A joyous Juneteenth from Michigan!

A joyous Juneteenth to all! This year's theme is Juneteenth in Michigan and I begin with Click on Detroit/Local 4/WDIV reporting Juneteenth 2026 in Metro Detroit — what to know.

From parades and block parties to artist markets and talks, there are plenty of ways to commemorate Juneteenth across Metro Detroit this week.

Sounds like a lot of fun! WXYZ has more in Juneteenth celebration scheduled at Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park on Fri[d]ay.

The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy is celebrating Juneteenth with an event at Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park.

This entry has now earned the poem label.

Detroit isn't having all the fun in the Great Lakes State. WNEM TV5 in Saginaw, Flint, Midland and Bay City reported Juneteenth plans in Flint for 54th year.

Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley said Flint was the first city in Michigan to officially recognize Juneteenth in 2020, a year before the federal government.

I didn't know that about Flint, so I learned something new. That makes today a good day.

I close by crossing the state with WOOD-TV reporting Juneteenth Solidarity Parade and Celebration happening in Grand Rapids.

Juneteenth was declared a federal holiday in 2021. (June 19, 2026)

That's a wrap for today's celebration of the newest federal holiday. Stay tuned for more, American Eagle Day, National Seashell Day, the Summer Solstice, World Giraffe Day 2025, Father's Day, World Rainforest Day, Detroit-style Pizza Day, and the first of two World UFO Days. I love holidays!

'The Perfect Neighbor' leads Gold Derby odds for Documentary Feature at the Oscars

I made two predictions about two winners in 'The Perfect Neighbor' wins five Critics Choice Documentary Awards including Best Documentary that won't come true.

The Critics Choice Association (CCA) unveiled the winners of the Tenth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards at a gala event in New York City. The Perfect Neighbor won the top award of the evening, Best Documentary Feature. The film also took home awards in four other categories including Best Director for Geeta Gandbhir, Best Editing for Viridiana Lieberman, Best Archival Documentary, and Best True Crime Documentary.

The only category I clearly called for The Perfect Neighbor was Best True Crime Documentary. I thought it was a co-favorite with Riefenstahl and Orwell: 2+2=5 for Best Director, so no clear call, picked Orwell: 2+2=5 to win Best Documentary and Best Archival Documentary, and made no call for Best Editing, although I'm not surprised; editing is what makes a good archival documentary. Just the same, congratulations and good luck at next year's Emmy Awards, either as Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary at the News & Doc Emmy Awards or Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special/Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking at the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards...

The trophy for Best Political Documentary was awarded to The Alabama Solution.

While I thought The Alabama Solution could win, I also thought Orwell: 2+2=5 would win. Nope. Just the same, congratulations and good luck at the relevant Emmy Awards next year.

Neither The Perfect Neighbor nor The Alabama Solution will be nominated at either Emmy Awards because both earned nominations at the Academy Awards, disqualifying them for Emmy consideration. I'm not the least bit upset; this is exactly the kind of wrong I'd like to be. Also, congratulations to the producers and directors of both movies. I'm thrilled for them!

Now that the nominees have been announced, what are their Gold Derby odds? The Perfect Neighbor leads with every expert, 33.3% of editors, and 90.4% of users picking it to win. The Alabama Solution sits in second because it has the support of 5.4% of users and 16.7% of editors. Mr. Nobody Against Putin is actually the other top choice of editors at 33.3%, but only 2.3% of users, placing it third in the odds. Come See Me in the Good Light is currently in fourth as the selection of the remaining 16.7% of editors and 1.0% of users. Cutting Through Rocks has the remaining 0.9% of users. I have the feeling that the editors will consolidate around one or two nominees once the PGA Awards, DGA Awards, and BAFTA Awards have been presented. The Perfect Neighbor is the only Oscar-nominated documentary nominated or longlisted at all of them.

I embedded the trailer for The Perfect Neighbor in 'Orwell: 2+2=5' and 'The Perfect Neighbor' lead nominees for Best Documentary at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards and am sharing again here.

One woman. Dozens of 911 calls. And a close-knit neighborhood caught in a nightmare. What begins as one woman’s relentless harassment of children spirals into a shocking act of violence. Captured through gripping police bodycam footage, The Perfect Neighbor - Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Directing Award - delivers a hauntingly powerful experience that keeps you on edge from start to finish.

Yikes! This looks like a real-life version of multi-Razzie nominee Karen. That movie was about racism and harassment, and it's even uglier when it's fact instead of fiction.

Follow over the jump for the trailers of the other four nominees.

Broken Peach sings 'Christmas Day'

Merry Christmas! I promised this year's version of Broken Peach sings 'Winter Wonderland' for Christmas, so I kick off today's holiday entry with Broken Peach - Christmas Day (Christmas Special).

"Christmas Day" is a song written, arranged, produced and mixed by Broken Peach.

Yes, an original song by Broken Peach instead of a cover!

I'm continuing the musical portion with Broken Peach - Winter Wonderland (Official Audio), another upload of last year's Christmas Special.

"Winter Wonderland" is a song written in 1934 by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith. Due to its seasonal theme, it is often regarded as a Christmas song in the Northern Hemisphere. Since its original recording by Richard Himber, it has been covered by over 200 different artists. Its lyrics are about a couple's romance during the winter season.

As a mashup, we have used a melody from the great Bruce Springsteen song: Dancing In the Dark.

"Dancing in the Dark" is a song written and performed by American rock singer Bruce Springsteen. It was the first single released ahead from his 1984 album, Born in the U.S.A., and became his biggest hit, helping the album become the best-selling album of his career.

I'm closing the musical portion with Broken Peach - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree (2021 TV Peachformance).


This post wouldn't be complete without one of my holiday traditions, a drink recipe video. For today's post, I'm sharing MISTLETOE COCKTAIL | CHRISTMAS COCKTAIL.

CHRISTMAS/HOLIDAY Cocktail
Ingredients
Rosemary
Cranberries
Lemon Juice
Honey
Cognac

Directions
Boil 3 Rosemary Sprigs in a pot of water. Strain and add to ice cube tray with Cranberries. Once frozen add into a glass Lemon, Honey and Congac. Stir ingredients together. Add 3 cubes of the Frozen Rosemary along with a Rosemary Sprig as a Garnish.

Drink responsibly!

Finally, as Broken Peach themselves wrote eleven years ago, "¡Feliz Navidad! - ¡Bo Nadal! - ¡Bon Nadal! - Eguberri! …. Merry Christmas!" Now stay tuned for an update on the Retail Apocalypse for Boxing Day, followed by year-end retrospectives through New Year's Eve.

Elle Cordova sings 'They did the Monster Slash' and other songs and skits

This blog passed its page view goals for October yesterday, so I'm going spooky season today with Elle Cordova singing They did the Monster Slash.


What's happening to science is scary!

The slashed federal agencies made an earlier appearance in Federal agencies hiding out in a bunker.


I shared this at my DreamWidth, where I wrote "If the National Forest Service had been hiding in the bunker, the National Park Service might have been snotty to it." I know, I worked for the National Park Service.

Elle sang another song about the situation, For our scientists.


I'm wishing Americans would listen to our scientists, too.

For an encore, I'm sharing Elle's take on the Big Brutal Bill in Fun with alliteration.

The “big beautiful bill” is actually the ugliest piece of anti-environmental legislation and deepest cut to Medicaid in our nation’s history. Time to call our senators!

It's too late for the "Big Brutal Bill," but it's not too late to affect the shutdown. I couldn't avoid the subject entirely!

NativLang explains 'What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like - and how we know' for Talk Like Shakespeare Day

Happy Talk Like Shakespeare Day! To celebrate, I'm sharing NativLang explaining What Shakespeare's English Sounded Like - and how we know.

Botched rhymes, buried puns and a staged accent that sounds more Victorian than Elizabethan. No more! Use linguistic sleuthing to dig up the surprisingly different sound of the bard's Early Modern English.

I always thought OP (original pronunciation) sounded like a pirate. What do you think?

Stay tuned for this year's version of marching music for the Pennsylvania primary.

Inauguration and Super Bowl poet Amanda Gorman interviewed by Trevor Noah and James Corden, plus her Inauguration reading

Happy, Super Bowl Sunday! I'm celebrating this year by concentrating on a featured entertainer probably for the first time since Predictions vs. reality for Katy Perry at the Super Bowl, although calling Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman mere entertainment does her a disservice. I expect her reading will be truly inspirational instead of merely sentimental.

I begin with Trevor Noah's interview of Gorman on "The Daily Show," Amanda Gorman - “The Hill We Climb” & Activism Through Poetry.

Amanda Gorman discusses reading her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Biden’s inauguration, what poetry means to her and her upcoming Super Bowl performance.

This is the one interview I'm embedding today that mentions Gorman speaking at the Super Bowl, so of course I'm placing it first. I don't think she realizes how much larger an audience she will have during the game than for the Inauguration, even though the latter is technically more important. Remember, entertainment gets Americans to act.

A week earlier, James Corden interviewed her in Amanda Gorman Is Giving Americans Hope.

James Corden connects with Amanda Gorman, who captured the collective attention of Americans with her striking poem, "The Hill We Climb," during the inauguration ceremony for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. James asks Amanda about her journey from being selected to standing at the podium delivering her art to the world. And Amanda talks about her coming children's book, "Change Sings," which is already atop the chart.

Welcome to fame, Amanda. May it treat you well and may you continue using your fame for good.

All this attention came from her Inauguration poetry reading, so watch ABC News Poet Amanda Gorman reads 'The Hill We Climb' to hear her speak.

The nation's first Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman recites "The Hill We Climb."

Wow. May Gorman's reading today be as hopeful and inspirational.

Nuclear fusion; better news than flying cars

In Where's my retro future?, I commented on something better than flying cars.

Flying cars aren't alone among examples of things Americans thought we'd have by now; Popular Science has an entire slideshow of technologies people expected would exist by now, including personal jetpacks, nuclear fusion, and robot armies, along with reasons why they haven't appeared. Too bad, as nuclear fusion would come in very handy right now.

As for when humans might achieve sustained controlled nuclear fusion, the Popular Science article isn't optimistic.

Don't hold your breath for this one. “It's been 35 years away for half a century, and it's still 35 years away. And I suspect 35 years from now it will still be 35 years away,” said Seife, “If you look at civilizations in 2500, then I wouldn't be surprised if they used fusion.”

Maybe that time frame will be a bit shorter now, as the following article I included in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (White House Correspondents Dinner edition) on Daily Kos indicates.

Princeton University via physorg.com: Physicists see solution to critical barrier to fusion
By John Greenwald
April 23, 2012

Physicists have discovered a possible solution to a mystery that has long baffled researchers working to harness fusion. If confirmed by experiment, the finding could help scientists eliminate a major impediment to the development of fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for producing electric power.

An in-depth analysis by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) zeroed in on tiny, bubble-like islands that appear in the hot, charged gases—or plasmas—during experiments. These minute islands collect impurities that cool the plasma. And it is these islands, the scientists report in the April 20 issue of Physical Review Letters, that are at the root of a long-standing problem known as the "density limit" that can prevent fusion reactors from operating at maximum efficiency.

Fusion occurs when plasmas become hot and dense enough for the atomic nuclei contained within the hot gas to combine and release energy. But when the plasmas in experimental reactors called tokamaks reach the mysterious density limit, they can spiral apart into a flash of light. "The big mystery is why adding more heating power to the plasma doesn't get you to higher density," said David A. Gates, a principal research physicist at PPPL and co-author of the proposed solution with Luis Delgado-Aparicio, a post-doctoral fellow at PPPL and a visiting scientist at MIT's Plasma Science Fusion Center. "This is critical because density is the key parameter in reaching fusion and people have been puzzling about this for 30 or 40 years."

The scientists hit upon their theory in what Gates called "a 10-minute 'Aha!' moment." Working out equations on a whiteboard in Gates' office, the physicists focused on the islands and the impurities that drive away energy. The impurities stem from particles that the plasma kicks up from the tokamak wall. "When you hit this magical density limit, the islands grow and coalesce and the plasma ends up in a disruption," says Delgado-Aparacio.

These islands actually inflict double damage, the scientists said. Besides cooling the plasma, the islands act as shields that block out added power. The balance tips when more power escapes from the islands than researchers can pump into the plasma through a process called ohmic heating—the same process that heats a toaster when electricity passes through it. When the islands grow large enough, the electric current that helps to heat and confine the plasma collapses, allowing the plasma to fly apart

This discovery may solve a scientific problem with fusion that will cut off five years from the 35 mentioned above. As for the engineering, financial, and political problems, I those are still worth ten years each. Still, thirty years is better than thirty-five, so it's reason to hope.

For today's song, I present Thomas Dolby singing "Wind Power" (lyrics here), a choice I find both ironic and fitting--ironic given the subject of today's post, fitting given that I started the month with one of his songs and then featured him performing two days later, so I may as well close out the month with him.

Kunstler in a Big Yellow Taxi

In Showing my students "End of Suburbia" again tonight, I asked, "I wonder what reactions I'll get from my students tonight?" I finished grading the papers for that class yesterday and found out that Kunstler's comments on how suburban developments were named were mentioned as both most and least favorite thing about the movie. In case you've never seen the movie or have and forgotten what he said, here it is from memory.

Housing developments are always named after what they've destroyed. If it's named Quail Run, then all the quails have been exterminated. If it's Oak Ridge, then all the oaks have been removed.

That thought leads into today's song, "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell, which tells its listeners that "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. They paved paradise, put up a parking lot."


I'll have more student reactions later.  Right now, I have to keep grading.

Game of Thrones: 2012 Campaign Edition

Eric Kain at Forbes had an intriguing flight of fancy over at Forbes.

[W]hat if instead of Romney and Obama, the candidates were characters from the popular book series A Song of Ice and Fire and its HBO adaptation Game of Thrones?
...
[T]here are spooky parallels between the fictional series and the stranger-than-fiction political figures of our times.

As they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words….

He's not kidding.

The first year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Part 5 of several

In fifth place with 361 page views and 7 comments* is First post: Why this blog? posted on March 21, 2011. It's no secret how this entry got to be in the top 10. It's been around the longest, it explains the motivation for this blog to new readers, I've linked to it several times, and, finally, in Google searches for "motie" or "moties" (the second and third most popular search terms for this blog the past two years), the image I used for the first post appears in the first line of the first page of results.




That's a much higher result than for the original source of the image over at Larry Niven's site. Go figure.**

The only odd thing about this post is that it fell out of the ten most viewed list after a couple of months, only to return to the top ten back in December or January. At least I can explain people started reading it again, unlike U.S.-China EcoPartnerships: The CoDominion plans for sustainability. I'm still mystified about how that became popular.

I know I promised to cover at least two posts from now on in the previous entry in this series, but I couldn't figure out how to link a second entry to this one. Besides, as the first post, it deserves to be commemorated by itself. Also, this part of the series is short. I'll make up for it by having a later post look at three at one time.

For the song, I could recycle the one from Happy birthday to Crazy Eddie's Motie News, but it's no longer the blog's birthday. Instead, I present "Video Killed the Radio Star" (lyrics here) which was the first music video on MTV.

Two Examiner.com articles on taxes and science

In the middle of my heaviest grading period, Examiner.com is insisting I publish articles or else I lose my positions there. So, in the interest of maintaining a paying platform (and self-promotion, don't forget that), here are links to and excerpts from my two latest articles. The first is from the Washtenaw County Elections 2010 Examiner. It fits perfectly well with my take on how the interplay between austerity and sustainability is shaping politics, especially when it comes to maintaining infrastructure and city services while meeting financial obligations.

Income tax and millage on May 8th ballot in Ypsilanti

On May 8th, voters in the City of Ypsilanti will be asked to approve a city income tax and a millage proposal to retire a debt. Both issues were placed on the ballot by the city council this past February. Both have also attracted their share of controversy, with the city and outside groups, both pro and con, weighing in.

The proposed city income tax looks straight forward. It will impose an annual rate of tax on corporations and resident individuals of 1%, and on non-resident individuals of 0.5%. If approved, it will take effect on January 1, 2013.

The millage proposal seems more complicated.
...
In reality, both proposals are linked, making matters more complex than they seem.

Next, an article for the Detoit Science News Examiner that is more tenuously linked to sustainability. I can at least make the case that one of the root causes of our inability to solve problems is a lack of understanding and interest in science. Therefore, anything that increases scientific awareness is likely to be a good thing.

ESPN Sport Science nominated for two Emmy Awards

ESPN Sport Science will be taking Biomedical Engineering professor Cynthia Bir of Wayne State University to New York City once again. The popular show explaining the science of sports has once again been nominated in the Sports Emmy Awards for Outstanding Graphic Design and Outstanding New Approaches. Bir and her colleagues will find out if they have won at the 33rd annual Sports Emmys on April 30, 2012, when the winners will be announced at Lincoln Center.

Contending with ESPN Sport Science for Outstanding Graphic Desighn are the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup on ESPN and ESPN2, ESPN Monday Night Football, NBA All-Star Weekend on TNT, and NBC Sunday Night Football. The show's competitors for Outstanding New Approaches in Sports Programming are A Game of Honor on CBSSports.com, Football Freakonomics on NFL Network/NFL.com, Sunday Night Football Extra on NBCSports.com, and The NFL Season: A Biography on NFL Network/NFL.com.

The series uncovers sports' biggest myths and mysteries by using cutting-edge technology to measure momentum, forces, and acceleration of top athletes. Bir, who is the show's lead scientist, helps viewers understand the internal and external forces sustained and generated by the body during high-level athletic activities.

Surf over to both articles. While this blog isn't monetized, Examiner.com is.

Next up, an article for the Detroit Coffee Party Examiner. That one might take some doing.

Tonight's song is the Eastern Michigan University fight song. It gets pride of place over Wayne State's because EMU employees are a prime target of the Ypsilanti city income tax and because the uploads of Wayne State's fight song are lame. Take my word for it.

Mercy Mercy Me

One of my students used this official version of Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me as part of her presentation yesterday. It really made the point of how we are still fighting the same problems 40 years later, which I made in yesterday's blast from the past. Unfortunately, that version won't embed. However, this version does and it has lyrics, too.




I'll have more videos from my students, along with their reactions to "End of Suburbia" in future posts. That will be after I correct their papers.

Blast from the past: Cartoon on oil dependence

I decided to do some more recycling from my LiveJournal.

Short version:


Long version:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
An Energy-Independent Future
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Finally, commentary on John Stewart's segment from The Oil Drum.

Showing my students "End of Suburbia" again tonight

I've been doing this for three years now, as I documented in two entries on my LiveJournal back in November 2009. This just happened to be the month I started participating in Nablopomo, so you're seeing the beginnings of my efforts in that project.

In both entries, I recorded the notable student reactions after each showing. The first night, one of them asked, "Should the US really go bankrupt fighting a war they can't win?" Of course the answer was no, but I also told them that never stopped any other empire in history. The second evening, the most memorable reactions were "I never understood how anyone was going to make hydrogen work for running cars" and "What a shame Americans are so spoiled. The end of oil is going to take away their toys and they'll all cry." The second student wasn't born here, as you could probably tell.

Since then, the reactions generally fall into a pattern. As I wrote in a comment to a recent post at Kunstler's blog:

I show that film to my students every semester, and it never fails to get a strong reaction out of them. The environmentalists think "it's worse than we thought," the conservatives get pissed off at Jim, and everyone else just goes "oh, shit."

When I showed the film this past summer, some of my students got one of the points reinforced in a rather concrete way.

Finally, this heat wave and the associated health problems and power outages have become another teachable moment for me. I showed my students "The End of Suburbia" this week and one of the events described in that movie was the 2003 blackout that happened during a heat wave. The late Russell Simmons mentioned that the power grid was most vulnerable between 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM on hot days because all three sets of customers, residential, commercial, and industrial, were online at the same time. According to one of my students, the power went out in Ferndale at 5:00 PM on Wednesday. He had watched "The End of Suburbia" the day before and he recalled what Simmons said. Well, that's one way to learn a lesson--the hard way!

I wonder what reactions I'll get from my students tonight?

Over the fold is the worksheet I've been using for the past three years. See how many of my questions about the movie you can answer.

ETA: For my students who are finding this entry using the more difficult to answer questions as search strings (and, yes, I can see you), I have not posted the answers here, nor will I.  I'll do so in a future entry.  Right now, the best you can do is to read Sustainability through the looking glass with Jeff Wattrick of Wonkette.  It has a guide to entries in this blog that contain the answers to some of the questions, along with the question numbers, plus some answers hidden in plain sight right above the fold/jump.  If you want to know which questions the answers go to, here's a hint: asterisks are your friend.  Also, don't be surprised if some of the answers to a couple of your questions are directly in front of you as you read this entry.

Earth Day News from campuses on the 2012 campaign trail

For Earth Day, I'm going to be a good environmentalist and recycle. In this case, it's the sustainability stories from last night's Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Earth Day 2012 edition) on Daily Kos. As I've mentioned before, I'm in the middle of a 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. This week, the featured states are Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. That said, the top story today is about colleges, not from them, as it comes from Discovery News.

Green 16: Top Colleges Make Earth Day Honors
Analysis by Sarah Simpson
Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:25 AM ET

Just in time for Earth Day, the Princeton Review has released its 2012 Guide to Green Colleges. The 232-page guide is the only free, comprehensive guide to green colleges that is updated annually.

This third edition of the book salutes the nation's most environmentally responsible "green colleges." It profiles 322 institutions of higher education in the U.S. and Canada that demonstrate notable commitments to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation.

To produce this book, Princeton Review partnered with the U.S. Green Building Council, a national nonprofit organization best known for developing the LEED green building rating system. The partners based their choices on a 2011 survey of hundreds of colleges to tally The Princeton Review's annual "Green Rating" scores (scaled from 60 to 99). Schools in this guide received scores of 83 or above in that assessment.

The top 16 colleges and universities, all of which received the maximum score of 99, are:

• American University
• Arizona State University
• College of the Atlantic
• Dickinson College
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Harvard College
• Northeastern University
• Oregon State University
• San Francisco State University
• State University of New York at Binghamton
• University of California—Santa Cruz
• University of Maine
• University of Washington
• University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point
• Virginia Tech
• Warren Wilson College

SUNY Binghamton gets to toot its own horn later in this post. Look for an excerpt from the press release over the fold.

*Cornell is an Ivy League school, and thus a private school, but it is also a land grant school, so it receives public funding. SUNY even lists some of the university's colleges and schools as state institutions in its directory. So, it qualifies for this list, barely.

Deepwater Horizon damaged psyches, too

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. For the headlines on how the spill affected all three aspects of sustainability, environment, economy, and society, PBS Newshour has the following video summary.

Two years after the largest oil leak in U.S. history, the Gulf of Mexico region still struggles with its impact. Jeffrey Brown, David Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Garret Graves of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana discuss the state of the Gulf and related industries.

That video does a superb job of following up on the better known types of long-term damage, but it forgot one--the damage to people's mental states. Here's an article from the American Psychological Association that orginally appeared in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Japanese earthquake and daylight savings edition) in Daily Kos and which I've been saving for just this occasion.

The oil spill's reverberations
The Mississippi coast has begun recovering from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but what about the people whose lives were changed as a result of the disaster? A team of graduate students investigates.
By Kirsten Weir

Nearly two years after BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the Gulf Coast, the effects of the disaster still linger. The accident on April 20, 2010, killed 11 people and poured 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over the next three months. It was the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The environmental devastation grabbed most of the headlines, but the human impact was just as significant. Millions of Gulf Coast residents were affected by the disaster. Rig workers found themselves unemployed, and the fishing and tourism industries — both major contributors to the Gulf Coast economy — suffered huge hits. As of December 2011, BP had paid more than $21 billion in cleanup costs and economic damages. Yet a report by the U.S. Travel Association estimated that the spill could cost the coastal region $22.7 billion over three years in lost tourism alone.

"Yes, it's an environmental disaster, but it really affects people's lives financially," says Scott Sumrall, director of disaster preparedness and response with the Mississippi Department of Mental Health.

Along with that financial devastation came depression, anxiety and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To address the mental health effects, BP provided $12 million to the Mississippi Department of Mental Health Oil Spill Recovery–Behavioral Health Grant Program for outreach, training and clinical services. Most of the grants went directly to mental health centers and other groups that provide direct care to people on the coast. But $285,000 of that funding, over a two-year period, also went to Stefan Schulenberg, PhD, an associate psychology professor at the University of Mississippi, and a team of graduate students who have been charged with assessing how well the program is meeting the mental health needs of people on the Mississippi coast.

Read the rest of the article for the results of that research. It's amazing what the social costs have been.

Today's song is another ironic choice, Black Water by The Doobie Brothers (lyrics here). Mississippi and black water take on new meaning in the context of the Deepwater Horizon distaster.

Ted Nugent, stochastic terrorist

As the Detroit Free Press reports:

Nugent stood by his remarks on Wednesday, according to ABCnews.com.

Nugent slammed the Obama administration and singled out four members of the Supreme Court as not supporting the Constitution during his remarks at the National Rifle Association's annual conference in St. Louis. Nugent, best known for his hit Cat Scratch Fever, is an NRA board member.

"If you want more of those kinds of evil anti-American people in the Supreme Court, then don't get involved and let Obama take office again," Nugent said Saturday. "Because I'll tell you this right now: If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year."

Those remarks had consequences. From the Detroit Free Press again:

Uncle Ted has a hot date with Big Brother today. Ted Nugent, who has made a flurry of statements in recent days about Democrats and President Barack Obama, says he has been asked to sit down with members of the Secret Service today, the Blaze reports.

Lucky that he landed just on the right side of the "shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" exception to the First Amendment, or he wouldn't have to wait until next year. The Associated Press headline was Secret Service closes case on Ted Nugent's remarks. They were right to do so, as Nugent himself poses no threat. My friend John Henry at LowGenius know why, as he says that Ted Nugent Is An Enormous Coward. Here's the video version.



While Nugent himself isn't a danger, his fans may not be. Join me over the fold for why.

Three urban farming stories and a funeral

The first story appears on the Detroit News' YouTube channel.

Future urban farm.

Volunteers from Motor City Blight Busters, Starbucks and Teach for America deconstruct houses in Detroit to expand the urban garden in the Old Reford Township area in Detroit.

That was yesterday. Last week's Detroit Free Press included these two articles, which sparked quite a discussion on my Facebook page. I might get around to summarizing it in a future post.

Michigan State proposes 100-acre, $100-million urban-farming research center in Detroit

With their city shrinking, many Detroiters use empty lots to grow gardens

Finally, the funeral. In memory of Dick Clark, I present Barry Manilow performing "Bandstand Boogie."




So long, World's Oldest Teenager. New Years Eve will not be the same without you.

Discovery makes final flight but to D.C. not space

Yesterday, the space shuttle Discovery left Florida for Washington, D.C., to be delivered to the Smithsonian. It made for a spectacular event, as ABC News on YouTube shows.




As exhilarating and historic as yesterday was, it was a bittersweet day for NASA employees and space enthusiasts alike, as Reuters explains.

"It's sad to see this happening," said NASA astronaut Nicole Stott, a member of Discovery's final crew. "But you look at it and you just can't help but be impressed by it. That's my hope now, that every time someone looks at that vehicle they are impressed, that they feel that this is what we can do when we challenge ourselves."

For its last ride, Discovery took off not from its seaside launch pad but atop a modified Boeing 747 carrier jet that taxied down the Kennedy Space Center's runway at dawn. The shuttle's tail was capped with an aerodynamically shaped cone and its windows were covered.

"It's a very emotional, poignant, bittersweet moment," said former astronaut Mike Mullane, a veteran of three space shuttle missions. "When it's all happening you think, ‘This will never end,' but we all move on."

Yes, but are we moving on to a continued future in space? Peter Apps of Reuters wonders if the answer is no when he asks, "Is humanity quietly abandoning a future in space?"

As astronaut Leroy Chiao watches the space shuttles he crewed make their final journeys to become museum pieces, he worries humankind is unthinkingly ditching space exploration and a future beyond Earth.
...
"It's hard to escape the idea that we are going backwards," Chiao - a veteran of three shuttle missions and a trip to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz rocket and now a private consultant and adviser to industry group the Space Foundation - told Reuters.

"I struggle to even think of it (the shuttle) in the past tense. It was a great vehicle."

With Russia's commitment to human spaceflight also seen wavering and some observers questioning whether even emerging powerhouse China will stick to its brashly self-confident plans, some begin to suspect the world is simply giving up.

I expressed my worries about this possibility just after Atlantis blasted off the final time in The end of an era: last space shuttle mission.

I would consider myself remiss if I didn't at least mention this story... After all, this blog is about both collapse, including decline, a leading indicator of collapse, and how to prevent it, and I examine these topics from a science fiction angle. I think few themes more exemplify civilizational decline in science fiction more than withdrawing from space, and those that do generally include loss of ability to travel off the planet.

I concluded the entry by quoting a lengthy description of the United States' continued efforts in space travel by the people in charge at NASA and the Obama Administration to point out that worriers (I'm not quite a pessimist) weren't entirely right, then capped it off with the following.

I hope they're right. Otherwise, the U.S. will be playing out one of the classic tragic technological decline scenarios from science fiction in real life.

Sigh.

ETA: There is cause for optimism in this week's space news, as the headline NASA clears SpaceX for cargo run to space station on Reuters shows. Here's to hoping everything goes well on April 30th. If it does, it will be a big step forward for manned space flight, as the same technology is intended to carry people into space in four or five years.

For today's song, I've decided to remember happier days in space flight from 30 years ago with Rush's "Countdown."

Repost: A rant on an anti-tax meme

For tax day, I'm reposting the following, which I originally posted on Friday, July, 29, 2011.

One of the favorite anti-tax memes that conservatives use is that "the government thinks it knows better how to spend money than individuals/the people do." I think that meme has it exactly backwards. First, the government in a democratically elected government is the people. Second, what government is doing when it spends is paying salaries of people and contracts to businesses, who then pay it to people. Those people now have more money to spend than they did before. As a result, government spending gives most people more power to make decisions over how they spend their money that they got from the government.

There is one exception to the above. Progressive taxation in support of government spending shows that the government thinks it knows better how to invest money than the wealthiest Americans for the greater good. The justification for keeping the tax rates low on the wealthiest Americans is that they will use that money to create jobs. They generally don't. Instead of hiring people for their own businesses, they use that money to blow speculative bubbles, whether in stocks, bonds, commodities, or real estate. Yes, those bubbles may create jobs while they're inflating, but they destroy jobs when they pop.

The last pair of bubbles was especially pernicious, as it first inflated people's home values then, as they started to collapse, leaving Americans owing more than their assets were worth, inflated commodities, making food and energy cost more just when Americans could no longer withdraw money from the "home ATM." Both of those bubbles harmed people financially even before the panic in the stock market and contraction of the economy threw people out of work. Now we're left with vacant houses, people who can't sell their houses to move to where there are jobs, and a government that has to borrow a trillion dollars a year to maintain the spending it's already doing to pay people the money they need to make more decisions with what is now their own income.

So, I think raising taxes, particularly on the wealthiest 2%, is a good idea. They're not doing much useful with that money other than trying to increase their own wealth by blowing asset bubbles. What the economy needs is demand, and the other 98% of Americans will gladly provide that demand if they have money to spend. Paying them that money shows that the government has faith that individuals do know how to spend their own money!

/rant

Now, today's song, Tax Man by The Beatles. It's an ironic choice, but it does make the point that taxes can be too high. That's not now the case in the U.S., which is suffering from the opposite problem.