Tilting at windmills

Sadly accurate comic via Union of Concerned Scientists.

What Happens At The Masonic Park, Stays At The Masonic Park

This weekend my wife and I went camping in a Masonic Park. We were invited along with a 3rd-Degree Mason and his girlfriend, friends of ours that we met through a gaming group. And in contrast to what the title of my post suggests, I'm actually gonna talk about it a little.

We were camped in a remote corner of the woods, yet still within jogging distance of a flush toilet, which makes it almost too easy to call it camping. Mother Nature decided to make up for that low degree of difficulty by dumping rain on our heads all day Saturday, so we could never forget that in the wild we survive only at the Earth's whims.

In all seriousness, it was a beautiful private park, and we had tons of fun despite the rain. Happily it turns out my firebuilding skills are stronger than I'd given myself credit for. Our camp was just up from a shallow river bed, so we had a constant sound of the rapids, plus the rain lightly falling on our roof-top, in the background all night. Funny the way sounds that would signify a burst pipe back home end up being awesomely beautiful out in nature.

The whole weekend was really serene and peaceful, with the exception of one little part during the open-air ceremony taking place at the far end of the camp, when a cacophony of noise rolled and echoed across the canyon. I'm not sure exactly what was going on, and since I'd promised to stay out of that area during a particular four-hour block, I couldn't go satisfy my curiosity about the noises. From the sound of it, though, it must have been a sight to behold - an epic riot on the order of the Orcs attacking Helm's Deep. Made me kinda envious of whatever Masonic secrets my friend is in-the-know about.

The place we put our tents was somewhat isolated from people (largely at my request), but those we met (all of them either Freemasons, or accompanied by Masons) were really nice. I was quite impressed with how friendly everyone was. As a long-haired freak with unusual hobbies, I often expect any strangers I meet to be distant and unwelcoming. I would have expected that those belonging to a secret brotherhood (which I am not a member of) to be even more so. Quite to the contrary, they never made me feel like an outsider at all.

As an added bonus, since it wasn't just some public park with totally random anonymous strangers, you could feel safe leaving all your stuff sitting out at night or while you were off on a nature hike. As a hardened city-dweller, I sometimes find it difficult to let down my guard when in the sorts of neighborhoods where they don't lock the doors. In retrospect I'm pretty sure I could have left my wallet sitting out on a random picnic table all weekend, and it would have been just fine.

Damn good weekend.

God can help us eat our way out of it.

The Louisiana State Senate has exhausted all worldly options, and is, I kid you not, relying on state-sponsored prayer to solve the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I learned about it from watching John Stewart...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Day 662 - The Strife Aquatic
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I think this is a really good idea. We get Jesus out there, and have him do his thing. No, I'm not suggesting he get his hands dirty cleaning up oil, just get his feet wet. Walk out on the water a ways, and then do one of your other well-practiced miracles. Jesus, if you're listening, please turn all the water into wine. Everyone knows that Oil and Water don't mix, but Oil and Wine... that makes a tasty Vinaigrette. We'll all line up on the shore with plates of salad and sides of crusty italian bread. For second course, I'm thinking linguni in a garlic alfredo. We could work in a little cross-promotion between the Holy Church and Olive Garden. All-you-can-eat salad, breadsticks, and petroleum.

Mixing like Oil and Water (and Dish Detergent)

Great. It's gotten worse. I hope you weren't emotionally attached to, say, the entire southern coast of the U.S., or, like, the ecosystem of the Earth, or anything like that.

Scientists: Newly discovered Gulf oil plume is 22-miles long, six-miles wide

Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico
...

The researchers say they are worried these undersea plumes may be the result of the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil a mile undersea at the site of the leak.

Hollander said the oil they detected has dissolved into the water, and is no longer visible, leading to fears from researchers that the toxicity from the oil and dispersants could pose a big danger to fish larvae and creatures that filter the waters for food.

"There are two elements to it," Hollander said. "The plume reaching waters on the continental shelf could have a toxic effect on fish larvae, and we also may see a long term response as it cascades up the food web."

Dispersants contain surfactants, which are similar to dishwashing soap.

A Louisiana State University researcher who has studied their effects on marine life said that by breaking oil into small particles, surfactants make it easier for fish and other animals to soak up the oil's toxic chemicals. That can impair the animals' immune systems and cause reproductive problems.

You know, I can't remember the last time a wind mill or a solar cell destroyed all life for hundreds of miles around. Just sayin'.

Sweden: Fossil Fuel Free by 2020

What an awesome commitment. Man, I love the swedes. First* that bikini team in the beer commercials, and now this. Of course, I didn't learn about it from the wikipedia article. I found it while reading something that turns out not to be the flying car we all wanted, afterall.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen cities in Sweden are planning podcar systems as part of the country's commitment to be fossil-fuel-free by 2020, said Hans Lindqvist, a councilman from Varmdo, Sweden, and chairman of Kompass, an association of groups and municipalities behind the Swedish initiative.

*: Okay, so I also like ABBA, neutrality, 5 weeks state-sponsored paid vacation a year, universal health care, and several other things Sweden did before this. I used to have some swedish folk music on cassette, and attended two different folk music / folk dancing festivals when I vacationed in Sweden. In general, I like everything about Sweden, with the exception of lutefisk and pickled herring. And I know the bikini team was fictitious. But man, if Sweden had flying cars, and they said flying cars didn't use fossil feul, I'd seriously consider moving there and learning to drive.

By Yimir's Frosty Phallus!

Mother Nature is a transvestite.

I'd be nearly that small in such cold water, too.

The north pole - in all it's uncut glory!

*insert your own penis here*

...joke! *insert your own penis JOKE here* yeesh.

McCain is Palin's Bitch

This made me laugh...

Plight of the Bumblebee

Worldwide, the honeybee is dying out. This has huge potential impact on our society. If the bees go, we don't just lose honey, we lose 1/3 of America's agriculture. The ripple effect of this will be felt far and wide.

• 36% of bee colonies in the US died in the past year, mostly the result of Colony Collapse Disorder.
  
• Colony Collapse Disorder started in the US in 2006, and has been documented in 26 states. It has since spread to Europe and Taiwan. Reports have also come from Brazil and India, though they have yet to be confirmed by the scientific community as cases of CCD.
  
• The cause of Colony Collapse Disorder has yet to be determined, though several different parasites are suspected as playing a part. There's at least one published study linking mobile phones to CCD, and climate change may play a factor. No one knows how to keep it from spreading.
• Over 30% of all British honeybees died in the past winter. England's Minister of Farming predicts the extinction of honeybees in the UK within 10 years.
  
• World honey production is centered in Argentina. They produce more than any other country, and 3 times the amount of honey that the next highest producing country (Mexico) produces. Argentinian honey production dropped 27% last year.
• The price of raw honey has increased 60% in the past year.
• One third of all crops in the US rely on pollination by honeybees. This holds true for more than "just" fruit - soybeans, almonds, and cucumbers all require honeybees to reproduce.
  

Sources of the above facts: The Guardian, Wikipedia.

To me, the creepy part is: Where are the bees going? Various articles mention that the bees just vacate the hives and never come back, but I have yet to read even a single report about wandering clouds of bees or large piles of dead bees.

Seattle, Bags, Laws, Kitty Litter, Inflation, Smug Twats, Dinosaurs, Facist Dickwads, etc

Restaurants panicked about Styrofoam ban

The Seattle City Council and Mayor Greg Nickels plan ... adding a bag fee to your grocery bill and banning Styrofoam products.

... legislation which would ban Styrofoam to-go containers and charge a 20-cent fee for each bag you use at the store.

I'm all for it, even though I use the leftover plastic bags to take out my cat litter. With the rising cost of oil, it's only a matter of a couple years before styrofoam costs more than recycled paper containers, and before traditional plastic costs more than corn-based, anyway. Might as well head it off at the pass.

A lot of the restaurants are bitching, but shouldn't be. After all, this is an excuse for them to raise their prices across the board and match the recent rampant inflation.

The grocery stores aren't complaining. The cost of the plastic bags is already coming out of their margin. Their profits will go up as more people start bringing their own reusable bags.

And the smug twats ain't complaining. Now they can carry around a "I'm not a plastic bag" without standing out.

Even the dinosaurs aren't complaining. This is one less reason for people to build time machines, go back and kill dinosaurs. I figure there's gotta be lots of that going on, 'cause didn't that story end with the facist dickwad get elected?

Speaking of which, that'd be a good solution to the oil crisis, too: kill more dinosaurs. Better yet, we could send all our dead back in time, so there'd be more ancient biomass to turn into oil. National Forest in between you and your oil? Just send the trees back in time to become the oil!

I'd Vote For That (and I wish I'd thought of it)

San Francisco voters in this November's Election will get to vote for a very imaginative ballot initiative. If passed, this initiative will rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant.

What will it be renamed? The George W. Bush Memorial Sewage Plant.

The reason gas costs more than $4 a gallon

It has precious little to do with the war in Iraq. It has NOTHING to do with domestic oil production. It has only slightly more to do with OPEC. It's all about unregulated commodities trading, the same loophole that allowed Enron to rob California blind before it laid off all it's employees.

I don't want (rhymes with non-oil-dependent or otherwise futuristic vehicle)

I just want to ride my (non-oil-dependent or otherwise futuristic vehicle)

Somebody else did this, somewhere, some time ago, and I thought it was cute. Y'know, kinda like Arlo Guthrie would sing it, except, about vehicles that we can't afford yet, but would really like. Y'know, the frickin' flyin' car or something. I'll get us started: (Maybe I'll even add links. )

I don't want some cool-aid,
I just wanna ride my Jeep Renegade.

And I don't want whipped cream,
I just wanna ride my Saturn Flexstreme.

And I don't want you,
I just wanna ride my Volkswagon Space Up! Blue

Ok, your turn...

Bush vs Polar Bears, round 2

Oh, look, there's more:

Bush's Polar-Bear Problem

Polar bears can't get a break these days. First we saw them in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth desperately swimming about in the Artic in search of ice floes that seem to have disappeared due to global warming. Now we hear that experts working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can't talk about these giant white-furred beasts in overseas scientific meetings about climate change.

The order to squelch talk about polar bears came in a "new requirement" listing to government scientists traveling abroad. Henceforth, if they are participating in a meeting "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears," they need to report this and have a spokesperson assigned to articulate the administration's policies. Fish and Wildlife officials want to be sure that "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears," understands the administration's position on these topics.

Fish and Wildlife director H. Dale Hale said this was not an attempt to censor scientists, though the travel memos specifically require that the traveler "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues." The memos were discovered and released by two environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Someone please explain to me how orders to "not be speaking on or responding to these issues" isn't censorship.

Pick On Someone Your Own Size

Pelosi ain't got the guts (or conscience, or sense of duty, or decency, or constitutional ethics) to take him on. Those who do have the courage (Kucinich, Wexler, etc) keep getting marginalized by the media. Lower-class Republicans keep coming back for more abuse, no matter how rich the bastard and his buddies get off robbing, murdering and enslaving us. At times it seems like the Grand Sadist of America can do what ever he wants to whomever he wants - or at least, he seems to think so...

Bush gives OK for oil companies to pester polar bears

Polar Bears don't vote, but they'll tip your car over and eat your face if you screw with 'em. It would make for a memorable protest march.

FCX Clarity - the car that emits only water

Car info via the AP and yahoo green:

The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the noxious fumes believed to induce global warming. It is also two times more energy efficient than a gas-electric hybrid and three times that of a standard gasoline-powered car, the company says.

Rock on. It ain't no flyin' car, but it's a step in the right direction. So is this:

The world's major automakers have been making heavy investments in fuel cells and other alternative fuel vehicles amid climbing oil prices and concerns about climate change.

Although Honda Motor Co. was the first Japanese automaker to launch a gas-electric hybrid vehicle in the U.S. in 1999, it has been outpaced by the dominance of Toyota's popular Prius.

Toyota announced in May that it has sold more than 1 million Prius hybrids, while both the Honda Insight and the hybrid Accord have been discontinued due to poor sales.

Honda also plans to launch a gas-electric hybrid-only model, as well as hybrid versions of the Civic, the sporty CR-Z and Fit subcompact.

Toyota has announced that it would launch a plug-in hybrid with next-generation lithium-ion batteries by 2010 and a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle later in Japan later this year.

U.S. carmaker General Motors Corp. plans to introduce a Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric vehicle in 2010. It also introduced a test-fleet of hydrogen fuel cell Equinox SUVs.

Now, just another 20 or 30 years of innovation (and oil shortages) and they'll be cheap enough that Sarah and I can buy a 5- or 10- year old hydrogen cell or fully electric car. When that happens, it'll finally be worth my getting a driver's license.

Door To Hell

Kevin pointed me towards this:

Note the tiny person walking along at the beginning to give you a sense of size. Supposedly that hole has been burning for 35 years in Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan (articles disagreed). After a collapse, it started leaking natural gas. The locals choices were: die of asphyxiation or start it burning. Luckily they weren't Americans - most of us would have just moved to a better neighborhood and pretended there weren't any poisons spewing forth.