass, an offshoot. I am not a scientist, ipso facto bingo bango, I am not an ecologist. When I'm even more honest, I think of myself as a naturalist, a delighted observer, a watcher, a person who enjoys stories and finding connections. I have the interest in becoming a scientist, and more than the average amount of scientific literacy, but I don't know if I have the patience or temperament to make it a vocation. No, I love learning about science, and applying scientific practices and knowledge in all kinds of ways, and sharing that knowledge, but I am not a scientist.<br />
<br />
But this is why I have such a wide range of interests. There is never a lack of interesting things to learn, or of incredible stories to hear or tell. In the last couple years, I've picked up a moderate fluency in American Sign Language, I've studied sociology and a little bit of gender studies, I've learned a ton about the Pacific Northwest in its ecology and history. The world is full of stories and connections, networks, systems, economies, and ecologies. Any subject of inquiry can be broken down into an infinite variety of Venn Diagrams, tables, timelines, outlines, and charts, and if you just find the right connections and present the data the right way, you can tell a really <a href="http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/broadstreetpump.html" target="_blank">great story</a> about any human endeavor, any aspect of the physical world around us or the motivations that drive the great river of human history. <br />
<br />
Sure, the slow grind of learning or explaining the math behind astrophysics is a challenge, but once humanity reached the point of exploring in that direction, we realized <a href="http://youtu.be/9D05ej8u-gU" target="_blank">we are made of the stuff of stars</a>, we are sparks of life born from the exploded carcasses of celestial furnaces that burned hot enough to make the old alchemical goal of turning lead into gold look like the most pitiable child's play. Sure, practicing your scales on a musical instrument is a rote task of questionable value when looked at as a single repetition, but the way music can chill my bones and make me gasp or shed a tear is an undeniably transcendent experience. And sure, memorizing names and dates from history texts is boring, but when laid out the right way, one can see the rise and fall of empires, the messy business of murder, intrigue, betrayal, and greed interplaying with every possible variant of human nobility, on both political and personal scales, and the small decisions and <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/accidental-discoveries.html" target="_blank">accidents</a> that changed everything. <br />
<br />
I once was told that if you get down into the math and science of higher-level Einsteinian physics, you can see that causality and free will are very possibly a lie. If, when traveling at the speed of light, you can see a person catch a ball before you see it being thrown, then the throwing was written in stone, was meant to be and inescapable. Apparently, you can envision a person in spacetime <a href="http://youtu.be/JkxieS-6WuA" target="_blank">as a worm-like creature</a> formed of a baby at one end, and an adult at the other, with each cross section representing a moment of awareness in the creature during which it is unable to see what lies ahead of it, and only dimly aware of what was behind. <br />
<br />
Now, I am not scientist enough, nor smart enough, to truly understand these concepts, but if a man is a worm, or a thread of some kind, then humanity, human experience, the human family tree, is a matrix of these, all tangled and interwoven. Our offspring are forks off of our own threads, our time with our lovers is a place where two threads join and merge briefly before continuing on in parallel or apart, our dearest friends are those threads we gravitate towards and run alongside, and twins are threads that forked at conception. <br />
<br />
My mind fills with images of such a structure. I imagine it to be some kind of an intricately layered algal bloom swirling in all directions, with patches of different consistency, color, density, all of which varies with the condition, the demographics, and the spirit of humanity at any moment in history. Can you imagine that we might be part of such a felt mat of living fibers, all so unaware of themselves, so unaware of the structure of which the length and breadth of their experience is simply the smallest part? <br />
<br />
This may all be pointless philosophizing, but that's one of the things I find myself loving about it. If you push out to the frontiers of human understanding of our universe, whether on the scale of galaxies or DNA, you begin to see just how little we may actually understand. And that is an incredibly beautiful, captivating thought.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Modern Physics impresses us particularly with the truth of the old
doctrine which teaches that there are realities existing apart from our
sense-perceptions, and that there are problems and conflicts where these
realities are of greater value for us than the richest treasures of the
world of experience.</i> <br />
---Max Planck</div>
</blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-20105796749711906452012-12-05T22:46:00.000-08:002012-12-11T07:27:05.174-08:00ZOMG SCIENCE<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/04/science/science-sign-language.html?ref=science" target="_blank">Nice</a>.<br />
<br />
My wife is in love with Lydia Callis because that woman is an ASL
badass, and, well, you know how I am about science. I'll keep this short
because not-the-point, but we started using ASL at home for my son, my
wife's ASL classes became a couple concurrent ASL careers, and I at one
time in the last year had as many as four Deaf housemates under age 24. All of which means, in short, I'm conversationally
fluent in ASL, I can see what a badass Lydia Callis is, and I have some idea of the state of Deaf education. <br />
<br />
This is amazing. Please watch the whole video, explore the ASL video samples of science terms below that, read whe whole article, and share. I'm in HEAVEN seeing the intersection of two huge parts of my life.<br />
<br />
If you'll excuse me, I have to go send this as a thank you to Lydia Callis and the New York Times, and then go prance through the ASL-STEM Forum like a giddy child.<br />
<br />
SCIENCE!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-85048763715024749832012-12-05T11:01:00.000-08:002012-12-05T11:01:24.847-08:00GillsSimple question: What do you think of when you think of gills? Probably, the image you get is that flap of hard, cartilaginous flesh right behind the mouth of a fish, am I right?<br />
<br />
That's what I thought, too, as a kid. But I was wrong. The gills are actually the tissues behind that flap, and that flap is just a protective cover known as the operculum, which sorta helps control the rate of flow over the gills, thus matching the gas exchange rate to the fish's metabolic need. And another thing I didn't know about gills as a kid: non-fish creatures have gills, too! <br />
<br />
Oh, I suppose I knew that bugs and other non-fish creatures in the water had to breathe somehow, but even with this knowledge, the gills I picture in my head are that flap of moving flesh, like Kevin Costner's neck in Water World, not the bloody, fibrous stuff underneath. The thing on the outside of a fish's head looks like it's helping the fish breathe water, right? Well, can you spot the gills on this little guy?<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XJ8-S-LVQTU" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Tiny Dancer</i> </div>
<br />
Does that look like breathing? 50 points if you guessed that this bug's gills are the "hairy" growths in the many armpits and joints on the little guy's underside. 50 more points if you can tell whether this is a stonefly, caddisfly, or mayfly. So yeah, that little jig he was dancing is him breathing. He's in a little display case, so the water stagnates a bit, and he has to shuffle side to side like that to get enough water passing over his gills. In his stream the water flows over him pretty consistently, and he can just walk to wherever is more comfortable, but not here. Don't worry, we returned him to his proper habitat not long after I took the video.<br />
<br />
Gills are just the water-life equivalent of the alveoli in our lungs. They're extremely delicate, blood-rich tissues that allow for gas exchange with the surrounding environment. Blood gets brought so close to the outside surfaces of the tissues that Oxygen gets taken into the blood, Carbon Dioxide gets pushed out, and the blood just keeps moving right on through, refreshed for another go-round through the whole body. There's a great graphic and short explanation of how it works at <a href="http://cikgurozaini.blogspot.com/2009/11/structure-and-function-of-fish-gills.html" target="_blank">this</a> site here, if you're interested. <br />
<br />
Can you imagine your breathing apparatus being practically outside your body? The sensitivity of these structures is incredible. In order to function properly, they need to be in the environment they're adapted for. This means the pH of the water (how acidic it is or isn't), how much bacteria and algae are in the water, how much mud or silt is suspended in the water, all have to be juuuust right in order for aquatic creatures to breathe. All these factors, even the amount of <a href="http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/plants/management/joysmanual/streamdo.html" target="_blank">dissolved Oxygen</a> that exists in the water, the excess that's floating about for the fish to breathe, can fluctuate dramatically based on temperature, which is why one of the biggest problem contaminants we introduce into streams is actually just <a href="http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/plants/management/joysmanual/streamtemp.html" target="_blank">heat</a>. After a factory draws water from a stream, uses it, and discharges it back into the stream, even if they clean it perfectly and there's no contaminants or traces of their process left, it can still be a big problem for aquatic life if it gets returned 10 degrees warmer than it got taken out. More on stream temperatures in another post, another time. <br />
<br />
Ok, so fish gills are under the operculum, fairly well protected, but what about a breathing apparatus ENTIRELY outside the body? Is it just bugs like our friend above? Nope. When I first started working with the Endangered California Tiger Salamander (CTS) in various regions of California, I was really surprised at what their larval form's gills looked like. A little background: They breed and are born in water, but spend most of their lives hiding in small mammal burrows. While they're still young, before they leave the vernal pools they hatched in, they still have gills. External gills, which I'd never really seen before. <br />
<br />
I don't have copyright permission for any of my favorite photos of this, so here's a short description, followed by a couple links to some really nice shots, and I DID find a photo attached to a public <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/New-threat-emerges-to-tiger-salamander-3226665.php" target="_blank">newspaper article</a>, so I think I can use that at the bottom. Picture a tadpole, but leggier; this salamander has all four legs for its whole life cycle, but while it lives in the water it also has a tadpole-like tail coming off of much of its body. Now add six little trees that sprout from the back of its head, three on either side. The trunk of that tree is structural support for all the feathery tissues (leaves?) that do the gas exchange, the gills. Now, go check out <a href="http://www.californiaherps.com/salamanders/images/acaliforniensucd506larva2.jpg" target="_blank">these</a> <a href="http://www.californiaherps.com/salamanders/images/acalifornienselrvcc610.jpg" target="_blank">three</a> <a href="http://www.californiaherps.com/salamanders/images/acalifornienselrvcc6102.jpg" target="_blank">shots</a>, taken by a very talented photographer and archived on the California Herps website . . . isn't that adorable?<br />
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Totally not what you think of when someone says "gills," but there you
have it. Fun fact: When you pull a baby CTS out of the water, the gills
lie flat against the neck so you can't always really even tell they're
there unless you look closely. At their smallest, they occasionally get mixed up with actual tadpoles if the person doesn't know what they're looking for. <br />
<br />
When I have more time, maybe I'll do a post about the California Tiger Salamander's life cycle. It's really pretty interesting, and I loved learning about it. Let me know if you'd like to read it, and I'll get to work.<br />
<br />
Seriously, ask questions, there is SO much more to write on any of these topics I touched on. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-44002067701677541882012-11-27T06:17:00.000-08:002012-11-27T06:17:56.555-08:00Lecture Series in SalemHey, all. This Thursday, I'm going to attend a lecture by Travis Williams, head of <a href="http://www.willamette-riverkeeper.org/WRK/index.html" target="_blank">Willamette Riverkeeper</a> and a guy who knows the ENTIRE Willamette River better than I know the street in front of my house. This is just one lecture in a series hosted by the <a href="http://www.fselc.org/" target="_blank">Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center</a>. I wanted to give you all a heads up about this series, because anyone who reads and enjoys my blog will very much enjoy the science and perspectives presented there, and I was extremely bummed to have missed the recent wolf ecology lecture, which, as readers know, is something I'm very interested in.<br />
<br />
Here's the introduction to Travis' lecture, according to the Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center:<br />
<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Willamette River
Greenways, Restoration or Field Guide</span></i></b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0;">
<span style="color: cyan; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">November 29, 2012</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0;">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;">Travis Williams</span></b></div>
<blockquote>
<div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Travis
Williams will cover a range of topics related to the
Willamette River. He will focus on the Clean Water Act, and
the status of the Willamette River's water quality and
habitat. He will provide a brief update on the Portland
Harbor Superfund site and the likelihood of a comprehensive
and timely cleanup. He will also provide a focus on the
Willamette River Greenway Program, a fantastic public lands
vision for the Willamette that was created back in the late
1960s by Governor Straub. The Greenway was hatched near the
same time as the Beach Bill, originally envisioned with the
same notion of public trust values, yet this program did not
reach the same heights.</span></span></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
The Straubs, after whom the Environmental Learning Center was named, are actually part of Oregon History, a former Governor and his wife, who had a deep love of Oregon's natural beauty. Visit the Friends of Straub ELC site and you'll encounter really cool links and events like <a href="http://www.greenfiremovie.com/" target="_blank">this</a> one, a film screening in Salem I'm hoping to make it to, a documentary about one of my heroes, Aldo Leopold. Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center is a great organization, you can learn a lot visiting their site or any of the events they promote, and they're worthy of your support. They have childrens programs, teen programs, and adult programs like this lecture series and others. Go kick a few bucks into their donation bucket, will ya?<br />
<br />
I promise to give a short summary of the lecture afterward, but if anyone would like to join me, you're more than welcome. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-47527338307102288572012-09-26T21:04:00.001-07:002012-09-26T21:12:03.015-07:00Streetwise<br />
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The first time I visited Portland, probably 5 or 6 years ago, I came across a very nicely designed <a href="http://www.catholicsentinel.org/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=35&ArticleID=6100" target="_blank">bioswale</a> at St. Philip Neri Parish in South East. A bioswale is a specially designed stormwater catch basin with plants in it that collects and helps manage runoff. They're nice landscape features in urban places. Most people have never given it much thought, but cleaning and managing stormwater runoff with bioswales is a good idea for a few reasons.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ok, now ignore the picture above. Picture an urban hardscape. When it rains, what happens to the water that hits your house, your sidewalks, your streets, and your parking lots? It runs off the hardscape into the gutter, right? And from there, the ordinary approaches are pretty simple. Gutters send the runoff into the city's stormwater systems, and those tend to either lead to a part of the sewage system or to simply direct the water away. "Away" tends to mean roadside ditches in less developed areas, rivers, lakes, beaches, whatever. These approaches have significant problems.<br />
<br />
First, just directing it away doesn't slow it down. In your picture of an urban hardscape, I imagine there wasn't a lot of grass or wetlands. Part of that may be because I used the word "hardscape," but even suburban lawns don't really do the trick when so much area is covered by houses, streets, and sidewalks. Water flows over urban spaces in gravity-powered sheets of erosive energy. All the stormwater system does is gather it all into one narrow space where it can do an incredible amount of harm. <br />
<br />
When all that unnaturally fast-flowing water finally makes it to an outfall, out to daylight again, if it isn't straight into a body of water, it cuts through the topography like a knife. Any vegetation, native or otherwise, that might slow down or benefit from normal water flow gets torn away. What you end up with often looks like Paul Bunyan took his axe to the side of a hill, or gouged it across a meadow. Trees can't stabilize an area against that energy; they get undercut and they fall in. <br />
<br />
If the outfall does lead directly to a body of water, you still have problems. That runoff isn't just water, it's motor oil, dirt, silt, windshield wiper fluid, dripped gasoline, soap residue from washing your car in the driveway, and a hundred other chemicals. Testing has shown that our highway system is a network of thoroughly lead-contaminated corridors. The weights your mechanic puts on your rims to balance your wheels are lead, the paint on old white-wall tires was lead-based for decades, and that nastiness (plus a whole lot more) has built up in roadside dust since the beginning of American car culture. And every time it rains, a portion of that filth gets directed right to where you, your neighbor, your uncle, or your co-worker likes to go fishing. <br />
<br />
Where I grew up, they tended to use the sewage route tactic. So whenever it rained enough, the sewage treatment system got a huge load of extra water, often more than it could handle, and it sometimes overflowed the sewage treatment facilities. This overflow was just directed out to the beach. There were annual blooms of fecal coliform bacteria in the coastal waters, and yes, that is exactly what it sounds like. And then they still had erosion problems at the outfalls a lot of the time.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/River_algae_Sichuan.jpg/450px-River_algae_Sichuan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/River_algae_Sichuan.jpg/450px-River_algae_Sichuan.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A river full of poo-slime </i></div>
<br />
Bioswales, though, catch that water and slow it down by design; they're shaped for retention and slow discharge. While the water sits there, the sediments and a good deal of the contaminants can drop out in a confined, maintained, cleanable space, rather than getting sent "away." The hardy, native plant species adapted to the region, also slow water flow, and get something like an inundated wetland habitat for a time. In addition, the plants themselves are chosen for their ability to take up and/or filter out a lot of contaminants, including oil. Once all this has happened, the water flows into the stormwater system clean and slow. <br />
<br />
So bioswales are important because they lighten and spread out the load on stormwater and sewage systems over time to reduce overflows, they recharge the groundwater, and they clean the runoff before it even gets into the system. All of that is aside from the fact that they can also be very pretty, and make me feel proud of my town for its forward-thinking development. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go volunteer at a planting in a rather large bioswale adjacent to the Willamette Park boat ramp, recently, and got a few really nice photos.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkploEqK0N4XDknymTndr5jvUKz35js6Zgsy8XLQYqGrv-OSAV3hkXR_OykdsXg5-pzpxMfP1dKnkrZ_FL42MG6Je_4l-zadkmgYTTdVSXtxcNt6G50Vp6MDdSLpqPSa9NCQfR8BzzpWs/s1600/EcoKids.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkploEqK0N4XDknymTndr5jvUKz35js6Zgsy8XLQYqGrv-OSAV3hkXR_OykdsXg5-pzpxMfP1dKnkrZ_FL42MG6Je_4l-zadkmgYTTdVSXtxcNt6G50Vp6MDdSLpqPSa9NCQfR8BzzpWs/s400/EcoKids.bmp" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Me & the kiddos volunteering</i></div>
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Yes, this is another "I love Portland" post. See, Portland has these things all over the place. They're outside my grocery store, in front of houses, and on major thoroughfares. There's actually a suggested <a href="http://www.portlandonline.com/bes/index.cfm?c=36848" target="_blank">bicycle route</a> you can take to check out a large number of them on the east side of town. Portland even has a volunteer group that goes around taking care of these things, picking up trash that gets washed into them, raking up leaves that'd otherwise clog the drain, or even watering the plants in the dry season to help them thrive. <br />
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The volunteer Green Street Stewards program has a <a href="http://www.portlandonline.com/bes/index.cfm?c=52501&a=319879" target="_blank">maintenance guide</a> and formal training events. There are two <a href="http://www.portlandonline.com/bes/index.cfm?c=52501&a=320743" target="_blank">trainings</a> left this season (one morning session on the 29th of this month in SE, one evening session on the 3rd of next month in NE), and they need all the help they can get. Go sign up. Do some good for your wonderful City, and feel good about investing in your town.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-15955257564668404632012-09-08T20:25:00.001-07:002012-09-08T20:25:49.729-07:00Lords of Nature<a href="http://lordsofnature.org/" target="_blank">Lords of Nature</a> is a great documentary I got to watch for a grad school class once.I really thought it was worth sharing, but it apparently isn't free, so all I can do is tell you about it.<br />
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Now, many of you may be aware of the idea that predators regulate the food chain. For example, if for some reason the rabbit population booms, rabbits become easy to catch, so the fox population booms, too, with a slight delay. The boom in foxes causes the rabbits to decline and crash, which means rabbits are harder to catch, so the foxes decline in turn. This is pretty well established ecological theory nowadays.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tiem.utk.edu/%7Egross/bioed/bealsmodules/pred-prey.gph1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="http://www.tiem.utk.edu/%7Egross/bioed/bealsmodules/pred-prey.gph1.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-style: italic;">The Basics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></div>
Another well-established facet of ecology, only slightly more advanced, is the Keystone Species idea. Keystone species are those that have a super strong influence not just on a single species, but on whole systems they occupy. Like an arch, if you remove the keystone, everything crumbles. This theory was born from the work of Robert Paine in 1966. What Paine did was remove sea stars from small patches of tidal habitat that were full of life. In these areas, sea stars were the top predator of all the different limpets, bivalves, barnacles, and other critters there. When the sea stars were removed, the diversity of species in those patches plummeted. The presence of the predator opportunistically picking off prey allowed many species to flourish, and its removal allowed certain species to out-compete others and basically take over.<br />
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Lords of Nature is about that dynamic, with wolves as the main case study. See, for decades, wolves had been gone from Yellowstone Park. They were hunted down and run almost entirely out of the country under the theory that wolves are bad, so we don't need 'em. They're "bad for agriculture," "bad for ranching," and keep populations of big game hunting species like elk and bison down. So, like mountain lions elsewhere, wolves got hunted down and killed en masse, with government bounties for carcasses. In the 1870's the wolf population of Yellowstone was around 300-400 wolves. In 1924, it became zero, and it stayed that way for decades.<br />
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In those decades, Yellowstone stopped . . . working. The elk population exploded, naturally, but the consequence of that was that they were eating, eating, eating. Riparian vegetation, usually not overgrazed because deer are cautious when going out into the open, pretty much vanished. This has major consequences for how rivers work, how banks are stabilized, how other species can use the river, and everything in the riparian systems began to degrade. Young trees got overgrazed, too, and couldn't grow to adulthood, so the famous Yellowstone forests just aged, and mature trees died without propagating.<br />
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Biologists were concerned about this and unable to understand why the forest was aging and why the riparian systems were degrading, until a couple of them, Bob Beschta and Bill Ripple of OSU (Go BEAVERS!) did a little thinking and figured out the connection: Yellowstone ecology started going sideways when the wolves were extirpated. They got in one of the coolest academic article titles I've ever seen. <a href="http://scholarsarchive.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/22136/RippleWilliam.FERM.WolvesEcologyFear.pdf?sequence=1" target="_blank"><i>Wolves and the Ecology of Fear: Can Predation Risk Structure Ecosystems?</i></a> Their 2004 paper suggests the answer to that question is yes. Wolves got <a href="http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/wolves.htm" target="_blank">reintroduced</a> in 1995, and since then everything has begun to recover in very cool ways. There's a good writeup on the whole case study and relevant concepts <a href="http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/keystone-species-15786127" target="_blank">here</a>, for those who are curious. <br />
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Anyway, the reason all this with the documentary and the paper from 6 months ago and the comes to mind is a recent news article in the <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/08/new_wolf_pack_confirmed_in_nor.html" target="_blank">Oregonian</a>. Apparently, the Eagle Cap Wilderness around the Minam River in eastern Oregon is now home to a new pack of wolves, and the latest count is that 23 pups were born in Oregon this year alone! I'm pleased to say I have a small amount of familiarity with that part of Oregon. The work I did monitoring salmon habitat earlier this year was in the adjacent watershed. Though I never visited the Minam specifically, I was all up and down the Upper Grande Ronde and Little Catherine Creek, just a hop, a skip, and a jump from this new wolf pack, and from what I've heard of that watershed, it's one of the most pristine areas in the state. <br />
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I hope I've impressed on you why this is such good news. On levels we're just beginning to understand, wolves make forests and rivers . . . work.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-41934274866540116482012-09-08T16:32:00.000-07:002012-09-08T16:34:47.810-07:00My Tropical Rain Forest Canopy WalkYes, I can say I visited a tropical rain forest and walked through and out over the canopy. I didn't get to work in a tropical raindorest, studying nocturnal forest mammals or mapping the range of some endangered flower, but I DID hike and sweat. Let tell you about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakum_National_Park" target="_blank">Kakum National Park</a>, in Ghana. <br />
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I was in Ghana to <a href="http://www.signingtimefoundation.org/2012/02/20/ghana-the-little-changes-make-the-biggest-difference/" target="_blank">support a school for the Deaf</a> there. My wife is an interpreter and we've volunteered and worked for the <a href="http://www.signingtimefoundation.org/" target="_blank">Signing Time Foundation</a> for over two years now. So after working with them for a while, we got invited to join STF on a trip they were making with <a href="http://signsofhopeinternational.org/" target="_blank">Signs of Hope International</a> (another <a href="http://youtu.be/jsDFCwmaQnY" target="_blank">incredible</a> organization you really should consider supporting) to visit and support the first school for the Deaf established in Ghana.<br />
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The fundraising for the trip was a nightmare, but we raised enough to get to go, cover our transportation and room & board for the trip, AND cover the tuition and room & board costs for a two kids at the school for about 5 years each. I did all that fundraising not knowing I'd get to visit a genuine for-reals tropical rainforest, but I'd have done it just for that, honestly. My wife's travel journal for the trip is <a href="http://martosghana.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">here</a>, if you'd like to read and see some videos. <br />
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So anyway, the trip coordinator makes a point of having all Signs of Hope travelers swing by a few stops besides the Deaf school. One is the nearby outdoor marketplace, a maze of outdoor tented stalls selling everything from household staples to electronics to local artwork. Another is the <a href="http://www.capecoastcastlemuseum.com/1.html" target="_blank">Cape Coast Slave Castle Museum</a>, a place where the weight of history threatens to crush your faith in humanity. And there's more, but my favorite is Kakum.<br />
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Ok, now, to understand the joygasm I had there, you have to get that I've been an environmentalist since I was a child. I had all the hippie talking points on rain forest clear-cutting down by middle school. I confused my parents to no end, but that was just me. Let me describe this a bit more.<br />
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We rolled into Kakum and then we hiked. Up. It was hot, it was sweaty, and it was gorgeous. The canopy was thick, cicadas were buzzing all around us, and the tour guide would stop periodically to tell us about this or that tree or historical feature, the time he and some tourists happened upon the rear end of a spitting cobra just laying there, front half in a burrow, alive and dangerous, but unmoving and unbothered by their presence, et cetera. We got to the top of this hill and found a structure that looked like the beginning of Disneyland's Jungle Cruise ride. The lower level was just a spot to sit while you wait your turn, and the top was the beginning of the rope-bridge canopy walk.<br />
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We stepped out onto this bridge, and began our horizontal trek outward, through the canopy. Because the rope bridge began at the top of the hill, every forward step brought us further out of the canopy as it descended with the terrain. Birds flew past us, insects the size of our hands just hung there in places, and the noise was incredible. And then, at some point, we were just out past and above the canopy, looking down on it, with no way to visually understand just how high up we were. I was in heaven, ladies and gentlemen. Heaven. My group was all busy taking pictures of each other on the rope bridge, amazed by the height, enjoying the beauty of the place, but somehow not entranced in the same way as I by the rain forest itself. I wanted to KNOW everything about how the ecology of the place worked from roots to leaves, eggs to bugs, nests to territories. Incidentally, if anyone knows of any particularly good reading material on the topic, I'd love to hear about it in the comments section.<br />
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I got back to our hotel that night after a 6 hour ride in an old, cramped, rickety passenger van they call a Tro-tro. We were fed the same food we'd been eating for the whole trip, the water in our hotel was shut off so we couldn't shower, and the power was out so we ate by candle light and hung out in the common room with a single flashlight upright on the table to see our companions by . . . and I was still exhilarated. I jokingly told the group that I wanted to go home and show my kids Fern Gully (not the finest moment for Robin Williams or Tim Curry, but fun, and set in a rain forest).<br />
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Here's another video with a little more perspective on the height and structures we were experiencing.<br />
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If I ever get to go back to Ghana, I'm going to spend more time there, and see if I can find a group to volunteer with for research or restoration purposes. So what about you? Have you ever walked through a rain forest? Or maybe arctic tundra was your coolest ecology experience? Deep sea diving? Share with me!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-250708544513923922012-08-25T12:48:00.000-07:002012-08-25T17:14:35.601-07:00I *Heart* Ecology<div style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">You know what I really love about science in general, and Ecology in particular? The way that upon close examination, everything you thought was a boundary or an edge is really more of a melding, a smear, a fade from one thing to another. Ecology is about relationships and interactions, how whole systems balance and how tiny elements of those systems that you wouldn't think are connected at all turn out to be interdependent in some roundabout way that just hadn't been understood before. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Take, for example, a stream or river. Where is the edge of a stream or river? Well, obviously, where the water surface touches the soil, right? Wrong. There isn't an edge, there's a blur. The stream fluctuates in height daily, seasonally, annually. There are specific elevation markers relating to streams called the "bank-full," "Ordinary High Water" and "Ordinary Low Water." The space between is often referred to as "tideland," "intertidal land," or even "submersible land," and it is vital to the life cycles of many species because it is so subject to this pattern of oxygenation and submergence, and that makes it highly productive for plants and algae (primary producers as we eco-nerds call them), invertebrates, and the species that consume them. This is why you always see shorebirds out at the water's edge when low tide hits, when mudflats are exposed. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">And try this on for size: What if you think of a stream or river not only as as melted snowpack and rain water flowing downhill, but as groundwater pushing out in a low spot on a slope and coming to the surface before running downhill? </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Again, the boundary of what constitutes a stream is indistinct. </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Depending on the water table and the geology of the spot you're looking at, that is, depending on what kind of rocks, gravel, sand, or silt make up the ground in that area, and in what kind of layers, and in what topographic (hilly) arrangement, you might not need any rain or snow at all to see a small stream or trickle of water pushing out. There's this whole range of interplay between groundwater and surface water, and portions of a stream may get more water from the ground than from the sky. The water in the ground flows with the stream, merges with the stream. Really, it's part of the stream. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">One of my favorite episodes of RadioLab is "<a href="http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/mar/05/war-we-need/" target="_blank">A War We Need</a>," a</span></span><span style="font-size: small;">nd if you're unfamiliar with RadioLab, go give it a
listen. It's full of interesting investigations into seemingly simple
questions, and it isn't always science oriented, but when it is they present it so well that everyone can enjoy it. They are very good at what they do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">In this episode, they talk about the chemical warfare practiced by phytoplankton and viruses in the ocean. More specifically, single-celled plants called Coccolithophores, so populous it boggles the imagination, battling viruses in the oceans, dying, sending out warning signals as they expire warning others to change their own DNA to protect themselves. And this battle is wide-ranging enough that the carnage results in discolorations of the oceans so large you can see them from space, enough that teensy carcasses from these battles pile up to form geological layers on the ocean floor. The battle rages back and forth, one side getting the upper hand, then the other, and with every new blooming phase of the Coccolithophores, there's a massive production of oxygen. These oceanic wars of phytoplankton are responsible for about half the oxygen we breathe.</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Ecology and nature are full of connections and inter-dependencies and <a href="http://youtu.be/_JViFugTtNQ" target="_blank">cycles</a> like this. Our world and our very existence is full of tide and breath, waxing and waning, death and regeneration, beautifully executed struggles and dances made up of life cycles and natural processes flowing around and through each other like an epic friggin' ballet . . . and it is beautiful beyond words. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">GodDAMN science is cool.</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">I leave you with this bit of . . . well, poetry, from Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the more brilliant minds in the world today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">If that doesn't hit you somewhere deep, you need to work on developing some depth. </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-35234335876986672822012-08-13T22:15:00.004-07:002012-08-13T22:15:54.579-07:00Oh, dear. This is embarassing.
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">I've discovered something frightful: I think I may have an inner academic. Like an inner child, but . . . no, really a lot like that. It is curious, gleeful, occasionally silly, very unfocused, and always finding something compelling. This is completely NOT something I'd have guessed about myself a year or two ago, but I think I found some joy in scientific literature.</span></span><div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="border-collapse: separate; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">I realized the existence of this inner academic when I was pursuing the work of <a href="http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/centennial/agenda/water/bio_sedell.shtml" target="_blank">James Sedell</a> and others through the '80's and '90's, down the length and (narrowing) breadth of my beloved <a href="http://www.portlandonline.com/ohwr/?c=52431" target="_blank">Willamette River</a> and the changes it underwent through centuries of human activity. I hopped and meandered about the internet from place to place quite contentedly until I discovered I no longer had access to OSU's online Library of scholarly literature because I'm not technically a student anymore. I need access to follow the trail of scientific writings to expand a budding train of thought and curiosity about the Willamette's historical floodplain, and I can't. I just about stamped my foot in indignation. I want it NOW.<span> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span>I'll hold my breath until I have it, just see if I don't. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span>My, what grad school has done to me! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span>On an unrelated note, I've changed jobs. I have gone from Outdoorsy Badassery to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_Cubeville" target="_blank">Cubeville</a>. Not that I'm complaining. The Outdoorsy Badassery was naturally badass, and, well, <a href="http://naturalistnotations.blogspot.com/2012/06/humdrum-labor.html" target="_blank">outdoors</a>, but it was only ever supposed to be a short-term gig. It was hourly labor, and scheduled to end in December at the latest, and that was a constant worry. Currently, however, I'm scheduled to work full time, in perpetuity (assuming I do my job and don't relieve myself on someone's desk or whatever), with benefits like health insurance and a retirement plan thrown in for kicks. Also, the current job is still focused on doing good work I can be proud of, and that matters.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span>Given the often litigious and confidential nature of my new work, I won't be discussing it here much, but there's still plenty to talk about. One book I highly recommend to everybody I talk books with is Bob Harris' memoir <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Prisoner-Trebekistan-A-Decade-Jeopardy/dp/0307339564" target="_blank">Prisoner of Trebekistan</a>. In it, the self-deprecating (yet Jeapordy-winning) author relates how he concluded that a life dedicated to pursuit of knowledge is a life worth living, a state of being with a never ending, ever wondrous mission. Now, the guy does his best to make the world a <a href="http://www.kiva.org/team/bobharrisdotcom" target="_blank">better place</a> on the side, too, which I also admire and try to <a href="http://www.signingtimeacademy.com/blog/2012/01/going-to-ghana-pablo/" target="_blank">emulate</a> in my own way, but I bring it up to point out that the tiny scholar jumping up and down and holding his breath in the back of my head won't ever really leave me alone anymore. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span>It seems I have little choice but to pursue more higher education. Nothing else will placate the tyrannical bookworm in me. The units I earned in pursuit of my Graduate Certificate in Fisheries Management from OSU will transfer just fine, and get me 1/3 of the way to a <a href="http://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/graduate/natural-resources/" target="_blank">Masters in Natural Resources</a> from the same institution. Even if I only take a single class at a time (which may be necessary since I'm no longer Un/der-employed and have to spend 2 hours on the road daily just to GET TO & FROM CUBEVILLE) I'll be constantly introduced to new concepts and ideas that'll spark my interest. Thus, you can expect to read my thoughts, magically converted to legible pixels for your entertainment and edification, on every class I take, whether it be EcoFeminism (an actual course option, though relax, Dad, it's not one I'm sure I'm Hippy enough to take) or Water Resource Conflict Resolution. I'll most likely be starting Winter term, not Fall, but I'll have Library access again!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span>Maybe that'll make the little mortarboard-wearing motherf*cker shut up, for a short time, at least. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span>Quote of the day:</span></span></div>
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“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible
parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles.
One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps
someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is
speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together
people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books
break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”</div>
―
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10538.Carl_Sagan">Carl Sagan</a>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3731627131892069086.post-71304170343954058692012-07-19T17:52:00.001-07:002012-07-19T17:52:41.719-07:00What it takes to make us pack it just in a little earlyPlease understand that by "a little early," understand that I mean it was a 9 hour day instead of 11 or 12.<br />
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Understand, we'd have kept working if it was just light rain. Hell, moderate rain we'd have probably pushed through, despite problems seeing the screens on our dataloggers, and other equipment. That's just how we roll. We're what the kids call "hardcore" these days.<br />
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But hail, plus lightning on our adjacent hillsides, really got us jamming back toward the truck.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07133259443008536562noreply@blogger.com0