Obama double feature

Obama speaking out for the gays :-)

And Obama being adorable for Ellen.

Only in Dubai

A skyscraper is being designed that will constantly change shape... and be wind-powered at that.

The cost of the Iraq War...

In painfully specific terms that we can all understand.

(Video link.)

Thanks to The Life of Brian.

If she can learn to forgive, can you?

At age nine, Kim Phuc was immortalized by Nick Ut in his award-winning photograph of an American napalm attack on her Vietnamese village (she's the girl in the center). That was in June of 1972, and this audio essay recounts her journey to forgiveness.

AP Photo, Nick Ut.

Obama's 2nd general election campaign ad

(Video link.)

Don't you love our foreign policy?

Mr. George W. Bush got Congress to go along with a $400 million (and counting) plan to fund covert operations with the goal of de-stabilizing Iran. Whee! Fun!

What kind of people are we?

Here's the short version and the long version.

Two hundred and four days until he is gone...

P.S. Now what would a military entanglement with Iran do to oil prices???

Up up up

The Los Angeles Times looks at some of the potential effects of $200/barrel oil, basing the article on trends already being seen in California and the nation as well as some recent studies.

Some of their predictions--like the shortening of supply chains and more reliance on local suppliers--sound like the unraveling of our cheap fossil fuel-oriented economy that James Kunstler describes in The Long Emergency (post here).

The Las Vegas Sun has an article today which mostly sums up my feeling about gas prices. Las Vegas depends so heavily on tourists that an era of high fuel prices will force a reset on expectations about the local economy.

The McCain's: minding those dollars and cents

Cindy has not been paying the taxes on one of the seven (or more) homes that they own, and John doesn't know how much gas costs... and doesn't think that it matters.

Bees continue to disappear

So far this year, a big portion of the bees used commercially for pollinating crops have gone missing. Colony collapse disorder, which began in 2006, is continuing to cause problems for farmers in the U.S. Already 36% of colonies have been affected since January. What's particularly strange about the problem is that the dead bees are never located.

Much of our food supply is dependent on bees for pollination, so a shortage of bees can limit crop yields.

The problem, of course, is that we're using the bees as machines rather than as part of our natural environment. We truck them from location to location, feed them honey-substitutes, and force them to work for longer periods of the year than is normal for bees.

Busy as bees are, they're not ready for the rat race.

"The infrastructure for a police state"

Mark Klein is the AT&T engineer (now retired) who alerted the press in 2006 that the National Security Agency was in the process of secretly tapping into America's telcommunications networks--with the cooperation of the companies who own those networks.

He has scathing remarks about Congressional support for the new FISA bill, HR 6304, which is nearing passage in the Senate. (Previous posts here and here.)

Itchy scratchy (updated)

From reading my blog lately, you might be thinking that the world as we know it is coming apart.

Sometimes I do, too.

But then I find an article like "The Itch" at the New Yorker website (thanks to a post I read on the Daily Dish), and somehow our slow but ongoing progress in understanding the complexities of how we humans are put together reminds me of how gorgeous life is.

Understanding ourselves. Sharing ourselves. That's what it's about for me.

Here are some excerpts from this fascinating article about itching and our perception of the world in general:

Though scratching can provide momentary relief, it often makes the itching worse. Dermatologists call this the itch-scratch cycle. Scientists believe that itch, and the accompanying scratch reflex, evolved in order to protect us from insects and clinging plant toxins—from such dangers as malaria, yellow fever, and dengue, transmitted by mosquitoes; from tularemia, river blindness, and sleeping sickness, transmitted by flies; from typhus-bearing lice, plague-bearing fleas, and poisonous spiders. The theory goes a long way toward explaining why itch is so exquisitely tuned. You can spend all day without noticing the feel of your shirt collar on your neck, and yet a single stray thread poking out, or a louse’s fine legs brushing by, can set you scratching furiously.

... Some basic features of itch remained unexplained—features that make itch a uniquely revealing case study. On the one hand, our bodies are studded with receptors for itch, as they are with receptors for touch, pain, and other sensations; this provides an alarm system for harm and allows us to safely navigate the world....

Contemplating what it’s like to hold your finger in a flame won’t make your finger hurt. But simply writing about a tick crawling up the nape of one’s neck is enough to start my neck itching. Then my scalp. And then this one little spot along my flank where I’m beginning to wonder whether I should check to see if there might be something there....

Our assumption had been that the sensory data we receive from our eyes, ears, nose, fingers, and so on contain all the information that we need for perception, and that perception must work something like a radio. It’s hard to conceive that a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert is in a radio wave. But it is. So you might think that it’s the same with the signals we receive—that if you hooked up someone’s nerves to a monitor you could watch what the person is experiencing as if it were a television show.

Yet, as scientists set about analyzing the signals, they found them to be radically impoverished. Suppose someone is viewing a tree in a clearing. Given simply the transmissions along the optic nerve from the light entering the eye, one would not be able to reconstruct the three-dimensionality, or the distance, or the detail of the bark—attributes that we perceive instantly....

The images in our mind are extraordinarily rich. We can tell if something is liquid or solid, heavy or light, dead or alive. But the information we work from is poor—a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing. So the mind fills in most of the picture. You can get a sense of this from brain-anatomy studies. If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you’d expect that most of the fibres going to the brain’s primary visual cortex would come from the retina. Instead, scientists have found that only twenty per cent do; eighty per cent come downward from regions of the brain governing functions like memory....

The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning....

Such findings open up a fascinating prospect: perhaps many patients whom doctors treat as having a nerve injury or a disease have, instead, what might be called sensor syndromes. When your car’s dashboard warning light keeps telling you that there is an engine failure, but the mechanics can’t find anything wrong, the sensor itself may be the problem. This is no less true for human beings. Our sensations of pain, itch, nausea, and fatigue are normally protective. Unmoored from physical reality, however, they can become a nightmare... [perhaps] the hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone who suffer from conditions like chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, chronic pelvic pain, tinnitus, temporomandibular joint disorder, or repetitive strain injury, where, typically, no amount of imaging, nerve testing, or surgery manages to uncover an anatomical explanation. Doctors have persisted in treating these conditions as nerve or tissue problems—engine failures, as it were. We get under the hood and remove this, replace that, snip some wires. Yet still the sensor keeps going off.

The article goes on to describe some novel techniques that a few neuroscientists have devised for helping to reset the brain's sensors.

Atul Gawande, the author, is a physician-journalist. He wrote a similarly insightful article about blushing that was published in The Best American Science Writing (2002). I highly recommend it for science buffs.

More weeds

I re-read the article about weeds that I posted about earlier today and did a little follow-up research.

Since I've been thinking about fires today (given that so much of Northern California is ablaze, and it's fairly hazy even here in Vegas), I began to see how climate change is related to more frequent and severe fires in ways that I hadn't thought of before. That global warming means some areas will get less precipitation and be drier--and consequently more likely to burn--I understood.

But I hadn't known that higher CO2 levels actually produce more fuel for the fires. For example, the article has this to say about cheatgrass, a common invasive grass that was everywhere in Kansas even when I was growing up 30 years ago:

Cheatgrass’s combustibility is inherent in the plant’s pattern of growth. Sprouting in the fall, it resumes growth at winter’s end to mature and set seed in early summer, whereupon the plant dies, leaving a tuft of dry, highly flammable leaves through the following dry season. Ziska and his colleagues discovered, though, that the weed’s flammability seems to have been greatly augmented by the increases in atmospheric CO2 that occurred during the period of cheatgrass’s spread through the West.

The scientists grew the plant at four concentrations of CO2: at 270 p.p.m. (the ambient level at the beginning of the 19th century, before the Industrial Revolution), at 320 p.p.m. (a 1960s level), 370 p.p.m. (a 1990s level) and 420 p.p.m. (the approximate level predicted for 2020 in all the climate-change panel’s estimates). What they found was that an increase of CO2 equivalent to that occurring from 1800 until today raised the total mass of material (the biomass) each cheatgrass plant produced by almost 70 percent. In addition, the composition of the cheatgrass changed as the CO2 level increased, the tissues becoming more carbon-rich so that the plant leaves and stems are less susceptible to decay. In a natural setting, this would mean that the dead material would persist longer, adding yet more fuel for wildfire.

More fuel, with a longer life — Ziska says that the rise in greenhouse gases we have already achieved may have played a decisive role in the spread of a weed that has already transformed the ecology of the Western United States. The situation seems likely to worsen too. The cheatgrass that Ziska grew at the CO2 level equal to that projected for 2020 increased the plant’s biomass by another 18 percent above current levels. Global climate change, it seems, will further stoke the rangeland wildfires.

This year-old article in the High Country News has similar bad news with respect to other invasive grasses.

As hard as it is to believe--or as hard as it was to believe when we were all a bit younger--we are changing the environment of our planet in ways that we don't yet fully understand.

Stonewall 39 response...

A friend responded to my earlier "Stonewall 39" post:

I Love you. Always know that. And know tonight that I dance for those, who are forever dancing.

:-)

Crops and weeds

An interesting article about weeds, how we've shaped them just as we've shaped the plants we consider crops, and what the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere may be on both of them.

This excerpt seems to support an earlier post I wrote about higher crop yields:

Coexistence with mankind has given rise to the sort of tough plants that flourish despite the worst we can do — hoeing, pulling, burning and, more recently, spraying the fields with herbicidal chemicals. Weeds have adapted to every means we used to exterminate them, even turning the treatments to their own advantage. Attacking a Canada thistle (actually of Eurasian origin and a regular entry in “worst weeds of North America” lists) with hoe or plow, for example, may destroy the plant’s aboveground growth but leaves the soil full of severed bits of fleshy root, each of which may sprout a new plant.

A result of this history is that crops and weeds embody diametrically opposed genetic strategies. Over the centuries, we have deliberately bred the genetic diversity out of our crop plants. Creating crop populations composed of clones or near clones was an essential step in achieving higher yields and the sort of uniform growth that makes large-scale, mechanized cultivation and harvesting possible. Because weed populations live as opportunists, however, they must include individuals with the ability to flourish in whatever type of habitat we make available. They also need diversity to cope with the wide range of punishments we inflict. A patch of Canada thistles, if it is to survive when the farmer switches from hoeing to herbicides, must include individuals that develop a resistance to the chemicals over time. Weed populations that lacked the necessary genetic diversity faded from our fields, lawns and waste places; historians of agriculture can cite many such casualties.

Stonewall 39

Today is the 39th anniverary of New York City's Stonewall Riots. That's the reason so many cities (e.g. San Francisco, New York) are celebrating gay pride this weekend (and why June is gay pride month in most places that have one).

Shortly after I began clubbing in the 90's, Club Universe became the place to be on Saturday nights in SF. It had an amazing eight year run which came to an end when the building was sold in 2002.

My favorite club, however, occupied the same space but was on Sunday nights: Pleasuredome. Nothing since has ever quite equaled one of those perfect nights at Pdome. Sigh.

Someone hung banners from SF City Hall his weekend in honor of Pleasuredome and Neil Lewis, a long-time resident DJ there. Neil died in March, 2004.

After his death, I sent this email to a few close friends:

Reflecting on Neil's death, I remembered this poem that someone sent me several years ago:

My Sweet, Crushed Angel

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God's Heart at all.

Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy
To hear.

So what if the music has stopped for a while.

So what
If the price of admission to the Divine
Is out of reach tonight.

So what, my dear,
If you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love.

The mind and body are famous
For holding the heart ransom,
But Hafiz knows the Beloved's eternal habits.

Have patience,

For He will not be able to resist your longing
For long.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One.

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet,
O my sweet, crushed angel.

-- Hafiz

And also this, from Dancer from the Dance:

What I said earlier was wrong: We don't have to do anything with our lives. As long as you are alive, there's an end to it. I feel like a child who's been awakened from his sleep and taken downstairs in someone's arms to see the party and the guests. Who knows how long it will last, who knows when that considerate adult will send you back to bed and and life will once more be that poignant band of light beneath the door, beyond which all the voices, laughter, and happiness lie? No, darling, mourn no longer for Malone. He knew very well how gorgeous life is--that was the light in him that you, and I, and all the queens fell in love with. Go out dancing tonight, my dear, and go home with someone, and if the love doesn't last beyond the morning, then know I love you.

Good night, my friends.

Tonight in SF there is a special Club Universe reunion night (at an alternate location, the original 177 Townsend warehouse space has been replaced by high-rise condos).

To all my friends in SF, NY, and wherever there is pride: Go out dancing tonight, my dears, and go home with someone, and if the love doesn't last beyond the morning... then know I love you.

T-shirt for sale :-)

Is the long emergency beginning?

I read James Kunstler's The Long Emergency in 2005, and I let several smart people I know borrow my copy. One of them commented afterwards: "The problem I have is that I can't come up with many good arguments to counter Kunstler's predictions."

This was the book that introduced me to peak oil, the notion that once we've recovered half of the world's petroleum reserves, the remainder will be increasingly difficult to recover. For the last hundred years or so, we've built our society on cheap fossil fuels. Once we've used up the easily recoverable deposits, the remainder become increasingly difficult to recover, and prices will skyrocket.

Kunstler commented on America's suburbanization as one of the most wasteful uses of tax dollars ever: by subsidizing developments that require that people drive long distances to work and shop, we've exacerbated the problems that our society will face when energy prices rise.

And rise they have. The Wall Street Journal discusses the possibility of $7/gallon gasoline in the next few years, and the New York Times reports on how higher gas prices are already affecting the desirability of life far from metropolitan centers, including the outer suburbs. And then there's the impact to the airlines...

Fasten your seat belts, it may be a bumpy ride.

OpenCongress

I came across an awesome website this week: OpenCongress. What they're about:

OpenCongress brings together official government data with news coverage, blog posts, comments, and more to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress. Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists already know what's really going on in Congress. We think everyone should be an insider.

OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. To read more about our approach, our data sources, and how Congress works, see About OpenCongress.

By creating an account, you can not only track bills, legislators, and issues but also engage in dialogue with other OpenCongress members. And this feature is really cool: you can create an RSS feed for the specific items you're tracking, so you can get updates in your normal feed reader (I use Google Reader).

It's good stuff... and has already been useful in learning more about the FISA bill (H.R. 6304) and the bill to end the ban on HIV-positive travelers coming to the U.S. (S. 2731).

Furniture shopping...

Love the bed... it comes with a built-in car radio and speakers. :-)

Active aging

The New York Times had a report on “active aging” a couple of days ago.

Coincidentally, a few minutes I sent my family a note about cardiovascular exercise and blood pressure. My family has a strong history of heart disease, and I've always been mindful of it. I was a long distance runner in high school and college, and switched to the stairclimber when I started working.

I've gotten lazy the past few years, focusing more on weight training than my cardio routine. And that's made a difference, as my blood pressure rose sharply.

Last year when I was training for the AIDS/LifeCycle, I noticed a big drop in my blood pressure and pulse rate. But then I slacked off again, and earlier this year my pressure was up again. Getting back on the stairclimber for 20 minutes a day for the past couple of weeks has brought it back down again.

It can be easier than you think... you just got to get moving.

From the Times article:

Fact: Every hour of every day, 330 Americans turn 60.

Fact: By 2030, one in five Americans will be older than 65.

Fact: The number of people over 100 doubles every decade.

Fact: As they age, people lose muscle mass and strength, flexibility and bone.

Fact: The resulting frailty leads to a loss of mobility and independence.

The last two facts may sound discouraging. But they can be countered by another. Regular participation in aerobics, strength training and balance and flexibility exercises can delay and may even prevent a life-limiting loss of physical abilities into one’s 90s and beyond....

Even if you have a chronic health problem or physical limitation, there are safe ways to improve fitness and well-being. Any delay can increase the risk of injury and make it harder to recoup your losses....

Jim Concotelli of the Horizon Bay Senior Communities in Tampa, who oversees fitness and wellness program development for communities for the elderly in several states, noted this year in The Journal on Active Aging that many older Americans were unfamiliar with exercise activities and feared that they would cause injury and pain, especially if they have arthritis or other chronic problems. Yet by strengthening muscles, he said, they can improve joints and bones and function with less pain and less risk of injury.

The key is start slowly and build gradually as ability and strength improve. Most important is simply to start — now— perhaps under the guidance of a fitness professional or by creating a program based on the guidelines outlined here.

Read the full article here. And don't forget to move a little more. :-)

The original "Meatrix"

I showed Victor the Meatrix videos tonight and realized I posted the two sequels (II and II½) here but never the original.

Clark County Democrats hosting event this Saturday

The Clark County Democrats will be having a fundraiser at the Government Amphitheater (500 South Grand Central Parkway) from 10am-4pm on Saturday, June 28. It's a day for the whole family with food, speeches, and entertainment.

I'll be working at the Stonewall Democrats booth so stop on by. :-)

More info here.

McCain continues to try to rally the Republican conservative base

He's polishing his "repeal Roe v. Wade" and other conservative credentials...

Ending America's ban on HIV-positive visitors

Amazingly, to this day the U.S. maintains an embarassing ban on foreign travelers who are HIV-positive.

There is a bill in the Senate for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). One of its provisions ends the ban on HIV-positive travelers. The White House is apparently on board, as are many Senators. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) is opposed. I believe this is S. 2731.

Let the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and your own Senators know your thoughts.

More from Andrew Sullivan.

Where things can grow

Trees and other plants are moving up hillsides (well, only the new ones sprouting from seeds :-) in an attempt to beat global warming by remaining in their preferred temperature ranges.

If the climate keeps getting warmer, they'll soon be sprouting on Mars.

New internet domains

Dot com may be yesterday's news if this plan to add new domains like .nyc and .perfume becomes reality. Sounds like trouble to this old internet dog. :-)

And by the way...

Lest anyone accuse me of being one of those fabled Obama supporters who thinks he's the Messiah, here's another issue on which we disagree: he favors the FISA compromise bill that I've been logging about. I think it's a horrible piece of legislation and detrimental to the long term health of the republic.

So give him a call, too. :-)

The Second Amendment

While I believe Americans are entirely too enamored of guns--and far too many people die from gunshot wounds every year--I also believe that if protecting the First and Fourth amendments is important, so is protecting the Second.

Today's Supreme Court ruling is a fair ruling of one of the more ambiguous clauses of the Constitution. The Court said that the people have the right to personally own firearms, but the right is not absolute and may be regulated.

To be honest, I have thought about buying a gun myself on occasion. You never know when the revolution may come. ;-)

Still shocked by the Bush White House's arrogance

Who'd have thought it possible? From the New York Times:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said....

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

I can't quite put into words how disgusted I am by such juvenile behavior by the supposed leader of the free world. It's barely believable and utterly sad.

Don't ever listen to anyone who tells you that your vote doesn't count, or that Democrats and Republicans are just the same. The last eight years are clear proof of that.

Two hundred and eight days until we are rid of this idiot.

FISA bill: it's not just about electronic surveillance

I followed up on a comment to one of my posts about the FISA bill (HR 6304, soon to be voted on in the Senate) and did some reading at Repeal FISA, a new website dedicated to the repeal of the current laws governing foreign intelligence gathering.

Besides the problems I described in my earlier post, I learned a new, frightening fact about HR 6304: it allows warrantless physical searches.

Up to this point, FISA has been about electronic surveillance; in other words, listening in on telephone calls and internet traffic. The new bill further tramples on the Fourth Amendment by allowing the government to perform physical searches without a warrant for up to seven days.

More here.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Call your Senators if this concerns you.

So this is how liberty dies... to thunderous applause.

-- Senator Padme, The Revenge of the Sith

Nader...

So I admire Ralph Nader for the work he has done in the past, but it seems like he is sometimes often operating in a bubble.

His comments today remind me of why my voting for him in 1996 won't be repeated.

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader accused Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic Party nominee, of downplaying poverty issues, trying to "talk white" and appealing to "white guilt" during his run for the White House.

Hillary's debt

I was impressed by an email I received from Hillary this morning: she is taking responsibility for her personal loans to her campaign and is only seeking help in paying off the remainder of her campaign's debt.

Here's the letter:

I made a promise to you, and I intend to keep it.

I told you that if you stood up for me, I would always stand up for you. You did more for me than I could have ever imagined, and I'm going to keep my end of the bargain and keep fighting for what we believe in -- in the Senate and on the campaign trail, helping to elect a new Democratic president and a bigger Democratic majority in Congress.

That relationship will endure thanks to the remarkable journey you and I have shared. But there's something else -- less endearing and I hope less enduring -- that our campaign has left behind: our substantial campaign debt.

I'm so grateful for all you've done for me -- all the ways you have given your time, energy, and financial resources. But today I am asking once again for your help ridding our campaign of debt so we can keep fighting together....

As you know, I had to loan money to my campaign at critical moments. I'm not asking for anyone's help to pay that back. That was my investment and my commitment because I believe so deeply in our cause.

But I do need your help paying the debts we accrued to others over the course of this campaign. We put everything we had into winning this race, and we came just about as close as you can.

I will never regret the energy, effort, and passion we put into one of the closest and most expensive primary contests in history. But I need your help to move on to the next phase of our journey together.

Your contribution today will help us pay down our campaign debt.

You've done so much for me over the past 17 months, and I can never thank you enough. But I hope you know how much I appreciate everything you put into our campaign.

¡Bebidas!

Lots of choices at Tacos los Toritos, a new taquería across the street from my school. :-)

6300 West Charles Blvd., 702-822-6700

Obama speaks on energy in Las Vegas

(Video link.)

Safer plastics

Here's a helpful guide to understanding which plastics are the safest to use (and re-use). It also provides recycling information.

In brief, the safest for use and re-use are:

• #2 - HDPE
• #4 - LDPE
• #5 - PP
  

These three types of plastic are the healthiest. They transmit no known chemicals into your food and they're generally recyclable; #2 is very commonly accepted by municipal recycling programs, but you may have a more difficult time finding someone to recycle your #4 and #5 containers.

Those to avoid are:

• #3 - PVC
• #6 - PS
• #7 - PC

Keep in mind that heating plastics will increase the likelihood that the chemicals in them will leach into your food or drink.

Nalgene and BPA

So I see people walking around all the time with those Nalgene bottles (especially when I lived in SF and Portland). The habit always seemed a little strange to me, but now that it's over a hundred degrees every day here in Vegas, I've started to reconsider.

I remembered that I had one of those bottles somewhere and ran across it tonight. I wondered what it was made of, checked the recycling number on the bottom, and saw that it was a class 7. That's the "other" category of plastics that may contain BPA, a potentially carcinogenic toxin. BPA can leach out of these plastics, especially when exposed to hot liquids (e.g. warm milk in baby bottles).

I checked the Nalgene website, and sure enough, they are discontinuing their polycarbonate bottles due to consumer demand.

Sometimes simple is best

Dinner on the new grill: chicken sausages (whole wheat buns!) with jalapeños and green onions, white corn on the cob, a spinach salad, and baked beans with molasses.

Yum :-P

More McCain mess-ups

(MORE ON MCCAIN HERE)

McCain is doing damage control after an offensive comment was made yesterday by his top advisor, Charlie Black. Black said that a terrorist attack in the U.S. would help their campaign, noting that Benazir Bhutto's assassination probably did:

A top adviser to John McCain said another terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a "big advantage" for the Republican presidential candidate, drawing a sharp rebuke Monday from both the presumed GOP nominee and Democrat Barack Obama.

Charlie Black, already in the spotlight for his past lobbying work, is quoted in the upcoming July 7 edition of Fortune magazine as saying such an attack "certainly would be a big advantage to him." Black said Monday he regretted the comment.

Black is also quoted as saying the "unfortunate event" of the assassination of former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 "helped us."

And then somehow McCain found himself being confronted by a member of one of his own hand-picked expert panels. McCain made the mistake of calling for offshore drilling and then holding a town hall meeting on energy in Santa Barbara a few days later. Santa Barbara is the site of one of the worst oil spills in U.S. history.

The panel member who disagreed with McCain is Michael Feeney, executive director of the Santa Barbara land trust. In his words:

Feeney also took issue with McCain's controversial proposal to lift the moratorium on offshore oil exploration: "It makes me nervous to think about those who are proposing to drain America's offshore oil and gas reserves as quickly as possible in the hopes of driving down the price of gasoline, because I think when you look at the good sources of information, were we to open up the California coast or the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, it would be 12, 15, maybe 20 years before those resources came online and got to full productions."

Adding that some research shows that drilling in ANWR would only "reduce our dependence on foreign oil from 70% to 67%," Feeney added, "I'm not sure most Americans would think that's really worth the price of admission."

(MORE ON MCCAIN HERE)

More on vitamin D

More research on the benefits of vitamin D:

New research linking low vitamin D levels with deaths from heart disease and other causes bolsters mounting evidence about the ''sunshine'' vitamin's role in good health.

Patients with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D were about two times more likely to die from any cause during the next eight years than those with the highest levels, the study found. The link with heart-related deaths was particularly strong in those with low vitamin D levels.

A couple of earlier posts on vitamin D here and here.

John McCain on Roe v. Wade and abortion

On his own website, McCain makes it clear that he believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned by the Supreme Court and that states should be empowered to end abortion altogether:

Overturning Roe v. Wade

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench.

Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat.

However, the reversal of Roe v. Wade represents only one step in the long path toward ending abortion. Once the question is returned to the states, the fight for life will be one of courage and compassion - the courage of a pregnant mother to bring her child into the world and the compassion of civil society to meet her needs and those of her newborn baby. The pro-life movement has done tremendous work in building and reinforcing the infrastructure of civil society by strengthening faith-based, community, and neighborhood organizations that provide critical services to pregnant mothers in need. This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion. These important groups can help build the consensus necessary to end abortion at the state level. As John McCain has publicly noted, "At its core, abortion is a human tragedy. To effect meaningful change, we must engage the debate at a human level."

Abortion is a horrendous choice, and I believe that there's a point in the development of a fetus when it can no longer be justified except when the mother's health is in danger.

But it's also barbaric to me that a woman in the early stages of pregnancy could be forced to have a child that she does not want.

Solar energy in Las Vegas

Obama was in town today to tour a small solar power plant that supplies electricity for about 75 Las Vegas homes. He picked a good day... the sun is out and it's 103 degrees.

Read more about his visit and his clean energy plans here. And you can read the speech he gave on energy here. An excerpt:

The possibilities of renewable energy are limitless. But to truly harness its potential, we urgently need real leadership from Washington – leadership that has been missing for decades. We have been talking about energy independence since Americans were waiting in gas lines during the 1970s. We've heard promises about it in every State of the Union for the last three decades. But each and every year, we become more, not less, addicted to oil – a 19th century fossil fuel that is dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive. Why?

It isn't because the resources and technology aren't there. We know this because countries like Spain, Germany, and Japan have already leapt ahead of us when it comes to renewable energy technology. Germany, a country as cloudy as the Pacific Northwest, is now a world leader in the solar power industry and the quarter million new jobs it has created. In less than eight years, before we'd ever see a drop of oil from offshore drilling, they have doubled their renewable energy output. And they did it by using technology that, in some cases, was paid for by the American people through our own Research and Development tax credits. The difference is, their government harnessed that technology by providing the necessary investments and incentives to jumpstart a renewable energy industry. Washington hasn't done that....

Just yesterday, Senator McCain actually admitted this. In a town hall he said, and I quote, "I don't see an immediate relief" but "the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial." Psychological impact. In case you were wondering, that's Washington-speak for, "It polls well." It's an example of how Washington politicians try to convince you that they did something to make your life better when they really didn't. Well the American people don't need psychological relief or meaningless gimmicks to get politicians through the next election, they need real relief that will help them fill up their tanks and put food on their table. They need a long-term energy strategy that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil by investing in the renewable sources of energy that represent the future. That's what they need.

Meanwhile, the oil companies already own drilling rights to 68 million acres of federal lands, onshore and offshore, that they haven't touched. 68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America's total oil production, and John McCain wants to give them more. Well that might make sense in Washington, but it doesn't make sense for America. In fact, it makes about as much sense as his proposal to build 45 new nuclear reactors without a plan to store the waste some place other than right here at Yucca Mountain. Folks, these are not serious energy policies. They are not new energy policies. And they are certainly not the kind of energy policies that will give families the relief they need or our country the oil independence we must have....

I have a very different vision of what this country can and should achieve on energy in the next four years – in the next ten years. I have a plan to raise the fuel standards in our cars and trucks with technology we have on the shelf today – technology that will make sure we get more miles to the gallon. And we will provide financial help to our automakers and autoworkers to help them make this transition. I will invest $150 billion over the next ten years in alternative sources of energy like wind power, and solar power, and advanced biofuels – investments that will create up to five million new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced; that will create billions of dollars in new business like you're already doing here in Nevada. And before we hand over more of our land and our coastline to oil companies, I will charge those companies a fee for every acre that they currently lease but don't drill on. If that compels them to drill, we'll get more oil. If it doesn't, the fees will go toward more investment in renewable sources of energy.

When all is said and done, my plan to increase our fuel standards will save American consumers from purchasing half a trillion gallons of gas over the next eighteen years. My entire energy plan will produce three times the oil savings that John McCain's ever could – and what's more, it will actually decrease our dependence on oil while his will only grow our addiction further.

Republicans say the darndest things

When I lived in Oregon, I always appreciated Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) for his support for the lesbian and gay community. All in all, he seemed like a fairly reasonable guy for me (especially for a Republican ;-).

But this ad... wow!

Just goes to show how unpopular Bush is these days... and what does it say about McCain's standing within his own party?

(Video link.)

Gay mayo

A Heinz commerical featuring a gay kiss has been pulled from the airwaves in Britain. Sigh. Here's the story, here's the video:

Watch out: rising prices ahead

Dow Chemical announced across-the-board July price increases of up to 25% today. That follows on a similar hike of about 20% earlier this month.

Since Dow's products are used in the manufacture of just about everything, expect to see rising prices in the months to come.

Why? Oil prices are up 44% so far this year, and they're a primary input for Dow's business.

Modern stonehenge

Actually, just the entrance to my campus library. :-)

Kill the screensaver

A good article on the benefits of getting rid of the screensaver on your computer and instead just turning your monitor off. It saves a lot of energy and will reduce the amount of CO2 that you're pumping into the atmosphere.

If you are using Windows XP, here is how to configure the auto-sleep feature for your monitor.

Beware the calls for offshore drilling

While McCain & Bush are sounding the call to open up the coasts and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, U.S. oil companies have vast areas already under lease where they haven't yet drilled:

Oil companies and many lawmakers are pressing to open up more U.S. areas for drilling. But the industry is drilling on just a fraction of areas it already has access to.

Of the 90 million offshore acres the industry has leases to, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, it is estimated that upwards of 70 million are not producing oil, according to both Democrats and oil-industry sources.

So... explain to me why the solution to $135/barrel oil and $4/gallon gasoline is giving the oil companies more land to drill on when they haven't fully explored their existing leases?

To me, it sounds like politics: use Americans' frustration with high gas prices to get around their strong opposition to drilling in these environmentally sensitive areas.

The 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara is one big reason why people are rightfully concerned. More from NPR.

And that's Straight Talk you can count on, Mr. McCain.

You might have thought that it'd never happen

But I made a contribution to Hillary Clinton today to help her pay off her campaign debt.

Yes, we can.

What's really wrong with the new FISA bill

The FISA "compromise" bill passed the House last week and will likely be taken up by the Senate soon. The measure seeks to resolve the controversies surrounding the FISA court (which approves requests from the government for domestic spying), immunity for telecom companies that have previously cooperated with the government on illegal warrantless wiretaps, and those wiretaps themselves.

Much of the focus has been on the bill's provision which amounts to immunity for the telcos.

But Kevin Drum describes the real problem with the bill in his Political Animal blog:

At this point we have to engage in a bit of guesswork since the details of the NSA program are classified, but the basic problem is the same as it's always been: NSA's program isn't targeted at particular people or even particular organizations. Nor is it targeted solely at foreign-to-foreign communications since modern communications technology makes it very difficult to be sure where a particular message originates or terminates. Rather, it's based on complex computer algorithms, something that's genuinely uncharted territory.

To repeat something I said a couple of years ago, the nice thing about probable cause and reasonable suspicion and other similar phrases is that they have a long history behind them. There are hundreds of years of statutory definition and case law that define what they mean, and human judges interpret them in ways that most of us understand, even if we disagree about which standard ought to be used for issuing different kinds of wiretap warrants.

But the NSA's domestic spying program doesn't rely on the ordinary human understanding of these phrases. Instead, it appears to rely primarily on software algorithms that determine whether or not a person is acting in a way that merits eavesdropping. The details are still murky, but what the NSA appears to be doing is very large scale data mining on virtually every phone call and email between the United States and overseas, looking for patterns that fit a profile of some kind. Maybe twice or three-times removed links to suspected terrorist phone numbers. Or anyone who makes more than 5% of their calls to Afghanistan. Or people who make a suspiciously large volume of calls on certain dates or from certain mosques. Stuff like that.

In short, the FISA bill suggests that monitoring U.S. phone calls, emails, and other electronically-transmitted communications is acceptable. And further, that the process for selecting who is monitored is no longer based on some evidence suggesting that a particular individual may be doing something wrong but rather on computer software written by a few nameless programmers.

Who is to say that the software works as specified? What happens to all the calls and emails that are analyzed and flagged as potentially related to terrorist activity, but turn out to be benign? If the process is so opaque, how do we ensure it's not abused? What's to stop the government from using the same techniques to sniff out data on other illegal activities?

Do you care if someone is listening in?

Contact your Senators if you do.

Happy Belated Birthday, Kim!

My friend Romaine drew a portrait of our mutual friend Kim's kids recently, and Kim's husband is giving it to her as a gift. I got his okay to share. :-)

Organic?

We like to assume that organic products are better for us and the environment. I think so. But there's not a lot of evidence so far.

But I'm using one organic product right now that I know is better for me: organic Heinz Ketchup. It's made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. And studies have found that the latter is worse for you than the former.

So knock yourself out with organic Heinz. ;-)

Plastic is forever

Well, not quite forever, but it might as well be. The average piece of plastic that passes through your hands will last hundreds of years.

And when you throw it away, you think it's just gone. But in reality, so much of humanity's plastic waste simply washes up somewhere else... or floats on the ocean for months or years or ???

The poisons that collect on plastic, as well as the toxins in the polymers themselves, end up in the ocean food chain, ultimately completing a grand round trip by coming back to us in the seafood we consume.

The New York Times had a great article today about the problem. The problem affects even the most remote areas of the planet, far from human habitation:

In 2004 two oceanographers from the British Antarctic Survey completed a study of plastic dispersal in the Atlantic that spanned both hemispheres. “Remote oceanic islands,” the study showed, “may have similar levels of debris to those adjacent to heavily industrialized coasts.” Even on the shores of Spitsbergen Island in the Arctic, the survey found on average a plastic item every five meters.

Where does it all come from? It comes from you and me:

Not even oceanographers can tell us exactly how much floating scruff is out there; oceanographic research is simply too expensive and the ocean too varied and vast. In 2002, Nature magazine reported that during the 1990s, debris in the waters near Britain doubled; in the Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica the increase was a hundredfold. And depending on where they sample, oceanographers have found that between 60 and 95 percent of today’s marine debris is made of plastic.

Plastic gets into the ocean when people throw it from ships or leave it in the path of an incoming tide, but also when rivers carry it there, or when sewage systems and storm drains overflow. Despite the Ocean Dumping Reform Act, the U.S. still releases more than 850 billion gallons of untreated sewage and storm runoff every year, according to a 2004 E.P.A. report. Comb the Manhattan waterfront and you will find, along with the usual windrows of cups, bottles and plastic bags, what the E.P.A. calls “floatables,” those “visible buoyant or semibuoyant solids” that people flush into the waste stream like cotton swabs, condoms, tampon applicators and dental floss. [emphasis added]

The Encyclopedia of Coastal Processes, about as somniferously clinical a scientific source on the subject as one can find, predicts that plastic pollution “will incrementally increase through the 21st century,” because “the problems created are chronic and potentially global, rather than acute and local or regional as many would contemplate.” The problems are chronic because, unlike the marine debris of centuries past, commercial plastics do not biodegrade in seawater. Instead, they persist, accumulating over time, much as certain emissions accumulate in the atmosphere. The problems are global because the sources of plastic pollution are far-flung but also because, like emissions riding the winds, pollutants at sea can travel.

Amazingly, huge amounts of floating plastic congregate out in the open waters of the oceans:

“As I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean,” [researcher Charles] Moore later wrote in an essay for Natural History, “I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic. It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments.” An oceanographic colleague of Moore’s dubbed this floating junk yard “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” and despite Moore’s efforts to suggest different metaphors — “a swirling sewer,” “a superhighway of trash” connecting two “trash cemeteries” — “Garbage Patch” appears to have stuck.

The Garbage Patch wasn’t merely a cosmetic problem, nor merely a symbolic one, Moore contended. For one thing, it was a threat to wildlife. Scientists estimate that every year at least a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die when they entangle themselves in debris or ingest it. “Entanglement and ingestion, however, are not the worst problems caused by the ubiquitous plastic pollution,” Moore wrote. Plastic polymers, as has long been known, absorb hydrophobic chemicals, including persistent organic pollutants, or POPS, like dioxin, P.C.B.’s and D.D.T. Highly controlled in the U.S. but less so elsewhere, such substances are surprisingly abundant at the ocean’s surface. By concentrating these free-floating contaminants, Moore worried, particles of plastic could become “poison pills.” He also worried about toxins in the plastic itself — phthalates, organotins — that have been known to leach out over time. Once fish or plankton ingest these pills, Moore speculated, poisons both in and on the plastic would enter the food web. And since such toxins concentrate, or “bioaccumulate,” in fatty tissues as they move up the chain of predation — so that the “contaminant burden” of a swordfish is greater than a mackerel’s and a mackerel’s greater than a shrimp’s — this plastic could be poisoning people too.

And what are we to do?

As nearly everyone I spoke to about marine debris agrees, the best way to get trash out of our waterways is, of course, to keep it from entering them in the first place. But experts disagree about what that will take. The argument, like so many in American politics, pits individual freedom against the common good. “Don’t you tell me I can’t have a plastic bag,” Seba Sheavly, the marine-debris researcher, says, alluding to plastic-bag bans like the one San Francisco enacted last year. “I know how to dispose of it responsibly.” But proponents of bag bans insist that there is no way to use a plastic bag responsibly. Lorena Rios, an environmental chemist at the University of the Pacific, says: “If you go to Subway, and they give you the plastic bag, how long do you use the plastic bag? One minute. And how long will the polymers in that bag last? Hundreds of years...." [emphasis added]

We still have limited tax dollars to spend and scarier nightmares to fear. No one... will tell you that plastic pollution is the greatest man-made threat our oceans face. Depending whom you ask, that honor goes to global warming, agricultural runoff or overfishing. But unlike many pollutants, plastic has no natural source and therefore there is no doubt that we are to blame. Because we can see it, plastic is a powerful bellwether of our impact upon the earth. Where plastics travel, invisible pollutants — pesticides and fertilizers from lawns and farms, petrochemicals from roads, sewage tainted with pharmaceuticals — often follow.

So the next time you handle something made of plastic, think about how long you will use it, how long it will last once you've discarded it, and where it may spend those centuries.

1am in Vegas

Sarah Silverman was sick! LOL

It's 95 degrees.

More friendly flora?

I like the bacteria that live in my gut. They're supposed to be there. :-)

Not so sure about Pseudomonas fluorescens, a bacterium that scientists are talking about adding to Lake Mead to kill off an invasive species of mussels. These tricky little guys cause problems for the Vegas water supply by clogging water intakes and damaging pumps, and they seal themselves in their shells if they detect poisons in their vicinity. They remain vulnerable to P. fluorescens, however.

Hmm. Might work. Or we might be smarter than we think we are and end up with some other problem.

There was an old woman who swallowed a cat.
She swallowed the cat to eat the bird.
She swallowed the bird to eat the spider.
She swallowed the spider to eat the fly.
I don't know why... she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die.

:-)

Yahoo! exodus

Apparently there's been an exodus of senior managers from Yahoo!

So many that some wiseguy (wisegal?) put together a do-it-yourself resignation letter template for folks there.

It reminds me of my final few months at Oracle... the rumors that our division were being sold were so persistent that people had become pretty lax about showing up for work. We got so many emails with ridiculous excuses for people's absences that my friend Susie put together a similar template: it generated an email to the group using the excuse you selected from her list, or let you have the template choose one for you randomly. :-)

Fire season

While worries grow that the West is in for another tough fire season, a U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher predicts the number of acres burned in the U.S. may double in the next 70 years due to climate change.

End ethanol mandates

With soaring food prices, the idea of rolling back ethanol mandates continues to gain steam in Washington.

Keith Collins, the former Agriculture Department chief economist, will release a study on Monday saying that as much as half of the sharp increase in corn prices over the last few years is due to the demands of ethanol production.

That view diverges sharply from the view of Mr. Collins’ former boss, Mr. Schafer, who said at a Rome conference that only a tiny percentage of the increase in world food prices was due to American ethanol production.

“We’ve seen a tremendous range of unintended consequences” from the requirement that increasing amounts of ethanol be blended into gasoline, Mr. Collins said.

The economist, who was hired by the Kraft food company to prepare his report, said he would be surprised if the Agriculture Department did not open up some conservation lands. He would not speculate about a change in the ethanol mandates.

The White House will be forced to confront the ethanol issue next month. States are allowed to asked for waivers of the mandate for corn ethanol on the ground that it is harming the economy or the environment.

Anatomy for the week

Just what is that appendix for? One theory: a reservoir for friendly bacteria.

Planes

Victor and I watched United 93 last night; I'd seen it before, he hadn't.

It's intense but well done. And it feels honest. At some point, I wouldn't mind seeing the memorial in Pennsylvania.

And while I was thinking of flying, I remembered to buy a TerraPass to offset the CO2 emissions from our four flights to California this summer. $17.85, what a deal. :-)

Obama's first general election TV ad

Obama's campaign has begun airing its first ad of the general election campaign.

It's running in eighteen states including Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota. Some of those are traditionally solid Republican states, giving some credibility to Obama's claims that he can be competitive outside the usual Democratic strongholds. In Alaska, he is running neck-and-neck with McCain which is particularly surprising given how handily Bush won there in 2000 and 2004.

HERE'S OBAMA'S EXPLANATION for why he's decided to forego public financing of his campaign and rely on the mostly small donors who have been supporting his campaign so far.

Score: free tickets to Sarah Silverman

We just got some free tix to see one of my favorite comedians, Sarah Silverman, this Saturday at the Hard Rock Casino.

She's nuts... love it!

(Video link.)

Sarah was also the voice behind one of my favorite prank phone-calling puppets, Hadassah Guberman, on Crank Yankers. :-)

Offshore drilling

With gas prices as high as they are, it's tempting to get into "drill anywhere and everywhere" mode to get more oil.

The problem is, the oil that's easy to find and extract has been used. It will be more expensive to find and pump whatever is left.

McCain, Bush & Co. are talking about ending the federal ban on offshore drilling. The problem is, if we did so, it would be decades before we'd see an impact:

A 2007 Department of Energy study found that access to coastal energy deposits would not add to domestic crude oil and natural gas production before 2030 and that the impact on prices would be “insignificant.”

So even if we moved ahead with offshore drilling, the results would be a long time coming (one reason: a shortage of super-expensive deep-sea drilling rigs).

Think about it: more than 20 years before offshore drilling would make a meaningful impact to U.S. supplies.

We could spend the next two decades trying to feed our oil addiction...

Or we could use that time to focus on the development of new energy sources, greater conservation, and the simultaneous improvement of the health of our species and our planet.

Risking our coasts is the fool's route, the one that seemingly gets us off the hook but leaves our children in an even worse predicament.

Bush still not being held to account

Congress continues to fail to hold the Bush administration responsible for years of warrantless wiretaps. The agreement reached in the House today actually expands White House powers and, while not giving telecom companies that cooperate with the government outright immunity, does give courts the ability to throw out lawsuits.

The deal, expanding the government’s powers in some key respects, would allow intelligence officials to use broad warrants to eavesdrop on foreign targets and conduct emergency wiretaps without court orders on American targets for a week if it is determined important national security information would be lost otherwise. If approved, as appears likely, it would be the most significant revision of surveillance law in 30 years.

The agreement would settle one of the thorniest issues in dispute by providing immunity to the phone companies in the Sept. 11 program as long as a federal district court determines that they received legitimate requests from the government directing their participation in the warrantless wiretapping operation.

More from the ACLU.

If you are unhappy, contact your Representatives and Senators directly.

You know you live in Vegas...

When you walk in the door, the thermostat is set at 85 degrees, and you feel cool. :-)

Actually, the thermostat is upstairs, and it's a cool 78 on the first floor. But it's around 104 outside and 2% relative humidity.

Hot and dry. But after all those years in cool and foggy SF, so far... no complaints.

Oil at record highs... hey, let's put the brakes on solar!

You'd think with soaring fuel prices that the government would be doing everything possible to speed the development of alternative energy sources.

The Bureau of Land Management claims to be doing that, but it's approach is to put a 22-month moratorium on new solar projects on the land it controls (which includes 67% of Nevada).

While I understand that it's necessary to ensure that these projects don't harm vulnerable arid and semi-arid areas of the southwest, it's also disappointing that the BLM's move comes now. There are 125 pending applications for solar projects on Federal lands, some of which are over three years old.

From the Las Vegas Sun:

“[The moratorium] immediately is going to slow the momentum of a growing economy of solar business in the state of Nevada,” said Chris Brooks, director of the renewable energy division of Bombard Electric, which installed solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base. “Twenty-two months will drive businesses out of existence.”

Brooks and other solar energy insiders said the moratorium, especially coupled with uncertainty in Congress over long-term tax credits for solar development, would discourage solar manufacturers from locating in the Southwest.

Of the 125 pending applications, 23 are for Nevada, and they have the potential to produce a huge amount of electricity:

The Nevada applications, 11 in Nye County and 12 in Clark County, would involve 211,000 acres of federal land and could produce 15,000 megawatts, more than twice the peak summer load in Southern Nevada. The 125 applications nationwide, if approved, would power 20 million American homes, according to the BLM.

Election news and notes

SO I DROPPED ORGANIC CHEMISTRY II and replaced it with a sociology class and an introduction to physical therapy course. Trying to cover 16 weeks of ochem in only 8 weeks--which meant two labs a week--on top of my anatomy course (also with a lab) was just too much. I'll be taking the second semester of organic chemistry this fall or next spring.

The sociology class has been a kick. I love the instructor, and the "all dialogue" format of our class sessions is a welcome change from so many lectures.

Today we talked about the media and whether it performed its role well in the months leading up to the Iraq War. I don't think it did: the Bush administration basically got a "pass" on their claims, and all these years later we're still watching the damage.

The McCain campaigns ongoing blather about Obama's inability to protect the country from terrorists is just so much more of the crap that I--and now, I believe, a majority in the U.S.--am sick of. They played this game with John Kerry four years ago...

And why not? It's an old an effective game. I had been thinking about a quote from Hermann Goering today, just moments before my sociology professor passed around the quote in class. Goering, the head of the Gestapo and one of the top Nazi leaders, made the remark after the war:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

What we have to work on this year is outsmarting the people who are counting on Americans to be duped again. As one girl in my class remarked today, "It only takes one person speaking out."
So during these coming months, think about what kind of world you want to live in. We can let our lives be ruled by fear... or by hope. Neither perspective guarantees that smart decisions will be made, but each frames the challenges we face differently.

I'm looking for a leader who is intelligent and motivated by optimism about what we're capable of.

McCain's campaign so far has told me that he's not such a man.

HIS NEW POSITION on offshore oil drilling (he used to be opposed) is that we should go for it:

The party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, used a speech in Houston on Tuesday to say he now favors offshore drilling, an announcement that infuriated environmentalists who have long viewed him as an ally. Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, a Republican, immediately joined Mr. McCain, saying he, too, now wants an end to the ban.

Bush agrees. Sorry, but I don't.

I just don't think we're at a point in the oil economy when we can drill our way out of the mess we're in. I do agree with McCain that an expanded role for nuclear energy is probably a good idea. It was amusing, though, that he made that comment while in Springfield (Missouri).

ACCORDING TO A NEW POLL, there's little evidence that the "dream ticket" would help Obama's chances of winning Ohio, Florida, or Pennsylvania.

NOT SURE WHAT I think of this new MoveOn ad

(Video link.)

I agree with the mother's concern for her child. But it plays into people's fears, and I wasn't that comfortable about the "red phone" ad's use of children, either. Hmm.

Okay, time to study. Even without ochem, still not much time for blogging. :-)

Gore endorses: "Elections matter"

More here.

Many people have waited for some sign that our country is awakening once again. How will we know when a massive wave of reform and recovery and regeneration is about to take hold and renew our nation? What would it look like if such a change were beginning to build? I think we might recognize it as a sign of such change if we saw millions of young people getting involved for the first time in the political process. I think we might just recognize it if we saw that new generation casting aside obsolete and hurtful distinctions and reaching out to one another across the ancient divisions that have frustrated action in the past. I think we would know this change was coming if a new generation rejected the special interest politics of the past and the big money that fueled it, and instead used the internet to get small donations and unite Americans in a common effort to realize our common destiny.

It wasn't happening

Saw The Happening tonight. It wasn't. Lame.

Sigh, it looked like it had potential, but M. Knight Shyamalan sure blew it.

Here come the brides

Long-time lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who have been together for 50 years, were the first couple to be married in San Francisco today when the California Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage took effect at 5pm.

Congrats!

Cell phone facts

Since the cell phone popcorn story was a dud, here are some hard numbers on the amount of radiation put out by various phone models.

Keep in mind that the radiation generated by cell phones consists of radio waves... and we're continuously bombarded by them from a whole host of sources, such as radio stations. The frequency used by most models is at the low end of the microwave range, but the real issue is that we're holding the transmitter close to our head, maximizing the potential of the waves to interact with our brains.

The radiation is non-ionizing, meaning it's not strong enough to dislodge electrons from atoms, and certainly not strong enough to break the bonds that hold DNA together. The concern is that either the radio waves themselves or the heat that they can induce in living tissue may somehow affect the chemical workings of our brain cells.

Our cells are quite temperature sensitive, and our bodies work hard to maintain a constant body temperature. Interestingly, when I cut my hand badly enough to require stitches a month ago, I had noticed that the nails on that hand seemed to grow faster than the other hand. A few weeks later, I learned in my anatomy and physiology class that one of the ways that inflammation helps wounds heal is by increasing blood flow to the injured area, resulting in a localized temperature increase. Higher temperatures speed up most chemical reactions. So if you talk on the phone a lot, there's the possibility that any resulting increase in temperature in your brain tissue might lead to undesirable biological changes.

While scientists search for the answers, think about getting a headset. :-)

Being gay in Las Vegas

Since moving to Vegas last August, I haven't seen much evidence of the gay community here. Sure, there are a few bars and clubs, but compared to other cities I've lived in or visited, there really isn't a place where gays and lesbians seem to congregate.

But then again, Las Vegas is noticeably lacking in coffeehouses and the sort of walkable areas that bring people into social contact with one another. Let's face it, The Strip doesn't cut it as a town square.

Obviously gay men and lesbians exist here in Vegas; the tough part is connecting. Here are the websites for a couple of organizations that are working for the benefit of our community:

• Stonewall Democrats of Southern Nevada
• Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada

All things Obama

Victor and I have been entertaining our friend Mikey this weekend. He and his mom were in town for a week celebrating their birthdays and visiting Mikey's aunt. Besides the usual club- and barhopping, we had a fun day at the Red Rock pool and a nice group dinner at Bleu Gourmet.

So I've been a little too busy to do much blogging, but I've seen a few Obama items from the past few days that I wanted to pass on.

A NEW NEVADA POLL finds Obama and McCain in a statistical dead heat, raising the likelihood that we'll be a battleground state with significant attention from both campaigns. Some key findings:

Voters age 18 to 34 preferred Obama by a wide margin, 55 percent to 31 percent. Among voters age 35 to 49, the two candidates were tied at 43 percent each. But McCain was preferred by voters 50 to 64, 48 percent to 39 percent, and by voters 65 and older, 50 percent to 34 percent.

"Obama winning the youth vote is not surprising, but he's got to keep them motivated, because they tend to turn out in lower numbers," said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter in Washington, D.C.

"They're tied in that middle tier, and that could be where it's decided."

Duffy said it was somewhat surprising to see McCain winning older voters by such a healthy margin. In national surveys, she said, the 71-year-old McCain has sometimes faced an age issue with "those older voters who don't think they could do it."

In another crucial demographic, Obama, 46, prevails among Hispanic voters, with 53 percent, but nearly one-fifth are undecided and McCain still draws 28 percent.

Also of note, Democrats continue to lead Republicans in terms of the number of voters registered statewide. And I've seen people from Obama's Vote for Change voter registration campaign and the Young Democrats of Nevada around Las Vegas in the last couple of weeks.

ON SATURDAY, OBAMA VOLUNTEERED to do some sandbagging in Quincy, Illinois, ahead of rising flood waters.

(Video link.)

AND ON FATHER'S DAY, Obama spoke at a Chicago church about the importance of the family and the tragedy of fathers who are absent:

Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation. They are teachers and coaches. They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success and the men who constantly push us toward it.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing – missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it....

But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child – it’s the courage to raise one.

We need to help all the mothers out there who are raising these kids by themselves; the mothers who drop them off at school, go to work, pick up them up in the afternoon, work another shift, get dinner, make lunches, pay the bills, fix the house, and all the other things it takes both parents to do. So many of these women are doing a heroic job, but they need support. They need another parent. Their children need another parent. That’s what keeps their foundation strong. It’s what keeps the foundation of our country strong.

It's a great speech, and if you don't have time to watch the whole thing, fast forward to 14:00 and watch for a couple minutes. He brings the crowd to its feet with his call for parents to raise their expectations of what their children can accomplish.

(Video link.)

FINALLY, I KNEW THAT OBAMA LOVES BASKETBALL but didn't realize that he had played on the team that won the Hawaii state high school basketball championship in 1979. No wonder he jokes about replacing the White House bowling alley with a basketball court. :-)

Iowa

What a mess... in Iowa, and through much of the Midwest. I can't even imagine dealing with that kind of flooding. Not to mention the tornadoes...

The Obama campaign is helping to organize volunteers.

Try this at at home

So my friend Jack forwarded me a link to a site that reports that the cellphone popcorn videos are a hoax. Guess I'll have to try it this weekend. :-)

Manuel, for the record, really is a nutritionist, lol.

Party unity humor

Nice pic and caption. :-)

OMG: Popcorn... from your cell phone

Oh, my!

My friend Manuel in San Francisco sent me a link to several videos of popcorn being popped with the microwaves from... cell phones! Frightening!

What's this thing doing to my brain???

MANUEL, BY THE WAY, is a registered dietician and one of the leading nutritional experts in the Bay Area. He is the founder of MV Nutrition, a provider of personalized programs for weight management and the treatment of cardiovascular disease, digestive disorders, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS through sound nutrition. His approach is grounded in science and maximizes his clients' success with ongoing follow-up. It's been proven to promote positive changes in eating habits while achieving people's nutritional goals in a healthy, realistic way.

I've spoken to a number of his clients, and they've been universally satisfied.

I went to Manuel's graduation from Berkeley back in the mid-90s, and I'm so proud of all that he's achieved. You, go! :-)