Crazy Eddie's Motie News

Nate Silver makes a punny

2012-03-13T19:55:00.000-04:00

In the middle of a long explanation about why polling in the Deep South has been more inaccurate than in other regions of the U.S., Nate Silver made what looked at first glance like an error, but really was a clever pun, however accidental (bolding mine).

Polls can sometimes have problems because of social desirability bias — the tendency to provide an answer that you think might seem most acceptable to the stranger on the other end of the line, rather than what you really think.

This bias is potentially stronger in cultures that have stronger codes of etiquette, and where people are more self-conscious of the front they present to strangers. This is pertinent in some Asian and Asian-American cultures, for instance. Polls of Hawaii, where there are many Japanese-Americans, have a bad track record; one survey there somewhat infamously predicted a win for George W. Bush in 2004, but John Kerry instead took the state by 9 percentage points.

Etiquette also remains more in tact in the South, and especially in the Deep South, than in most other parts of the country. If so, polls there could encounter similar problems.

I couldn't resist ribbing Nate about his diction.

My proofreader's eye notices something odd about the use of "in tact" in that sentence. Let's see what the Free Online Dictionary has to say about "in tact" versus "intact."

tact: Acute sensitivity to what is proper and appropriate in dealing with others, including the ability to speak or act without offending.

intact: Remaining sound, entire, or uninjured; not impaired in any way.

The proper usage is "intact," but I think you should let this one stand. In context, writing "etiquette...remains...in tact" makes for a good pun. I hope it was intentional.

Even if it were unintentional, I still found it funny. Hey, I like looking at Freudian slips showing. ;-)

Tornadoes overnight in Michigan

2012-03-13T10:57:00.000-04:00

A tornado wall cloud was spotted in western Michigan yesterday, which was enough to trigger a tornado warning. WOOD-TV has the report.

The tornado kept moving.

The storm continued to the northeast and may have spawned a tornado near Midland. The Detroit Free Press reports.

The National Weather Service will determine today whether a tornado hit Midland County overnight, as storms move east for sunshine and warm temperatures in metro Detroit.

Trees and wires were knocked down and some buildings damaged in Coleman, Michigan, in Midland County overnight, meteorologist Dave Gurney said today from the agency's White Lake Township office.

"There’s a little damage up in Midland county, but not down around these parts," Gurney said. "We’re going to do a storm survey for one portion of the damage to see if it was straight-line wind or a little tornado."

No tornadoes here in Oakland County, but the storm did produce a strong thunderstorm with heavy rain about 10:30 PM. It was enough to interfere with reception of the satellite TV at my house. I can put up with the inconvenience so long as worse weather avoids me and nice weather awaits.

Today, expect warm sunshine with temperatures climbing to an unseasonably warm 60 to 65 degrees, Gurney said.

"It's above normally, certainly," Gurney said. "Normal high temperature for this time of year is 40, 45 during the day. So we’re running 15 to 20 degrees above normal."

The rest of the week will also be just as unseasonably warm. I'm enjoying it, but not everyone is.

The mild winter has affected not just the ski resorts and snowmobile dealerships, but also the tertiary businesses that depend on cold and snow to thrive. They include shoeshines, pizzerias, hot chocolate companies, and a whole slew of businesses that rely on a real winter for real dollars.

I have to say this has been the mildest winter since I moved here from California in 1989. May the summer not be as hot as the winter was mild.

Mitt Romney and George Carlin on grits

2012-03-12T00:01:00.005-04:00

On Friday, Mitt Romney tried to win over the crowd at a rally in Pascagoula, Mississippi, with his newfound love of grits.

Romney repeated his affection for grits in Jackson, Mississippi. The panelists on Alex Wagner's show couldn't restrain themselves from facepalming.

This is enough to make me think his saying "the trees are the right height" sounds intelligent in comparison. That's my second reaction. My first is to recall George Carlin's standup bit about cooking grits.

Actually, you can eat them damned grits, but I doubt Romney actually does.

First anniversary of Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown

2012-03-11T18:59:00.001-04:00

From ITN News on YouTube comes the official memorial.

Japan holds a minute's silence to mark the one year anniversary of the massive earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 19,000 people. Report by Katie Lamborn.

ITN also has this retrospective.

A look back at the destruction caused by the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan a year ago. Report by Katie Lamborn.

Click on Read more to see the earthquake/tsunami/meltdown stories from last night's Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday on Daily Kos.

This week's featured story comes from the University of Alabama.

When the Earth Shakes
March 1, 2012

The United States Geological Survey records earthquakes every day. The earliest reported U.S. quake was felt in 1769 about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles. A single earthquake several thousand years ago is believed to have killed 800,000 in central China.

In 2011, a Richter magnitude 9.0 quake in Japan became the largest Japanese earthquake since records began. The Japanese National Police Agency confirmed 15,787 deaths from it with more than 6,000 injuries. In addition, the earthquake, tsunami and aftershocks damaged or destroyed more than 125,000 buildings. From an economic standpoint, the Japanese government estimates the overall costs could exceed $300 billion, making it the most expensive natural disaster in Japanese history.
...
In the wake of a catastrophic natural disaster, engineers review whether human and economic losses can be reduced. Through structural-engineering research and experimentation, building codes and retrofitting techniques are improving, better protecting inhabitants and property.

Mississippi State University: CAVS studies radiation effects on nuclear reactor materials
March 9, 2012

STARKVILLE, Miss.--Testing how steel reacts under radioactive conditions with tens of thousands of simulations may seem ambitious, but that's the goal of research at Mississippi State University.

The nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, a year ago--a crisis started by a massive earthquake that set off a tsunami--helped show the importance of learning more about the strength of materials used in nuclear reactors. While Japan continues to deal with the fallout of the nuclear reactor's breakdown, the global scientific and research community for nuclear energy are taking measures to prevent this scenario from happening again.

Mark Tschopp, an assistant research professor at Mississippi State, has led efforts to create better predictive models for materials used in extreme environments such as nuclear reactors. The research is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Now, the moment of silence in full, from Al Jazeera English.

A minute of silence has been observed across Japan at the exact instant that, one year ago, a devastating earthquake struck off the country's northeast coast.

WXYZ: $4.00 gas! Econobrowser: Not that big a deal

2012-03-10T17:57:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's post, I described how the combination of high unemployment and high and rising gas prices has thrice resulted in increased gasoline thefts during the past 4 years. Within hours of my posting that entry, WXYZ uploaded a video that marks an important psychological milestone: Gas prices in metro Detroit jumping over $4.00/gallon.

The price increase extended to my corner gas station, which raised its price for unleaded regular to $3.99/gallon. How long they keep that price is open to question, as the three gas stations just two blocks away were still selling regular at $3.85/gallon this morning. I suspect the corner gas station will lower their price down to $3.87 by Monday. However, a return to the $3.75/gallon I paid on Tuesday is not in the cards any time soon.

That written, and the reactions of people in the WXYZ clip about higher gas prices curbing their other spending notwithstanding, James Hamilton at Econobrowser was surprisingly sanguine earlier this week as he explained Why Current High Oil Prices Won’t Derail the U.S. Economy.

Although the prices of oil and gasoline have risen significantly from their values in October, they are still not back to the levels we saw last spring or in the summer of 2008. There is a good deal of statistical evidence...that an oil price increase that does no more than reverse an earlier decline has a much more limited effect on the economy than if the price of oil surges to a new all-time high.

One reason for this is that much of the impact on the economy of an increase in oil prices comes from abrupt changes in the patterns of consumer spending. For example, one thing we often observe when oil prices spike up is that U.S. consumers suddenly stop buying the less fuel-efficient vehicles that tend to be manufactured in North America. That drop in income for the domestic auto sector is one factor aggravating the overall economic consequences. But if consumers have recently seen even higher prices than they’re paying at the moment, their spending plans and firms’ production plans are likely already to have incorporated that reality.

Although gas prices have risen over $4.00/gallon for the fourth time in as many years, at least in Michigan, they aren't at that level for most of the country yet, and nowhere have they reached record levels, as the graph immediate below shows. Therefore, the impact of the current price rise will be less than for the previous two, which merely slowed down the economic recovery, to say nothing of the first one, which helped put the economy into a tailspin.

The main line of evidence Hamilton looked at was the rapidly improving automobile sales figures, which are showing no sign of a slowdown related to oil prices, at least so far. That's not the only statistic that Hamilton analyzes.

Another series I pay close attention to is the share of total consumer spending that is eaten up by the cost of energy. But the remarkable thing here is that nominal consumer spending on energy goods and services actually declined on a seasonally adjusted basis between September and January, even as the price of gasoline was going up considerably. This represents a combination of an unusually mild winter, very low natural gas prices, and consumers finding ways to reduce their energy consumption and thereby insulate their budgets from some of the damage of higher gasoline prices.

Here's the graph he uses to illustrate his point, which shows the percentage of consumer expenditures devoted to energy for the past 50 years. The blue line is the 6% level, which Hamilton has determined is the threshold for consumers to change their spending behavior.

There is one thing that worries Hamilton, which just happens to be the same thing that worries me.

If tensions with Iran were to escalate, then I would start to worry a good deal more. But based on what has happened to oil prices so far, I find myself in the unusual position of being less concerned about the impact of oil prices on the U.S. economy than many other analysts.

I hope he's right.

Hard times plus rising gas prices equals gas thefts

2012-03-09T20:01:00.000-05:00

Today's good employment news that unemployment is the lowest it's been since it was time to party like it's 1929 in September 2008, which means it's down nearly two percent from a year ago and more than five percent from its peak back in 2009, still isn't enough to hide one important fact; Michigan's unemployment rate is nine percent. That means that conditions are improving, but times are still tough for a lot of people. Adding to the difficulties of both the employed and unemployed is that gas prices are up 25 cents this week for a statewide average of $3.93/gallon, $3.89 in metro Detroit.

We've seen this movie before, first in 2008 and again in 2011. Both times gasoline theft increased. Since it happened then, it should be no surprise that it's happening now. This time, gas thieves in Detroit are adding a new twist to the plot.

In 2008, the method of choice was driving off without paying. WALB, TV 10 in Albany, Georgia, has a spectacular example from March 2008 posted on their YouTube channel.

A thief tried to run off with less than $30 worth of gas, but wound up causing well over $10,000 in damage after a wild high-speed chase.

The result of that escapade was that the station starting insisting on pre-paying for gas.

The very morning after the driveoff managers posted these signs letting customers know thing would have to change. "We don't have any options right now except to prepay. We're trying to figure out the best thing," said Harrison. Deputies agree the prepay policy, along with good surveillence equipment, is probably a store's best bet to prevent drive-offs.

Drive-offs were a problem in 2011 as well, as USA Today reported last April.

As gas prices approach record highs, gas-related thievery is on the rise.

Regular gasoline averages $3.88 a gallon, up $1.02 from a year ago and likely to climb higher.

As I wrote, we've seen this movie before.

Increasingly, consumers are pumping gas and driving off without paying, stealing from other motorists and ripping off large quantities from municipalities and businesses.

In addition to the drive-offs, the reporter listed several instances from all over the country of bulk thefts from tanker trucks and underground tanks* as well as gas being siphoned from private vehicles' fuel tanks, which led to the article's conclusion.

Sales of locking gas caps are surging. Stant Manufacturing, a Connersville, Ind., supplier for Pep Boys and Wal-Mart, expects sales to eclipse 2008 sales, when gas prices hit all-time highs. "We've been ramping up since January," says marketing chief Chris Hoffman. "You could call it our hedge fund."

Just as happened the last two times high and rising gas prices coincided with hard times, both drive offs and thefts from other drivers. This time, even locking gas caps are insufficient to protect the fuel in your tank, as gas thieves in Detroit have found a "where the weak are killed and eaten" method of circumventing them--puncturing and draining people's tanks. WXYZ has the story.

Gas Tank Thefts

An earlier clip presented more complete interviews of the victims shown briefly above.

Thieves are puncturing gas tanks to drain them and steal the gas.

I used to teach in the neighborhood where the thefts reported above happened. I now teach only a few miles away.

In addition to the loss of the gas, there are the dangers of the damaged gas tank and leaking gas as well, as this most recent segment shows.

Officials are warning people who have had their gas tanks drilled not to drive until the tanks are replaced.

More on this story at WXYZ's website here and here.

I've written before that the solutions for our problems devised here will be exported to the rest of the continent, so it's important that we encourage the good solutions and stop the bad ones. This is a bad solution that needs to be stopped, ASAP.

*Two cases from 2011 that USA Today managed to miss have finally resulted in guilty verdicts and sentences for the perpetrators. First, a firefighter in Pennsylvania plead guilty to stealing 250 gallons of gas worth $820 from Cleona Borough fire company between March 4 and May 2 of last year. He was sentenced to restitution, a $50 fine, and 60 days probation. He got off lightly, especially compared to the municipal employee who stole up to 1,200 gallons of gas from the city of University Place, Florida last year. He pled guilty and was sentenced to $3,295.88 in restitution and two years of probation. He could have avoided a conviction if he had paid $6,200 in restitution, written an apology letter to the city, and attended an ethics class, but he decided against it. Sucks to be him.

The first warm day of spring

2012-03-08T01:44:00.000-05:00

Here's what I wrote on my Facebook page earlier tonight.

It's a gorgeous night, so [my wife] and I have the heat off and the windows open, enjoying the warm breeze from the south.

As for how warm, I'll let the Detroit Free Press tell you.

Temps expected to soar to 65 degrees in metro Detroit

It won't be a record-setter, but temperatures today are expected to soar to 65 degrees in metro Detroit, according to the National Weather Service.

The record high for March 7 at Metro Airport is 76 degrees, set in 2000, meteorologist Matt Mosteiko said today from the agency's office in White Lake Township. And the record low is a frigid 2 degrees, set in 1913. The normal high is 42 degrees, and low is 26, he added.
...
It's expected to be breezy and partly cloudy with peeks of sunshine today, with the temperature peaking at about 2 p.m. Rain is expected to move into the region around midnight, with an overnight low of 52 and an 80% chance of precipitation, Mosteiko said.

Yeah, it's nice, but it's not going to last until tomorrow. As for what's in store, here's the latest weather report from WOOD-TV, which looks at space weather in addition to the forecast for the western half of the state.

Some cooler weather will move in before we get warm again, Bill Steffen says. And a magnificent solar storm.

The weather is not returning to the deep freeze again, but will warm up after turning merely cooler. So far, it looks like I was right to believe Staten Island Chuck over Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day.

Universities studying and promoting civility in politics

2012-03-07T00:27:00.000-05:00

It is no secret that I'm a member of the Coffee Party, as I blog about it here. One of the founding principles of the Coffee Party is civility, including having members sign a Civility Pledge. So when I stumbled into what looks like the beginning of a trend for universities to be interested in and promote civility in politics as part of my long-term project on Daily Kos to highlight the research stories from the public universities in each of the states having elections and caucuses during the week, it piqued my interest.

Here's the first story, which I posted in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (AAAS, Arizona, and Michigan edition) week before last.

University of Arizona: Gabrielle Giffords to Join National Institute for Civil Discourse Board
By University Communications
February 21, 2012

The National Institute for Civil Discourse is a nonpartisan center for the research and advocacy of civility in public discourse.

The National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona has announced that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has been named to its National Board of Advisors. Fred DuVal, chair of the institute's Working Board, and Eugene G. Sander, president of the UA, made the announcement Tuesday.

"There is truly no greater example of a public servant committed to the idea of increasing civility in politics than Congresswoman Giffords," DuVal said.

"We are honored that Congresswoman Giffords, who is beloved and respected around the world, will partner with the institute on advancing the quality of our nation's public discourse," Sander said.

This past week, I found two more stories in the same vein, which made their way into Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Massive March Storms edition).

University of Massachusetts: Forum on Civility Draws Audience of Hundreds
Pamela Worth
February 28, 2012

What is civility? Does the word indicate etiquette and manners, or a deeper and more fundamental quality in a democracy? Has America ever truly embraced civil discourse in its history? Have incivility and disrespect hindered Americans in recent years from working together?

On Friday, February 17, UMass Boston’s Center for Civil Discourse hosted its inaugural event: a national Forum on Civility and American Democracy that aimed to explore these and other questions with a day of discussion and thought.

The forum was the brainchild of Stephen Crosby, outgoing dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), along with Mass Humanities, Boston’s National Public Radio station 90.9 WBUR, and the McCormack Graduate School helped to sponsor the forum.

University of North Dakota: Conflict Resolution Center to focus on politics and ‘civility in public conversation’ at annual symposium
Former U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan to speak; event delves into the question: Have we lost our ability to talk civilly?
March 2, 2012

The University of North Dakota Conflict Resolution Center (CRC) will explore the current state of political and public discourse at its fifth annual "Symposia on Conflict Transformation" seminar.

The CRC wants to use the occasion to talk about "civility in public conversation" and its impacts on society locally and beyond. The symposium is set for May 21-25, 2012. Most events will take place at in the River Valley Room of the UND Memorial Union.

Former U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, a UND alumnus whose spent more than 30 years in local, state and national politics, will be a guest speaker for the event.

Three stories about promoting political civility from three states in two weeks--must be something in the Zeitgeist. I'm encouraged.

I was one of "about a dozen" yesterday

2012-03-06T10:53:00.000-05:00

Paul Ryan came to town yesterday to be the main attraction for a fundraiser for Pete Hoekstra, who is running for Senate. Since I've had my share of things to say about Paul Ryan, it was an easy sell to get me to be one of the people demonstrating his visit. A bunch of us carried signs about protecting Social Security and Medicare. The protest even made the Detroit Free Press.

Candidate Pete Hoekstra rallies support

About a dozen protesters, including some senior citizens, picketed the event at the Westin Hotel in Southfield and were more than happy to talk about their fear of spiraling health care costs.

“All I have is Social Security and my husband’s pension and now I feel like I’m being squeezed out,” said Deanna Tachna, 73, of Birmingham. “I always thought that I was part of the middle class, but with this, there’s not going to be a middle class anymore.”

The reporter came at the end of the demonstration as people were starting to leave. If she had counted five minutes earlier and included the people demonstrating by the entrance to the parking garage less than 100 feet away, she would have recorded twice as many. That's not the only error in the report. She identified Paul Ryan as an "Illinois Republican." He's not. Paul Ryan is a representative from Wisconsin, not Illinois. He represented my wife when she lived in Kenosha County, not when she lived in the Chicago suburbs.

On the subject of followers of Ayn Rand, there is a diary about their ill effects on U.S. politics and society over at Daily Kos: Book Review: Ayn Rand Nation, by Gary Weiss. I recommend you read it.

And now, the macro I keep on hand just for mentions of Ayn Rand.

Look who I found while doing something else

2012-03-05T01:20:00.001-05:00

Over at Daily Kos, I've been engaging on a long-term project to "highlight the research stories from the public universities in each of the states having elections and caucuses during the week (or in the upcoming weeks if there is no primary or caucus that week)."* Among the states having elections and caucuses coming up are ten states participating in Super Tuesday, and I included stories from eight on them in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Massive March Storms edition). One of those states is Vermont. It just so happens that I ran across a familiar name while searching through the University of Vermont's press releases.

University of Vermont: Kunstler Headlines 'Vermont's Energy Future' Lecture Series
By University Communications
February 23, 2012

James Howard Kunstler has no love for flashy, contemporary architecture. "These redundant monumental gestures are the last gasps of the cheap energy fiesta," he writes on his "Eyesore of the Month" page of his website, which regularly skewers images of skyscrapers, poor urban planning and futuristic buildings. "The closer we get to the end, the more soulless they get."

Kunstler is author of The Geography of Nowhere, Home From Nowhere, and The Long Emergency, among other books, which critique and offer solutions to America's "tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside," symbols of disregard, he says, for an impending energy crisis.

In the keynote address of a spring semester lecture series on "Vermont's Energy Future," co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Vermont and the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, Kunstler will speak on "The End of Cheap Energy," Wednesday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the Davis Center's Silver Maple Ballroom.

In this lecture, Kunstler will lay out a vision of a world dependent on cheap energy and approaching a devastating turning point that will return the nation to a place where community matters, where neighbors gather and people build places they value.

I filed the above under "Energy" but I could just as easily have filed it under "Science, Space, Environment, Health, and Energy Policy," "Science Writing and Reporting," or "Non-Science Research." In any event, it's a small world!

*I have a bunch of stories from Michigan among all the rest of the sustainability news from all the other primary and caucus states so far. I've been saving them for a slow day. The problem is that slow days in the politics of sustainability have been rare lately. I'll see about getting around to posting them soon.

I hope Thomas Friedman doesn't care what Newt Gingrich thinks

2012-03-04T21:41:00.000-05:00

In the spirt of a stuck clock being right twice a day, Tom "Suck on this" Friedman made a very eloquent plea on behalf of sustainable development of energy.

But this is not a column about traffic — per se.

This is a column about energy and environment and why we must not let the poisonous debate about climate change so tie us in knots that we cannot have any energy policy at all, particularly one focused on developing much more efficient use of resources, through better designs and systems. If you are so reckless as to dismiss all climate science as a hoax, and do not accept the data that our planet is getting hotter and the oceans rising, I can’t help you. That’s between you and your beach house — and your kids, whose future you’re imperiling.

But you better believe this: The planet is getting flatter and more crowded. There will be two billion more people here by 2050, and they will all want to live and drive just like us. And when they do, there is going to be one monster traffic jam and pollution cloud, unless we learn how to get more mobility, lighting, heating and cooling from less energy and with less waste — with so many more people. We can’t let the climate wars continue to derail efforts to have an energy policy that puts in place rising efficiency standards, for buildings, windows, traffic, housing, packaging and appliances, that will drive innovation — which is our strength — in what has to be the next great global industry: energy and resource efficiency.

Friedman then goes on to explain how the last paragraph I quoted forms the message of two books, “The Sixth Wave: How to Succeed in a Resource Limited World” by James Bradfield Moody and Bianca Nogrady and “Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era” by Avory Lovins. Despite what I think of Friedman on foreign policy and partisan politics, which isn't much, I agree with him here. I highly recommend reading this column.

I only have one snarky observation about the column itself, separate from its author--the title: "Take the subway." Dude, Newt Gingrich hates your guts.

Rich Robinson of Michigan Campaign Finance Network on Coffee Party Radio

2012-03-03T20:08:00.001-05:00

Louden Clear! Vince Lamb guest hosts for Jeanene

How can we get the money out of politics when we don't even know where all the money is? Finding that hidden money in politics is the subject of today's Louden Clear. Guest host Vince Lamb and his guest Rich Robinson of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network will be talking about the hidden money in Michigan politics. Rich has been investigating unreported expenditures for many years and has found $70 million in hidden money spent in Michigan alone during the past decade. He is finishing up his research on the just-concluded Michigan primary and could be ready to share his preliminary findings today. Join Vince and Rich today at 2:30 PM ET/11:30 AM PT for an hour of conversation about the hidden money in politics.

In addition to the guest host and the guest, Eric Byler of Coffee Party USA called in. To listen to the episode, click on the embed below. It lasts one hour and one minute.

Listen to internet radio with Coffee Party USA on Blog Talk Radio

And, yes, I'm the host. Hi there!

Follow-up to Examiner.com article on Michigan primary

2012-03-02T15:53:00.001-05:00

In my Examiner.com article on the Michigan primary I included the following in the article itself but didn't quote it in my post of a couple of days ago.

According to the latest figures from the Secretary of State, Romney won the Republican primary with 41.07% of the 996,126 votes cast in the G.O.P. side of the race, Santorum came in second with 37.86%, Paul placed third with 11.62%, and Gingrich finished out of the money with 6.53%. Despite Romney's clear victory in the statewide popular vote, he and Santorum split the state's delegates to the Republican National Convention evenly, at least according to the preliminary results on the Michigan Republican Party's web page for the primary. Romney and Santorum each won seven congressional districts, earning 14 delegates apiece, and split the two delegates determined by the statewide vote, for a total of 15 delegates for each candidate.

It turns out that the Michigan Republican Party decided to allocate both at-large delegates to Romney. Chuck Stokes of WXYZ-TV explains.

The state Republican Party has set the delegates that will be awarded, based on the results of Tuesday's primary.

As Stokes explains, Romney now has 16 delegates, while Santorum has 14, so the delegates are no longer evenly split. On the one hand, that's a reasonable result given the outcome of the vote. On the other, it wasn't what the candidates or the media, including me, believed would happen given how their understanding of the rules. I'll let the Detroit Free Press explain.

The vote came despite the party’s rules that the two at-large delegates are supposed to be awarded on a proportional basis based on the statewide popular vote.
...
Saul Anuzis, a member of the credentials committee, said the party’s rules were passed in early February to award the two at-large delegates to the statewide winner, but that a memo sent, in error, to the candidates’ campaigns said the delegates would be distributed proportionately.

“While we regret the error in the memo, it does not change what was voted on by the committee,” Anuzis said. “This is much to do about nothing.”

This decision didn't sit well with two members of the committee, one of whom spoke to the Detroit Free Press about it.

Former Attorney General Mike Cox is a supporter of Romney and even acted as a surrogate for the candidate on several occasions during the last three weeks.

But Wednesday night’s 4-2 vote to award the two at-large delegates to Romney didn’t pass the smell test for Cox.

“I have this crazy idea that you follow the rules,” Cox said. “I’d love to give the at-large delegates to Mitt Romney, but our rules provide for strict apportionment.”

This is the latest episode in a long-running comedy of errors in the Republican primaries and caucuses. I'll let Taegan Goddard of Political Wire sum it up.

The Republican presidential campaign has been one of the sloppiest in memory.

Mitt Romney was declared the winner in Iowa until several days later miscounted votes were "found" which put Rick Santorum ahead. Romney was named the victor in Maine without all caucus votes counted because they were "lost" in someone's email. Now, the Michigan delegate count was changed two days after the primary either due to sloppiness, ambiguity in the rules or a backroom power play.

It sure makes you wonder.

The question he asked was "Why so sloppy?" The answers range from simple incompetence to lack of belief in democracy. I'm not going to pick one. Instead, I'll just repeat that I am glad I am no longer a Republican!

Nablopomo for March: Whether

2012-03-01T02:00:00.000-05:00

From Nablopomo on BlogHer

So what is the NaBloPoMo theme of the month?

WHETHER
It's actually whether... and it's weather... since both words fit with the season. March is a transitional month, bringing either warmer weather for the northern hemisphere or colder air for those down south. Being transitional means that there are a lot of whethers to your day: whether to wear a coat or not, whether to spend your time outside or in front of the computer, or whether to sign up for these summer/winter plans or that.

Some people love the open possibilities inherent in the word "whether" and others find the lack of concreteness terrifying. Whichever way you swing, this is a great month to explore why you feel the way you do; if you embrace or run screaming from the "whethers" of life.
...
NaBloPoMo is what you make of it. At its core, all you need to do is post daily on your blog. The point of NaBloPoMo is not to be restricted by the theme, but instead to either take it or leave it. If you'll do better blogging every day based on what's happening in your world, throw aside the daily prompts.

So start thinking about how you feel about the uncertainty of whether.

This will be easy, as I blog about weather regularly. Even easier, I have multiple sources for it. WXYZ on YouTube has frequent if irregular local weather features, but is very good for any kind of extreme event. WOOD-TV 8 posts their weather reports reliably on their YouTube channel at least once a day, if not more. If all else fails, there are Next Media Animation's Weather Girls. Besides, if the weather is boring, there is always the "whether." Choices and chances about the present and future abound! The big problem will be posting every day, not finding something to post about.

Speaking of weather, that snowstorm I was dreading turned out to be a complete dud. One inch of snow fell overnight instead of the four or more predicted and it all melted by the end of the day. Tonight, on the other hand, was more interesting--a thunderstorm to usher out February and herald March. In like a lion, indeed!

Examiner.com article on the Michigan primary

2012-02-29T21:45:00.001-05:00

As I just wrote:

As for my analysis of last night's primary, stay tuned. I'll link to and post an excerpt to an article I just started writing for Examiner.com.

The article is posted. Here is the link and lede paragraph.

Romney wins Michigan and Washtenaw County but splits delegates with Santorum
Washtenaw County Elections 2010 Examiner

For the order of finish of the top four Republican candidates, their vote percentages, and the splitting of the delegates between the top two candidates, Washtenaw County mirrored the results of the state of Michigan as a whole. On the other hand, the turnout, percentage of the vote cast in the Democratic primary, and order of the lower ranked candidates on the Republican ballot differed significantly from the rest of the state and displayed Washtenaw County's distinctive take on politics. Elsewhere in the state, Democrats crossing over to vote in the Republican primary may have had an effect on the result in at least one Congressional district.

For the rest of the article, surf over to Examiner.com. My blog here isn't monetized, but Examiner.com is.

As for anything I left out of the article, note that I assign part of the responsibility for Santorum's splitting the delegates between the Republicans in the Michigan legislature, who came up with the redistricting plan that moved Calhoun County out of the 7th District and replaced it with Monroe County. That worked to protect my former representative Tim Walberg from a challenge by my other former representative Mark Schauer, but it also made the district more friendly to Santorum. Without that slick move, Romney would have won that district and its two delegates. The rest I give to Democrats crossing over to vote in the Republican primary, although the clearest example involves Democrats voting for Ron Paul, not for Rick Santorum. Sorry, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, Operation Hilarity wasn't as effective as you thought it was, despite your bragging. Even so, the video is hilarious.

In other news, one of my New Year's resolutions was to resume writing for Examiner.com. As you can see, I finally got around to it.

Romney wins and the elephants depart for Ohio

2012-02-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

WOOD-TV 8 on YouTube has the summary.

Romney wins Michigan primary, called it a "big win."

WXYZ-TV has the full speeches for both Romney and Santorum if you wish to watch them. I won't inflict either of them upon you by embedding them, especially since my wife and I got fed up with Santorum's and turned off the TV after about five minutes.

As for my analysis of last night's primary, stay tuned. I'll link to and post an excerpt to an article I just started writing for Examiner.com. Yeah, I'll out myself, but a lot of you know who I am anyway.

Newt Gingrich on Volts and gun racks

2012-02-28T13:00:00.000-05:00

First, Newt in Georgia, where he's hating on sustainability by making fun of the Volt.

That wasn't just a one-time remark. Here he is in Oklahoma, repeating the line that "you can't put a gun rack in a Volt" along with his call for $2.50/gallon gas. His supporters think this line is a winner, as his own superPAC put the video on their own YouTube channel.

President Obama has already taken care of debunking Gingrich's call for cheap gas, but what about it being impossible to put a gun rack in a Volt? Yes, you can.

Any questions?

LOL, Foster Friess=Foster's Freeze

2012-02-27T20:12:00.002-05:00

I'm so glad nonnie9999 at Hysterical Raisins is back!

Full-sized original at Brainless Friess on Hysterical Raisins.

Here's a properly formatted version of my comment to nonnie9999's post:

Welcome back! To thank you for your return, I’ll let you in on an inside joke only people from California would know. When I first heard Friess’s name, I thought “this has to be a joke; who the hell is named after an ice cream stand?” Yes, there is a fast food chain specializing in soft serve ice cream in California called Foster’s Freeze. Even better, it used to be called Foster’s *Old Fashioned* Freeze. Here’s the link to the Wikipedia page. You can’t make this stuff up!

Whenever I hear the name of Santorum's ~~sugar daddy~~ major superPAC donor, I don't see him, I see these images instead:

Put the two names together, and the result is this:

Full-sized original at Winnie Toons.

Now you know why there were people in Bill Maher's studio audience snickering at the man's name week before last. They (and I) weren't the only ones giggling at the similarity. So were Dennis Miller and commenters at Crooks & Liars, Democratic Underground, Washington Monthly, and Huffington Post--and that's just from the first page of Google results! As for the best comment of the bunch, I give that honor to Paul the Sax Guy at Crooks & Liars:

"I knew Foster's Freeze, Foster's Freeze was an employer, and he, sir is no Foster's Freeze."

As Karoli at Crooks & Liars said, "Poifect!"

Sustainability-related films at the 2012 Oscars

2012-02-26T20:14:00.000-05:00

At the very end of Sustainability-related news from Reuters for 2/23, I included the following excerpt and comment about the Oscars.

Michael Moore champions Oscar documentary makers
By Jordan Riefe
LOS ANGELES | Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:48pm EST
(Reuters) - Director Michael Moore championed non-fiction filmmakers on Wednesday night at a pre-Oscar event honoring nominees for best documentaries, attributing a growing appetite for the art form to a public starved for the truth.

The often controversial director, who won an Oscar for gun control movie "Bowling for Columbine" and scored the highest-grossing documentary of all-time with anti-war film "Fahrenheit 9/11," was hosting a symposium at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences featuring nominees for best documentary features and short subjects.

"We've been living in a time where people have been lied to a lot," Moore told Reuters. "People are tired of it and they want the truth, and documentaries represent the truth."
...
Feature film documentaries nominated for this year's Oscars include, "Hell and Back Again" by Danfung Dennis, "If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front" by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman, "Pina" by Wim Wenders, "Undefeated" by TJ Martin and Dan Lindsay, and "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory" by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
I don't like the ELF, as I think they're too extreme and their tactics counterproductive, but their story should be told.

Here's the trailer for the movie from Point of View on YouTube.

The PBS page for the movie is here and the full description is here. While I disapprove of the ELF's methods--they really are criminals--I'm astounded that they were the subjects of the largest domestic terrorism investigation U.S. history. In terms of suspects and total property damage, I can believe it. In terms of other ways of measuring it, I'd have to be convinced.

"If a Tree Falls" isn't the only documentary with a sustainability theme nominated tonight. There is also "The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossum," which has been nominated for the Best Documentary Short Subject. Here is its trailer from the film's own YouTube channel.

The film's description at the go.com (ABC/Disney) page for the Oscars is here. It turns out that this isn't director Lucy Walker's first foray into sustainability-related documentaries. She directed the Oscar-winning documentary feature Waste Land. Here is its trailer.

I don't know if I'll be rooting for "If a Tree Falls" to win its category, but I'm more optimistic about "The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom" based on the director's track record.

Sustainability-related news from Reuters for 2/23

2012-02-25T16:26:00.001-05:00

I built the core of Gingrich pledges $2.50 gas; President Obama hits back from a Reuters article that I originally posted as part of a comment to Overnight News Digest on Daily Kos. Here are the rest of the sustainability-related articles from that comment. Note that most of them are heavily slanted to economy and society, especially through the lens of politics.
International News

Greece sets stage for Friday bond swap
By George Georgiopoulos and Lefteris Papadimas
ATHENS | Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:34pm EST

(Reuters) - Greece took its first step towards reaping urgently needed funds agreed in a 130-billion-euro rescue package on Thursday as its parliament endorsed a bond swap for private holders of its debt.

The swap, in which investors trade bonds for lower-value debt, is to be launched on Friday with the aim of slicing 100 billion euros off liabilities worth 160 percent of national output that have brought the country to the brink of a chaotic bankruptcy.

"By approving this law, parliament will allow us to start getting out of the vortex," Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told lawmakers earlier.

U.S News

USPS closings plan to eliminate up to 35,000 jobs
hu Feb 23, 2012 8:03pm EST

(Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service announced plans on Thursday to close or consolidate 223 mail processing centers and eliminate up to 35,000 jobs as part of its strategy to cut costs by reducing its network of facilities.

The Postal Service has been losing billions of dollars each year as email chips away at mail volumes and as it faces massive annual payments to the federal government.

Postal officials said in September they would study more than 250 of the 461 processing sites for possible consolidation with other facilities as part of a series of cost-cutting steps. They also announced plans to end next-day delivery to cut back on overnight work.

Jim Rogers: U.S. Presidential favorites clueless on economy (3:27)

Feb. 23 - Jim Rogers predicts Obama will win the U.S. election but argues that none of the leading candidates have any idea how to get the economy back on track.

Maryland gay marriage bill passes, heads to governor
By Alice Popovici
ANNAPOLIS, Maryland | Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:51pm EST

(Reuters) - The Maryland Senate approved on Thursday a same-sex marriage bill that will now be sent to Gov. Martin O'Malley, who has promised to sign the legislation and make the state the eighth in the nation to legalize gay and lesbian nuptials.

The Senate voted in favor of the bill, which had previously been approved by the state's lower House of Delegates, after a full day of debate that included efforts by opponents to derail the measure with a series of proposed amendments.

The preliminary vote tally of 25 to 22 drew loud cheering and applause from the gallery in the 18th-century State House.

Business

AIG posts huge 4th-quarter profit on tax benefit
By Ben Berkowitz
Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:24pm EST

(Reuters) - Bailed-out insurer American International Group reported a $19.8 billion profit for the fourth quarter, after an accounting change that allowed the company to record an enormous one-time benefit.

The move, which sent the company's shares up by about 6 percent, essentially means AIG will not pay tax on tens of billions of dollars in income in the coming years, thanks to benefits that stem from its financial crisis-era losses.

AIG said in the third quarter that its results in the fourth quarter would determine whether it could release a so-called valuation allowance against the tax assets.

Insight: Bankers escape big penalties in FDIC failed bank cases
By Philip Shishkin
WASHINGTON | Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:33pm EST

(Reuters) - Like many banks engulfed by the mortgage crisis, First National Bank of Nevada specialized in risky home loans that didn't require borrowers to prove their incomes. When the housing bubble burst, First National got crushed in 2008 under the weight of bad loans that it could no longer resell to investors.

Last year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sued two former senior executives of the defunct bank for alleged negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, hoping to recover nearly $200 million in losses that it tied directly to those executives' decisions. The two men denied wrongdoing and settled for $40 million.

But they didn't pay a dime.

After all the stories about the economy and society, here is one that is about society as well as the environment.

On the Lighter Side

Michael Moore champions Oscar documentary makers
By Jordan Riefe
LOS ANGELES | Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:48pm EST

(Reuters) - Director Michael Moore championed non-fiction filmmakers on Wednesday night at a pre-Oscar event honoring nominees for best documentaries, attributing a growing appetite for the art form to a public starved for the truth.

The often controversial director, who won an Oscar for gun control movie "Bowling for Columbine" and scored the highest-grossing documentary of all-time with anti-war film "Fahrenheit 9/11," was hosting a symposium at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences featuring nominees for best documentary features and short subjects.

"We've been living in a time where people have been lied to a lot," Moore told Reuters. "People are tired of it and they want the truth, and documentaries represent the truth."
...
Feature film documentaries nominated for this year's Oscars include, "Hell and Back Again" by Danfung Dennis, "If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front" by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman, "Pina" by Wim Wenders, "Undefeated" by TJ Martin and Dan Lindsay, and "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory" by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

I don't like the ELF, as I think they're too extreme and their tactics counterproductive, but their story should be told.

Gingrich pledges $2.50 gas; President Obama hits back

2012-02-25T13:47:00.004-05:00

As I should have expected, rising gas prices have become a hot campaign issue again. Yes, Michele Bachmann promised $2 gas last summer, which was roundly criticized, but the issue didn't go away when she dropped out. Newt Gingrich, who has been demagoguing against Agenda 21 and beating up on sustainable living practices for months, has now taken up the mantle of the fossil fool candidate from the departed Bachmann.

From the Associated Press on YouTube:

Gingrich is playing fast and loose with his statistics, as he failed to mention that gasoline went well over $4/gallon during the summer of 2008 during the term of George W. Bush. Tsk, tsk, but I don't expect any better from Newt. I do expect better from our journalists, I found it. The hard-headed money people at the Wall Street Journal point out how patently ridiculous Gingrich's stance is.

Journalists aren't the only ones to point out the silliness of Gingrich's pledge. Our politicians are as well, and the best response comes from the very top, as shown in these two videos from Brad "climatebrad" Johnson of Think Progress.

Reuters has more on this speech.

President Barack Obama hit back on Thursday at election-year Republican criticism of his energy policies, offering a staunch defense of his attempts to wean Americans off foreign oil and saying there is no "silver bullet" for high gasoline prices.

Obama sought to deflect growing Republican attacks over rising prices at the pump, blaming recent increases on a mix of factors beyond his control, including tensions with Iran, hot demand from China, India and other emerging economies, and Wall Street speculators taking advantage of the uncertainty.
...
"It's the easiest thing in the world (to) make phony election-year promises about lower gas prices," Obama said, offering his most comprehensive rebuttal yet of the intensifying Republican criticism.

"What's harder is to make a serious, sustained commitment to tackle a problem that may not be solved in one year or one term or even one decade," he said.
...
"You can bet that since it's an election year, they're already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas," Obama said. "I'll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill and step three is keep drilling."

As President Obama said, what the Republicans are promising is not a strategy, it's a bumper sticker. Bumper sticker slogans aren't enough to solve our problems.

Finally, here's the embed of the complete speech from the White House's YouTube channel. It's about more than just energy, but also about manufacturing and STEM education, two other priorities of the Obama Adminstration.

I love a president who really likes the idea of sustainable development packaged as making America competitive!

Finally, if the full 23 minutes of the University of Miami address is too long, the President's weekly address has all the highlights boiled down to under five minutes.

Above crossposted to Daily Kos.

Lou Dobbs thinks "The Lorax" and "The Secret World of Arrietty" are liberal propaganda

2012-02-24T16:44:00.000-05:00

Time to be a good environmentalist and recycle.

The Hollywood Reporter via MSNBC: FOX's Lou Dobbs attacks 'Lorax' and 'Arrietty' as left-wing brainwashing
During his Tuesday night show, Dobbs dubbed Disney’s "Arrietty" and Universal’s "Lorax" “insidious nonsense from Hollywood,” then he announced: “Hollywood is once again trying to indoctrinate our children.”

"Arrietty," about four-inch people who “borrow” what they need from normal-sized humans, encourages class envy and redistribution of wealth, according to Dobbs, while "Lorax" is just another example of environmental radicalism.

“So, where have we all heard this before?” Dobbs asks after showing a clip from each of the two films.

Then he answers himself: “Occupy Wall Street forever trying to pit the makers against the takers and President Obama repeating that everyone should pay their fair share.”
It's Obama's fault! Never mind that "The Lorax" is from 1973 and "The Borrowers" is from 1952, as Keith Olbermann pointed out. Bonus snarking from Time.

In the case of "The Lorax," Lou Dobbs must really believe green is the new red. Just to tick Dobbs off some more, here is the trailer for "The Lorax," which definitely is a cautionary tale about overexploitation of the world's resources.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Winter has returned

2012-02-24T00:01:00.004-05:00

After a couple of false starts, it looks metro Detroit is getting a respectably severe winter storm. As the Detroit Free Press reports, Weather service issues winter storm warning: 5-8 inches of snow from Detroit up through Thumb.

The National Weather Service this afternoon issued a winter storm warning for southeast Michigan tonight into Friday morning, projecting 5-to-8-inch accumulations in a swath of southeast Michigan stretching from Detroit up through the Thumb and across to Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.
...
The snow should begin falling between 9 p.m. and midnight tonight, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Richter said.

“The heaviest will be in the overnight, sometime between midnight and 6 a.m., and it’ll continue to snow lightly through the morning hours,” Richter said. “There will be some impact during the morning commute.”

Totals could be anywhere from four inches around downtown Detroit to double that near Flint, he added. Winds gusting to 30 m.p.h. on Friday may lead to snow blowing and drifting, the Weather Service said.

“It looks like the further south you go, you’ll have a little bit lower amounts,” Richter said. “North-central Oakland County into Flint, you could see some places push 8 inches or so.”

WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids shows the Winter Storm Warning area for all of Michigan, although their segment concentrates on the other side of the state.

Snowy, rainy mix moving in, Bill Steffen said.

This is just a slightly above average storm in a normal winter, but it's the largest one we've had so far. Fortunately, the local road commissions are ready for it, as the Free Press article mentions.

Road crews have been busy today putting down salty brine water on roads as a preemptive strike against icy conditions during the morning commute, Road Commission of Oakland County spokesman Craig Bryson said today.

WXYZ has more about how the local county road commissions are preparing.

Counties prep for winter weather

Yes, everyone is ready, but I'm still glad that I'm on mid-Winter break starting today and don't have to drive into work in the morning. It doesn't look like it would be any fun. Besides, if it's bad enough, the college might be closed anyway.

WOOD-TV on rising gas prices

2012-02-23T10:36:00.000-05:00

When I linked to Gas prices going up again on Facebook yesterday, I alluded to Iran's role in the increase in the prices of oil and gasoline. One of the commenters on Facebook pointed out that I had neglected the actions of speculators. He was right. I was being lazy and just reflecting WXYZ's reporting, which emphasized Iran and the expanding economy, but left out speculation. WOOD-TV's report on the subject, on the other hand, does.

Gasoline prices have never been higher so early in the year.

McClatchy Newspapers via Truth Out have more in Once Again, Speculators Behind Sharply Rising Oil and Gasoline Prices.

While tension over Iran has ratcheted up over the last few months, the price of oil and gasoline has leaped far beyond conventional supply and demand variables. Financial speculators are piling into the market, torquing the Iranian fear factor into ever-higher prices.

"Speculation is now part of the DNA of oil prices. You cannot separate the two anymore. There is no demarcation," said Fadel Gheit, a 30-year veteran of energy markets and an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. "I still remain convinced oil prices are inflated."

I highly recommend you read the rest of the article.

So, how much is the cost of oil being inflated by speculation right now? The experts interviewed in the article estimate that it could be anywhere from $10-$25 per barrel.

Gas prices going up again

2012-02-22T10:22:00.002-05:00

It's been two months since I last blogged about gas prices, so it's time to revisit the subject with help from WXYZ.

Could gas prices rise to $5 a gallon by April?

The answer to the question is no unless one particular event happens. As I wrote last time:

Should Iran actually follow through with this [a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz], especially before they succeed in building nuclear weapons, there will be war and the price of gas will go to $5.00/gallon.

I have my doubts Iran's threats will much beyond saber rattling.

I don't know if Iran is so reckless as to invite the U.S., EU, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and who knows who else to beat up on them. That written, stranger things have happened, such as Manuel Noriega waving a machete on Panamanian television in 1989 and declaring that a state of war existed with the United States. That didn't work out too well for him.

The day after WXYZ posted the video above, the station broadcast and then uploaded the following clip that features a more measured analysis and gives a more reasonable answer to the question posed in the preceding segment.

Gas prices are soaring across the country and they could slam the economy.

As I wrote above, $5 gas by April is not likely. On the other hand, $5 gas by this summer I could believe, especially during high-demand holiday weekends. As for whether those predictions come to pass, that's up to Iran.

Happy Paczki Day!

2012-02-21T07:27:00.002-05:00

WXYZ has the story.

Live at New Palace Bakery in Hamtramck for Fat Tuesday

I already had my Paczki yesterday. No more today. After years of eating them, I can say people aren't kidding when they call the day Fat Tuesday!

Recyclemania!

2012-02-20T07:34:00.002-05:00

Recyclemania 2012 is going on. Here are two stories I included about the competition, one of which I posted in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday on Daily Kos.

Michigan State University is participating in RecycleMania, an annual eight-week recycling competition between more than 600 colleges and universities across the United States. Learn more at http://www.recycle.msu.edu/recyclemania/.

That one didn't make the cut for Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Michigan and Arizona Week 1 edition), although it should have. The next one was posted in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Darwin's Birthday 2012 edition).

Colorado State University: RecycleMania 2012
February 7, 2012

The annual collegiate recycling tournament "RecycleMania" kicks off Feb. 5 and will run through March 31. Colorado State will compete among hundreds of universities and colleges across the country and the world.

RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for colleges and universities to promote recycling and waste-reduction practices on campus.

Over an 8-week period, schools will report recycling and trash data on a weekly basis, competing in these tournament contests:
the highest overall recycling rate (Grand Champion),
the largest amount of recyclables per person (Per Capita Classic), and
the least amount of trash per capita (Waste Minimization).

Nearly 550 schools from the United States and Canada are signed up for the 2012 competition.

There are community colleges participating. I'll see if I can get the one I teach at to participate next year.

A tale of two macros

2012-02-19T13:01:00.000-05:00

The Fantasy.

The Reality.

Thanks to Lisa Frame on Facebook, who created the second macro.

Adding the macro to macroeconomics

2012-02-18T15:44:00.001-05:00

Hat/tip to The Other 98% on Facebook.

Also, Krugman has an interview in this month's Playboy. NSFW because of ads.

Above crossposted to the communities the_recession and teamkrugman on LiveJournal.

Second day of WXYZ on the Michigan Republican Primary

2012-02-17T21:36:00.002-05:00

Here are some videos that didn't make it into The GOP Circus returns to town, one because it was posted to WXYZ's YouTube account after the I posted yesterday's entry, one because it wasn't relevant then, and three simply because I missed them the first time. Here they are.

First, some old news, the state of the race three days ago.

Dead heat in GOP race

That was three days ago. The polling situation changed rapidly enough in two days that WXYZ posted a follow-up clip yesterday.

Rick Santorum has a lead in Michigan over Mitt Romney

Someone actually gave this video a dislike rating, which is rare for WXYZ videos on YouTube. Based on the one comment so far, it probably was a Democrat, although one might have expected that it was a Romney supporter.

Santorum may be the front-runner in the polls, but Romney is still being targeted by Democrats for his positions, as expressed in a TV ad and op-ed piece in the Detroit News about the auto bailout.

Speaking of the auto bailout, here's the most recent piece of news to come out about its aftermath.

General Motors Company announced Thursday a net income for the 2011 calendar-year attributable to common stockholders of $7.6 billion.

That came out two days after Romney doubled down on his opposition to the bailout. As Rick Perry would say, oops.

Finally, Rick Santorum gets his time in the spotlight, just like Romney did.

7 Action News reporter Julie Banovic speaks one-on-one with Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

If you get bored listening to Frothy, concentrate on his nose and notice that, like the person it belongs to, it turns to the right.

The GOP Circus returns to town

2012-02-16T20:40:00.000-05:00

The elephants came to Michigan for a debate last November, which produced one of the epic fails of the campaign so far. However, that was only for one night. The remaining four candidates have returned to Michigan, this time for two weeks until the primary on February 28th. WXYZ on YouTube reports.

GOP Contenders Campaign In Michigan

While the candidates themselves have just arrived, their campaigns have been active here for weeks. Ron Paul's campaign has been canvassing since the middle of January, when I found a flyer from the Michigan campaign chair on my door. Also, Newt Gingrich's campaign was running ads at the beginning of the month. However, those aren't the candidates WXYZ has been covering. Instead, the station is devoting its airtime to the two front-runners, Romney and Santorum. Native son Romney, who grew up in Oakland County, is getting marquee treatment, both from the station and the local GOP establishment. In fact, Governor Snyder endorsed him, as shown in this WXYZ clip.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder endorsed Mitt Romney as he visits Michigan.

Romney even sat down for an interview with WXYZ's Val Clark.

Val Clark talks one on one with Mitt Romney.

Romney may be the native son, but Rick Santorum is the front-runner, so he gets his own segment.

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum appeared in Michigan to campaign.

Looks like The Froth has risen to the top again.

New nuclear reactors in U.S. finally approved

2012-02-15T10:48:00.000-05:00

L.A. Times: First new U.S. nuclear reactors in decades approved
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves construction and licensing of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, the first such approval in the U.S. since 1978.
By Ralph Vartabedian and Ian Duncan
February 9, 2012, 10:13 p.m.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington—A consortium of utilities in the South won government approval Thursday to construct two new atomic energy reactors at an estimated cost of $14 billion, the strongest signal yet that the three-decade hiatus of nuclear plant construction is finally ending.

Several new projects will test whether new technology and streamlined government licensing can help the industry avoid the economic and safety disasters that have tainted its past, nuclear experts say, though critics condemned the action by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The commission's 4-1 approval of the construction and operating license to expand the capacity of a Georgia nuclear power plant came 11 months after the meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi facility left a wide swath of radioactive contamination.

I've been expecting this news since spring of 2005. Back then, I could see the beginnings of the price run-up in oil that eventually led to the record $147/barrel in July 2008. Based on who was in power, a couple of Texas oil men (Bush and Cheney), I knew they would push for more conventional energy sources. They'd already started working on expanding oil and gas production, which is already bearing fruit, however poisoned (who do you think approved the regulatory framework that made fracking and Deepwater Horizon possible), but they'd soon start working on building more coal-fired plants (this hasn't worked out too well so far, as a lot of the proposed plants have been disapproved) and eventually nuclear plants. That's what I told my students in Howell that semester. With the approval of these two plants, my prediction is looking better all the time. It only took seven years and another Administration to make it happen.

Above based on a link and excerpt originally posted as part of Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday on Daily Kos.

Science for Valentines Day

2012-02-14T10:42:00.000-05:00

Colorado State University: In time for Valentine's Day: Your questions about love, sex, relationships answered by scientists
There's a science to sex, love and relationships, according to a new book published by a CSU psychology professor and her colleagues.
February 13, 2012

Relationship books are dime a dozen, but very few are written from the perspective of researchers using science to answer pressing questions, says Jennifer Harman, an assistant professor of applied social psychology at Colorado State.

Harman was one of 15 university researchers nationwide who wrote chapters of The Science of Relationships: Answers to Your Questions about Dating, Marriage and Family, which is available on Amazon.
...
The Science of Relationships is based on science unlike most relationship and self-help books, which are opinion-based and written by clinicians, Harman said. In this recently released book, scientists address 40 of the most common questions on such topics as attraction and relationship initiation, love, intimacy and attachment, long-term relationship processes, the dark side of relationships, sex and parenting.

The Science of Relationships is not just a book, it's an entire website devoted to the subject, including an extensive list of recent articles. Since it's Valentines Day, the page has lots of great links, such as the video I embedded at the started of this entry, articles, and images, including the XKCD cartoon I used above. I highly recommend that you readers take a look.

Above based on a link and excerpt originally posted as part of Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday on Daily Kos.

Winter appears to be just visiting

2012-02-13T22:20:00.001-05:00

The day before yesterday, I quoted a Free Press article and added my comment.

The forecast calls for cold temperatures through Monday, said Mosteiko, with two chances for snow as far out as they can measure.

Snowfall is expected overnight between Monday and Tuesday. Overnight Wednesday into Thursday could see levels much like what happened last night. But during the days, said Mosteiko, "it warms back up to above normal." By Wednesday, the high will be 38 degrees.
In other words, it's continuing to be a mild winter, as Staten Island Chuck predicted at the same time that Punxsatawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. I'm not surprised that both predictions are playing out.

The latest Free Press story on the weather confirms that the prediction from Saturday still holds.

[A]nother little blast of snow is expected to hit metro Detroit overnight, according to the National Weather Service.

Accumulations will likely be about one inch, with the snow starting after midnight, meteorologist Mike Richter said from the agency's office in White Lake Township.

It may be only a brief encounter with winter, with warmer temperatures and the possibility of rain by Thursday, Richter said.

The highs for the next three days will be 36 tomorrow, 40 on Wednesday, and 37 on Thursday. All of those temperatures are above average for this time of year. I'm with Mike Richter on this season's mild winter.

"That’s why I didn’t want to say winter’s here to stay now. It does warm up by Wednesday," Richter said. "We just keep getting little shots here and there, like we did this weekend. We haven’t had a long stretch of cold weather this season. It’s just been one of those weather patterns, we haven’t been able to get it."

Mind you, I'm not complaining. I just hope the summer won't be as much above average as the winter has been.

Happy Darwin Day!

2012-02-12T10:34:00.000-05:00

Alternet: Sunday is Darwin Day. How Will You Celebrate It?
February 12 is Darwin's Birthday -- a holiday for the reality-based community
By Glenn Branch
February 10, 2012

Despite the white beard, Charles Darwin isn’t Santa Claus, but like Christmas, Darwin Day comes once a year, and when it comes it brings good cheer. Across the country and around the world, at colleges and universities, schools and libraries, museums and churches, people assemble around February 12 to commemorate the life and work of the British naturalist. But it’s not just about Darwin: it’s about engaging in—and enjoying—public outreach about science, evolution, and the importance of evolution education.

Where are they celebrating? Where aren’t they celebrating! You may not be able to make the trip to Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, to participate in a discussion of life on other planets, or to Perth, Australia, to hear a lecture on “some really odd evolutionary features in tortoises,” but no worries, mate (as they say in Dnepropetrovsk): the Darwin Day website, operated by the International Darwin Day Foundation, maintains a useful registry where you can find a Darwin Day event near you and spread the word about your own.

More at the link, including details about the state of the teaching of evolution in education throughout the nation, as well as suggestions about how to improve it. I hope the readers of Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Darwin's Birthday 2012 edition) on Daily Kos, where I first posted the above link and excerpt, follow through in their home states.

As for how I'm going to celebrate the day, you're looking at it. According to the list of events, there are none here in Michigan. This makes me a sad Panda's Thumb.

Halfway though winter, it finally looks like it

2012-02-11T17:01:00.000-05:00

It snowed last night. By my count, it's only the third snowfall totalling more than one inch so far this season. This is both good and bad news, but first I'll let WXYZ-TV report.

Snow Finally Hits In Michigan

The Detroit Free Press has more on the weather and its aftermath.

Michigan police urge drivers to slow down on slick roads as accidents pile up

National Weather Service forecaster Matt Mosteiko said between two and five inches of snow fell around metro Detroit during the night, with much of it falling after midnight Saturday.

Metro airport saw 4.8 inches, while Warren saw 2.5 inches. The snowfall is helping the area catch up to normal levels, he said, as we were about a foot of snow off the mark as of Friday. But for February itself, we're right on track, he said.

I'm due west of Warren, so the 2.5 inch figures looks about right for here. It's probably the heaviest snow we've had so far this winter.

Of course, since this is the first really heavy snowfall of the winter, drivers are having issues.

Michigan State Police are reporting accidents all over metro Detroit's freeways after the overnight snowfall, and are urging drivers to slow down.

"There are too many to name," said an officer in the MSP Detroit dispatch center, who said she was also fielding numerous 911 calls. "People need to reduce speed, especially over bridges."

WXYZ has another report just about driving conditions today.

Drivers Deal With Snowy Roads

I'm glad I'm not driving today.

There will be more snow later this week, as the Free Press article concludes.

The forecast calls for cold temperatures through Monday, said Mosteiko, with two chances for snow as far out as they can measure.

Snowfall is expected overnight between Monday and Tuesday. Overnight Wednesday into Thursday could see levels much like what happened last night. But during the days, said Mosteiko, "it warms back up to above normal." By Wednesday, the high will be 38 degrees.

In other words, it's continuing to be a mild winter, as Staten Island Chuck predicted at the same time that Punxsatawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. I'm not surprised that both predictions are playing out.

Of course, Detroit just finished a wild year in weather as did the country as a whole, so I wouldn't be surprised by anything that came along.

Speaking of which, just because it snowed last night doesn't mean that Metro Detroiters aren't bemoaning the lack of winter.

Where's the love, Mother Nature?

That's the question from metro Detroit's festival planners as winter events have withered because of the lack of snow.

Communities such as Beverly Hills and West Bloomfield canceled their snow festivals, while Rochester's Fire and Ice event was put off until late February. St. Clair Shores canceled its pond hockey festival because Lake St. Clair isn't frozen.

More than just the pond hockey festival is suffering on and around Lake St. Clair, the Free Press reports that Winter fun on Lake St. Clair fizzles without ice and snow

The normally rocking winter life on the north end of Lake St. Clair has come to a screeching halt this year without any ice to play on.

And so have the profits of businesses that are usually part of that winter playground -- all thanks to this winter's lack of ice-freezing temperatures.
...
Blue Water Bait and Tackle has a choice location, next to the Department of Natural Resources boat ramp in Fair Haven. The ramp usually is ground zero for winter fun and games, with at least 100 or so ice-fishing shanties just outside Blue Water's door.
...
This year there's nothing but open water where those ice shanties usually are. The bottom line: Business is off about 80% this year...

That's the bad news, along with this winter possibly being a sign of climate change (Yeah, I know, weather isn't climate, but I doubt this mild winter is a complete coincidence). What's the good news?

But on the flip side, taxpayers are saving money on road salt and overtime, area road commissions said. And Denise Semion of the Huron-Clinton Metroparks said a weak winter means golf courses might open early, bird watching is better and folks can hike without specialized equipment.
...
"I can tell you, to date, we've only used 7,067 tons of road salt," said Bob Hoepfner, Macomb County Road Commission director. "I would estimate in a normal winter, by this time of the season, we would have used 25,000 tons."

Hoepfner said he hasn't yet tallied the savings from not spending on overtime for plow drivers, fuel and salt. What the commission saves, he'll spend on road improvements and equipment upgrades.

Oakland County road crews have used 27,800 tons of salt so far this year, about half what they use in a normal year, said Road Commission spokesman Craig Bryson. He envisions the savings going to road improvements and equipment upgrades, too.

The cost savings also applies to heating bills. My wife and I have saved hundreds of dollars on our gas bills so far. Also, I've so far been spared winter events such as I've blogged about on my LiveJournal during previous winters.

From 2011:

Snow Day!
Thundersnow
Snow day, Groundhog Day, and a gift idea
Big storm coming

From 2010:

Facebook status about the weather
Metrodome goes boom! Ford Field hosts first Monday night game
Winter storm coming this way

All the above were from last winter. The winter before that was even worse.

Here we go again.
Crap, gotta go to work in this.
I was right to dread driving to work that day. On the way home, I ran off the road and punctured my gas tank. At least the next day was another snow day.

From 2009:

Today's weather follies
It's winter and I'm lucky to make this post

I think you get the idea. This winter most likely is a bad sign regarding climate change, but on a personal level, I'd rather not have such bad weather. Just from my blogging alone, I stayed home from work four days the past two winters, got into two weather-related accidents, and had one other incident of weather-related property damage during the past two winters alone. So far, I'm glad that hasn't happened this winter.

Two Deep Forest fan videos

2012-02-10T09:35:00.000-05:00

Not up for heavy blogging this morning, so instead I leave you all with these two fan-made videos with environmental images and themes using music from Deep Forest. Enjoy!

Worth 1000 words on Santorum

2012-02-09T10:47:00.001-05:00

I saw the following at Daily Kos last night.

My response was, "I'm more likely to believe the guy with the hat."

Yes, I like my politics with a science fiction angle, too. Just ask Newt Gingrich.

By the way, my cat didn't like the video. In protest, he stepped all over my keyboard. And you wonder why there are more cat macros than dog macros.

Two Super Bowl ads about Michigan

2012-02-08T11:26:00.001-05:00

After reading and watching the controversy over both Chrysler's ad featuring Clint Eastwood and Pete Hoekstra's ad that was made by the same people who created "Demon Sheep" and "I'm not a witch," I thought I should write a post titled "A tale of two ads." It turns out that my Facebook friend Scotty Urb at Michigan Liberal beat me to it.

You've probably seen (or at least heard about) these ads by now, but in case you haven't, click the links below (embedding won't seem to work):

Halftime in America

Debbie SpendItNow

One is a hopeful look at the spirit of Detroit and the spirit of America. The other has embroiled the controversy-prone Hoekstra in yet another bitter controversy.

For more at Michigan Liberal, there's Pete Hoekstra calls Asian-baiting ad a "home run" and Hoekstra ad costs him support from within his own party, as well as the first two items in Links for the commute home. Hoekstra and his advertising people apparently forgot that there are Chinese-American elected officials in Michigan who are Republicans. At least one of them is not happy with him. As Rick Perry would say, "oops."

A moment of science

2012-02-07T10:41:00.001-05:00

Keep the following in mind when you read this blog.

I shared the above on my Facebook yesterday, and it received 20 21 likes with two additional people commenting, making it probably the most popular link/image I've posted there yet. It's right behind my most popular status update, which had 21 likes and three other people commenting. I found the response gratifying.

Newt Gingrich and the Republican National Committee demagoguing Agenda 21

2012-02-06T00:01:00.006-05:00

While I've blogged before about the grassroots paranoia among Tea Partiers about Agenda 21, this time the movement has moved beyond the grassroots to the highest levels of the Republican Party. As the New York Times reported on Friday, Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot. Most of the article reviews the same examples that the Washington Post and The Atlantic have already used. However, it also shows that people higher up than a mere member of the House of Representatives are taking this crackpot idea seriously. In fact, it goes all the way up to the top.

In January, the Republican Party adopted its own resolution against what it called “the destructive and insidious nature” of Agenda 21.
...
The Republican National Committee resolution, passed without fanfare on Jan. 13, declared, “The United Nations Agenda 21 plan of radical so-called ‘sustainable development’ views the American way of life of private property ownership, single family homes, private car ownership and individual travel choices, and privately owned farms; all as destructive to the environment.”

Hey, this sounds familiar.

There will be a great battle to preserve the supposed entitlements to suburbia and it will be an epochal act of futility, a huge waste of effort and resources that might have been much better spent in finding new ways to carry on an American civilization.
...
In the service of defending suburbia, the American public may turn to political maniacs...who promise to allow them to keep their McMansions and their commutes...

That looks even more familiar.

To make the point that anyone who disagrees with him on housing policy is just an elite liberal snob, instead of engaging them on substantive economic policy grounds, Gingrich has taken to mocking people who don’t own a detached single-family home in the suburbs and drive everywhere.

At the National Association of Home Builders, “Rally for Homeownership” in South Carolina, Gingrich said, “Those who, you know, live in high-rise apartment buildings writing for fancy newspapers in the middle of town after they ride the metro, who don’t understand that for most Americans the ability to buy a home, to have their own property, to have a sense of belonging is one of the greatest achievements of their life, and it makes them feel like they are good solid citizens.”
...
On Friday he reiterated his hatred of people who live a more environmentally efficient lifestyle. Speaking in Las Vegas ahead of the Nevada caucus, a contest he is sure to lose, Gingrich attacked “elites” in Manhattan who live in high rises and “ride the subway.”

If it sounds like Gingrich with all of his hating on mass transit and city life is fully on board with the Agenda 21 bashing, he is.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Gingrich has called Agenda 21 an important issue and has said, “I would explicitly repudiate what Obama has done on Agenda 21.”

Looks like Newt and the RNC are banking on Kunstler's prophesy that the "American people will elect maniacs" who promise people the entitlements of suburbia, including "single family homes, private car ownership, and individual travel choices." If it means stirring up anti-environmental paranoia, that's a feature, not a bug.

Speaking of stirring up anti-environmental paranoia, the Tea Partiers at the grassroots seem to be confused, and their confusion is contagious.

But some local officials argue that the programs that protesters see as part of the conspiracy are entirely created by local governments with the express intent of saving money — the central goal of the Tea Party movement.

Well, that's what the Tea Party says both to itself and to outsiders, but as I've pointed out using Troy Mayor Janice Daniels as an example, the movement isn't really about fiscal issues; it's about social ones, including preserving what they see as the American way of life. It's not a coincidence that Troy at first voted down a transit center, then acted in a penny-wise yet pound-foolish way by approving the transit center with a conventional gas furnace instead of a geothermal heating/cooling system. To top it all off, the public comments after the vote included remarks about Agenda 21. The New York Times article didn't mention Troy as an example, but they should have.

I mentioned that the confusion was contagious.

“The Tea Party people say they want nonpolluted air and clean water and everything we promote and support, but they also say it’s a communist movement,” said Charlotte Moore, a supervisor who voted yes. “I really don’t understand what they want.”

Truth be told, neither do they. They just don't realize it yet.

A sustainable Super Bowl?

2012-02-05T12:48:00.001-05:00

On a day dedicated to excess, spectacle, and American Exceptionalism, is it possible to watch The Big Game and still engage in sustainable behaviors? On their Facebook page, Grist made a modest step by asking its readers:

What sustainable snacks will you be whipping up for your Super Bowl party? Share ideas and recipes!

The responses were not encouraging. Most people mocked the idea of combining sustainable food and the Super Bowl. The most popular comment just thought the entire idea was not worth considering.

F*ck the Super Bowl in all of its excessive entirety. I'm packing some trail mix and going hiking.

SOCRRA, the local recycling facility, skipped asking questions entirely, and just offered advice on their Facebook page.

Don't make Super Bowl Sunday super wasteful! As many people are planning their celebrations for this coming Sunday, consider opportunities to reduce waste. Serve beverages in their recyclable container (aluminum cans, plastic and glass bottles). Reduce the amount of disposable items as much as you can - do you have extra plates, silverware, and cloth napkins as an option? If you must use disposable, look for those with recycled content. Good luck in making it a Super Reduce, Reuse, and Recycling event!

That got a more favorable response, as no one dissed it, four people liked it, and two people, including me, shared it.

Now, what about the event itself? In a story I shared on last night's Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday on Daily Kos, Discovery News has the information.

Super Bowl Tackles Climate Change
Analysis by Tim Wall
Fri Feb 3, 2012

The field won't be the only thing green about Super Bowl XLVI. The NFL has a plan in their playbook to tackle the carbon dioxide emissions caused by energy use at the six major Super Bowl facilities. Renewable energy certificates will pass 15,000 megawatt hours of clean energy to the NFL's environmental receivers.

At the slick new Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis even the lights shining on the New York Giants and New England Patriots will be accounted for by renewable energy certificates provided by Green Mountain Energy Company.

The stadium's namesake, Lucas Oil sells gasoline additives and other automotive products.

But the NFL doesn't want grease stains on their uniforms. They bought carbon credits to intercept the emissions resulting from transporting the Super Bowl teams to the stadium, according to NFL.com.

Click on Read More to see the infographic accompanying the Discovery News article and the relevant part of the NFL press release.

Now, the relevant section of the press release, which shows that it isn't just climate change that the NFL is trying to mitigate, but all aspects of their environmental impact.

The NFL Environmental Program has developed a series of initiatives to minimize the impact of Super Bowl activities on the local and global environment. Environmental projects are developed in partnership with the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee and local, state and national organizations.

These initiatives include:

Solid Waste Management/Recycling -- Comprehensive solid waste management at major NFL event facilities. This project diverts waste from local landfills through recycling and reusing potential waste materials. Sites include Lucas Oil Stadium, the Indiana Convention Center (100 South Capitol Ave.), and the hotels serving as team headquarters, NFL headquarters and the Motorola Super Bowl Media Center. In addition, Pepsi is providing recycling bins for the NFL Experience and the Lucas Oil Stadium.

Prepared Food Recovery -- Extra prepared food from Super Bowl XLVI events will be collected for donation in partnership with Second Helpings, an Indianapolis-based non profit community kitchen and food rescue agency. Food recovered through this effort will go to soup kitchens, shelters and other local organizations that provide meals to those in need.

Materials Donation -- Decorative materials, building materials, office supplies and other reusable items will be recovered and donated to local nonprofit organizations. Some materials are appropriate for reuse while others will be used as fund raising auction items or remanufactured into new products.

Sports Equipment and Book Donation Project -- The Super Kids-Super Sharing Sports Equipment and Book Donation project was developed in partnership with the Indianapolis Colts, the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee, Martin University and Greater Indianapolis public and private schools. Local students are bringing gently used or new books, sports equipment and school supplies to their schools. These items will be collected then donated to pre-selected local schools and organizations serving children in need. On Thursday, Jan. 19, media is invited to Martin University (2171 Avondale Pl.), where hundreds of students and coordinators will bring donated items between 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Indianapolis Colts cheerleaders and mascot will attend the event and take part in a brief thank you ceremony with NFL officials at 10:30 a.m. (Best photo opportunities will be from 9:45-11:00 a.m.).

Climate Change Initiative -- Steps being taken to reduce the overall greenhouse gas impact of Super Bowl activities and events include:

» Use of renewable energy certificates to provide "green" power for major Super Bowl XLVI event venues including Lucas Oil Stadium, the Motorola Super Bowl Media Center, NFL Super Bowl headquarters, the NFL Experience and the AFC and NFC team hotels.

» Use of carbon offset credits to address the transportation emissions created by Super Bowl team travel. These offsets will cover both air and ground travel for both Super Bowl teams.

» Incorporation of solar power into the Rebuilding Together community project as part of the overall Near East Side Legacy Project. The renewable energy, solar power and travel offset projects are made possible through a partnership with Green Mountain Energy

» The planting of several thousand trees in local neighborhoods in partnership with the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee and Keep Indianapolis Beautiful as part of the overall "greening" of Super Bowl XLVI.

Yes, it's greenwashing, but it's impressive greenwashing of a kind that I applaud.

Read the rest of the press release. The NFL is doing all kinds of sustainability-related activities this weekend to burnish its image. As a football fan, I say good work.

Oh, in case you're wondering who I'm rooting for, Go Pats! The quarterback is a Michigan man and I count Massachusetts as one of my home states right behind Michigan and California and just ahead of Utah.

Newt Gingrich hates on mass transit

2012-02-04T18:19:00.000-05:00

I knew Gingrich being pro-science wouldn't last. Ben Adler of The Nation has the story.

Newt Gingrich’s New Enemies: Subway Riders

Newt Gingrich has taken phony cultural populism to its logical extreme. Gingrich abandons his supposed free market and small government principles when it comes to federally subsidizing over-consumption of housing. That’s both a biographical fact, in light of his work for Freddie Mac, and a policy position.

To make the point that anyone who disagrees with him on housing policy is just an elite liberal snob, instead of engaging them on substantive economic policy grounds, Gingrich has taken to mocking people who don’t own a detached single-family home in the suburbs and drive everywhere.

At the National Association of Home Builders, “Rally for Homeownership” in South Carolina, Gingrich said, “Those who, you know, live in high-rise apartment buildings writing for fancy newspapers in the middle of town after they ride the metro, who don’t understand that for most Americans the ability to buy a home, to have their own property, to have a sense of belonging is one of the greatest achievements of their life, and it makes them feel like they are good solid citizens.” As Matthew Yglesias wrote in Slate, “it’s telling how swiftly any kind of commitment to free market economics melts away in the face of the identity politics concerns of prosperous older white suburbanites.”

Adler goes on to call Gingrich stupid and ignorant. I don't think that's a fair characterization. Gingrich probably knows the environmental benefits of mass transit and urban living, but he also knows the GOP primary electorate and values what they think more. After all, there is a reason why Ezra Klein and Paul Krugman call him "a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like." This is exactly why I think Yglesias has Gingrich exactly right. Newt and the rest of the GOP represent core interest groups instead of having core ideologies and thus have no respect for their own ideas except as vehicles for promoting the interests of themselves and their supporters.

Gingrich then doubled down on his position.

On Friday he reiterated his hatred of people who live a more environmentally efficient lifestyle. Speaking in Las Vegas ahead of the Nevada caucus, a contest he is sure to lose, Gingrich attacked “elites” in Manhattan who live in high rises and “ride the subway.”

This attracted the attention of Dan Amira of New York Magazine, who posted this screen capture of a tweet repeating Gingrich's words.

Amira then mocked Gingrich in the most scathing terms.

If by "elites," Gingrich means people who can't afford to own cars or take taxis; who don't mind keeping an eye out for rats as they wait God knows how long for a standing-room-only train; who are willing to spend 40 minutes next to a lady with whooping cough while basking in the smell of the semi-conscious homeless man laying all the way at the other end of the car; who have no choice but to put up with panhandlers, gropers, proselytizers, straight-up insane people, crying babies, break-dancing teens, spaghetti fights, garbled announcements, unexplainable delays, unexpected route changes, and the occasional elbow to the kidney, then yes: "Elites" are the ones taking the subway in Manhattan.

Amira's take on Gingrich's hating on New York and subways has been drawing in more eyeballs than any other recent post on New York Magazine's Daily Intel blog. It's also the fifth most commented on article, with 67 responses and counting. Most consisted of simple derision, but a few cut to the heart of what Gingrich was trying to achieve. Boris4 managed to do both.

It doesn't have to make sense. Right wing populism is a fantasy anyway - and Gingrich is its Tolkien.

Mollysgaga translated the motivation.

"Elites" in new GOP-speak are the 20% who were educated at good colleges, and supposedly look down on the culturally inferior 80%. The trick is to create resentment against these amongst the 80% who didn't get much of an education. That way the rich can keep their tax cuts.

GraduatedAmbition was even more terse.B

By "elites", Gingrich means urban whites who aren't Real Americans. Fck him.

Boris4 induced me to respond.

He's also hating on mass transit. Newt has a real talent for hitting multiple targets in one sentence. The record so far was in his comment about poor kids in schools working as janitors. In one sentence, he hit poor people, poverty programs, minorities, unions, public education, and child labor laws. Top that for a cluster bomb of conservatism!

You're a mean one, Newt Gingrinch!

Relative: Yosemite video from Vimeo

2012-02-03T17:02:00.002-05:00

If you have ever wondered where my love of the outdoors comes from, just watch the video.

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

io9 has more to say.

If you've ever visited California's Yosemite National Park, then you have an appreciation for how absurdly majestic its scenery is. You also know how difficult it can be to encapsulate that majesty when describing it to others; somehow, adjectives like "breathtaking" don't even begin to describe it.

For years, I've referred to Ansel Adams' iconic photographs of Yosemite when describing the Park to friends who have never been. Now, I have this video to show them, as well. Feast your eyes on Project Yosemite — a time-lapse, HD tribute to some of the most jaw-dropping wilderness on Earth.

I spent at least part of every summer growing up in Yosemite and both my sisters worked there.* I use the park and its features every chance I get in my Geology lectures, including this past Wednesday, when I showed my students the hikers climbing up the back side of Half Dome. One of the scenes in the video shows that. I tell my students that I love Geology, because it's my chance to get paid showing my family vacation photos. I'm only half joking.

*That's the "relative" part for today's post. The brother of one of my ex-girlfriends worked there, too, and knew my sisters. That story, when I tell it, will be filed under "it's a small world."

Driving update for February 2012

2012-02-03T00:01:00.005-05:00

Three days ago, I observed and predicted:

I still haven't put another 1000 miles on my car since my last update. That was in September. Look for the next one within a week.

Right now, Yuki the Kia* has 210,999 miles on her odometer, so she'll log 211,000 miles within minutes of my pulling her out of the driveway tomorrow (today when you read this post). Since I know exactly what's going to happen, I may as well go ahead and write the post about it.

My previous update was on September 27, 2011. That was 129 days ago. 1000/129=7.75 miles/day. Expressed as miles/month using 30.5 days/month, it's 236.4 miles/month. That's ridiculously low, and not an average I expect to get again until I start cycling to work two days a week during the summer. What contributed to it were two events I knew about in September, but forgot to account for when I wrote the previous post, along with something that came as an unpleasant surprise.

The known events were my trips to Mexico and New Jersey. I didn't drive at all during the trip to Mexico, not even to the airport (I was lucky enough to get a ride). I did drive some in New Jersey, but that was in my wife's car, which I don't monitor for mileage the way I do my own.

The unexpected event was my shifter cable sticking, which put my car out of commission for a week and a half. I also drove my wife's car then. I made up for one of those missing weeks by driving into work the week before classes started, which I normally wouldn't have done, but I'm still down three weeks of no driving when I'd normally only be down one.

All the same, I'm still doing my part to reduce the number of miles driven by Americans, as shown by the following graph from Calculated Risk.

Folks, that's four years of driving less than the previous peak in December 2007. That's a record, one that will continue to be extended for at least a year. Peak Driving, anyone?

*I still have to explain that name. Some other time.

Groundhog Day 2012 and the climate

2012-02-02T10:39:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press has raw footage of the announcement.

As you can see and hear, Punxsutawney Phil (or rather, his human handlers) declared that there will be six more weeks of winter. As you can also see and hear, that was not a popular pronouncement. It's also a contested one, as the Los Angeles Times reported that the other animals observed today predicted an early spring.

From Canada to Staten Island to the tiny town of Dunkirk, N.Y., on the shores of Lake Erie, other groundhogs competing for the title of grand prognosticator offered differing opinions on this Groundhog Day, which marks the midway point of winter. Perhaps they were confused by the unseasonably warm weather across much of the eastern half of the country. The temperature Wednesday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport hit a record for the day: 64 degrees. That's more than 20 degrees above normal for this time of year.

The number one competitor for Punxsutawney Phil is Staten Island Chuck. What did he predict?

Groundhog Day 2012: Staten Island Chuck predicts early spring

With the aid of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Staten Island's furry prognosticator did not see his shadow this morning in a ceremony at the Staten Island Zoo.

Staten Island Chuck's predicted that milder weather is likely to be with us until spring arrives on the calendar in late March.

Not only is Staten Island Chuck's prediction going to be more popular, I suspect it will be more accurate. The Los Angeles Times relayed the following.

The Staten Island Zoo claims that Chuck has correctly predicted the duration of winter 80% of the time since the 1980s.

Personally, I'm banking on Chuck. After the first significant snowfall coming in late January, there was a second snowstorm that hit over last weekend, which actually dropped more snow, despite getting less hype. Monday's commute was no fun, but Tuesday, the temperature was in the high 50s and the snow all melted. Today, it may as well be mid-March.

Of course, Detroit just finished a wild year in weather as did the country as a whole, so I wouldn't be surprised by anything that came along. For example, I was supposed to be at a rally in Washington D.C. the Saturday before Halloween, but missed it because I went to Mexico. The rally got hit by a freak early ice-storm, which became a blizzard farther north and east. Good thing I went to Mexico instead!

Nablopomo for February: Relative

2012-02-01T10:15:00.001-05:00

It's that time again.

So what is the NaBloPoMo theme of the month?

RELATIVE

Families form in hundreds of different ways -- from the brothers and sisters you are born with to the people who become fictive kin as you go through life, our relationships define us and support us. Use the month to not only explore your connections to the obvious relatives -- your aunts, cousins, or grandparents -- but your ancestors, the people who are no longer part of your family, and the ones that you wish were related to you.
...
So tell us about your siblings. If you can name at least five things about them, it means you have at least five blog posts inside of you. And if you can do five posts, you can certainly expand that and do an extra 25 or so.

That's not really what I had in mind for this blog. If I were using my LiveJournal (not a good idea, as the service is subject to DDoS attacks, which would prevent me from fulfilling my pledge to post every day) or my Dreamwidth (I really don't want to post the name of that blog on a feminist site; I also don't want to rename it), I could do this, as both are personal blogs. Other than talking about what my relatives have done (or not done) in terms of sustainability, broadly interpreted, I think it would be off-topic.

However, these Nablopomo themes always have approved alternative interpretations.

This is also a month to look for connections between two unrelated concepts or objects. It's a month to get subjective, to state opinions, to examine your personal truth.

I do both all the time. I find two things that on the surface appear to be unrelated, but show that they really are. I also have been stating opinions all along. Looks like this topic is just fine for this blog.

As for who will be blogging with me under politics, the blogroll currently shows stay{up}early.

I’m Christina. A Democratic political operative working in and around the Texas Capitol.

I’m an over-zealous texter, a native Austinite and a social media evangelist. I’ve seen every episode of The Golden Girls and not one minute of The Godfather.

That's promising. I hope she can keep up the pace.

Peak Oil in Wired and Forbes

2012-01-31T11:06:00.001-05:00

I posted the following in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Science of Conflict edition) over at Daily Kos. Instead of including it in a sustainability news linkspam, even as the top story, I decided it deserved a post of its own.

Ars Technica via Wired: Researchers Argue Peak Oil Is Here, Bringing Permanent Volatility
By John Timmer, Ars Technica
January 26, 2012

The global production of oil has remained relatively flat since 2005 and peaked in 2008, declining ever since even as demand has continued to increase. The result has been wild fluctuations in the price of oil as small changes in demand set off large shocks in the system.

In Wednesday’s issue of Nature, James Murray of University of Washington and David King of Oxford University argue this sort of volatility is what we can expect going forward, and we’re likely to face it with other fossil fuels as well.

The notion of peak oil is fairly simple: Oil is a finite resource and at some point we simply won’t be able to extract as much as we once did. There is no getting around that limit for any finite resource. The issue that has made peak oil contentious, however, is the debate over when we might actually hit it. Murray and King are not the first to conclude that we’ve already passed the peak. Even as prices have climbed by about 15 percent per year since 2005, production has remained largely flat.
...
“We are not running out of oil,” the authors argue, “but we are running out of oil that can be produced easily and cheaply.”

It's not just the scientists in Nature and the geeks in Ars Technica and Wired that are recognizing that peak (conventional) oil is here. The hard-headed businessmen at Forbes have realized this, too.

The End of Elastic Oil
By Tim Conrad
January 26, 2012

The last ten years have brought a structural change to the world oil market, with changes in demand increasingly playing a role in maintaining the supply/demand balance. These changes will come at an increasingly onerous cost to our economy unless we take steps to make our demand for oil more flexible.

We’re not running out of oil. There’s still plenty of oil still in the ground. Oil which was previously too expensive to exploit becomes economic with a rising oil price. To the uncritical observer, it might seem as if there is nothing to worry about in the oil market.

Unfortunately, there is something to worry about, at least if we want a healthy economy. The new oil reserves we’re now exploiting are not only more expensive to develop, but they also take much longer between the time the first well is drilled and the when the first oil is produced. That means it takes longer for oil supply to respond to changes in price.

In economic terms, the oil supply is becoming less elastic as new oil supplies come increasingly from unconventional oil. Elasticity is the term economists use to describe how much supply or demand responds to changes in price. If a small change in price produces a large change in demand, demand is said to be elastic. If a large change in price produces a small change in supply, then supply is said to be inelastic.

The Forbes article isn't explictly about Peak Oil, but it does discuss what happens when supply has reached the bumpy plateau and what can be done about it. One of the best lines involves reducing demand by living closer to work, including the line "the most fuel-efficient vehicle is a moving van." I resemble that remark.

From 2000-2004, I regularly put 40,000 miles on my car. In 2005, I began driving 1000 miles a week when school was in session to three different colleges and a tutoring service. Then on the weekends, I'd judge marching bands or cover drum and bugle corps shows. From May 2005 to May 2006, I drove 48,000 miles. That was the year I put my house up for sale, stopped seeing my long-distance girlfriend, and eventually sold my house. In June, I moved to the middle of my jobs and cut my driving down to 700 miles a week. Then I changed one of my jobsites and cut it down to 500 miles a week. Then I got a full-time job and quit my part-time jobs and dropped to 300 miles a week. Finally, we moved and I now drive 70 miles a week. I'm so close to work I could ride a bike on a good day.

I still haven't put another 1000 miles on my car since my last update. That was in September. Look for the next one within a week.

More on when Romney came to town

2012-01-30T22:14:00.001-05:00

I collected a lot of links and excerpts for my posts on Bain Capital and Mitt Romney, but didn't get around to using them until now. I decided to put together a meal of leftovers before the Florida primary tomorrow so that they don't go to waste. Enjoy!

Paul Krugman at the NYT: Bain, Barack and Jobs

The real complaint about Mr. Romney and his colleagues isn’t that they destroyed jobs, but that they destroyed good jobs.

When the dust settled after the companies that Bain restructured were downsized — or, as happened all too often, went bankrupt — total U.S. employment was probably about the same as it would have been in any case. But the jobs that were lost paid more and had better benefits than the jobs that replaced them. Mr. Romney and those like him didn’t destroy jobs, but they did enrich themselves while helping to destroy the American middle class.

And that reality is, of course, what all the blather and misdirection about job-creating businessmen and job-destroying Democrats is meant to obscure.

For more on this topic, read When Mitt Romney came to Kansas City on Daily Kos.

That's not all from Krugman. Here's more.

America Isn’t a Corporation

“And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.”

That’s how the fictional Gordon Gekko finished his famous “Greed is good” speech in the 1987 film “Wall Street.” In the movie, Gekko got his comeuppance. But in real life, Gekkoism triumphed, and policy based on the notion that greed is good is a major reason why income has grown so much more rapidly for the richest 1 percent than for the middle class.

Today, however, let’s focus on the rest of that sentence, which compares America to a corporation. This, too, is an idea that has been widely accepted. And it’s the main plank of Mitt Romney’s case that he should be president: In effect, he is asserting that what we need to fix our ailing economy is someone who has been successful in business.

In so doing, he has, of course, invited close scrutiny of his business career. And it turns out that there is at least a whiff of Gordon Gekko in his time at Bain Capital, a private equity firm; he was a buyer and seller of businesses, often to the detriment of their employees, rather than someone who ran companies for the long haul.
...
America certainly needs better economic policies than it has right now — and while most of the blame for poor policies belongs to Republicans and their scorched-earth opposition to anything constructive, the president has made some important mistakes. But we’re not going to get better policies if the man sitting in the Oval Office next year sees his job as being that of engineering a leveraged buyout of America Inc.

Salon has even more scathing things to say about Willard the Rat.

Romney and the pathology of Bain

Romney’s tenure at Bain, which he ran from 1984 to 1999, is currently being raked over the coals in the media and in a TV spot paid for by the stunningly hypocritical Newt Gingrich, but I’m not seeing much about what this says about him as a human being.

Here’s one of the better brief digests of Romney as a corporate job-destroyer, written by Josh Kosman, who wrote an excellent book in 2010 on the buyout industry called “The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy.” This book is required reading for anybody who wants to understand what Romney did for a living at Bain. He is the living embodiment of how the “job creator” Republican meme is grotesquely misleading, if not an outright lie.

You can’t really blame him. It was his job. Or as Don Vito Corleone once put it, it was “strictly business.” Romney was taught at Harvard Business School that the purpose of a corporation is not to “create jobs” but to create profits for its owners by, among other things, keeping the cost of labor at an absolute minimum. Job creation, if any, is incidental and entirely expendable, sort of the way oil-drilling rigs burn off natural gas. If profits are to be enhanced by job destruction, so much the better.

More commentary in Why Does Romney Lie About EVERYTHING? That's What Sociopaths Do.

Finally, the Washington Post: When Romney ran Bain Capital, his word was not his bond

I don’t know if Bain Capital still uses the bait-and-switch technique when it competes in auctions these days (I’m told that it doesn’t). But that was the way the firm’s partners competed when Romney ran the place. This win-at-any-cost approach makes me wonder how a President Romney would negotiate with Congress, or with China, or with anyone else — and what a promise, pledge or endorsement from him would actually mean.

Would a President Romney, along with a Republican Congress, cut taxes for the wealthy even more than he has pledged to do? Would he not try to balance the federal budget, even though he has said he would? Would he protect defense spending, as he has indicated he would?

I have no idea how Romney might behave in office. I do believe, however, that when he was running Bain Capital, his word was not his bond.

As Krugman remarked when he wrote about this article:

This isn’t a policy issue; it’s the kind of thing I usually try to stay away from, the supposedly character-revealing nature of someone’s personal history. But as these things go, it’s especially interesting. Would you buy a used company — or a used ideology — from this guy?

I know I wouldn't.

Feds find Volt's battery safe

2012-01-29T14:48:00.000-05:00

In Good automotive news to begin 2012, I embedded a WXYZ-TV video on YouTube reporting that the issues with the Volt's battery have been resolved and suggesting that the car will be found safe to drive. Last week WXYZ followed up.

The Chevy Volt was on the hot seat during a hearing about the recent fires following crash tests.

The fossil fools behind the GOP are again attacking the green energy agenda of the current administration and making false claims that the Volt is not a market-based solution. As the reporter pointed out, the Volt was approved for production before the bailout and government takeover, which worked out rather well, thank you very much. So much for that claim!

As for the safety concerns, I'll let Wired take over for me.

Feds Say Volt Is Safe, Close Battery Inquiry
By Chuck Squatriglia
January 20, 2012

Federal regulators have closed their investigation into the Chevrolet Volt, saying they are satisfied with the steps General Motors has taken to protect the car’s lithium-ion battery and minimize the risk of a fire in the days and weeks after a severe crash.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration posted an explanation and summary of its inquiry on Friday and announced the conclusion of the investigation it launched Nov. 25.

“The agency’s investigation has concluded that no discernible defect trend exists and that the vehicle modifications recently developed by General Motors reduce the potential for battery intrusion resulting from side impacts,” the feds said in a statement.

The statement adds, “Based on the available data, NHTSA does not believe that Chevy Volts or other electric vehicles pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles.”

A battery is no worse and probably much better than a gas tank for immediate fire risk. Also, electrical fires in cars are nothing new. In fact, I lost a car to electrical issues 28 years ago.* Therefore, I'm less than impressed with the argument that the Volt is any more dangerous than anything I've been driving for the last 30+ years. In fact, it's probably safer!**

* The fusebox shorted out while it was parked in front of my house, and the resulting fire destroyed the dashboard and the windshield. The car was a total loss. Good thing I was in bed asleep at the time and that the car was insured. Even better, it was a Honda, and its Blue Book value exceeded what I owed on it. I was able to pay off the loan and buy my sister's car, which caused me much less trouble.

** The first car I was supposed to drive was a Pinto. Those things were notorious for the gas tank exploding in rear end collisions. Talk about unsafe! I guess my father did me an unintentional favor when he crashed it (head first) before I could get my driver's license.

Sustainability news from commercial sources for the week ending January 21, 2012

2012-01-28T13:18:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know this is from last week. However, I haven't started compiling this week's news for Daily Kos, so I'm reposting the relevant links and excerpts from Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (South Carolina Primary edition) before I do. Besides, science, unlike most news, has a relatively long shelf life.

General Sustainability

This week in science: He who controls the spin controls the universe!
By DarkSyde

Our good friends at the National Center for Science Education are branching out to confront misinformation on climate change. The NCSE has a lifetime record of unbeaten on the legal battles over creationism, as in they've never lost. NCSE evolution education specialist Joshua Roseneua explains the new effort:
In our time on those front lines, we keep hearing from teachers facing similar pressure about climate change. We hear it from teachers in workshops. We see it in newspaper stories. We track legislation lumping evolution and climate change together as "controversial" issues in science class, even though both are supported by over a century of unchallenged scientific research. And as we looked around, we realized that, while lots of groups exist to encourage good climate change education and provide positive content for classrooms, no one else was focused exclusively on blocking bad science from climate change lessons.

I wish them luck in fighting both forms of denial in the classroom.

More stories over the jump.

Environment, including science

LiveScience: Ocean's 8, a Golden Eye, Count Dracula Primates and more ...

A brilliant figure-8 glowing on the sea, a golden eye nebula in space and a gory, yet stunning, image of a boa constrictor strangling its prey. These are just some of the dazzling science images from the past week. Take a look.

The "Count Dracula Primates" are the stars of the next story.

LiveScience: Monkey Feared Extinct Rediscovered
Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 20 January 2012 Time: 07:07 AM ET

An elusive monkey feared extinct has shown up in the remote forests of Borneo, posing for the first good pictures of the animal ever taken.

The mug shots reveal a furry Count Dracula of sorts, with the monkey's black head, face tipped with white whiskers and a pointy collar made of fluffy white fur.

The Miller's grizzled langur, an extremely rare primate that has suffered from habitat loss over the last 30 years, popped up unexpectedly in the protected Wehea Forest in east Kalimantan, Borneo.

"We knew we had found this primate that some people had speculated was potentially extinct," said study researcher Stephanie Spehar, a primatologist at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. "It was really exciting."

MSNBC: Cougars extinct in East? No way, say those who claim sightings
By Jim Gold, msnbc.com

Cougar sightings persist in the East nearly a year after the big predators were declared extinct in the region, a determination that some don't believe. Others want to make cougars' presence a big reality.

Just this month Gary Sanderson, sports editor at the Greenfield, Mass.-based Recorder newspaper, reported cougar sightings on a farm near the Vermont border, by an Amtrak engineer who claimed his train's video captured images of the creatures near Leverett, and from readers in the region who claim to have pictures of cougars.

Our Amazing Planet via MSNBC: Rare sea creature climbs onto woman's dock
Surprise was a ribbon seal, an Arctic species that spends most of its life at sea
By Andrea Mustain

A Seattle resident recently got a big surprise when she discovered a strange-looking furry visitor on her property.

"She woke up and it was lying on her dock, hanging out and sleeping — just chilling," said Matthew Cleland, district supervisor in western Washington for the USDA's Wildlife Services, and the recipient of a photo of the bizarre intruder.

"I thought, 'That's an interesting-looking creature,'" Cleland told OurAmazingPlanet. "I had no idea what it was."

A quick glance through a book in his office soon revealed it was a ribbon seal, an Arctic species that spends most of its life at sea, swimming the frigid waters off Alaska and Russia.

LiveScience: Bowerbird Bachelor Pads With Best Illusion Snag Mates
Joseph Castro, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 19 January 2012 Time: 02:01 PM ET

Everyone likes a good optical illusion, and that includes at least one animal. Male bowerbirds woo females by constructing a bachelor pad that creates an illusion of uniform décor (and the illusion that their owners are much more robust lads than they really are).

And a new study suggests the females tend to choose mates from those who produce the best illusion.

Male great bowerbirds —pigeon-size birds native to Australia — spend the majority of their time building and maintaining their courtship sites, called bowers. A bower consists of a tunnel-like avenue made of densely woven sticks that leads to a court of gray stones, shells and bones. Previous research suggested the birds arrange items in such a way that the court appears uniform and small to a female viewing it from within the avenue, which makes the male appear much larger and more impressive than he really is.

Bowerbirds are the only animals so far that have been shown to use illusions for mating.

BBC: La Nina 'linked' to flu pandemics
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

La Nina events may make flu pandemics more likely, research suggests.

US-based scientists found that the last four pandemics all occurred after La Nina events, which bring cool waters to the surface of the eastern Pacific.

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they say that flu-carrying birds may change migratory patterns during La Nina conditions.

However, many other La Nina events have not seen novel flu strains spread around the world, they caution.

Society, including culture and politics

Wired: The Best Fictional Scientists From TV and Movies
By Wired Staff
January 19, 2012

There is a great argument to be made for Star Trek's Spock, as a real-life scientist eloquently does in an op-ed today for our From the Fields series. But he got us thinking about all the other smart, scary, sexy, silly and sinister scientists we love to watch, so we've compiled a list (in no particular order) of our favorites.

As always, we trust you'll let us know where we went wrong and whose absence offended you most.

LiveScience via MSNBC: Belief in evolution boils down to a gut feeling
How we feel may trump facts as well as religious beliefs, research suggests
January 20, 2012

Gut feelings may trump good old-fashioned facts, and even religious beliefs, when it comes to accepting the theory of evolution, new research suggests.

"The whole idea behind acceptance of evolution has been the assumption that if people understood it, if they really knew it, they would see the logic and accept it," study co-author David Haury, an associate professor of education at Ohio State University, said in a statement.

But, he noted, research on the matter has been inconsistent. While one study would find a strong relationship between knowledge level and acceptance, another would not. Likewise, studies have contradicted each other on the relationship between religious identity and acceptance of evolution, he said.

N.Y. Times: New Definition of Autism Will Exclude Many, Study Suggests
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: January 19, 2012

Proposed changes in the definition of autism would sharply reduce the skyrocketing rate at which the disorder is diagnosed and might make it harder for many people who would no longer meet the criteria to get health, educational and social services, a new analysis suggests.

The definition is now being reassessed by an expert panel appointed by the American Psychiatric Association, which is completing work on the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the first major revision in 17 years. The D.S.M., as the manual is known, is the standard reference for mental disorders, driving research, treatment and insurance decisions. Most experts expect that the new manual will narrow the criteria for autism; the question is how sharply.

The results of the new analysis are preliminary, but they offer the most drastic estimate of how tightening the criteria for autism could affect the rate of diagnosis. For years, many experts have privately contended that the vagueness of the current criteria for autism and related disorders like Asperger syndrome was contributing to the increase in the rate of diagnoses — which has ballooned to one child in 100, according to some estimates.

Commentary in Experts Consider Changing the Definition of Autism.

LiveScience: New US Wildlife Refuge Established in Florida
Remy Melina, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 19 January 2012 Time: 11:05 AM ET

The first parcel of land has been put aside for a new wildlife refuge to protect one of the last remaining grassland and savanna landscapes in eastern North America.

Government officials accepted a donation of land in south-central Florida as part of the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area effort.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar accepted the 10-acre (4-hectare) donation, which will make up the 556th unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System. The new addition to the system comes as part of the Obama administration's America’s Great Outdoors initiative.

LiveScience: Mutant Bird Flu Researchers Offer to Suspend Work
Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 20 January 2012 Time: 02:04 PM ET

Controversy surrounding research on highly transmissible bird flu has prompted scientists, including those who altered bird flu viruses so they could spread between mammals, to call for a 60-day hiatus on the work to allow for discussion.

"We recognize that we and the rest of the scientific community need to clearly explain the benefits of this important research and the measures taken to minimize its possible risks," write about 40 scientists.

"We propose to do so in an international forum in which the scientific community comes together to discuss and debate these issues," they write in a letter released by the journals Science and Nature today, Jan. 20.

Economy, including technology

Brigham Young University via physorg.com: Hydrogen peroxide goes green in undergrad's published paper on renewable energy
January 20, 2012

Most of us know hydrogen peroxide as a way to bleach hair, but MacKenzie Mayo is using it to help turn yard waste into renewable energy.

A chemistry major, MacKenzie applies hydrogen peroxide to algae, sawdust and grass clippings so that they can be more easily converted to biofuels like natural gas. She’s the lead author of an academic journal article on the topic.

What’s more, the hydrogen peroxide changes to water in the process.

LiveScience: Could the Internet Ever Be Destroyed?
Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer
Date: 20 January 2012 Time: 09:09 AM ET

The raging battle over SOPA and PIPA, the proposed anti-piracy laws, is looking more and more likely to end in favor of Internet freedom — but it won't be the last battle of its kind. Although, ethereal as it is, the Internet seems destined to survive in some form or another, experts warn that there are many threats to its status quo existence, and there is much about it that could be ruined or lost.

And that's it for last week's news!

President Obama speaks at the University of Michigan

2012-01-27T14:48:00.000-05:00

Follow-up to this morning's post: WXYZ now has the complete speech posted on YouTube.

The speech covered both energy and education, so here are links to the relevant fact sheets from the White House's web site.

FACT SHEET: President Obama’s Blueprint to Make The Most of America’s Energy Resources

FACT SHEET: President Obama’s Blueprint for Keeping College Affordable and Within Reach for All Americans

Also, both the Detroit Free Press and AnnArbor.com have stories up. The Free Press's headline is Let's steer aid to colleges that keep tuition affordable down, Obama tells U-M crowd. AnnArbor.com had a more meta take in Campaigner in chief: Obama address to Ann Arbor crowd sounded like stump speech. I recommend reading both for a stereo view of the speech along with a good selection of the best quotes.

Obama at University of Michigan

2012-01-27T07:23:00.002-05:00

WXYZ-TV on YouTube reports.

Anticipation is high on the University of Michigan campus with President Obama set to give a speech on Friday.

The Detroit Free Press reports that the President's speech at University of Michigan will focus on skills, college affordability.

President Barack Obama will focus on "American Skills and Innovation," including college affordability, when he takes the stage at the University of Michigan this morning in front of more than 3,000 students, faculty members and staff members.

Obama will talk about affordability and getting students and workers the education needed to develop a competitive work force, a White House official told the Free Press. It will be a follow-up to his State of the Union address earlier this week, in which he touched on the same topics.

Like most of the issues the President covered in his State of the Union Address, educational affordability is a sustainability issue. This is part of a pattern. As I pointed out the last time I blogged about President Obama visiting Michigan, "President Obama...really likes the idea of sustainable development packaged as making America competitive." Based on the reaction to the State of the Union, a lot of Americans do, too.

An overwhelming majority of Americans approved of the overall message in President Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, according to a CBS News poll of speech watchers.

According to the poll, which was conducted online by Knowledge Networks immediately after the president's address, 91 percent of those who watched the speech approved of the proposals Mr. Obama put forth during his remarks. Only nine percent disapproved.

As for how the positive reaction to the State of the Union and other actions Obama has taken are playing out in Michigan, I'll let WOOD-TV on YouTube tell you.

It's paying off very well, thank you. As for Willard:

Romney was expected to have a hometown...advantage in the state that [his] father once governed.

Romney barely has an advantage in the primary, but right now he's getting crushed in the state where he grew up in the general. Of the five states he calls home, Michigan, Massachusetts, Utah, New Hampshire, and California, he'll probably win all of their primaries, but at most two, Utah and maybe New Hampshire, in the general. The last candidate who didn't win his home state in the general election was Gore, and we all know how he fared in 2000. He wouldn't have needed Florida if he had won Tennessee. That's not a good sign for Romney.

UPDATE: After I crossposted the above to Daily Kos and Michigan Liberal, WWYZ posted two more videos to their YouTube page. View them below the fold.

President Obama in Michigan

President Obama to speak at UM Friday

Diary crossposted to Michigan Liberal.

Gingrich shoots for the Moon while campaigning in Florida

2012-01-26T10:31:00.003-05:00

Yes, really.

WESH-TV on YouTube has a better video, but it doesn't embed. Too bad, as it shows Gingrich using the idea of reviving the space program as a major selling point of his campaign in Florida, especially along the Space Coast. I don't know if it has helped him with Republican voters, but it certainly is getting him more attention.

Here's Reuters' article on the topic, which is currently headlining its science page.

Gingrich calls for moon base, space contests
By Irene Klotz
COCOA, Florida | Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:25pm EST

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich called on Wednesday for a base on the moon and an expanded federal purse for prize money to stimulate private-sector space projects.

"We want Americans to think boldly about the future," Gingrich said during a campaign rally in Florida, where he outlined a space policy initiative that would cut NASA's bureaucracy and expand on private-sector space programs championed by President Barack Obama.

"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," Gingrich said.

"We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism and manufacturing, because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching," he said.

Gingrich is explicitly trying to one-up our rivals in manned space exploration, especially the Chinese, who are planning on building a space station by the end of the decade and landing on the Moon after that. They can certainly do both, but a Moon base will still be beyond their capabilities.

Gingrich is also playing to a local constituency, the aerospace workers and companies in Florida. On the one hand, this is typical campaigning to an interest group that is traditionally Republican (I should know; my father worked in aerospace in Southern California for 40 years, and he and his co-workers were overwhelmingly Republican for most of that time). On the other, I think Gingrich is sincere in his interest. Whether this works for him will take until next Tuesday to determine.

The article continues.

Gingrich said he wanted to spend 10 percent of NASA's $18 billion budget on prize money for competitions that spur innovation and technological breakthroughs in space.

"I'm prepared to invest the prestige of the presidency in communicating and building a nationwide movement in favor of space," Gingrich said at a meeting of aerospace executives and community leaders after the rally.

"If we do it right, it'll be wild and it will be just the most fun you've ever seen," he said.

Remember what I wrote about different political philosophies giving rise to different means to the same ends?

[In 2001] People responded to their president's suggestion by whipping out their credit cards and spending. Within a month or two, the recession was over. Honestly, it was exactly what a party with a free enterprise philosophy should advocate, and it worked. It also showed that Bush was far more afraid of a recession deepening than he was letting on at the time.

By 2009, just about everyone's credit card was tapped out, so that strategy wouldn't work. However, the government sill had credit and other incentives available, and the party in power believed in goverment intervention. So instead of just urging people to spend, it instituted Cash for Clunkers. That worked, not only in stimulating car sales, but increasing real retail sales as a whole. That it also removed a bunch of gas guzzlers from the roads was a bonus. Both instances show that increasing demand works.

Despite what I wrote about major U.S. political parties having core interests instead of core ideologies, the GOP still prefers market-oriented solutions more than the Democrats do, and Gingrich's suggestions are perfectly consistent with this preference.

As for whether Gingrich's idea are achievable, I'll let Space.com answer.

Gingrich's chief rival for the Republican nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, has occasionally called attention to the "grandiosity" of Gingrich's ideas about space and other subjects.

Gingrich said he doesn't view "grandiose" as an insult.

"I accept the charge that I am an American, and Americans are instinctively grandiose, because we believe in a bigger future."

But Gingrich's big plans may indeed be grandiose in the more traditional, pejorative sense, some experts say.

"When we are not expecting a U.S. crewed launch to the ISS until 2016-2017 and are just getting started on a lunar-class launch vehicle, establishing a lunar outpost by 2020 is a fantasy," space policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, told SPACE.com via email. "It would be much better to set realistic goals, but that is not Mr. Gingrich's strong suit."

Darn.

Seriously, Gingrich's grandiose plans for space exploration are the only thing I like about him. They prove that, unlike much, even most of the rest of his party, he hasn't given up on science. I applaud him for that. However, his ideas about space are not enough to get me to vote for him. It would be like voting for Ron Paul because of his anti-war and pro-legalization positions, while the rest of what he advocates is just unacceptable.

Detroit, Michigan, and the auto industry in the State of the Union

2012-01-25T07:23:00.000-05:00

Before the State of the Union yesterday, Paul Krugman managed to scoop one of the themes of the State of the Union address.

[C]an we think of a recent example in the United States where helping to preserve an industrial cluster was an important policy consideration? Indeed we can: the auto bailout. A key argument for the bailout was that if the major US firms were allowed to go bankrupt, a whole industrial ecology would be lost with them. And the auto bailout has been a huge success, not least because it did preserve that ecology.

Aren’t you glad that Obama didn’t listen to the other party on this issue?

Right on cue, immediately after President Obama listed his administration's foreign policy achievements, he pointed out the success of the auto company bailout in his State of the Union speech.

On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world's number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S. plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.

We bet on American workers. We bet on American ingenuity. And tonight, the American auto industry is back.

What's happening in Detroit can happen in other industries.

In the same post in which Krugman praised Obama for bailing out the auto companies in the name of preserving the industrial ecology supporting auto manufacturing in the U.S., he posted this graph of the Michigan's unemployment rate.

That's quite a recovery, although it was interrupted by the short-lived slump that accompanied the rise in oil prices during the first half of the year. In fact, the following graph from Calculated Risk displaying the unemployment rates of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia shows that it was the best recovery of all 51 reporting.

Unemployment has fallen nearly 5% since Fall 2009, when Michigan had the highest unemployment rate in the Union. Now, Michigan is below 10% after three years of double-digit unemployment and is out of the ten worst states at 11th. Both Krugman and Bill McBride of Calculated Risk are showing that what happened in Detroit (actually all of Michigan) is indeed worth emulating. Isn't that a pleasant surprise?

Preppers in Reuters and National Geographic, a murmuration

2012-01-24T20:13:00.001-05:00

James Howard Kunstler titled this week's missive of doom Murmuration. It was surprisingly dispassionate in tone while being full of factual content and rational analysis. I found that combination not to be an accident, but I digress. What Kunstler had to say about his topic showed more insight than usual into humans as a social animal.

Investment guru James Dines introduced another seminal idea on Eric King's podcast last week. Dines's work over the years has focused much more on human mob psychology than technical market analysis - which he seems to regard as akin to augury with chicken entrails. Dines now introduces the term "murmuration" to describe the way that rapid changes occur in the realm of human activities. The word refers to behaviors also seen in other living species, such as the way a large flock of starlings will all turn in the sky at the same instant without any apparent communication. We don't know how they do that. It seems to be some kind of collective cognitive processing beyond our understanding.

Dines goes on to suggest that the political stirrings and upheavals of the past year represent an instance of human "murmuration" that will lead to even greater epochal changes in geopolitical and economic life.

My response was to praise him.

I like the concepts of trust horizon and murmuration, as they connect me to my scientific roots. Trust horizon recalls event horizon, something that marks the surface of a black hole. If we hit the event horizon, then we'll be sucked into the black hole with no escape. Of course, the center of a black hole is a singularity, so I suspect you don't want to extend the metaphor that far! As for murmuration, that's an even better one, as I'm an amateur astronomer, but a professional biologist who has studied animal behavior. Since humans are just a very smart social mammal, we shouldn't be surprised at how our behavior reflects that of other social animals, including coordination of group behavior by murmuration. Thanks for adding those concepts to my vocabulary. I'll be sure to blog about them and credit you for inspiring me.

That was yesterday morning. Yesterday evening, I encountered the following on Reuters as an example of a murmuration that is starting to change behaviors and become noticed--and noticed in a big way.

Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization's collapse
By Jim Forsyth
Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:44am EST

[Patty] Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.

They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.

Preppers, though are, worried about no government.

I'm worried about no government, too. In my lecture on population, I point out the decline in world population that resulted from the fall of the Western Roman Empire. That's an important example of how organized human behavior, e.g. centralized government, increases carrying capacity (K), and how the loss of government causes K to decrease, sometimes dramatically.

Back to the article.

Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a "survival center," complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency, she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency could come soon.

"I think this economy is about to fall apart," she said.

Yesterday evening, this article was the most read post on Reuter's site. Tonight, it is still the most commented on article, with 316 responses and counting. It also had been recommended 3,212 times on Facebook and tweeted 52 times. It definitely hit a nerve in a lot of people.

That's not all. This evening, I encountered the following video from National Geographic on my YouTube subscription list.

The blurb on the show's page on National Geographic's website describes the series.

Doomsday Preppers explores the lives of otherwise ordinary Americans who are preparing for the end of the world as we know it. Unique in their beliefs, motivations, and strategies, preppers will go to whatever lengths they can to make sure they are prepared for any of life’s uncertainties. And with our expert’s assessment, they will find out their chances of survival if their worst fears become a reality.

There are nine clips from the series posted on the show's video page. My favorite so far is Self-sustaining Suburbia.

Dennis McClung has created a self-sustaining garden out of an unused pool in his backyard. If the end of days ever comes, he'll be all set.

Actually, I think what he did to his pool is really cool, even if what he's preparing for is a bit unrealistic--or is it?

Reuters: Sun hurls strong geomagnetic storm toward Earth

The strongest geomagnetic storm in more than six years was forecast to hit Earth's magnetic field on Tuesday, and it could affect airline routes, power grids and satellites, the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center said.

Maybe Dennis isn't so cranky after all.

Series starts Tuesday, February 7 at 9 PM EST. I'll be sure to set my DVR. You should, too.

Newt Gingrich throws core GOP interest group under bus while campaigning as a populist

2012-01-23T08:44:00.000-05:00

In When Mitt Romney came to town, he exposed the GOP's disrespect for its own ideas, I quoted Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, who opined:

Here’s Newt Gingrich’s bizarre 28-minute video attack on Mitt Romney; bizarre not because of the subject matter (which is pretty devastating to Romney), but because of the political orientation. Gingrich is coming at Romney from a position that can only be described as “left wing” — criticizing Romney for precisely the Republican values that Newt (and every other candidate) espouses.

I don’t think I’ve seen a better demonstration of an absolutely amoral lust for power — from Gingrich and from Romney. With this video, Gingrich is throwing the entire GOP ideology under the bus.

I wouldn't call it "throwing the entire GOP ideology under the bus," as major U.S. political parties don't have consistent ideologies. They do, however, have consistent core interest groups and Gingrich is throwing one of them, the northeastern business interests, which have been with the GOP since it formed out of the remains of the Whigs in the 1850s, under the bus. That ended up being smart in the short run, given that he was angling for the votes of Southern populists, who don't care much for the northeastern business interests and haven't since before the founding of the republic. They came through for him last Saturday when he won the South Carolina primary handily.

On the other hand, Gingrich's strategy is pissing off the GOP establishment, who are behind Romney and represent the core interest group of northeastern businessmen (and women), no end! For how that looks to one group of outsiders, the netroots progressives of Daily Kos, read The Republican civil war unleashed. For another, here's what the snarky animators over at Next Media Animation have to say about it.

Newt Gingrich's stunning victory over Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary has breathed new life into the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Despite a scandalous interview given by Gingrich's second ex-wife to ABC, the former speaker of the House has firmly established himself as the leading anti-Romney candidate.

Erstwhile frontrunner and shoo-in for the candidacy Mitt Romney has been dogged by one controversy after another, from having to defend his time at Bain Capital to accusations of dragging his feet over releasing his tax returns. Most importantly, many evangelical voters simply do not trust a Mormon with a moderate record as governor of Massachusetts when he says he would be faithful to their conservative agenda as president.

The only problem: If the evangelicals get their way and nominate Gingrich, they might be committing electoral suicide.

Keep the popcorn ready, folks. This will be fun to watch.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

2012-01-23T00:26:00.000-05:00

Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le

Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi

Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok

Source

Simplified Chinese: 恭喜发财新年快乐

Traditional Chinese: 恭喜發財新年快樂

Source

Above originally posted in my LiveJournal two years ago.

Three stories about Detroit in the New York Times

2012-01-22T22:11:00.002-05:00

No time for an essay tonight, so here are some links and excerpts.

Dismantling Detroit

We chose to focus our cameras on Detroit out of a gut feeling that this city — often heralded as the birthplace of the middle class — may well be a harbinger of things to come for the rest of the country.

One of the things I've been saying on this blog is that the solutions devised here will be exported to the rest of the continent, so it's important that we encourage the good solutions and stop the bad ones.

When the Lights Go Down in the City

BACK when I was growing up in Detroit, a bumper sticker appeared that read, “Will the last person out of Michigan please turn out the lights?”

It was supposed to be a joke.

Now they are turning out the lights. Cash-strapped Highland Park, Mich., has not only darkened two-thirds of its streetlamps, but removed them. Detroit is teetering on the brink of financial takeover by the state. Mayor Dave Bing plans to raze 10,000 empty structures; he also intends to provide full city services only to the more viable neighborhoods. This makes sense when you consider that Detroit has lost a quarter of its population in just the last decade, and around a million inhabitants in my lifetime.
...
Detroit’s troubles are self-evident. What’s harder to understand is what Detroit looks like to its citizens and the members, like myself, of the Detroit diaspora. For us, the city is not a symbol of despair or decay, but a source, believe it or not, of hope.

I also keep saying that exciting things are happening here, and I would miss them for the world.

Now, some good news from Detroit.

G.M. Regains the Top Spot in Global Automaking

DETROIT — After three years of settling for second place, General Motors reclaimed its title as the world’s largest automaker in 2011, a year when its sales grew in every region of the globe while Toyota sales were hampered by major natural disasters.

G.M. said Thursday that it sold 9,025,942 vehicles last year, 7.6 percent more than in 2010. Its closest competitor was Volkswagen, whose sales grew 14 percent to 8.156 million, with Toyota falling to third place.

Toyota has not released final sales results for the year but last month it estimated that sales totaled 7.9 million vehicles, a 6 percent drop.

As I've been posting over at Clusterfuck Nation lately, Happy Motoring--for now--from Detroit!

Two pictures worth 1000 words about last year's weather

2012-01-21T14:16:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's post, I linked to 2 more billion-dollar disasters added to 'extreme' 2011 at MSNBC. That article had two images that illustrated the points nicely.

First, a map showing the record 14 weather-related disasters that resulted in more than a billion dollars in losses and damages during 2011.

One of the two disasters added was Tropical Storm Lee, which I blogged about at least four times. I expect the damage described in those entries was included in the estimate.

The second is a map of all the localities that had annual records for precipitation, drought, heat, and cold last year.

Looks like Michigan and Ohio weren't alone in setting precipitation records last year. Localities in a swath from Arkansas to Vermont and Massachusetts set precipitation records. Nearly all of those weather stations were in areas hit by either Hurricane Irene or Tropical Storm Lee, and some were hit by both.

I know weather isn't climate, but with 2011 tying for the ninth warmest year on record, one has to wonder.

First major snowfall and it's already late January

2012-01-20T13:25:00.000-05:00

The first major snowfall of the winter is coming today. As the Detroit Free Press reports: Snow expected across metro Detroit as deep freeze blankets area. The odd part is that this didn't happen until a full month after the official start of winter. It's been a very mild winter so far, which is exactly what one would expect if the planet is warming, along with 2011 being the ninth warmest year on record (so far), having a record 14 billion dollar disasters, and record precipitation in Detroit and other Michigan and Ohio cities. Still, a couple of months that I didn't have to shovel snow or drive on slick roads makes for a small silver lining in the cloud of climate change.

In honor of the event, I present two videos about winter in Michigan. First, the fantasy.

Now, the reality.

Welcome to Michigan. If you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes. It will change.

Jeff Wattrick has the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on the Troy Transit center

2012-01-19T10:25:00.000-05:00

In New beginnings for two Metro Detroit transit projects, I made this prediction about the Troy Transit Center:

[I]t seems that it might pass by one vote. That would be enough.

Sure enough, that happened, as Jeff Wattrick of MLive reported.

Troy City Council passes revised transit center plan by 4-3 vote

Sure enough, the revised plan passed by one vote. The deciding vote both times was Council member Fleming, who voted against the original $8 million plan but voted for the revised $6 million version. As for the operating costs, Wattrick reported that the Chamber of Commerce will put together a plan to cover the station's $31,000 annual operating costs.

As for the bad, Troy City Council may increase transit center's operating cost per square foot to symbolically 'cut' federal spending. That occurred, in part, because the geothermal heating plant originally proposed for the site was replaced by a standard gas furnace. I really don't like this decision, and I'll probably have more to say about it later.

Finally, the ugly. Democracy's Earthy Aromas: Troy transit vote sparks colorful council public comment session. Wattrick had the following to say about the aftermath.

Troy's City Council approved the transit center plan Tuesday night. Public comment immediately following that vote, and boy howdy, you simply cannot beat municipal government public comment sessions for cheap thrills and unintentional comedy.

Quite naturally, I had the old digital recorder rolling to preserve in magical ones and zeros every explanation of how public transit was a Chinese plot to take our jobs, a UN Project 21 conspiracy to destroy America’s sovereignty, and the machinations of a shadowy cabal led by Rip Rapson, the dark overlord of the Kresge Foundation. All those things were said, but last night's public comment was so fantastic, none of them made the greatest hits album.

I highly recommend you read this article. It's local political comedy at its best.

Stop SOPA blackout

2012-01-18T00:01:00.001-05:00

Two videos today, the first silly and the second serious. As one might expect, the silly one is from Next Media Animation.

To protest SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing and other sites are shutting down for a day on January 18th. The blackout seeks to educate the public about SOPA, which opponents say will "break the internet."

As hard as it is to go a whole day without Reddit or the cute animals of the Cheezeburger network, the site participating in the blackout with the biggest impact is likely to be Wikipedia. Tens of millions of people around the world check Wikipedia daily for fast information for free. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales warned students with a tweet: "Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday! #sopa."

As the backlash against SOPA continues, Congress actually announced that the bill will be shelved. However, activists are adamant that the blackout will go ahead, in case SOPA makes a comeback, either on its own, or as PIPA, or the Protect IP Act.

Now the serious one, which is from Russia Today.

The world's most popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is going on strike on Wednesday. The "knowledge blackout" is aimed at protecting the Internet - and the website's very existence -- from online censorship.
The Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia foundation decided on a global blackout of the English version of the website for 24 hours starting at 05:00 UTC on January 18.

For more, read SOPA opponents gaining momentum; Wikipedia, Google join protest on MSNBC and Wikipedia to go dark Wednesday on Daily Kos. To sign a petition, there's one at Progressive Change Campaign Committee. I'm staying off this blog for the rest of the day. In fact, I'm not really on the blog today, as I programmed this post in advance the night before. If you're wondering what I'll be doing instead, check out the macro below.

May the 404ce be with you!

Tom Tomorrow thinks Romney is a robot, too

2012-01-17T00:01:00.002-05:00

The day after the Iowa caucuses, I snarked:

Romney is a corporate robot who will do whatever his programmers tell him to do.

Not even two weeks later, Tom Tomorrow has picked up that idea and run with it, explaining Romney's flip-flopping in the process.

Full-sized version at Daily Kos.

Whatever cartoon! Gingrich will do, it won't be any stranger than what actually happened in the real Gingrich's name.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to play SW:TOR with my wife.

When Mitt Romney came to town, he exposed the GOP's disrespect for its own ideas

2012-01-16T00:09:00.000-05:00

Late last week, I wrote, "I'll have lots more to say about this video and the reaction to it later." After elaborating on my prior post, it's time to follow through.

P. T. Barnum is supposed to have said, "all publicity is good publicity." I'm not sure that Mitt Romney will agree with the man who also said, "a sucker is born every minute," something Romney and a lot of the other Republican candidates are banking on. Right now, Willard M. Romney is getting a lot of bad publicity, which is summed up in the half-hour-long attack ad presented as a muckracking documentary I posted in the first installment of this series. The blurb accompanying this video minces no words about what it sees as Willard's legacy and why he's bad for business, in more ways than one.

Mitt Romney was not a capitalist during his reign at Bain. He was a predatory corporate raider. His firm didn't seek to create value. Instead, like a scavenger, Romney looked for businesses he could pick apart. Indeed, he represented the worst possible kind of predator, operating within the law but well outside the bounds of what most real capitalists consider ethical.

He is exhibit number one the left wants to use in the coming election to give capitalism a bad name.

In other words, Willard is a liability, not an asset. While he might be "most electable," if his opponents want to score points based on economic philosophy, he's also the most vulnerable.

The blurb continues.

He and his friends at Bain were bad guys. Any real capitalists should disavow Romney's 'creative destruction' model that made him wealthy at the expense of thousands of American jobs.

Mitt Romney and his cronies pioneered 'deindustrialization,' a process by which they searched out vulnerable companies, took them over, loaded them with debt, and collected obscene fees while doing so. He sent jobs overseas or killed them altogether, and then picked apart the remains - including pension funds - before the companies went bankrupt.
...
If you wonder why America has lost so many manufacturing jobs overseas, look no further than Mitt Romney -- the King of Bain.

Willard, John Galt hates you. So, apparently, do a lot of other people who've seen this video and are commenting on both it and the reaction to it. One of them is Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs.

Video: When Mitt Romney Came To Town

Here’s Newt Gingrich’s bizarre 28-minute video attack on Mitt Romney; bizarre not because of the subject matter (which is pretty devastating to Romney), but because of the political orientation. Gingrich is coming at Romney from a position that can only be described as “left wing” — criticizing Romney for precisely the Republican values that Newt (and every other candidate) espouses.

I don’t think I’ve seen a better demonstration of an absolutely amoral lust for power — from Gingrich and from Romney. With this video, Gingrich is throwing the entire GOP ideology under the bus.

Nate Silver also remarked about how left-sounding the video was in Intraparty Attacks Could Be November Liability for Romney.

Ads like “When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” the 28-minute commercial put out by a “super PAC” that backs Newt Gingrich, adopt what appears to be a documentary style, but they present a one-sided view of the role played by private equity companies like Bain Capital, characterizing them as greedy and as lining the pockets of the wealthy at the expense of the working class. Were it not for the couple of clips of Mr. Romney speaking French, one would be shocked to learn that the ads had been produced by Republicans, rather than by a liberal filmmaker.

Color me cynical, but I find both Johnson's and Silver's astonishment at the ideological inconsistency of the attack overblown, if for no other reason than I don't think the current incarnation of the Republican Party has enough respect for its own ideas to really have a consistent ideology. If they did, they would do what David Frum did on Real Time last Friday--point out that their ideas were right all along and praise Obama for following them. Watch the video and pay attention to Frum from 6:50 to 7:30.

Frum actually has some respect for the ideas he advocates, so he's pleased when someone, even the opposition, impliments them. I guess that's why he's a pariah in the GOP these days.

As for what the Republicans do instead, I'll let Paul Krugman describe how Romney has spun his reaction to the auto company bailout.

So can Romney claim that he was for this successful policy all along? No, he can’t — because when the actual policy was proposed, he trashed it:
What is proposed is even worse than bankruptcy–it would make GM the living dead.
So what the story of Romney and the auto bailout actually shows is something we already knew from health care: he’s a smart guy who is also a moral coward. His original proposal for the auto industry, like his health reform, bore considerable resemblance to what Obama actually did. But when the deed took place, Romney — rather than having the courage to say that the president was actually doing something reasonable — joined the rest of his party in whining and denouncing the plan.

And now he wants to claim credit for the very policy he trashed when it hung in the balance.

Mitt Romney is still a flip-flopper--but that's not the important point here. Instead, it's what Johnson wrote. This isn't about ideology. It's about power, and Newt is doing his damnedest to gain power. To Hell with ideology--and in that regard, he and Romney are being typical Republicans.

I'll have more on this subject later. It's time to play Star Wars: The Old Republic with my wife. See you!

Next Media Animation on the Hostess Cakes bankruptcy

2012-01-15T08:01:00.001-05:00

I'll have more on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital and their business practices later. Tonight it's time to watch Next Media Animation's No more Twinkies? Hostess cakes declares bankruptcy.

Is this the end of Twinkies? Hostess Cakes, the maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Wonderbread, is declaring bankruptcy.

The Twinkie has been a favorite snack since it was invented in the 30s. Its purported shelf life is legendary. Some believe that Twinkies never go bad. Hostess Cakes says this is not so and that Twinkies should only sit on the shelf for a couple of weeks.

Hostess Cakes says the rising cost of flour and heavy pension obligations did it in. But some believe Hostess is declaring bankruptcy to wiggle out of pension fund obligations.

Number one on the list of people who think it was about the pensions is the author of Hostess Brands Goes Bankrupt (Again), Stiffs Workers For a Billion on Daily Kos. I suggest you read it for more detail on the history of the company. As for Twinkies and the rest of the baked goods put out by Hostess Cakes going away, advocates of healthy eating could only wish.

The New York Times on Bain Capital and KB Toys

2012-01-14T15:29:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's post, I quoted a passage from Wikipedia's entry for KB Toys. On closer examination, that passage doesn't conform to Wikipedia's standards for citation style, so it's likely to be edited. The facts contained in it, however, are just fine, and they link to the following New York Times article.

Buyout Profits Keep Flowing to Romney

Here's the relevant section about KB Toys.

One lucrative deal for Bain involved KB Toys, a company based in Pittsfield, Mass., which one of the firm’s partnerships bought in 2000. Three years later, when Mr. Romney was the governor of Massachusetts, the company began closing stores and laying off thousands of employees.
...
While Bain’s deals typically yielded enormous profits for its investors and partners, several have led to serious financial problems — and sizable layoffs — at companies it acquired.

The 2000 purchase of KB Toys, then one of the country’s largest toy retailers, became one of the most contentious.

As in most Bain deals, the partnership put up a small fraction of the money — in this case $18 million — and borrowed the rest of the $302 million purchase price. Just 16 months later, the toy company borrowed more to pay Bain and its investors an $85 million dividend.

That gave Mr. Romney and the other partners a quick 370 percent return on their money. But it also left the toy company with a heavy debt burden. Before long, the company began closing stores around the country and laid off 3,400 workers. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004.

Also, that first bankruptcy didn't kill off KB Toys. The second one did. From Wikipedia.

K·B closed 156 stores on November 8, 2007. The Gordon Brothers Group[3] handled the liquidation of these stores. On February 9, 2009, K·B closed the remaining stores following the second bankruptcy filing in four years. In addition, K·B Toys' website was closed down.

The K·B Toys brand and related intangible assets were sold by Streambank LLC to Toys R Us on September 4, 2009 for a reported $2.1 Million. Because K·B Toys' 460 stores had been closed and liquidated, the sale applies mainly to the company's logo, website, and trademarks/intellectual properties. Toys R Us remains unsure of how the K·B name will fit into its future business plan.[2] So far, Toys R Us uses the K·B Toys brand in self-manufactured toys, under the name "KB Classics" with the K·B Toys logo.

None of that prevents me from thinking of Willard as the rat whose company killed off my kids' toy store, as the Ann Arbor location was gone by 2004.

When Mitt Romney came to town, KB Toys closed

2012-01-13T18:57:00.000-05:00

The following half-hour-long attack ad presented as a muckracking documentary was released earlier this week by Winning Our Future, the Super PAC associated with Newt Gingrich.

I'll have lots more to say about this video and the reaction to it later. Right now, I'll just share my personal connection to the events protrayed in it.

The video briefly describes the role that Bain Capital had in the demise of KB Toys, where I shopped for my kids' toys all during the 90s. Later, a friend of mine worked there and lost her job about the time the chain first went bankrupt. Here's the relevant section from the chain's Wikipedia entry.

KB Toys was purchased and taken private in 2000 by the leveraged buyout firm of Bain Capital for $305 million, Bain announced the purchase on Dec. 8th, 2000. Only $18 million of the purchase money was cash, the rest was borrowed against the assets of the company. Sixteen months after the buyout, Bain Capital paid itself $85 million in dividends in early 2002. Two years later, due to increasing competition from national discount chains such as Wal-Mart and Target and its enormous debt, on January 14, 2004, K·B Toys filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and closed 365 stores.

I'd been wondering for years how such a successful and popular enterprise could have declined and disappeared so quickly. Thanks to this video, now I have an answer. Thanks a lot, Willard M. Romney. Your first name is truth in advertising. You are a rat.

More politicians visit NAIAS plus a cameo by Bill Ford, Jr.

2012-01-13T16:59:00.003-05:00

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Governor Rick Snyder weren't the only politicians to show up during the Press Preview at the auto show. The same day Governor Snyder showed up, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Commerce Secretary John Bryson, and, of course, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing all toured the show. In the category of "one of these things is not like the others," Ford Chairman Bill Ford, Jr., was also interviewed making important points about how changes in the auto industry have managed to diversify the economy. Energy storage (advanced batteries for electric cars) was not a major factor in Michigan and the U.S. 10 years ago. It is now.

WXYZ has the report.

As the saying goes, success has a hundred fathers, while failure is an orphan. Looking at how many important people want to be associated with the auto show, both the event and by extension the automotive industry look to be successes. Based on the good automotive news that began 2012, I can't say that I blame them.

Governor Snyder interviewed at NAIAS

2012-01-12T10:10:00.001-05:00

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was not the only important political figure to visit the auto show. Governor Rick Snyder also attended and was interviewed by WXYZ-TV.

Governor Rick Snyder speaks with Action News Anchor Stephen Clark at the North American International Auto Show.

Snyder talks a good game, but if he's so interested in doing what is good for business, including attracting the best talent, then why did he sign a bill that discriminated against LGBT partners of public-sector worker, which resulted in his getting sued? Not everything that the "pro-business party" does is good for business.

On another note, he sounds like he wants to cooperate with Mayor Bing regarding Detroit's financial situation, although he's being coy about something he should be claiming as a great success, the unexpected surplus in the state's budget. It's almost as if he's not happy about losing an excuse for austerity.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visits NAIAS

2012-01-11T23:11:00.008-05:00

From WXYZ-TV on YouTube comes this auspicious beginning to the North American International Auto Show.

Anchor Vic Faust speak[s] with United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood at the auto show in Detroit.

Not only is Secretary LaHood talking about the auto industry and the show itself, but also about the revival of light rail in Detroit. He sounds cautiously optimistic while he praises Mayor Bing and Governor Snyder. I hope he's right.

Auto sales as economic stimulus

2012-01-10T00:01:00.006-05:00

In my previous entry, I quoted Calculated Risk on how auto sales will have contributed to GDP when it is computed and released later this year.

Growth in auto sales should make a strong positive contribution to Q4 GDP. Sales in Q3 averaged 12.45 million SAAR, and sales averaged 13.46 million SAAR in Q4, an increase of 8.1% over Q3.

I also made the following promise.

Stay tuned for more news about the NAIAS and a digression about the importance of auto sales as part of increasing demand in an economy.

It's time to follow through by expanding on the second point by demonstrating how important consumer spending in general and auto sales in particular are to GDP, as well as make a point about how necessary demand is to keeping the economy as it is currently structured afloat.

Here is Calculated Risk's latest line graph of U.S. auto sales showing their relationship to recessions for the past 45 years. Note that auto sales declined both before and during each recession, although some of the declines during recessions have been more marked than others, as some of the milder recessions, along with those that began with already depressed sales display more stagnation than decline. Also note that auto sales rose coming out of every recession, sometimes even during its late phases.

Did you see the two sharp spikes at the ends of the past two recessions? Those are the results of government intervention to stimulate the economy, although of very different sorts, both consistent with the philosophies of the parties in power at the time. The first one occurred when George W. Bush told everyone, in so many words, to keep shopping.

Now, the American people have got to go about their business. We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't -- where we don't conduct business, where people don't shop.

By memetic mutation, this became "go shopping or the terrorists win." Even if Bush didn't say exactly those words, people responded. Just look at the graph of real retail sales below.

Look at the big spike right at the end of the 2001 recession. People responded to their president's suggestion by whipping out their credit cards and spending. Within a month or two, the recession was over. Honestly, it was exactly what a party with a free enterprise philosophy should advocate, and it worked. It also showed that Bush was far more afraid of a recession deepening than he was letting on at the time.

By 2009, just about everyone's credit card was tapped out, so that strategy wouldn't work. However, the government sill had credit and other incentives available, and the party in power believed in goverment intervention. So instead of just urging people to spend, it instituted Cash for Clunkers. That worked, not only in stimulating car sales, but increasing real retail sales as a whole. That it also removed a bunch of gas guzzlers from the roads was a bonus. Both instances show that increasing demand works. Keynes was right. So, no, Ron Paul, we're not all Austrians now.

Good automotive news to begin 2012

2012-01-09T08:01:00.012-05:00

The local news about cars will be dominated for the next two weeks by the North American International Auto Show, which begins today with the Press Preview, but other things worth paying attention to happened this past week. To view and hear them before they get buried in all the auto show coverage, click "Read more."

First, U.S. light vehicles sales were announced. Calculated Risk has the story.

U.S. Light Vehicle Sales at 13.56 million SAAR in December

Based on an estimate from Autodata Corp, light vehicle sales were at a 13.56 million SAAR in December. That is up 8.9% from December 2010, and down 0.3% from the sales rate last month (13.60 million SAAR in Nov 2011).

This was at the consensus forecast of 13.6 million SAAR.
...
The annualized sales rate was essentially unchanged from November, and the last two months were the strongest since June 2008 excluding cash-for-clunkers.
...
Growth in auto sales should make a strong positive contribution to Q4 GDP. Sales in Q3 averaged 12.45 million SAAR, and sales averaged 13.46 million SAAR in Q4, an increase of 8.1% over Q3.

In the spirit of a picture being worth 1000 words, here are the appropriate graphs from Calculated Risk. First, the monthly bar graph of sales for the past six years.

Yes, sales were flat from November to December, but they are exactly as described--the two strongest since Cash for Clunkers in 2009 and August 2008 before that. Also, the fourth quarter of 2011 was the best since the second quarter of 2008. As far as U.S. auto sales are concerned, not only has the situation recovered from the combination of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami along with the spike in oil prices resulting from the Arab Spring, but it's the best it's been since I wrote it's time to party like it's 1929 on my LiveJournal back in September 2008.

Burrowing down into the numbers shows that, while auto sales didn't improve month over month, it was overall a very good year for U.S. auto makers, as the Big Three regained the largest market share in the U.S. market. From Investors Business Daily.

The Big Three U.S. automakers bettered their share of U.S. auto sales to 49.3% in December, up more than two percentage points from a year ago and turning the tables to top Asian makers' 46.3% share, which was down from 49%. In December, Chrysler's market share rose from 19.5% of the domestic makers' sales a year ago to 23.8% as 2012 models of its flagship 300 sedan and midsize 200 proved popular. GM still leads with 40.5%, followed by Ford with 35.6%, according to WardsAuto.

WXYZ-TV on YouTube has even more details.

There was even more good news for GM and Chrysler. For GM, it seems that issues with the Volt's battery may be resolved. Again, WXYZ-TV on YouTube reports.

Finally, good news for Chrysler will become good news for auto workers in Detroit.

Chrysler says they will be bringing more jobs to Chrysler's Jefferson North Assembly plant.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for more news about the NAIAS and a digression about the importance of auto sales as part of increasing demand in an economy.

The Wolf Moon, the first full moon of 2012, is tonight

2012-01-08T19:16:00.000-05:00

The first full moon of 2012 will be tonight, the first of 13 full moons this year. Each of these moons has a name (and one of them has two names), as Space.com (via MSNBC) explains.*

How 2012's full moons got their strange names
Origins credited to Native Americans and early European settlers
By Joe Rao
updated 1/7/2012 3:07:59 PM ET

The start of 2012 brings with it a new year of skywatching, and lunar enthusiasts are gearing up for a stunning lineup of full moons. But, where does the tradition of full moon names come from?

Full moon names date back to Native Americans of a few hundred years ago, of what is now the northern and eastern United States. To keep track of the changing seasons, these tribes gave distinctive names to each recurring full moon. Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred.

There were some variations in the moon names, but in general, the same ones were used throughout the Algonquin tribes from New England, continuing west to Lake Superior.

European settlers followed their own customs and created some of their own names. Here is a list of all of the full moon names, as well as the dates and times for 2012: (Unless otherwise noted, all times are given in Eastern Standard Time.)

Tonight's full moon is the Full Wolf Moon which will reach maximum on January 9th (technically tomorrow) at 2:30 a.m. EST. The association of wolf with a full moon has cross-cultural connotations, particularly with superstitions about what else happens involving wolves, people, and full moons. Everyone, enjoy the light show and sing along with Warren Zevon. A-hoo!

Now that the show is over, click on "Read more" for the rest of the full moon names, along with important astronomical events associated with some of them.

Feb. 7, 4:54 p.m. EST — Full Snow Moon...to some tribes, this was the Full Hunger Moon.
...
March 8, 4:39 a.m. EST — Full Worm Moon...The more northern tribes called this the Full Crow Moon...the Full Crust Moon...or The Full Sap Moon.
...
April 6, 10:21 a.m. EDT — Full Pink Moon...Other names for this month's moon were the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and — among coastal tribes — the Full Fish Moon...This is also the Paschal Full Moon...The first Sunday following the Paschal Moon is Easter Sunday, which indeed will be observed two days later on Sunday, April 8.

May 5, 11:35 p.m. EDT — Full Flower Moon...also known as the Full Corn Planting Moon or the Milk Moon. The moon will also be at perigee just 25 minutes after turning full, at 12:00 a.m. EDT on May 6, at a distance of 221,801 miles from Earth. Very high ocean tides can be expected from the coincidence of perigee with the full moon.

June 4, 7:12 a.m. EDT — Full Strawberry Moon...Europeans called it the Rose Moon. A partial eclipse of the moon will be visible chiefly favoring those living around the Pacific Rim. Observers in Japan and Australia for instance, can see it at, or soon after, moonrise, while those in the western United States and western Canada see it at, or just before, moonset. At maximum, about 37 percent of the moon’s diameter will be immersed in the dark umbra shadow of the Earth.

July 3, 2:52 p.m. EDT — Full Buck Moon...also often called the Full Thunder Moon...[or] the Full Hay Moon. Since the moon arrives at apogee less than 13 hours later, this will also be smallest full moon of 2012. In terms of apparent size, it will appear 12 percent smaller than the full moon of Jan. 10.

Aug. 1, 11:27 p.m. EDT — Full Sturgeon Moon...A few tribes knew this moon as the Full Red Moon...(in 2012, "The Old Farmer’s Almanac" gives this moniker to the full moon of Aug. 31). Other variations include the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.

Aug. 31, 9:58 a.m. EDT — Full Corn Moon...This is the second time the moon turns full in a calendar month, so it is also popularly known as a "Blue Moon."
...
Sept. 29, 11:19 p.m. EDT — Full Harvest Moon...also called the Fruit Moon.
...
Oct. 29, 3:49 a.m. EDT — Full Hunter’s Moon.
...
Nov. 28, 9:46 a.m. EST — Full Beaver Moon...also called the Frosty Moon. Since the moon arrives at apogee less than six hours later, this will also be the smallest full moon of 2012. In terms of apparent size, it will appear 12 percent smaller than the full moon of May 5. There is also a penumbral lunar eclipse with this full moon; observers in the western parts of the U.S. and Canada might notice the upper part of the moon appearing slightly darker as 92 percent of the moon’s diameter becomes immersed in the fainter penumbral shadow of Earth. .

Dec. 28, 5:21 a.m. EST — Full Cold Moon...also called the Full Long Night Moon.

*This article is among those I excerpted for last night's Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (100 Year Starship edition) on Daily Kos. The headline article of that diary entry is one that also deserves a "Beginnings" entry of its own, especially given the science fiction slant of this blog. Like Anonymous, expect it.

New beginnings for two Metro Detroit transit projects

2012-01-07T15:02:00.000-05:00

This morning, the Detroit newspapers had good news about two transit projects, Detroit light rail and the Troy transit center, that had been left for dead. It looks like both might happen anyway.

First, the news about light rail in Detroit from the Detroit Free Press.

Detroit light rail revived, but with shorter route

Gov. Rick Snyder and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing insisted Friday that a light-rail line for Detroit is still possible, backtracking on their decision last month to pull passenger trains out of the mix of modernized transit options for the city.

Snyder and Bing said they're supporting a plan for a shorter rail line from downtown to New Center that would be built as part of an upgraded system of rapid-transit buses crisscrossing the city and suburbs.

"We see light rail as a part of regional transportation, so light rail is not dead," Bing said at a news conference at his office with Snyder and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "It's back on the table."
...
The mayor and governor said a less-ambitious rail system, about 3.4 miles long, could still be built, largely with private funding through the M-1 Rail group of investors.

In order to secure federal funding, the group was given 90 days to produce a study showing it could make the line work.

So it's not a definite yes, but the project has the status of "not dead yet." That's cause for hope.

Next, the Detroit News reports that a Revised Troy transit center plan up for vote.

The City Council on Monday is expected to vote on a scaled-back proposal for the Troy Transit Center weeks after the panel failed to award a contract to begin the federally funded project.

The resolution released late Friday reduces expenditures by about $2 million and was proposed by Councilman Dane Slater. "The integrity of the project is still there," said Slater, adding the new plan is based on a smaller facility with fewer features.

"It's my hope that through these concessions we can get a majority vote on this project and move it forward."

The way this article is written, it seems that it might pass by one vote. That would be enough.

Governor Snyder sued twice this week

2012-01-06T03:48:00.001-05:00

That's right, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder got sued twice this week and the suits were filed on successive days, Wednesday and Thursday. Both suits allege that legislation Snyder signed violated the constitutions of both Michigan and the United States.

The Oakland Press has the report on the suit filed Wednesday.

Democrat follows through on lawsuit against new county commission law

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday against Gov. Rick Snyder for signing a controversial redistricting bill into law during the holidays that affects only Oakland County.
...
The legislation Snyder signed reduces the number of county commissioners from 25 to 21 in Oakland County, the only county that has more than 21, and allows the county commission to draw new district boundaries in advance of this year's election in November.

At issue is Article IV, Section 29 of the Michigan Constitution.

The legislature shall pass no local or special act in any case where a general act can be made applicable, and whether a general act can be made applicable shall be a judicial question. No local or special act shall take effect until approved by two-thirds of the members elected to and serving in each house and by a majority of the electors voting thereon in the district affected. Any act repealing local or special acts shall require only a majority of the members elected to and serving in each house and shall not require submission to the electors of such district.

None of the actions in the bolded section occurred. If nothing else, this act has not be placed before the voters of Oakland County.

The suit not only alleges that the law violates the state constitution, it also violates state law and the U.S. Constitution, as it fails to:

Appropriate funds for the Oakland County Board of Commissioners to engage in this new activity as required by law;
Allow for the statutory judicial review of the Board of Commissioners new apportionment plan as prescribed by state statutes; and
Allow Oakland County citizens the certainty and time to prepare for and become candidates as outlined by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Also, it's not like there isn't a perfectly good redistricting plan around. A panel consisting of three county elected officials and the heads of the county's Democratic and Republican parties devised one that survived a court challenge by the local Republican Party. This plan is an attempt to prevent its implementation and preserve the power of the local Republican Party on the County Commission. As Oakland County Democratic Party Chair Frank Houston said.

“Gov. Snyder knew that the Oakland County power grab legislation he signed into law was unconstitutional, in conflict with several other state laws and nothing more than a political favor for Brooks Patterson and Oakland County Republicans. This is why redistricting laws and court decisions shouldn't be changed through back room conversations by Republican Party leaders without public input or review.”

For Thursday's suit, I'll let the Detroit Free Press have its turn.

ACLU sues Snyder, state of Michigan over loss of same-sex-partner health benefits

The ACLU of Michigan sued the state and Gov. Rick Snyder in federal court today to try to overturn a state law that prohibits certain public employers from providing health insurance and other benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

“This law was designed with one purpose in mind and that was to strip away health insurance coverage from same-sex couples,” ACLU Legal Director Michael Steinberg said at a news conference in Detroit after the suit was filed.

He called the law “cruel and shameful” and said Snyder signed it Dec. 22 despite his stated goals of attracting the best and brightest workers to Michigan.

There was no immediate comment from the governor’s office.

The law will strip away domestic partner benefits from all local government and school district employees, whether they are in same-sex or opposite-sex unions. The same-sex couples at least have the option of getting married to preserve their benefits. The same-sex couples don't. Proponents of the law have made clear that it is targeted against same-sex couples because it "is consistent with a 2004 constitutional amendment voters approved defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman."

The impact of the law could be even greater than described above, as the American Family Association of Michigan also thinks it should apply to state civil servants and to state university employees and wants the Attorney General to make a ruling about its scope. If it does, there will be even more trouble. The state universities have their own governing boards and thus have autonomy to set their own benefits. The same is true for state employees, who are governed by the Civil Service Commission. The universities, at least, are protected by the state constitution, but as we saw with the first suit, that didn't impede the Republicans in the state legislature one bit.

While Snyder didn't write these laws, he could have saved himself the suits by vetoing the bills and sending them back to the legislature. Instead, he signed both of them. Now he has the beginnings of not one, but two, big legal fights on his hands that will cost the state more money than the measures would save. Good going, Nerd.

WXYZ begins its North American International Auto Show coverage

2012-01-05T06:12:00.000-05:00

While the automotive highlight of the year for amateurs is probably the Woodward Dream Cruise, the automotive event of the year for professionals is the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), which also serves as the kickoff of the year for car enthusiasts of all kinds here. It's such a big event that hotels and motels are booked up for miles around, as I found out back in 2000 when I tried to book a room in Livonia--but that's a story for another post.

Like the Dream Cruise, the NAIAS attracts a lot of local coverage, in particular from WXYZ-TV. The station has already begun. Here are the clips from yesterday.

NAIAS To Exhibit Technology For People With Disabilities

Inclusiveness is something that is good for people and for profit.

Urban Wheel awards to kick off Auto Show

John Quinones should bring his 57 Chevy from San Antonio to the Dream Cruise. He and his car would be a big hit and he'd probably love the event.

Auto show behind the scenes

I'm glad to post such good news about a Detroit event that is so important for the local economy.

Expect a lot more coverage of this event between now and the 20th.

Last night was the beginning of the primary/caucus season for 2012

2012-01-04T19:46:00.000-05:00

It was also the beginning of the end for some of the candidates, too.

WXYZ-TV on YouTube reposted the summary of last night's events from ABC News.

WOOD-TV on YouTube has the details on what Iowa's caucus results mean for the rest of the campaign, including here in Michigan.

Good riddance to Michele Bachmann! In fact, I don't have kind words to say about any of the candidates who actively campaigned in Iowa. Here's what I wrote about the field on Kunstler's blog Monday and reposted on Is this it?, the only other politics blog on the January 2011 Nablopomo blogroll.*

The Republican candidates are a bunch of clowns. Rick Perry is so dumb, a zombie was walking down the street in Des Moines the other day, saw Governor Goodhair, and turned away to look elsewhere for brains. Newt Gingrich doesn't even have the organization to get his name on the ballot in the state where he now lives, Virginia. Bachmann is exactly the kind of maniac that would promise cheap gas to keep suburbia alive. Ron Paul is stopped clock who is right twice a day, namely at 4:20. Rick Santorum is famous because his surname is a synonym for froth. Romney is a corporate robot who will do whatever his programmers tell him to do. Poor Huntsman had to sign on to climate denial in order to stay viable. Finally, when I tell people about Buddy Roemer, who has the closest thing to James's "My Tea Party" platform, the response is "who?"

Other than Huntsman and Roemer, neither of whom competed in Iowa, these candidates make me glad that I haven't been a Republican or conservative since 2000.

*It's only the 4th, and I'm already the only politics blogger actively participating in Nablopomo. Is this it? gave up after only two days. Too bad. She showed promise. Instead, I'll be reading The Crunchy Wife, who is very much about sustainability on the personal level.

2012: The Mayan Apocalypse? Yeah, right

2012-01-03T13:49:00.000-05:00

Last May, I concluded my first post on the end of the world with the following prediction.

This post takes care of your daily dose of DOOM! Expect repeats at irregular intervals at least until December 21, 2012.

It's that time again.

James Howard Kunstler began his first post of the new year with a tip of his writer's cap at the Doomsday du jour.

There's a lot to be nervous about, even if you don't subscribe to the undercooked Mayan apocalypse lore moving through the gut of the Internet like a Staphylococcus-infected tamale.

Count me out as one of those people who thinks there is anything either supernatural or cosmological coming to end the world as we know it by this year's Winter Solstice. I still hold to what I wrote last May and repeated in October.

No supernatural causes will be needed to bring about the collapse of civilization; the interaction of human behavior with limited resources can do that all by themselves. That end will be completely natural, not supernatural.

The flip side is that anything that could also postpone or even prevent that collapse will also be the result of exploiting human psychology and the available resources. It may look like a miracle, but it will be completely natural as well.

That written, I would be remiss if I didn't at least acknowledge the non-event on a blog that began as an examination of the collapse of civilization and evolved into an examination of sustainability from a science-fiction perspective.

Join me below the fold for the news stories about 2012 that I posted on Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Farewell to 2011 edition) over at Daily Kos.

MSNBC: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/28/9779631-its-boom-time-for-weird-science
By Alan Boyle

Even with the supposed Mayan doomsday coming up, it's going to be hard for 2012 to match 2011 when it comes to weird science: What other year can boast a bird-killing "aflockalypse," a chupacabra prowling around the nation's capital, two Loch Ness-type monster sightings and two doomsday predictions. (News flash: The predictions were wrong.)

That's why the Weird Science Awards exist: To pay tribute to the strange but scientific (or pseudo-scientific) tales of each year. This year's winners of the fifth annual Weirdies will take their place alongside glow-in-the-dark cats and dogs, reattached rabbit penises, the 2,700-year-old marijuana stash and the Stone Age sex toy as talismans of this wacky age.

We're offering 30 nominees from the past year, and it's up to you to pick the top 10 award-winners. One of the nominees — the one about pee pressure — is a laureate from this year's Ig Nobel award ceremony, which honors "research that makes people laugh and then think." You can use that as your judging criterion, or you can go for the article that makes you laugh, and then ask, "What on earth were they thinking?"

Philadelphia Daily News: Looking ahead in 2012: The world ends - Mayan style
Mayan region starts apocalypse countdown
BY JASON NARK
Philadelphia Daily News
narkj@phillynews.com 215-854-5916

IF OCEANS boil next year and ancient gods start sucking human souls into the fiery heavens, only then will you wish you had heeded the words of former Phillies catcher Darren Daulton.

"The Mayan calendar stops at Dec. 21, 2012 - the date the Mayans believed the world would end," Dutch supposedly told Sports Illustrated in 2006. "On that day, at 11:11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, those who are ready to ascend will vanish from this plane of existence, like the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek."

McClatchy Newpapers via the Deseret News: Mayan calendar doomsayers, debunkers welcome 2012
By Helen Gray, McClatchy Newspapers
Published: Friday, Dec. 30, 2011 5:00 a.m. MST

If some interpretations of the Mayan calendar are correct, we'll all be gone next year.

While every other doomsday prediction has (obviously) come and gone, some people think that the Maya knew something others didn't and that the world will indeed come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012.

Opportunists already are trying to cash in with 2012 survival kits, T-shirts reading "Doomsday 2012" and a "Complete Idiots Guide to 2012."

A website, december212012.com, devoted to the prediction, says, "Although this date may not necessarily mark the end of the world, it is widely believed that it may indeed mark the end of the world as we know it. ... . The signs and indicators of dramatic and possibly devastating change seem to be all around us. Both ancient and modern-day observers alike have foretold the possibilities of this date, and the coming events of our solar system seem to support their theories."

The site talks about the worldwide social and political unrest, new and untreatable pandemics, unusual and unpredictable weather patterns, devastating natural disasters in unlikely places and man-made devastation leading up to this date.

As you can tell, I take both of these stories about as seriously as Next Media Animation does, in other words, not very seriously at all.

2012 New Year: A prelude to disaster?

People around the world are preparing to celebrate the 2012 New Year, but some who buy into doomsday theories based on Mayan mythology are preparing for what they believe is the beginning of the end times.

According to the Mayan Long Count calendar, December 21, 2012 signifies the end of the 13th Baktun, a unit of time measurement equal to about 394 years. What exactly the Mayans believed will happen when the rollover occurs is being debated among scholars and Internet commenters alike.

A prophesy engraved on a slab of rock at the Tortuguero archaeological site in Mexico foretells the Earthly arrival of the Mayan god Bolon Yokte, which some alarmists have linked to other, hotly contested predictions involving natural disasters and cosmic events. Detractors feel December 21 will not mean the end of time. They offer the fact that Mayans made mention of dates past the 13th Baktun as proof.

As is the case with all doomsday panics, like Y2K at the start of the 2000s and this year's more recent claims from Harold Camping, only time will tell if the year 2012 is anything to fret.

Kunstler and I take the same tack on this story; there are plenty of ways for technological civilization to end, but all of them are perfectly natural and quite human. Even so, he's taking no chances.

Good luck to you in 2012, and report any suspicious characters adorned with ear-plugs, quetzel feathers, and carrying obsidian knives to your nearest office of Homeland Security.

Occupy the Rose Parade, plus an astronaut on gardening in space

2012-01-02T08:01:00.014-05:00

While this is a Detroit-based blog (I brand it as a sustainability blog with a science-fiction slant and a Detroit perspective) and I have adopted Detroit as my home town, it's no secret to anyone who knows me that I'm originally from Los Angeles, which I left 23 years ago to move to Michigan. So, I'll occasionally stray from my Midwestern focus to look back at the places and events where I grew up. One of those is the Rose Parade, which I went to just about every year from the late 1960s (I can't even remember the first one I watched in person) until 1983. It turns out that the Rose Parade is back in the news in two ways that I can't resist blogging about.

First up, from KTLA: 'Occupy' Organizers Putting Last Touches on Rose Parade Human Float

PASADENA (KTLA) -- Bystanders hoping to catch a glimpse of the brightly decorated floats at Monday's Tournament of Roses Parade might notice something a bit unusual if they stick around to the end.

Occupy activists this weekend are putting the finishing touches on Occupy Octopus, a 70-foot squid puppet that will be paraded alongside thousands of protesters.

The so-called "Octupy Rose Parade" float is made entirely of recycled plastic bags and powered by 36 humans, with tens of people carrying the arms and a smaller group of people holding up the central body.

"We're calling it 'The People's Parade' to contrast against the corporate parade that the Rose Parade has become," an organizer said.

"It will represent Wall Street, the financial sectors [as] vampires, [with a] squidlike stranglehold," one organizer said.

If you were wondering when Matt Taibbi's "vampire squid" would make an appearance in an Occupy protest, wait no longer. It will make its debut in a few hours.

Demonstrators, flanked by a 250-foot recreation of the U.S. Constitution, will be gathering at 7 a.m. at Singer Park and are set to begin marching near the parades end at 9:30 a.m.

Those times are Pacific, thus three hours behind the time zone here in Detroit. You have time to watch the end of the parade and catch the Occupy Octopus.

The Occupiers will not disrupt the parade, as the Los Angeles Times reports.

Protesters will march the parade route after the floats and marching bands have passed. The group has been working with Pasadena police and Tournament of Roses officials on how not to disrupt the parade.

"Our goal is to put Occupy's best foot forward," Thottam said, adding that activists expect more than 1,000 participants. "We recognize that this is a historic, iconic event geared toward middle America and the family."

The group says the protest will be "G-rated" and will stick to nonviolence in expressing Occupy's messages against income inequality and corporate power.

The organizers expect there will be no trouble with police and that thousands will show up. I believe the first, but am sceptical about the second.

KTLA has two videos showing Occupy the Rose Parade's efforts as part of the preparation for the Rose Parade. Unfortunately, neither is allowing its embed code to be shared. The first one is at the L.A. Times site and the second is hosted at KTLA.

Now, something a little more conventional--an astronaut riding on a float courtesy of MSNBC.

Astronaut stops to smell the roses
By Alan Boyle

One of the last astronauts to ride on a space shuttle will be riding a totally different vehicle on Monday: a flower-bedecked float in the 2012 Rose Parade.

Say what?

The 5.5-mile journey down the parade route in Pasadena, Calif., doesn't hold a candle in distance or danger to the 5.3 million-mile journey that NASA astronaut Rex Walheim made in July during STS-135, Atlantis' program-ending mission. But it's a perfect follow-up for several reasons:
Walheim will be riding on the "Garden of Imagination" float with his brother, Lance, a horticulturist who wrote the book "Roses for Dummies." Lance is the go-to garden guy for Bayer Advanced, an arm of the chemical conglomerate that makes lawn and garden prducts.
With Lance's encouragement, Rex carried up a dried rose as one of his personal items during a 2008 mission on Atlantis. That rose was featured on Bayer Advanced's trophy-winning Rose Parade float in 2009.
This Rose Parade appearance gives Rex a chance to smell the roses, literally, after a high-pressure spaceflight. It also gives him an opportunity to reflect on how a little gardening could come in handy for future generations of space explorers.
"If you think about it, that's one of the things we need to develop on our long-term vehicles," he told me this week. "We need to have a self-supporting ecosystem, environmental control systems for recycling air and water, and you have to grow your own food. We're doing that in space. ... These skills that any astronaut has as a young child when they work in the garden and help their parents, well, those turn out to be important on the most advanced vehicles ever made, and on the most complex exploration missions."

I told you this blog was about sustainability with a science-fiction slant!

The Atlantic on Tea Partiers disrupting planning commissions because of Agenda 21

2012-01-02T00:01:00.002-05:00

I've blogged before about how Tea Partiers are fighting efforts to improve mass transit, build high-speed rail, protect endangered species, and prepare for climate change. Now, The Atlantic has an article about this topic with entirely new examples of people concerned about Agenda 21.

How the Tea Party Is Upending Urban Planning

Across the country, Tea Party activists have been storming planning meetings of all kinds, opposing various plans by local and regional government having anything to do with density, smart growth, sustainability or urbanism. In California, Tea Party activists gained enough signatures for a ballot measure repealing the state’s baseline environmental regulations, while also targeting the Senate Bill 375, the 2008 law that seeks to combat climate change by promoting density and regional planning.

Florida’s growth management legislation was recently undone, and activists in Tampa helped turn away funding for rail projects there. A planning agency in Virginia had to move to a larger auditorium and ban applause, after Tea Party activists sought to derail a five-year comprehensive plan and force withdrawal from the U.S. Mayors Agreement on Climate Change.

What’s prompting the ire is anything from a proposed master plan to a new water treatment plant, rules governing septic tanks, or a bike-sharing program. What’s driving the rebellion is a view that government should have no role in planning or shaping the built environment that in any way interferes with private property rights. And in almost all instances, the Tea Partiers link local planning efforts to the United Nations’ Agenda 21, a nearly two-decade old document that addresses sustainable development in the world’s cities – read as herding humanity into compulsory habitation zones.
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It may not be time to panic. In some cases there are very few vocal activists leading the charge, but the Tea Party has been so well publicized, and their tactics are often so sophisticated, that their powers of intimidation appear outsized. This is also in part a case of everything old being new again. Property rights activists have always been well organized, and were energized by the Kelo Supreme Court case affirming the use of eminent domain. The sprawl lobby – the fanciful label from my first book, This Land – circles the wagons for corporate home-builders, road-builders and even the lawn-care industry invested in far-flung conventional suburban development. The anti-smart growth American Dream Coalition dovetails with the Tea Party view, giving some familiar contrarian voices new visibility. Wendell Cox and Ron Utt co-authored a grave warning against “radical environmentalists,” driven by, yes, the UN’s Agenda 21, in a recent fact-contorting essay for the Heritage Foundation.
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Yet, as in national politics, the Tea Party view doesn’t leave room for compromise. Even the most open-minded and free-speech supporting planner can’t operate when the framework for the dialogue itself has been invalidated. Where does one go from there? The skirmishes at town halls around the country over the past year or so means that planners will have to try even harder to make their case. But in the mean time, the chairman of that sleepy planning board hearing might be eying the exits, looking for a black helicopter, to make a run for it.

Read the rest of the article, including the 325 comments, which the Tea Partiers are swarming.

The general outlines of this phenomenon, including the connection to the "sprawl lobby," but not all the details, such as the general anti-environmental hysteria, were forecast more than eight years ago during the filming of "End of Suburbia" by James Howard Kunstler. In Bachmann on $2 gas and Kunstler on maniac politicians, I put together quotes of his from two sources in which he outlines his prediction.

There will be a great battle to preserve the supposed entitlements to suburbia and it will be an epochal act of futility, a huge waste of effort and resources that might have been much better spent in finding new ways to carry on an American civilization.
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Americans will elect maniacs who promise to allow them to keep their McMansions and their commutes and that’s going to produce a lot of political friction, probably a lot of violence, probably a threat to our democratic institutions.

Prophetic, wasn't he?

Kunstler has since escalated his language from maniacs to "corn pone Nazis." Even he thinks the Tea Party is his prophesy come to life.

The Tea Party people are the corn-pone Nazis I have been warning you about.

There is a reason why I use the "corn pone fascists" tag for posts about the Tea Party and the politicians they support.

Nablopomo for January 2012: Beginnings

2012-01-01T08:01:00.001-05:00

From Nablopomo on BlogHer.

So what is the NaBloPoMo theme of the month?

BEGINNINGS

January 1st is a blank slate, and you can make the year anything you want it to be? Leave your job and embark on a new career. Open that blank document and start that novel you always wanted to write. Join that online dating site, signup for a new class, or close your eyes and point to a place on a globe to plan your next vacation.

Beginnings can be scary, but as the adage by Lao-tzu goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." You can take a single step, right? And after that, it's just putting foot before foot, taking your new journey slowly and letting it unfold at its own pace. Along the way, blog about your experience, not only so readers can follow along, but so that you have a record of how far you've come any time you feel yourself falter.
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So what are you beginning this year? If you can name at least five things, it means you have at least five blog posts inside of you. And if you can do five posts, you can certainly expand that and do an extra 25 or so.

I have no problem popping off a post a day, as blogging about sustainability and politics in Detroit means never running out of material, so I'm signing up again. As for what this theme inspires in me, it's music. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fire playing "Beginnings."

Of course, there's always another version of this song, so I'll give you one that is distinctly mine--a drum and bugle corps playing it. If you want to skip to the most relevant section, click here to start playing at 5:59. You can stop on your own at 8:33. Of course, I recommend watching the whole thing. 27th Lancers were always better marchers than players.

This clip is doubly appropriate for Beginnings, as this is from the very first Drum Corps International championship in August 1972, 40 years ago. Welcome to the beginning of the modern era of drum corps competition, one that I think will draw to a close by the end of the decade because of sustainability concerns. For every beginning, there is an end.