Eat more cookies

Are we not blessed in America? When have we had the chance to choose between two fine Irishmen to lead our great country in its presidency? And here we are with Mr. McCain, and Mr. O’Bama.

What’s that now? Do you not know that Mr. O’Bama is as fine as Irishman as ever danced a hearty jig after a pint of porter down at Cohan’s? Well sit yerself down, and I’ll relay the story.

Sure’n twas down on the famed Ring of Kerry that himself, ol’ Paddy O’Bama used to turn the spade and cut peat to warm the family hearth. Out he’d come from the bogs, 60, 80, 100 lbs of turf on his blessed back, and ye’d think he’d long for to take a rest after carryin’ that load ‘cross the miles back to his own house. But ol’ Paddy would stack the turf and, just when you’d think he’d go inside for to enjoy a hot cup of tay by his own fire, the saintly man would begin his march back to the bog, all for to fill another pack with turf. This he would then take to the houses of all the poor widows in town, leavin’ neat little stacks of peat bricks outside their front doors, and them never knowin’ ’twas any but the little people who’d found favor with them, and supplyin’ them with the means for some heat and comfort.

Now in the evenings when he dangled his grandson on his knee he would tell ‘im, “Michaeleen, me b’y. Yuz always got ta give somethin’ barack when you’ve been blest as we are. We’ve the good fortune t’ live warm and dry in this house, with full bellies and quick minds and strong arms. This land has supported the O’Bama clan all these many years, and it will continue to be so for as long as we remain faithful to share our gifts. Yuv always got ta give barack.”

Young Michaeleen took those words to heart, and when his saintly grandfather crossed to the heavenly mantle, he sought fit to bless his memory by naming his own son “Barack”. The young b’y grew and eventually immigrated to Amerikay where he became interested in Chicago politics.

Now that we know him as a presidential candidate, some see fit to argue about his background, callin’ him Muslim and some such nonsense. So much the worse for those fools, for ‘twould be no shame in him bein’ Muslim and running for the presidency of that great land across the ocean. That’s the beauty of Amerikay ye know: Ye can be the president whether you’re Hindu, Muslim, Bhuddist, Catholic, or even an atheist you know, like them Protestants. Amerikay is a free land, free from the kind of tyranny that says “Ye must be this” or “Ye have to be that.” I almost wish sometimes that Mr. O’Bama was some kind of Muslim, and the good people of Amerikay show the whole world how they really live out the words in their grand Constitution by electing him anyway. Wouldn’t that be a blessed day?! A day to show the whole world that the American people are the best people in the world, and freedom reigns in that fair land as in no other.

Alas, we won’t be seein’ that day next November, as Mr. O’Bama is as Irish as any shamrock that ever greened Erin’s Isle. And now ye know the truth, may the good Lord strike me down otherwise.

I received the latest installment of the “Audubon Eider eNews” newsletter today, and it had lots of great information on bird conservation in Alaska. The most interesting tidbit was this:

“Will Drilling in the Arctic Refuge Lower Gas Prices?
As the U.S. faces record prices at the pump, President Bush and pro-drilling advocates insist that opening the Arctic Refuge to oil development is the answer. Ironically, the Bush Administration’s own Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently reported that even at peak production in 2027, the oil produced from the Refuge would only reduce the price of a barrel of oil by 78 cents. Increased conservation and use of alternative technologies would yield nearly ten times more savings than what consumers would ever get from drilling in the Arctic Refuge, based on the EIA’s report.”

This is why it simply isn’t worth despoiling the Arctic National Wildlife for the oil it might produce. We are America, dang it! We can and should do better!

For more great updates on conservation issues related to our native birds, check out the “Audubon Action” website.

Here’s a letter from Richard Allison recently printed in the Sante Fe New Mexican:

July 13, 2008 in The Santa Fe New Mexican

I stayed close to home for the Fourth of July weekend. My wife and I spent a
very enjoyable weekend camping near Mills Canyon in Harding County. We did
it to save gasoline, as many others did. My thoughts, like those of many
others, centered on how we are going to get out of this high priced
crude-oil mess we have gotten ourselves into. I still want to travel and
visit family.

Most of my friends are sold on alternative energy supply as the key to
reducing our dependence on oil. These folks are no dummies, as they include
other engineers like me, teachers and researchers at the labs. Consistently,
they all say solar and wind power are the tickets to energy independence.
This seems to be the party line, as our governor and other leading
politicians in New Mexico are against any other form of power generation,
such as nuclear or coal. But what these excellent politicians are failing to
tell us is the whole truth.

I polled at least 10 friends last week, and only one had the right answer as
to the cost of wind generation, which is the power- generation alternative
of choice in New Mexico.

None of our politicians want to talk about the cost of wind- power
generation. Wind-power generation is one of the most expensive forms of
electric-power generation.

I am in favor of varied sources of power generation, but only after everyone
realizes what it is going to cost. The fact is that wind power is between 20
percent and 30 percent more costly than conventional power production. PNM
is right in the middle at a 25 percent premium. If you don’t believe me,
just look at the much- touted PNM Sky Blue program on its Web site.

The additional cost for signing up for this program is $.0169 per kilowatt
hour, or $1.69 per hundred kilowatt hours. This is 25 percent more than
their base rate. I am really not up to paying 25 percent more on my electric
bill because my ‘97 Honda still needs to be fed gasoline to get to work. My
energy dollar only goes so far.

The politicians are not telling us that wind power can never be used to base
load a power generation system. What happens when the wind does not blow,
which frequently happens for days at a time even in our windy New Mexico?
The base load generation must pick up the slack and this happens a lot.

So, unless we are willing, which I am not, to turn off the lights when the
wind does not blow, the base load generation must keep expanding. This is
where the cost gets exorbitant. For every dollar invested in a megawatt of
wind power generation, PNM must also have in reserve or under construction a
megawatt of base load capacity. In other words, PNM must spend the money to
build two power stations rather than one: the wind farm and coal/nuclear
base load plant. Both the wind power farms and base load generation must be
maintained, which again doubles the maintenance cost. PNM is also entitled
to a return on its investment, as it is a publicly held company that must
return a profit to the investors. If it were not for the tax incentives both
the state and federal governments give to wind generation, power companies
including PNM simply could not afford to build wind farms.

In the PNM system, the cheapest electrical generation is from the Palo Verde
Nuclear Plant in Arizona at a cost of $.0129 per kilowatt hour with more
than 90 percent availability, followed by the coal- fired plants in New
Mexico.

Based on the cost of generation, common sense leads us to more nuclear
plants as a way of keeping electrical costs low and a means of providing a
benefit of no emissions for those who are members of the climate
change/carbon reduction faith. If electric car technology comes on line in
the next 10 years, this could be our best choice for fueling our cars.

So the next time some of your friends or politicians start touting the
benefits of wind-power generation, ask them why they are in favor of such an
expensive power source. I am ready for more diverse power generation,
including nuclear and next-generation, clean-coal technology.

Richard Allison is a registered professional engineer currently working for
the New Mexico Department of Transportation. He lives in Santa Fe.

It’s an odd thing that your college years should be a time that you’re not tuned in to world events, but that’s exactly what happened to us in the ’80s. In the pre-Internet world of the late ’80s, you got your news from TV (which we didn’t have), radio (which we set to one classic rock station), or the college newspaper. In our case, the latter was the Cornell Daily Sun, which we read occasionally but unlike the coffee-gulping Artsies in Collegetown, we were far too busy with labs to take the time to make a daily habit. Given that we were so strangely cut off from the outside world, perhaps it isn’t such a surprise that we have little recollection for some amazing events that happened at the time, in particular, the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 1988, my world was consumed with trying desperately not to fail Genetics, convincing professors in far off locales to take a chance on me as their graduate student, and in the rapture of a young man’s love for his college sweetheart. My roommate and I also spent a lot of time back then discussing really important stuff like the myriad ways Springsteen was awesome, when he’d next tour with the E Street Band, and how sad it was that our hero at 40 had become too old and stodgy to ever perform Rosalita live again. A mere blip on our radar, we thought it cool when we heard that he was giving a concert in East Berlin, but mostly we thought he needed to give a concert in Ithaca - provided, of course, that he brought the whole band and included Rosalita in the set.

There’s a fascinating Erik Kirschbaum story here, however, that suggests the 1988 Springsteen concert in East Berlin was about a lot more than an aging rock star going all acoustic and political in front of a crowd of 160,000. The author describes the scene, and its afterglow, as a turning point in a sequence of events that led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall a year later.

. . . All of which simply adds additional layers to any discussion of the awesomeness that is Bruce Springsteen. Keep on rockin’!

Another sad environmental disaster in the making was reported here today. Blue Crabs, this generation’s Chesapeake mainstay, are in a population tailspin thanks to water pollution in the Bay and overharvesting by watermen.

Again, as a society, we refuse to learn a lesson. Overharvesting destroyed the oyster stocks in the Chesapeake Bay, and they’ve never recovered. People sounded the alarm about Blue Crabs many years ago, and not enough was done. In fact, the same issues of declines in “submerged aquatic vegetation” that were discussed decades ago in reference to waterfowl populations are affecting crabs today.

If you’ve ever considered an environmentalist an “alarmist”, then this message is for you: listen to them and take heed! This is the kind of stuff they raise alarms about. (1) Population of something declines. (2) Scientists point out that human activities are the likely cause of the decline. (3) Activists take up the mantle to try to motivate society to fix the problem. (4) Society ignores activists. (5) Population declines continue; whatever economic features are linked to the species in question begin to suffer. (6) Industry collapses as resource base diminishes. (7) Society questions if there might be a problem.

We’re at stage 7 with Blue Crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. (We’re somewhere between 4 and 5 on global warming.)

Praise, congratulations, and thanks are to be bestowed on our neighbors to the north today, as Ontario has established an enormous preserve to protect boreal forests. Premiere Dalton McGuinty announced a commitment to protect 55 million acres (225,000 km2) of coniferous forest in northern Ontario. I don’t know yet what that “protection” really means, but it sounds pretty good!

To dig deeper on this story, be sure to check out Jeff Wells’ excellent Boreal Bird Blog.

From overhunting and egg collecting, through the atrocities of the millinery trade and the unintended long-term consequences of DDT, from the introduction of exotic invasive species to nesting sites formerly free of predators and loss of critical nesting habitat from coastal development and the operation of off-road vehicles, from oil spills and inshore water pollution and overfishing, and on through the effects of changing ocean currents and rising sea levels . . .

coastal seabirds are in long-term population decline.

Some of the best studied mixed species colonies in Scotland are apparently in the midst of 15 years of poor reproductive success and colony abandonment. Traditional breeding sites that formerly supported thousands of pairs of various species are now just shadows of their former glory, or have been abandoned altogether. If this was just a Scottish problem it’d be bad enough, but stories like this have been the norm from different regions of the globe for many years. While many seabirds benefit from relatively long lifespans (> 15 years) and populations can generally withstand a few bad years in a row, 15 bad years indicates that something unusual is happening.

As the Republican strategy for the 2004 election so brilliantly demonstrated, a candidate who changes position on various issues might as well be discovered with an Al Qaeda membership card.  We Amoronicans are far more interested in a candidate whose brain is a bulwark of idealism - solid and unchanging no matter how loud the cries of dissent - than one who actually considers information from all sides and is willing to change course when the situation calls for it.  John Kerry was the latter in 2004, and it cost him the election (and it cost our country a lot more); George W. Bush epitomizes the former, and we all remember the “political capital” he claimed to earn from that ill-fated election.

Well, the flip-flopping rhetoric has begun in earnest in this current election, but at least this time it applies to both sides.  John McCain is tacking to the right of center while Barack Obama is beginning to zig-zag a course toward the middle, both men striving to be as electable as possible to the largest number of people in the most advantageous states come November.  Who has more to lose? It’s hard to say at this point.  McCain seems to have dumped every part of his persona that made him attractive to oddballs like me.  I wish he’d just say “screw you Republican machine!” and go back to being the self-styled maverick he used to be.  Obama seems to be changing his message from “stick it to the man” to “stick like glue to the man”, and I’m not sure that’s going to work either.  The result of all this strategizing?  Oh I dunno, maybe 25% of eligible voters coming out next fall?

For an excellent guide to the the candidates’ blowin’ in the wind, check out Max Deveson’s article in the BBC.

and they call it a “vacation.”

We have just slept in 9 different places over the past couple of weeks, and visited with 10 cousins - plus 4 “friend” cousins.

We have consumed Fritos, Muchos, Funjuns, gummi bears, Coke, vanilla Coke, Mountain Dew, 200mg caffeine tablets, M&Ms, Milky Ways, Snickers, Skittles . . .

There are at least 56 McDonald’s restaurants on Interstate highways between Lamar, PA and Tulsa, OK. By my reckoning, this works out to approximately 1 McDonald’s every 23 miles.

I told you so.

A report from poverty aid organization Oxfam concludes that biofuel development is driving up prices for staple foods among the world’s poorest, with one official calling biofuels a “crime against humanity.” Read the story here.

It is already insane that most of the crop acreage in this country is devoted to raising feed for livestock. Now we’re raising crops to feed our cars - something we don’t eat indirectly! To think that we’re plowing up CRP land to plant corn for the “good of the planet” is asinine. But it’s happening, and meanwhile, Mexico’s poor can’t afford tortillas. Something seriously wrong here folks . . .