Maryland Voters to Decide on In-state Tuition for Illegal Immigrants

Md. voters to decide immigrant tuition law

Opponents of a new law that gives undocumented immigrants in-state tuition discounts at Maryland’s public colleges have gathered enough signatures to suspend the law and force a statewide referendum, election officials said Thursday.

It is the first time in 20 years that a petition drive has forced a vote on a Maryland law.

I was unaware that our legislators had passed a law granting in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.

Under the law, undocumented immigrants who can prove that they have attended Maryland high schools for at least three years and that their parents or guardians have begun paying taxes were to have been allowed to begin courses this fall at community colleges at in-state rates. The measure was approved in the closing hours of this year’s legislative session after years of failed attempts.

Having paid out of state tuition personally, and for my son, this pisses me off.  Why does the state legislature feel that we need to grant special privileges to people who violate our laws and borders to come to our country? However, opponents of the referendum have pulled the "That's Racist" card"

“The language used to gather signatures has for the most part been very narrow, mean-spirited and, at times, racist,” Glassman said. “We believe that once a counter-narrative is put out there, one that speaks to the greater good, the Maryland DREAM Law will prevail.”

So how much does this bill cost Maryland taxpayers?

For a four-year degree, the plan could cost Maryland $40,000 per student, and state analysts had estimated that hundreds of undocumented high-school graduates would begin applying for aid this summer. Immigrant groups say that those students’ college plans are now in limbo, and that for many, college in the fall may be out of reach financially.

So we are talking millions of dollars annually. This is a perfect use of the referendum tool; reminding legislators that if they won't represent our interests, we can represent them ourselves.

The Case Against the Front Lawn

Why the hell do we grow so much grass anyway?

The American suburban landscape is dominated by homes set far back off the sidewalk, separated by a front yard almost exclusively of grass, an ecologically barren monoculture devoid of flowerbeds or shrubs. (In lush places like Washington, there will be a few azaleas and a handful of trees, of course, but in newer developments even trees are a scarcity). And in most areas, people don't seem to actually hang out or play on their front lawns; often, the only human activity you see is the homeowner or landscaper engaged in noisy and tedious lawn maintenance and mowing.

So why do Americans have such big front lawns?

In most municipalities, builders are actually required to adhere to rigid "setback” requirements and subdivision codes, meaning that residents are stuck with a big front lawn whether they want it or not. According to The Old Urbanist, $40 billion is spent on lawn care each year across 21 million acres of grass — that's the size of Maine, by the way. That's a lot of money for land you never actually use.

In our case, we moved our house even further back and down the hill than the builder had intended and the codes required in order to save a large forked White Oak.  Over the years, we have substantially reduced the amount of lawn in the front.  A front porch platform, an Azalea bed, and the pond area got rid of the lawn immediately adjacent to the front of the house.  Later I built a free stone retaining wall, which produced a flat path in front of the porch and the flower beds, and a set of beds that we have planted with ground covers, mostly Creeping Phlox.

The phlox look really nice for the week in Spring when they bloom.  This photo was taken in 2004; by now the flox have filled in and almost totally covered the area; Georgia finds room for a few annuals at the bottom.

Perhaps this will spur me to start the next step in the front lawn eradication project, another path at the top of this bed, with another bed above that.  As it is, I still have 45 minutes worth of lawn to mow (including the side and back).

Hat tip to Maggie's Farm.

Your Friday Monkey Dacker Photographer

Monkey Hijacks Photographer’s Camera and Shoots Self-Portraits

wildlife photographer David Slater spent three days photographing a group of crested black macaque monkeys in an Indonesian national park. As he was trying to fend off some monkeys, another monkey approached his tripod-mounted Canon 5D and started playing with the remote shutter release.

So how did the monkey do?  Better than many amateur photographers...

Afterward, he found hundreds of photos taken by the monkeys on his memory card, including some self-portraits and even a portrait of Slater.

I think I've seen that monkey's Facebook page...

I Guess It Never Hurts to Ask...

Letter to Senator Patty Murray, Chair Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

Senator Patty Murray, Chair
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

Dear Senator Murray:

For many months now, your colleagues in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee leadership have engaged in a series of disparagements and ad hominem attacks about us, apparently as part of a concerted political and fundraising strategy. Just recently, Senator Reid wrote in a DSCC fundraising letter that Republicans are trying to “force through their extreme agenda faster than you can say ‘Koch Brothers.’”

So you can imagine my chagrin when I got a letter from you on June 17 asking us to make five-figure contributions to the DSCC. You followed that up with a voicemail* indicating that, if we contributed heavily enough, we would garner an invitation to join you and other Democratic leaders at a retreat in Kiawah Island this September.

I’m hoping you can help me understand the intent of your request because it’s hard not to conclude that DSCC politics have become so cynical that you actually expect people whom you routinely denounce to give DSCC money.

It is troubling that private citizens taking part in the discourse have become the targets of White House and DSCC fundraising missives, and we would certainly encourage you to rethink that approach. Ultimately, I expect voters will see through that and will weigh the issues on the merits alone. But in the meantime, if you could provide me some insight on what exactly you are asking of us and why, I would be most grateful.

Sincerely,

Philip Ellender
President, Government & Public Affairs
Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC

Saving Maryland's State Flutterby

Baltimore Checkerspot

Volunteers try to restore Maryland's vanishing butterfly

Don't look now, but Maryland's state insect is fluttering away.

The Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly, named for the state's founding Calvert family, has dwindled to just a handful of places, mostly in Western Maryland. Experts worry that the butterfly, once fairly common, may disappear entirely from the state.Pockets of dedicated butterfly lovers, though, are trying to slow or even reverse the decline by breeding the species in captivity. One such nursery is in a tent in back of an old maintenance shed at Black Hill Regional Park in Montgomery County.

"Here's where the larvae are," said Barbara Kreiley, pointing out tiny caterpillars clinging to the stem of a white turtlehead plant inside the tent. The crawlers are recently hatched and still green, not yet displaying their distinctive orange-and-black markings. "My little babies — see them?"

From a single caterpillar-infested plant collected from the wild last year, Kreiley, a retired nurse, and four other volunteers reared about 250 hatchlings to adulthood. About a month ago, they released them as butterflies, in spots primed to be suitable habitat for the seemingly picky creatures. Since then, patches the women recognize as butterfly eggs have been spied on the undersides of leaves at the release sites, and they have been waiting like expectant parents for them to hatch...

Calvert Family Crest

...The butterfly has a special meaning for this state, as it's reputedly named for the first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, who sponsored the first English colony in Southern Maryland and whose family crest also displays orange and black.

Well, I see the resemblance, but it's a bit of a stretch.  I hope they manage to keep the little guys going.

BTW, the speculation that the word butterfly was derived as a Spoonerism from Flutter By (what butterflies do) appears to be false....

Knot du Jour

The Awesome Trucker's Hitch

I've used a version of this knot for years, using it to secure luggage and and Christmas trees on car roofs, boats onto trailers and many similar applications.  I can't even remember when I learned it (probably not in Applications in Oceanography, where I learned most of the important nautical knots).  Often, when I use it, people comment on how obviously useful it is, but this is first time I've ever seen it written out.

Spotted at Ace's ONT.

Stuff Charlie Sends - That's Racist!

A cool visualization of the changes in the population from the 2000 to the 2010 census.

I think I'd have found something other than race/ethnicity as the other variable to explore, but hey, that's just me, and I'm not the New York Times.

Only slightly related, "That's Racist" has become a phrase of derision by today's youth, a way of dismissing/dissing societies preoccupation with race:

But what’s the joke? We don’t find out until a 14-year-old-boy says it plainly: “I think I or other people just sort of do it as a way of mocking people who are overly sensitive about race issues.”

Bingo!

NPR could have done the whole story in 30 seconds. But instead it spent more than five minutes trying to grapple with a wonderful yet utterly inconvenient truth for the ostentatiously liberal network: Young people just aren’t as uptight about race as their parents, never mind their grandparents, are. And, by the way, the days of segregated swimming pools and neighborhoods haven’t merely “yielded” to “more subtle forms of discrimination”; they’ve yielded to — wait for it — less discrimination.

 Hat Tip to Charlie.

EPA Invents Perpetual Funding Machine

EPA Funds Green Groups That Sue The Agency To Expand

When the Environmental Protection Agency said in late June that it would force Western coal-fired power plants to install haze-reducing pollution-control equipment at a cost of $1.5 billion a year, it said it had to in order to settle a lawsuit by environmental groups.

One organization involved in the suit, the Environmental Defense Fund, has a long history of taking the EPA to court. In fact, a cursory review finds almost half a dozen cases in the past 10 years.

The odd thing is that the EPA, in turn, has handed EDF $2.76 million in grants over that same period, according to an IBD review of the agency's grant database.

This strange relationship goes well beyond EDF. Indeed, several environmental groups that have received millions in EPA grants regularly file suit against that same agency. A dozen green groups were responsible for more than 3,000 suits against the EPA and other government agencies over the past decade, according to a study by the Wyoming-based Budd-Falen Law Offices.

The EPA even tacitly encourages such suits, going so far as to pay for and promote a "Citizen's Guide" that, among other things, explains how to sue the agency under "citizen suit" provisions in environmental laws. The guide's author — the Environmental Law Institute — has received $9.9 million in EPA grants over the past decade.

And, to top it off, critics say the EPA often ends up paying the groups' legal fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act.

So, EPA gives money to the NGOs, who use the money to sue the EPA, which the EPA can then  defend themselves against incompetently, lose the suit, and get more money and more power to give the NGOs to sue the EPA with.

...the EPA settlement of a greenhouse gas emissions suit as a good example.

The suit, filed in 2008 by EDF, the Natural Resources Defense Council (which has received $6.5 million in EPA grants since 2000), the Sierra Club and several states, sought to compel the EPA to issue greenhouse gas "performance standards" for power plants and refineries. In its settlement, the EPA agreed to do that.

So EDF sues the EPA, and EPA gets the authority to regulate CO2 emissions!

Schweeeeet!

Less Shad Stocked

But strong spawning run raises hopes:

Fishery managers stocked sharply fewer American shad around the Chesapeake this spring than in most years of the past two decades; but biologists said efforts to rebuild the shad population might be helped by a spawning run that appeared stronger than those of recent years...

Apparently the high waters hampered the egg collecting efforts.

Counter to the below-average numbers of fish stocked, many biologists believe the size of this year's spawning run increased. Biologists were hoping that larvae produced by the spawning fish might have good survival, as high flows can expand nursery areas, and even make the water cloudy enough to protect them from predators.

However, the high flows tend to favor the recruitment of most of the anadromous fish, so perhaps (but maybe only perhaps), the higher flows offset the inability of the fisheries managers to stock them.  It would be better in the long run if we did not have to rely on stocking efforts, and the natural spawning and recruitment would suffice.

Previous shad posts.

Continued Flooding Expected in Midwest

Widespread flood threat to continue through summer

2011 could rival Great Flood of 1993

Many rivers in the upper Midwest and northern Plains remain above flood stage, and the threat for more flooding will continue through the summer, forecasters at NOAA’s National Weather Service said today.

With rivers running high and soils completely saturated, just a small amount of rain could trigger more flooding, including areas that have already seen major to record flooding. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is forecasting above-normal rain in most of these vulnerable areas in the next two weeks, and above-normal rainfall in much of the region in the one- and three-month outlooks. Adding to the flood threat will be the rising temperatures over the Rockies, which will release the water from the remaining snowpack.

“The sponge is fully saturated – there is nowhere for any additional water to go,” said Jack Hayes, Ph.D., director of NOAA’s National Weather Service. “While unusual for this time of year, all signs point to the flood threat continuing through summer.”

Forecasters say this season could rival the Great Flood of 1993, when the upper Midwest endured persistent, record-breaking floods from April through August, impacting nine states and causing more than $25 billion in damages (adjusted for inflation).

Remember, these floods are quite possibly the result of deliberate interventions by the the Federal government to restore habitat (flood plains and wet lands) at the expense of the communities already present.

The 7 Million Dollar Broadband

Your stimulus money at "work"

Eisenach and Caves looked at three areas that received stimulus funds, in the form of loans and direct grants, to expand broadband access in Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Kansas, and Northeastern Minnesota. The median household income in these areas is between $40,100 and $50,900. The median home prices are between $94,400 and $189,000.

So how much did it cost per unserved household to get them broadband access? A whopping $349,234, or many multiples of household income, and significantly more than the cost of a home itself.

Sadly, it’s actually worse than that. Take the Montana project. The area is not in any meaningful sense unserved or even underserved. As many as seven broadband providers, including wireless, operate in the area. Only 1.5% of all households in the region had no wireline access. And if you include 3G wireless, there were only seven households in the Montana region that could be considered without access. So the cost of extending access in the Montana case comes to about $7 million for each additional household served.

You wanna bet whether or not this money went into the hands of administration friends?

Hat tip to Ace of Spades.

My Day...

The company picnic was today, so the band bundled together, got in the van, and headed off.  The company logo in plants.

 A look down the National Mall, through the Folk Life Festival towards the Washington Monument.

We were the last group to play, and they had a little trouble setting up, so we were a few minutes late to start.  Here they are plugging us all in, and checking the mikes.










Singing for our supper (hey, at least we got a free lunch out of it).  I have a video of us doing one of our four songs, but I don't like it much so I won't subject you to it...

Going to the Back of the Rack

I had a bunch of Kingston Trio albums back in the Hootenanny era...

N. Afrrica to Become a Source of Solar Power for Europe?

Scientists help make deserts into solar-energy hubs 

Swap solar energy from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for scientific equipment or access to facilities in Europe. Boost the scientific level in the region through exchanges and collaboration. Establish in Cairo a joint European–MENA solar energy center for research and implementation of relevant technologies. Power the region’s scientific facilities with solar energy.

A brainstorming sessions between scientists and policy makers came up with a plan to produce solar power for DESY (the synchrotron project in Germany) using solar power from North Africa.

Gerhard Knies, a retired DESY physicist, was the driving force in starting Desertec in 2009 after discovering that “within six hours deserts receive more energy from the sun than humankind consumes within a year,” ...Early estimates put a total cost of about €400 billion ($580 billion) on the infrastructure required for solar energy from MENA to satisfy 15% of Europe’s energy needs by 2050. If Knies is right, “the transfer from fossil fuel to renewable energy will become the biggest business of the future.”

For its part, DESY runs on roughly 200 gigawatt-hours per year. “With our current energy mix, we are responsible for 100 000 tons of carbon dioxide per year,” says Dosch.

Hmm, maybe we can put Mexico to some good use after all...



Hope it doesn't end up like this abandoned solar project in Germany.  It must have seemed like such a good idea at the time too.

Beware of Lost Fishing Gear

Derelict Fishing Equipment Haunts Bay Waters

Camouflaged in waters around many of our rivers and the Chesapeake Bay, lost fishing gear no longer brings in seafood but continues to snag marine life. The gear — crab pots, tangled fishing line, or nets — were either abandoned or dropped from a severed line. This derelict gear poses a threat to fish, birds and invertebrates, as well as to water craft with propellers and anchors that can become entangled in line or nets.

Part of the problem is monofilament fishing line. According to the BoatUS Foundation, mono-filament can persist for 500 years in the water, accumulating at popular fishing holes. Rusted, derelict hooks can be dangerous for people who are wading or walking. Fishermen waste hours each season untangling their gear from this so-called ghost gear. For watermen, dealing with ghost line, nets and pots means more than lost time — it means lost revenue.

Ghost crab pots are a persistent problem in the Chesapeake Bay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Crab traps become lost when buoy lines snap or a storm breaks the trap free. Some 10 to 30 percent of a commercial crabber’s pots may be lost each year to storms or propellers, according to Maryland DNR. That’s a big loss, since crab pots cost some $30 each.

Side-scan sonar surveys by the Maryland Geological Survey and the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office revealed an estimated 85,000 ghost pots on the bottom of Maryland’s part of the Bay. Virginia surveys estimate at least 35,000 derelict traps actively ghost fishing. Whatever the staggering total number, the impact is real. Lost pots continue to catch crabs and take away from harvest-able crabs and crabs left to reproduce. Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), researchers estimate that an abandoned trap catches an average of one market-sized blue crab every four days.

As part of Maryland DNR’s Ghost Crab Pot Retrieval program, 450 watermen were paid up to $400 per day to recover and dispose of ghost crab pots in 2010. These watermen pulled some 8,000 pots or parts of pots from six areas, primarily the West, Patuxent and Patapsco Rivers. Virginia has a comparable program for watermen, who retrieved 9,000 ghost posts and hundreds of other abandoned pieces of gear for $300 per day last year; 66 watermen participated.

Recreational anglers can do their part, too, by not abandoning tangled or snagged fishing line. To collect and dispose of such unusable — and often messy — line, BoatUS Foundation is building a national network of monofilament recycling sites near popular fishing spots across the country. Parks, groups or individuals install the bins in high traffic fishing areas and agree to empty the bins. Discarded line is then sent to Iowa-based Berkeley Conservation, where it’s melted down and turned into artificial fish habitats for lakes.

Recover any line you can, then ball it up and disposed of it in a line recycling bin. Of course, sometimes line becomes so tangled in natural habitat that to free it would wreck havoc on a micro-ecosystem. In that case, cut the line as close to the tangle as possible.

 We know from previous posts on the gill nets that got "lost" (more like abandoned) before and during the Striped Bass gill net season, abandoned nets can be a serious problem.  Lost crab pots continue to catch crabs and fish until they rust away, which can take a long time if they are well protected against corrosion.  Fishing line, presents problems to fish and birds.  I've lost my fair share of fishing line to the bay, to break offs on rocks, big fish, lost crab pots, etc.  (Most of mine is braided line and not monofilament, but I don't know if that makes a significant difference in it's life span).  I've also recovered a fair amount of line from the bay as well, by hooking it and retrieving it.  I'm always careful to wad it up and carry it home for disposal in the trash.  Most of my break offs are relatively short, because I tie a short mono leader to the braided main line, and usually the braided line will cut the mono before the braided line breaks.

The biggest thing I've ever recovered that way was an anchor.  I caught the broken off anchor line, retrieved it to the boat with the fishing lure, and pulled the anchor in.

Can a High Protein Low Carbohydrate Diet Prevent Cancer?

In mice it can: Low Carbohydrate, High Protein Diet Slows Tumor Growth and Prevents Cancer Initiation

Since cancer cells depend on glucose more than normal cells, we compared the effects of low carbohydrate (CHO) diets to a Western diet on the growth rate of tumors in mice. To avoid caloric restriction–induced effects, we designed the low CHO diets isocaloric with the Western diet by increasing protein rather than fat levels because of the reported tumor-promoting effects of high fat and the immune-stimulating effects of high protein. We found that both murine and human carcinomas grew slower in mice on diets containing low amylose CHO and high protein compared with a Western diet characterized by relatively high CHO and low protein. There was no weight difference between the tumor-bearing mice on the low CHO or Western diets.

Additionally, the low CHO-fed mice exhibited lower blood glucose, insulin, and lactate levels. Additive antitumor effects with the low CHO diets were observed with the mTOR inhibitor CCI-779 and especially with the COX-2 inhibitor Celebrex, a potent anti-inflammatory drug. Strikingly, in a genetically engineered mouse model of HER-2/neu–induced mammary cancer, tumor penetrance in mice on a Western diet was nearly 50% by the age of 1 year whereas no tumors were detected in mice on the low CHO diet. This difference was associated with weight gains in mice on the Western diet not observed in mice on the low CHO diet. Moreover, whereas only 1 mouse on the Western diet achieved a normal life span, due to cancer-associated deaths, more than 50% of the mice on the low CHO diet reached or exceeded the normal life span. Taken together, our findings offer a compelling preclinical illustration of the ability of a low CHO diet in not only restricting weight gain but also cancer development and progression. Cancer Res; 71(13); 4484–93. ©2011 AACR.

This is really interesting.  Now, mice aren't men, and animal studies have led people down the wrong paths before (see Thalidomide as an example), but the idea that glucose is relied on by cancer cells to a degree that normal cells aren't suggests that manipulating blood sugar to keep levels as low a healthfully possible (too low will kill you, after all), might help slow the rate of tumor formation, and slow the rate of cancer growth should be readily testable without a dangerous trial.  In fact, the data may already be out there in all the epidemiological studies on cancer, and no one has looked at the data right yet.

Will Atkins win another posthumous victory?

Quit Picking on the Gingers, Please

Mick Hucknall says ginger jibes are akin to racism

He may have found fame with Simply Red, but you mustn’t mention the colour of Mick Hucknall’s hair.

The ginger singer claims making fun of his roots is akin to racism.

After facing a series of belittling comments on social networking website Twitter, the 51-year-old told his followers: ‘Let’s play a game: whenever you read “ginger” try replacing it with “black” or “asian” and see how it reads.’

A later post added: ‘Bigots are mostly best ignored. Tho a little outing once in a while spices up ones Tea!’

The pop star questioned why a string of prominent Britons were not similarly defined by the colour of their hair.

‘Interesting also that Prince Harry almost never referred to as Ginger by the media,’ he noted. ‘Or Churchill, or Elizabeth 1 or Shakespeare (allegedly). And lest we forget, dear old Henry VIII!’

I wasn't aware of any significant prejudice against redheads, uh Gingers in the US until South Park did the "Ginger Episode", where it is posited that Ginger kids have a disease, gingervitus, caused by red hair, fair skin and freckles, and have no soul in Season 9, episode 1:


     

Ginger Kids

Tags: SOUTH
PARKmore...

I myself, have always been partial to Gingers, after all I married one.  Gingers have quite a lot to recommend them, such as say, Christina Hendricks.  In fact, being a Ginger wasn't all that bad for Hucknall either:

Hucknall – once known as the Ginger Lothario for his womanising ways – married former art dealer Gabriella Wilke-Wesberry, 40, the mother of his four-year-old daughter Romy True, 13 months ago.

The singer recently revealed he had slept with more than 1,000 women, and offered an extraordinary apology for his actions.

‘I regret the philandering,’ he said. ‘In fact, can I issue a public apology? They know who they are and I’m truly sorry.’

However there were historical instances of extreme prejudice to Gingers:

In 15th-century Germany, redheads were seen as witches and 45,000 were tortured and murdered. Elsewhere, the Egyptians burned ginger people alive, and the Greeks claimed they turned into vampires when they died.

Utterly ridiculous.  Just because they don't have souls, they aren't vampires...

Well, OK, maybe they are.  But they're good vampires then, like Fred Saberhagen's Dracula, not necessarily nice, but good.  I might let her bite me...




 

Thanks to the Rule 5 Wombat for including this in the weekly Rule 5 compendium over at The Other McCain's.

The Casey Anthony Verdict

Not Guilty of any charge of killing her daughter.  Guilty of lying to the police.

Until this weekend, traveling, and seeing cable TV news more often than usual, I was barely aware of the Casey Anthony trial.  Cable news, and Fox in particular, tried very hard to convince me that she was guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt.  My reaction was that she sounded guilty but the evidence was not beyond a reasonable doubt.

A jury of 12 people, who as far as I know, listened to the whole trial and had no particular reason to be biased, found her not guilty. 

Damn, I'm glad that's over with.

You might also find this old essay of Eugene Volokh's instructive.

"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer," says English jurist William Blackstone. The ratio 10:1 has become known as the "Blackstone ratio."  Lawyers "are indoctrinated" with it "early in law school." "Schoolboys are taught" it. In the fantasies of legal academics, jurors think about Blackstone routinely. 

 Read the rest if you wish to wade deep in the legal swamp. Hat tip to Aaron Worthing at Patterico's.

Seagull Steals Live Camera, Narrates

Shamelessly stolen from Maggie's Notebook.

Global Warming? Never Mind, the Chinese Took Care of That...

...with their dirty coal-fired power plants:

Smoke belching from Asia's rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998 because of sulphur's cooling effect, even though greenhouse gas emissions soared, a U.S. study said on Monday.

The paper raised the prospect of more rapid, pent-up climate change when emerging economies eventually crack down on pollution.

World temperatures did not rise from 1998 to 2008, while manmade emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel grew by nearly a third, various data show.

The researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and Finland's University of Turku said pollution, and specifically sulphur emissions, from coal-fueled growth in Asia was responsible for the cooling effect.

Sulphur allows water drops or aerosols to form, creating hazy clouds which reflect sunlight back into space.

"Anthropogenic activities that warm and cool the planet largely cancel after 1998, which allows natural variables to play a more significant role," the paper said.

Natural cooling effects included a declining solar cycle after 2002, meaning the sun's output fell.

The study said that the halt in warming had fueled doubts about anthropogenic climate change, where scientists say manmade greenhouse gas emissions are heating the Earth.

"It has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008," said the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

A peak in temperatures in 1998 coincided with a strong El Nino weather event, a natural shift which brings warm waters to the surface of the Pacific Ocean every few years.

Subsequent years have still included nine of the top 10 hottest years on record, while the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said 2010 was tied for the record.

The fact that global temperature haven't increased in the last ten years while CO2 has continued to increase exponentially has been a thorn in the side of the IPCC and the warming alarmists. For an amusing take down of the conclusions of this paper regarding the cause of the "thermopause", you should read Dr. David Whitehouse's comments.

Also global warming related, a new study shows that the more scientifically educated you are, the more likely you are to be a global warming "skeptic."

The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.

Win - Win: Cut Your Lawn Less and Save the Bay

Keep grass 3 inches or taller, save your lawn and the bay

If you’re looking to save your lawn and the Chesapeake Bay, start with cutting your grass higher this summer.

The Audubon Society is part of a pilot project along with the University of Maryland on public attitudes and practices toward sustainable lawn care.

Organizers say studies show mowing at 3 inches prevents weed problems, contributes to a healthy root system and promotes drought, disease and insect resistance. It also prevents runoff of soil, fertilizers and chemicals.

Lawns are important to bay restoration efforts because grass covers more acres in the six-state bay watershed than any other crop. Many homeowners use fertilizer to help lawns grow, which harms water quality when it reaches the bay.

You don't have to convince me to mow my lawn less. I'd like to do it all in and get ground covers that don't require constant care.  If it weren't so hard to kill a lawn deliberately...

Incidentally, following the link at the bottom of the article (http://www.growinggreenlawns.org) got me to this link, which is where, in the bulletin on chiggers I found the following advice...

The easiest and most effective long term solution to chigger infestations is vegetation management. Keep lawns cut low and vegetation pruned to allow air circulation.

I guess one bureau doesn't know what the other is recommending...

Stimulus Jobs - $280,000 each

This is one of those things you just have to post.  You've probably all seen it (at least I hope so), but if I can reach just one more person, it's worth it.  The statistical jobs "created or saved" by the Obama stimulus plan cost $278,000 each (I rounded it in the title, but you know they don't know the true number any more accurately than that).  It would have been cheaper to pick random people out of the ranks of the unemployed and grant them $100,000.  Sure, most of them would have just spent it, thus stimulating the economy as the government planned, but some minority of them would have invested it in some form of business, and a fraction of those would have succeeded, and help build the economy.

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs...

I Wonder If There Is a Lawyer Version

The Smell of Danger: Rats Instinctively Avoid Compound in Carnivore Urine

David Ferrero and Stephen Liberles, neuroscientists at Harvard Medical School, have discovered a single compound found in high concentrations in the urine of carnivores that triggers an instinctual avoidance response in mice and rats. This is the first time that scientists have identified a chemical tag that would let rodents sense carnivores in general from a safe distance. The authors write that understanding the molecular basis of predator odor recognition by rodents will provide crucial tools to study the neural circuitry associated with innate behavior.

It would be good if all us little rats could smell lawyers and/or politicians coming...

Fireworks at the Beach, July 4, 2011

The crowd starts to assemble.

The communities of Long Beach and Calvert Beach (and most of the other small beach communities) have a tradition of unofficial fireworks displays down at the beach.  For the last several years we have gone to these rather than the larger officially sanctioned displays at places like Solomons.  I charged up the Nikon, and found the tripod and off we went:

One of the first of the night

From the beach you can see many displays around the Bay, as far north as Breezy Point, and as far south as Cove Point, and across the Bay at Taylor's Island and St. Michaels


As usual, click the pictures to enlarge:

I stood on on of the small sand dunes by the volleyball court, and used the tripod to help steady the camera.  Mostly I just watched for the trail of sparks from a rocket going up and tried to swivel it around and get it pointed in the right spot before triggering it ahead of the explosion.  I got a lot of blanks too, but over 75 pictures I moved into the "keeper" folder.

Mostly I shot a 2 second exposure at F11, but some of the exposures were 20 seconds, to allow me to get multiple fireworks in one shot.

The overcast sky helped keep the ambient light down - last year a 20 second exposure at night looked like a late twilight, but this year, it was essentially black. 

The Flag in Art

A couple of pieces of patriotic art, both by Frederick Childe Hassam, a well known American Impressionist painter.

Childe Hassam - Flags on the Waldorf - 1916

Childe Hassam - The Flag Outside Her Window - 1918

Scientist Finds Excuse to Drink on the Job

The Beer Archaeologist 

...Patrick McGovern, a 66-year-old archaeologist, wanders into the little pub, an oddity among the hip young brewers in their sweat shirts and flannel. Proper to the point of primness, the University of Pennsylvania adjunct professor sports a crisp polo shirt, pressed khakis and well-tended loafers; his wire spectacles peek out from a blizzard of white hair and beard. But Calagione, grinning broadly, greets the dignified visitor like a treasured drinking buddy. Which, in a sense, he is.

The truest alcohol enthusiasts will try almost anything to conjure the libations of old. They’ll slaughter goats to fashion fresh wineskins, so the vintage takes on an authentically gamey taste. They’ll brew beer in dung-tempered pottery or boil it by dropping in hot rocks. The Anchor Steam Brewery, in San Francisco, once cribbed ingredients from a 4,000-year-old hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian beer goddess.

“Dr. Pat,” as he’s known at Dogfish Head, is the world’s foremost expert on ancient fermented beverages, and he cracks long-forgotten recipes with chemistry, scouring ancient kegs and bottles for residue samples to scrutinize in the lab. He has identified the world’s oldest known barley beer (from Iran’s Zagros Mountains, dating to 3400 B.C.), the oldest grape wine (also from the Zagros, circa 5400 B.C.) and the earliest known booze of any kind, a Neolithic grog from China’s Yellow River Valley brewed some 9,000 years ago.

Widely published in academic journals and books, McGovern’s research has shed light on agriculture, medicine and trade routes during the pre-biblical era. But—and here’s where Calagione’s grin comes in—it’s also inspired a couple of Dogfish Head’s offerings, including Midas Touch, a beer based on decrepit refreshments recovered from King Midas’ 700 B.C. tomb, which has received more medals than any other Dogfish creation.

“It’s called experimental archaeology,” McGovern explains.

To devise this latest Egyptian drink, the archaeologist and the brewer toured acres of spice stalls at the Khan el-Khalili, Cairo’s oldest and largest market, handpicking ingredients amid the squawks of soon-to-be decapitated chickens and under the surveillance of cameras for “Brew Masters,” a Discovery Channel reality show about Calagione’s business...

July 4, 2011 Beach

We came back to Maryland yesterday with the lightening and thunderstorms on our heels; we passed through it in Pennsylvania and West Virgina, and caught up with another line of it as we got back last night.

Today, the air is still humid and breeze-less, but not as hot as it could be.

A family plays in the surf.  "Throw me, Daddy!"  "No, it's my turn!"

The Mallards just lie around in the heat.

Another family cruises the beach in their run about.

I found this small dead Striped Bass on the beach.  There was no damage to it, and it looked healthy (well, other than being dead).  Did we have a low oxygen event here?  I saw a few other dead fish, but not many, and none of the other signs of low DO (crabs and fish in the surface, or gasping).  A little mystery.

There was a large flock of Swallows (probably Cliff or Bank Swallows) on the beach near the jetty as we walked up, and took off en mass.

Disappearing behind the dune.

Rare Earth Elements Discovered in Deep Sea

Huge Rare Earth Deposits Found in Pacific

Vast deposits of rare earth minerals, crucial in making high-tech electronics products, have been found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and can be readily extracted, Japanese scientists said on Monday.

We've been down this road before.  When I was a young, manganese nodules, a deep-sea mineral deposit was touted as the answer to our needs for a number of metals, including manganese, nickel copper, and cobalt. In the 1970s, one project did attempt to develop the technology to mine them for 8 years from 18,000 feet down, obtaining several tons, and extracted the metals.  However, low nickel prices made the project uncompetitive.  I have a small bottle of manganese nodules in my office on my "treasure" display (along with some fossils).

"The deposits have a heavy concentration of rare earths. Just one square kilometer (0.4 square mile) of deposits will be able to provide one-fifth of the current global annual consumption," said Yasuhiro Kato, an associate professor of earth science at the University of Tokyo. The discovery was made by a team led by Kato and including researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology...

...He estimated rare earths contained in the deposits amounted to 80 to 100 billion tonnes, compared to global reserves currently confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey of just 110 million tonnes that have been found mainly in China, Russia and other former Soviet countries, and the United States.

Those are pretty compelling numbers, however.  The ability to get a years worth of the the rare earth elements from  a square kilometer of sediment certainly suggests that we do not have to fear running out of these elements any time soon.

They found the minerals in sea mud extracted from depths of 3,500 to 6,000 metres (11,500-20,000 ft) below the ocean surface at 78 locations. One-third of the sites yielded rich contents of rare earths and the metal yttrium, Kato said in a telephone interview. The deposits are in international waters in an area stretching east and west of Hawaii, as well as east of Tahiti in French Polynesia, he said.

I would hazard a guess that the problems of obtaining large amounts of sediments from this depth, processing them on board ship and dealing with the waste materials would make this mining too uneconomical, unless the prices of rare earth elements (REAs) rise significantly.  Any prospect of that?

A chronic shortage of rare earths, vital for making a range of high-technology electronics, magnets and batteries, has encouraged mining projects for them in recent years. China, which accounts for 97 percent of global rare earth supplies, has been tightening trade in the strategic metals, sparking an explosion in prices. Japan, which accounts for a third of global demand, has been stung badly, and has been looking to diversify its supply sources, particularly of heavy rare earths such as dysprosium used in magnets.

Here is my bet.  We won't see economical exploitation of these deposits for years, if not decades.  However, knowledge that they exist will encourage the Chinese to keep prices, if not reasonable, at least low enough to discourage the research and development necessary to make these deposits feasible to mine. Furthermore, I predict that China will suddenly become a defender of the deep-sea environment, claiming that exploitation of these deposits is too environmentally destructive to tolerate, so we will just have to make do with their more REAs.  I also predict that western environmentalists will beat China to that punch.

First seen at Instapundit.

Meanies Stop Meaningless Votes

With Republican majority, House loses its resolve for symbolic legislation

Something is off in the House of Representatives: It’s already July 4, and the House still has not yet registered its opinions on bald eagles, motherhood or the American flag.

By last Independence Day, the House had already voted to approve Resolution 1409, which declared the bald eagle “an inspiring symbol.” It had approved Resolution 1295, saying that American mothers “have made immeasurable contributions.” Resolution 1429 affirmed that “the United States flag is universally honored.”

Bills such as these — whose only purpose is to commemorate, congratulate or celebrate — are the legislative equivalent of empty calories. And last year, the House was on a binge.

It passed more than 250, honoring everything from the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. to the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon at Penn State University.

But the House’s new Republican leaders have stopped these resolutions, saying they distract from the real work of Congress.

That has set off a debate about what the real work of Congress is. Supporters of these resolutions say the symbolic gestures are better than no gestures at all, in a legislature close to paralysis...

 Actually, not doing anything is way better than screwing things up worse - "First, Do No Harm."

Reading is Fundamental

Well, I've fished out there too, so I can't say much...

Happy 4th of July!

How's about some Classic 4th of July Pinups?

Fireworks - Gil Elvgren

Picnics! - Gil Elvgren

Parades! - Rolf Armstrong

Concerts! - Alberto Vargas

Maryland Doubles the Bet that You Can't Catch a Fish

Diamond Jim is Now Worth $20,000

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) joined junior anglers today to catch, tag and release a second round of up to 200 specially tagged striped bass, including one genuine Diamond Jim, currently worth $20,000, into the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries as part of the 2011 Maryland Fishing Challenge.

“Now in its seventh year, the Maryland Fishing Challenge showcases Maryland’s excellent fishing, featuring accessible, affordable, diverse and high quality opportunities for anglers of all ages,” said Governor Martin O’Malley. “We hope to further encourage Marylanders to get outside and enjoy the water.”

The first batch of Diamond Jim fish were released in June. This second round brings the number of imposters, worth $500 each, to about 400. A final group of approximately 200 fish will be released in August. This year, for the first time, DNR is guaranteeing a $25,000 payout. If no one catches an authentic Diamond Jim, the $25,000 will be split among those who caught the $500 imposters.

One would hope, for the sake of the fish alone, that the chances of catching a particular individual fish out of the bay during the summer would be fairly low, so having a guaranteed pay out to the runners up in the event the Diamond Jim fish are not caught is generous.  I don't know of many people who go fishing with the assumption that their trips will be paid for with the proceeds of the reward for Catching Diamond Jim, though.

Previous Diamond Jim post.

Do You Want Electric Cars?

If so, you need to let someone mine copper

Each hybrid contains about 100 pounds of copper — most of that is in the electrical cables and the electric motor. A conventional car only contains about 50 pounds of copper.
Other “green” technologies also contain lots of copper. A five-megawatt wind turbine is made of nearly five tons of copper and solar panels are up to 60 percent copper. Blocking future mine construction effectively jeopardizes the very technology greens want to power their vision of a “clean-energy future.”

Plus additional Cu will be needed to bolster the power lines that carry power to households. Major transmission lines are mostly aluminum, but the distribution system, which will need to have increased capacity in the event that all electric or plugin hybrid cars are widely adopted are mostly copper.

So, why are environmentalists opposed to the Pebble Project, a proposal to develop a new copper mine in Alaska, where a new deposit of copper ore bearing as much as 8 billion (with a "b") tons of copper, gold and molybdenum?  Are they opposed to its environmental impacts? 

The Pebble Project’s owners have reportedly already spent $125 million on the environmental research reports required to open the mine. But opponents have petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to deny a Clean Water Act permit for the mine before the owners have even applied for an operating permit. Incredibly, the EPA is seriously considering this outrageous petition. And even more outrageously, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson this spring attended and spoke at a reception for opponents of the mine, which was hosted in the Supreme Court by retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor!

Well of course, even though the project is not yet fully planned, and the impacts cannot be known for certain.

There's simply no doubt.  Mining is a dirty business.  To extract metals from ore, you have to dig up the ore, which often involves a huge hole, and considerable difficulties with groundwater contamination.  You have to extract the metal from the ore, and this often involves extremely messy chemical processes, or fume producing smelting. And then, the raw metal must be shaped into the final form for use in a factory.  All these processes can be dirty, but all can be considerably improved through technology.

Should the United States, as a country, simply make it a policy to abandon the processes of mining, refining and production of goods from metals, hoping that we can sell enough software and banking services abroad that other metal producing nations abroad will be willing to give us their metal products in exchange?  You know, anyone can learn to do paperwork, especially if the price is too high...

It is incumbent on us to do our mining and refining with as cleanly as reasonably possible, with the acknowledgment that reasonably is sensitive to costs), but it is simply insane to give them up entirely for a imaginary idyllic future.

Pittsburgh Pictures

 Georgia, Alex, Kelly and I ditched the dogs after lunch and rode the "T" (for trolley), from near their house in South Park, to Pittsburgh for a little sight seeing and dinner.  After arriving at Station Square, we rode the Monongahela Incline up to the top of Mount Washington (formerly Coal Hill) to view the city.

From the overlook on Grandview Avenue at the top of Coal Hill.  The Monongahela (foreground) and the Allegheny River (background) meet to form the Ohio River, (to the left).  The former site of Three Rivers Stadium, and a lousy TV show.

Panning right.  The Mon River (as it is more familiarly called locally) and downtown Pittsburgh towering over it.

Looking upriver on the Mon, still from Mt. Washington.  Then we went and had some iced coffee, and went back down the Incline.

 A "Clinton Furnace" on display down in Station Square, on the Mon waterfront, with a bunch of shops and restaurants.  A little like Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, without the fish...

 A statues in the garden of one of the restaurants in Station Square.

 Another statue guarding a different restaurant.

After drinks and dinner, we caught the "T" back.

Weed of the Day

Bachelor Buttons Wild Chicory, Blue Sailor or Corn Flower (Centaurea cyanus Chicorum intybus).  






We found  masses of these growing along a trail in a park in Canonsburg this morning.

UPDATE:  As pointed out by Pam below, this is actually Chicory, an even more interesting weed. Cultivated varieties are used to flavor Louisiana style coffee (or as a very cheap coffee substitute), young leaves are used in salad (Belgian Endive, Radicchio or Witloof), the greens are boiled as vegetables, and the whole plant is used as stock fodder known for it's vermifugal properties.

Movie Review - Super 8

Georgia and I went with Alex and his fiance Kelly to see Super 8.  After what seemed to be an interminably long time sitting through advertisements, movie previews and theater reminders, we eventually got around to actually seeing the movie. 

We all enjoyed the movie.  I thought the kids that played the lead roles were great, and captured that special geekiness that comes with that age and era in a charming manner (except for the projectile vomiting). The adults were so so. The stoner in between was hilarious. The special effects were, of course, totally awesome.  I kept seeing a weird camera artifact that I can only assume was added to remind you

The sad part of the movie is, of course, the plot.  The bad, US Air Force, has captured an alien, and, well you can project the rest (never mind that the alien casually eats whole innocent people). But if you were to reject a movie for trying to make you hate the military, it would limit your pick considerably.

A quick intro, or not.

Elder brother Fritz sent me a email advising me that he was off to Pittsburgh for the weekend and that if I felt inspired, to go ahead and drop a post on his blog. In fact his exact words were.

"I had the google software send you an invitation to join as a co-blogger. If you feel inspired, give it a whirl... If not, well OK.

I trust you – well mostly, you’re not quite a sick as I am, but what the heck."

High praise from an older brother. I'll try to think of something witty and worthy of this Blog. My own blog is much more a gun related blog but then Fritz was always the scientist of the family.

The only thing I have on tap at this moment is an item about ex US Representative Anthony Weiner (D, Slimeville) that contains a most amazing Freudian slip.

"While Weiner, 46, heads to an "intensive" rehab program to recover from the sexting scandal that cost him his congressional career.."

In other words this "intensive" rehab is supposed to help him recover from the scandal, not from whatever compulsion he has to send inappropriate pictures of himself to complete strangers on the net.

This is going to turn out to be nothing more then the political version of celebrity alcohol/drug rehab. All show, no substance, disappear for a few weeks then come back and present yourself as "Cured". Of course an complicit press will buy it with out question.

But then I'm a cynic. I discovered long ago that if you expected the worst of your elected officals you would seldom be surprised and on those few occasions that you were, it was a pleasant surprise.

I'm not sure I'll be able to post again this weekend, Fritz was particularly concerned with trying to carry on the tradition of his Rule 5 posts. However while Fritz and Co are going to Pittsburgh for the weekend my family and I are headed for Santa Cruz to spend the weekend at a friends house.

Beautiful Santa Cruz, home to a great Boardwalk, a great roller coaster, and this lady.

Your Friday Menstrual Crackhead Monkey Dacker Post