1. Dogs, dogs, dogs. Space, space, space
2. LTE on dogs
3. Rising waters at Ocean Beach
4. Presidio Habitats extended - outdoor art exhibit celebrates wild Presidio
5. Inner Sunset Free Fix-It Fair Saturday May 7
6. Restoring native oysters to the Bay - May 12
7. Helping two worthy groups is easy - vote for them every day: Citizens for Sustainable Pt Molate/Alemany Farm
8. Sunday Streets returns to the Mission for Mother's Day
9. Beyond Searsville Dam Coalition
10. Request for bids for 2011 Invasive Species eradication projects
11. SF Naturalist Society: The Wild World of Frogs - May 12
12. Living with Coyotes - May 12
13. Celebrate Endangered Species Day May 20
14. Acterra: Guided bird walk May 7/Green@Home Energy Specialist Volunteer Training May 10
15. Feedback: solar highways/Facebook, Twitter
16. The great human characteristic of our age, - gender equality? wealth? social mobility? sexual freedom? Try solitariness
17. George Monbiot wonders what the basis of his belief is....(me too)
18. Blue Greenway Planning - save the dates
19. Early-bird registration for September native plant gardening symposium
20. Annual UC Berkeley hydrology symposium May 7, 1-5 pm
21. Challenges facing preservation of culturally significant places - May 11 in Presidio
22. Scottish philosopher David Hume, born 7 May 1711 - important to founders of this country
23. Bioregional Ecology Workshops May 7, 14, June 4
24. Nature in the City: Treks/announcing brand-new gardener's collective/three volunteer intern positions
25. Year 2 for mission blue butterfly reintroduction on Twin Peaks
26. Arcturus, part II - its relation to Chicago World Fair in 1893
27. Science comedian Brian Malow (Rational Comedy for an Irrational Planet) - several Bay Area presentations in May
28. Scientific American potpourri
29. Tractors can be very sexy - two stories
30. Notes & Queries
1. Words, words, words: San Francisco Bay Guardian GGNRA dog issue poll
(The dog groups have posted this poll on their websites, leading to a lopsided result so far.)
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2011/05/04/guardian-poll-dogs-and-next-mayor
The Bay Guardian article has sub-head "...leaves environmentalists cheering". Not that I'm aware of it. Changing National Park Service policy because of one interest group in one geographic area? Better a funeral dirge. Off-leash dog owners should be cheering over their palpable victory.
“Wilderness, above all its definitions and uses, is sacred space, with sacred powers, the heart of a moral world.” -- Michael Frome
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2. LTE on GGNRA website, from Louise Lacey:
A dog is a pet, not wildlife. There are certain very important differences.
A pet must be fed and housed. It focuses on its "owner" to decide its mental health.
A member of wildlfife does not need humans. It feeds and houses itself.
However, wildlife can have it's food and/or housing stolen or put in what amounts to a zoo.
Now: When the two meet, without humans, the pet is most likely to lose the interaction. I lived for 14 years in a place called Wildcat Canyon, in the hills behind Richmond. There were cougars and bobcats and coyotes there. I watched a cougar eat a deer. I watched the heads of cats in the gutters along the road.
So, to protect pets from wildlife, if possible, humans take over the territory, one way or another. Wildlife loses.
The GGNRA must remain firm in it's decision to keep unleashed dogs outside. Absolutely.
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3. Ocean rising - Ocean Beach: http://spur.org/publications/library/article/future-ocean-beach
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4. PRESIDIO HABITATS EXTENDED - OUTDOOR ART EXHIBIT CELEBRATES WILD PRESIDIO
Presidio of San Francisco (May 3, 2011) -- The Presidio Trust and the FOR-SITE Foundation announce that Presidio Habitats, a unique, site-based art exhibition celebrating Presidio nature and wildlife, has been extended through the summer. The exhibit has attracted more than eight thousand visitors to the Exhibition Pavilion since it opened last May. Tens of thousands more have experienced the art along Presidio trails. Originally scheduled to close May 15, Presidio Habitats will now run through September 30.
“I’m personally thrilled at the public response we’ve received for the Presidio Habitats exhibition and the opportunity to share this project with new audiences through the summer months,” says Cheryl Haines, the executive director of the FOR-SITE Foundation, which organized the exhibit in partnership with the Presidio Trust. “We are very grateful to our vocal supporters—they have shown that the Bay Area can foster the creation and experience of dynamic contemporary art about place.”
The first site-based art exhibition in a U.S. National Park, Presidio Habitats began in mid-2009, when more than two dozen artists, designers and architects were asked to design habitat sculptures for selected “animal clients” of the Presidio. From 25 proposals, eleven were selected to be created and installed along Presidio trails and walkways.
“This has been a wildly successful exhibit,” says Michael Boland, chief planning, projects and programs officer for the Trust. “We’re extremely excited about the opportunity to reach even more people over the next four months. The exhibit draws visitors to the Presidio’s trails and allows them to explore the park’s diverse landscapes.”
An audio tour, available by cell phone, an indoor Exhibition Pavilion, and an array of special events accompany the exhibit and invite the public to interact with the art and the park. Created from three repurposed shipping containers arranged around a covered central atrium, the Exhibition Pavilion is the starting point for Presidio Habitats. The pavilion exhibits all 25 proposals submitted for the exhibition, scale models, and other artist material as well as video about the Presidio’s plants and wildlife. An exhibition guide and map will lead visitors on a self-guided journey of all installation sites. Located at the corner of Ralston and Storey avenues, directly across from the historic Log Cabin, the pavilion is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11am to 5pm. Admission is free.
The Log Cabin Series—a series of talks, multimedia presentations and performances inspired by the Presidio, its wildlife and the art of Presidio Habitats—will continue over the summer, as will the other public programs, guided hikes, and family-oriented events that have accompanied the exhibit since its opening. For details and a schedule of events visit www.presidio.gov/habitats.
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5. Inner Sunset Free Fix-It Fair
Saturday, May 7th 10a - 4p, Irving at 6th Ave.
Last items in at 3p.
We’ll try to fix anything—except electronics & relationships—for FREE.
Yes, for free. No hidden charges, no fees, no gobbledegook.
Bring your wobbly, loose, broken, frayed, splintered, torn, ripped, cracked, or severed item. We will glue, solder, clamp, re-wire, sew, chop, sharpen, file, cut, adjust, weld, screw, etc. If we can’t fix it, we’ll give you twice your money back!
Barbara: 415/246-4748 (for questions or to volunteer)
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6. Bubbles & Bivalves
Thursday, May 12, 2011, 7:00pm - 9:30pm
The Aquarium of the Bay
San Francisco Bay was once home to the West Coast’s largest oyster industry. More than seven decades after the last commercial oyster harvest, award-winning oyster author Rowan Jacobsen is coming to San Francisco to support The Watershed Project’s efforts to restore native oysters to the Bay.
Join Jacobsen and other special guests for oysters, champagne and libations, and sustainable bites from the Bay Area’s finest sustainable restaurants, wineries, and breweries. Guests will learn about our native oysters while helping restore the critical underwater ecosystems of our magnificent San Francisco Bay.
Participating restaurants include: Waterbar, Farallon, Slanted Door, Greens and Slow Club. Oysters will be provided by Hog Island Oyster Co., Drakes Bay Oyster Co. and Tomales Bay Oyster Co.; wine and beer by Hess Collection, Radio-Coteau, Handley Cellars, Unti Vineyards, Anchor Brewing and Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery; and desserts by Bi-Rite Market, Scream Sorbet, and TCHO Chocolates.
All of the restaurants, wineries, and breweries serving at Bubbles & Bivalves are committed to protecting our environment and have donated their time and talent to the event. All proceeds from ticket sales go directly to funding The Watershed Project's Living Shoreline program.
There are 3 ways to purchase tickets:
1) Online via Eventbrite (a small service charge will apply).
2) Call Event Coordinator Diana Dunn at (818) 298-5824 with any major credit card.
3) At the event (we highly recommend purchasing tickets ahead of time as we expect to sell out).
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7. Two worthy groups you can help by your vote:
Citizens for a Sustainable Point Molate
Help us Win Bay Citizen's Citizen of Tomorrow Award! Every Vote Counts
CFSPM has been chosen as one of five finalists for the Bay Citizen's 'Citizen of Tomorrow'
Award. Each year, Bay Citizen selects five individuals or groups in the Bay Area who are making a difference, and hosts a contest to determine the winner. CFSPM is honored to have been chosen as one of the finalists based on our community visioning work to create a new destiny for Point Molate.
The contest ends on May 16th and you can vote each day until the contest closes. Help us achieve our goal to bring a lively and interactive visioning event to Richmond's neighborhoods so that the community at large can have a voice in defining Point Molate's future.
View our contest entry on YouTube and learn about our community design plans.
AND, while you're in the voting mood:
Alemany Farm right here in SF is in the running to be one of 5 community gardens in the US awarded $4000. Whether it gets the money or not depends on votes from the public. Like yours. They will use the money for plants, tools, and programming at the site.
Here are the instructions:
Go to http://www.deloachcommunitygardens.com
That will get you to a colorful display of 15 small photos, each one of which represents a community garden somewhere in the US. Alemany Farm's photo is the one in the upper left corner.
Each photo has a whitish arrow in the middle of it, Click on the whitish arrow.
You will then be linked to a box in which you may vote. You need to type in your email address and your name, and, presumably click on the little box that says you don't want to get messages from the nice folks at Deloach. Click on "Submit your vote". That's it! You should see the total of votes go up by one.
Here's the most important thing of all: EACH PERSON MAY VOTE ONCE PER DAY FROM NOW UNTIL AUGUST 1. SO DON'T JUST VOTE ONCE! BOOKMARK THE SITE, AND VOTE EVERY DAY!
For more info on the farm, and volunteer workdays visit alemanyfarm.org - 3rd Sundays, 1:00-4:00 is the native plant area workday
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority." E.B. White
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8. Sunday Streets returns to the Mission for Mother's Day
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/417137/a038757ef3/1490000697/c6af090a69/
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(JS: Yet another issue descended on me from cyberspace just now. It was much too long to post in its entirety, so I drastically condensed to this. Go to the webpage to get grounded in the issue.)
9. Beyond Searsville Dam Coalition
In light of Stanford's recently proposed and significant alteration to their Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) to exclude Searsville Dam and all "activities", following public review and comments, we are sending out the following press release today and have submitted the following letter to National Marine Fisheries Service and US Fish & Wildlife Service, as they continue to consider the HCP and prepare the EIS.
REPORTS AND DOCUMENTS CITED IN OUR LETTER CAN BE VIEWED AT OUR HOMEPAGE: www.BeyondSearsvilleDam.org
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10. BAY AREA EARLY DETECTION NETWORK (BAEDN)
REQUEST FOR BIDS FOR 2011 INVASIVE SPECIES ERADICATION PROJECTS
go to BAEDN.org
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11. SF Naturalist Society
Thursday, May 12 - The Wild World of Frogs
How long do frogs live? How many types of frogs are there? What's the difference between a frog and a toad? Why are frogs disappearing worldwide and what can be done to save them? Dr. Kerry M. Kriger answers all these questions and more as he introduces the audience to The Wild World of Frogs.
Dr. Kriger is the Founder & Executive Director of SAVE THE FROGS! (www.savethefrogs.com), America's first and only public charity dedicated to amphibian conservation.
Randall Museum, 7:30-9 pm. For more information, go to www.sfns.org. Free.
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12. Living with Coyotes: May 12, 2011 (6:30pm PST)
Gina Farr- guest speaker; presentation- Living with Coyotes. Sponsored by San Francisco Recreation & Parks and Project Coyote. San Francisco County Fair Bldg, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. more info.
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13. Celebrate Endangered Species Day - May 20, 2011
On May 20, our nation will celebrate America’s commitment to protecting and recovering endangered species. As we well know in Southern California, without the Endangered Species Act, our natural heritage would be hopelessly lost.
Let's celebrate successes, like the brown pelican and gray whale, as well as our own endeavor to protect the California gnatcatcher, arroyo toad, and quino checkerspot butterfly in a regional reserve network.
The goal of Endangered Species Day is simple – to educate people about the importance of protecting endangered species.
Click here to visit the Endangered Species Day website <http://www.stopextinction.org/esd.html> and:
• Find a worthwhile and fun event near you
• Get help in planning an event
• Access educational materials like 10 Things You Can Do at Home to Protect Endangered Species
• Send an Endangered Species Day e-card
• View the winning entries in the Endangered Species Day Youth Art Contest
• Meet Endangered Species Day Ambassadors
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14. Acterra
Guided Bird Walk
Saturday, May 7, 9:30 am - 12:30 pm
Pearson-Arastradero Preserve [map]
Learn about bird habitats and local species during this FREE guided bird hike at beautiful Pearson-Arastradero Preserve.
The hike will be led by John Wills of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society (SCVAS), who actively monitors the bird boxes at Arastradero Preserve and is a wealth of avian knowledge. Acterra's Arastradero Preserve Project Director Joan Dudney will also share Acterra's latest accomplishments in habitat restoration at the Preserve.
Scopes and binoculars will be provided. To register for this hike, please visit the Acterra Stewardship Events webpage.
Green@Home Energy Specialist Volunteer Training
Tuesdays, May 10 AND May 17, 5:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Menlo Park (location TBA)
Want to help hundreds of local residents reduce their energy use by providing free home energy assessments and installing basic energy saving devices? Then become a Green@Home Energy Specialist Volunteer!
The next two-part volunteer training session will be held in Menlo Park. For more information and to register for the training, please visit the Green@Home webpage or call Deb Kramer at (650) 962-9876 ext. 353.
Green@Home is now doing HouseCalls in Mountain View! For more information, please visit the Green@Home HouseCalls webpage.
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15. Feedback
ML Carle (re solar roads):
From an ex- reviewer for the old Whole Earth Catalog which some of you may remember:
Cool, but they carefully avoid the price (including making the panels and installing them), traction, (especially ice) fire, snowplows and snow chains, glare, frost heaves, potholes (Inevitable if the underlayment shifts a bit), theft, tornado damage, maintenance, steel- wheeled farm tractors, drag racing, speed and location monitoring, route choice, destination, time records, etc.
Jay Baldwin
And from Vishnu, who elaborates on the traction problem:
They didn't quite explain, once it started to drizzle, what would keep every car driving south from sliding into every car driving north, if you get my drift.
And from me: How about grasshopper plagues?
Jenny Ta:
Hi Jake: Thanks again for posting my request for Boston area conservation-related organizations. I got some good tips from people who responded. I'm now a land steward intern at the Mass Audubon Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary helping with GPS mapping of invasive species. Learning lots about the invasive plants here in New England!
John Bosley:
Greetings, Jake, from the shores of the Chesapeake Bay--which shares a very doubtful eco-future with that other great estuary out your way, San Francisco Bay. Both are sore beset by man's idiotic habits and perverse practices.
I just hollered with glee when I read this exchange in the latest Nature News:
On Apr 29, 2011, at 6:25 PM, Christina Salvin wrote:
Have you considered Facebook? We would so easily read your posts--some could be long and some could be short and many could have pictures or video. It's super user-friendly even for non-techies.
Christina: I don't even know what Facebook is--or Twitter or LinkedIn either. And I don't want to know.
Good for you, Jake! And your added comments weren't necessary. These are truly insane social tumors that I hope and pray will collapse soon of their own weight and sink into a much-deserved oblivion.
Yah, but of course, John, we know Mark Zuckerberg et al are laughing all the way to the bank. What fools these mortals be. Sinking into that deserved oblivion may be the whole of Western civilization. Facebook was only a pustule on the disease-wracked corpse.
Yes they are, Jake--but I think it's another bubble. A bubble made from bubbles. I mean think about it! An actual value for Facebook or Twitter stuff? What? Where? To whom is it valuable? I just don't get it. Well, I DO get it; Wall Street will sell anything if it can find people silly enough to buy it. And such people apparently exist. Sigh.
Our economic system is largely supported by trivia and non-substance. In that case, will Facebook last as long as the system does? I think of Twitter, Facebook, &c as froth, as symptoms of a dis-ease. Our sense of community is selling stuff to each other; it doesn't matter what the stuff is, as long as exchange is happening and people have the illusion that something is going on. It's an irrational, functionless, purposeless world. And very destructive.
Oh, I do get the idea, Jake. My friend David Harvey, in his 2009 book "Enigma of Capital," refers to "fictitious markets." Markets that are just made up to move money around. There were numerous fictitious markets involved in the 2008 crash bubble creation. The core theme of the book is this: Capital ("Capitalism") requires 3% annual growth per year, compounded. Harvey asks, "How long can Planet Earth afford such a system?"
Postcript: Several years ago, David Brooks remarked about the cell phone (not exact quote): Most of the conversations are trivial and inane, eg, 'Yah, the takeoff was just fine; they're serving coffee and juices now.' (Wife): 'I decided to stop at the hardware store on the way home. I think I'll get that new can-opener we talked about.'
Most of the conversations I have overheard (involuntarily) have been of this nature. It gives those who don't know who they are a temporary sense of identity.
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16. Review extract by Jeremy Paxman in Observer of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Johnathan Coe
Reprinted in Guardian Weekly 28.05.10
If someone asked you to identify the great human characteristic of our age, what would you say? Gender equality? Wealth? Social mobility? Sexual freedom? It seems to me the answer could just as easily be solitariness. This, surely, is one of the oddities of the present: at a time when there have never been more of us Britons crowded on to a small island, it has never been easier to be isolated.
The biggest household change mapped by sociologists is the steady growth in single-occupancy dwellings. You can travel to work alone, spend your day communicating with others only by screen or telephone, eat a solitary lunch in your workplace (if you have one), and then return home for a ready meal for one and a screen in a darkened room.
Communal travel on trains or buses is for losers, the mechanised bubble of the motorway for the successful. And it is not just that the automobile is superior to the omnibus. Autolatry is the religion of the age, autoeroticism its romance, autocide the freedom we cry out for. Being alone may not be the same as being lonely. But it sure as hell makes it a lot more achievable….
________________
"Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there by car." E.B. White
..."There is," Lewis Mumford wrote in the Myth of the Machine, "only one efficient speed: faster; only one attractive destination: farther away; only one desirable size: bigger; only one rational quantitative goal: more."
Denise D'Anne: "Oil is a curse to the world, destroying indigenous people, the environment and foreign economies. Cars are a bargain with the devil."
We have one globe, and it has one atmosphere.
"...People’s optimism about improving their communities often wavers when they talk about the clutter, confusion, and congestion they see through their windshields. It falters again when they reach inside themselves to describe the absences sprawl imposes on their lives: It steals time, choice, and proximity to others—not just open space. We are not only farther away from schools and shops, from friends and neighbors, from fields and woods; more and more of each day is given over to a tense, effortful, unnourishing, and for now unavoidable in-betweenness. This townless, countryless, road-bound running around stretches us thin; our bodies are in motion—but what is there around us to anchor our hearts and minds?"
From ‘Man About Towns’ by Tony Hiss, Sierra, November-December 2001
The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars...is sure to be noticed. Soren Kierkegaard
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17.
"We wonder whether in the present pattern the pieces are not straining to fall out of line; whether the paradoxes of our times are not finally mounting to a conclusion of ridiculousness that will make the whole structure collapse. For the paradoxes are becoming so great that leaders of people must be less and less intelligent to stand their own leadership." John Steinbeck, The Log From the Sea of Cortez 1941.
I shop, therefore I am
"The only permitted answer to the effects of greed is more greed."
"The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend to take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less.
"I refuse to believe that there is not a better means of averting disaster than this. I refuse to believe that human beings are collectively incapable of making rational decisions. But I am beginning to wonder what the basis of my belief might be."
George Monbiot, Guardian Weekly 22-28 July 2005
“Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much....the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.” Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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18. Save the following dates for the next series of Blue Greenway Planning community meetings at the Port at Pier 1:
May 25th - review revised Concept Plans for Port Blue Greenway open spaces, project cost and a draft project prioritization based upon available funding; and
June 15sth - review Concepts for Blue Greenway, Linking Streets, Signage Program and the revised Site Furnishing standards.
A final notice and meeting agenda will be distributed prior to the meeting. A document supporting the community workshop and previous material prepared
through the Blue Greenway planning process will available on line at www/sfport.com/bluegreenway by 5/20. Please visit www.sfport.com/bluegreenway for previous material prepared for the Blue Greenway planning.
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19. Save the date
CNPS, Friends of Regional Parks Botanic Garden, and Pacific Horticulture are collaborating once again to present a two-day symposium on native plant gardening and design on Sat-Sun, Sep 17-18, 2011 in Lafayette & Berkeley. Featured speakers include Carol Bornstein, David Fross, Steve Edwards, Don Mahoney, and other native plant professionals.
Earlybird registration deadline is June 30, 2011 - http://gns.cnps-scv.org
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20. You are invited to the annual UC Berkeley hydrology symposium this Saturday, May 7 from 9am-1pm. Coffee and registration will begin at 8:30. The event will be held in Wurster Hall room #112 at UC Berkeley.
The day will include:
- Student presentations from independent research projects.
- A keynote address titled "Restoring streamflow in coastal California watersheds: lessons learned through a science-based process" by Matthew Deitch (Center for Ecosystem Management and Restoration)
- A panel discussion and Question/Answer session on current issues and future trends in hydrology and restoration.
Panelists are:
Herman Garcia, Executive Director, Coastal Habitat Education & Environmental Restoration, Gilroy
Barry Hecht, Senior Principal, Balance Hydrologics, Berkeley
David Hines, National Marine Fisheries Service, Habitat Conservation Division, Santa Rosa
Christian Nilsen, Senior Hydrologist, ESA PWA, San Francisco
The event is free, but please RSVP to ensure a space. (ucbriverrestoration@gmail.com)
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21. Contemporary Historians at the Presidio features nationally known historians speaking at the Presidio of San Francisco. Some talks will be about the Presidio, while others will cover larger themes in American and world history that help put the Presidio into context as a former military post and now an innovative national park.
Wednesday, May 11, 7 pm
Golden Gate Club 135 Fisher Loop
Global Historic Preservation Today
Frank Matero, University of Pennsylvania
The challenges facing the preservation and conservation of culturally significant places around the world are many and rapidly changing. This talk will look at a variety of international sites, examining new responses in preservation. For more information visit www.conlab.org and www.design.upenn.edu/historic-preservation/degrees-offered.
FREE. NO RESERVATIONS REQUIRED.
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22. 7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776 David Hume
Hume was one of the shapers of the Scottish Enlightenment, which America's founding fathers drew so heavily upon in fashioning the foundation of the country. A down-to-earth sensible man. JS
“Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.”
“I have written on all sorts of subjects . . . yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”
“When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities."
“He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances."
“The law always limits every power it gives.”
“It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”
"And what is the greatest number? Number one."
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23. BIOREGIONAL ECOLOGY WORKSHOPS
Learn about our Northern California Bioregion
At Heron's Head Park EcoCenter or Glide Foundation’s Rooftop Garden in San Francisco
Join Peter Berg, Director of Planet Drum Foundation, for an inspiring full day workshop on:
May 7th or June 4th, 2011
Heron's Head Park EcoCenter in the Bayview/Hunter's Point neighborhood. Anthony Khalil, Heron's Head Park Educator/Ecologist will provide background on the Park as well as information on HHP's new EcoCenter and the wonderful ongoing community outreach work conducted by Literacy for Environment Justice.
May 14th, 2011
Glide Foundation's Rooftop Garden in the Tenderloin neighborhood. Josephine Quiocho, Glide Foundation/Graze the Roof, Project Organizer and Educator will provide information on this outstanding model of urban sustainability and talk about Glide's "green" Cecil Williams Community House.
The workshops will provide a holistic ecological approach to identifying and understanding Northern California's unique climate, weather, soil, landforms, watersheds, native plants and wildlife. Emphasis is on observation of natural characteristics, discussing interrelationships of natural systems, and on-site learning in an amazing environment. This is a must for learning about and seeing what makes our bioregion distinct from any other on the planet and for UNDERSTANDING what we must do to restore and maintain healthy natural systems within San Francisco.
We will begin at 10AM at each location and continue until approximately 4PM. Additional information, including site addresses and MUNI information, will be provided to you when you register for either or both workshops.
The workshop includes:
• Participation in an easy-to-follow bioregional map-making of your own life-place
• Exploration of native habitats that coexist with urban surroundings
• Acquisition of new environmental skills to share with students, colleagues, family, and friends
• Observation and discussion of restoration and urban sustainability activities
• Take-home materials
Workshops are partially funded by a grant from the Bill Graham Foundation.
Thank you!
Call now for more information and to reserve your place in one of the following workshops:
Saturday, May 7th - 10:00 am to 4:00 pm at Heron's Head Park
Saturday, May 14th - 10:00 am to 4:00 pm at Glide's Rooftop Garden
Saturday, June 4th - 10:00 am to 4:00 pm at Heron's Head Park
Workshops will fill up quickly! Call Planet Drum Foundation, (415) 285-6556 or email mail@planetdrum.org today to register and/or learn more details.
Sliding scale $35-$50 (full scholarships for SF-USD teachers, limited work exchanges available). Fee includes workshop participation and project materials. Bring a bag lunch and wear comfortable shoes.
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24. Nature in the City
1. Announcing Habitat City, a Brand New Gardener's Collective
Several former Nature in the City employees, including its founding director, have teamed up to offer San Franciscans and Bay Areans local native plant landscaping services. If you or someone you know wants to build habitat for birds, bees, butterflies and frogs, contact Habitat City, and they can help you implement your part of our vision for a San Francisco Restored.
2. Nature in the City TREKS in the City
Check out Green Hairstreaks, the Presidio's rich and fascinating dunes, spring bird migration, or Yerba Buena Island.
SATURDAY | May 7
Green Hairstreak Butterfly Corridor
with Liam O'Brien
SATURDAY | May 14
Wildflower Power in the Dunes of the Presidio
with Lew Stringer
SUNDAY | May 15
Spring Bird Migration at Mt. Davidson
with Dominik Mosur
SATURDAY | May 21
Exploring Yerba Buena Island
with Ruth Gravanis
3. Nature in the City Needs your Passion and Expertise
We have openings for three volunteer intern positions: Membership, Web Developer/Manager, and Community Outreach. If you are in a position to offer your services to Nature in the City, then you stand to have a terrific experience working for our celebrated organization.
We need your technical skills managing our database and sending bulk mailings;
and we need someone who wants to wrap themselves in the gift that is Nature in the City's website, the online resource for natural San Francisco - we need someone to manage our current website, and someone to build our new one;
finally, we need somebody who loves working with people and contacting the media to keep our publicity and outreach dynamic and current.
Email peter@natureinthecity.org.
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25. Mission Blues to Twin Peaks: Year 2
The mesh enclosures on Twin Peaks. The females are immediately observed ovipositing. They are released within the hour of transport. Eggs have now been observed throughout the release sites.
SF Recreation and Parks Natural Areas Program, in cooperation with US Fish and Wildlife Service, has succeeded in importing a few more mission blues from San Bruno Mountain to further augment the population on Twin Peaks of this federally listed endangered species.
"...it was a long, beautiful mid-afternoon along theridge. Saw my first Callippe Silverspot (Speyeria callippe callippe ) of the season (kinda early for that bug), as well as my first Ringlets (C. tullia californica) bopping about. The marine layer moved back in after 1:30 and we lost our butterfly weather. The transport is made with small tupperware bowls this year -- less impact on the creatures than glycine envelopes." Liam O'Brien (I believe this was when collecting on SBM. JS)
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26. Arcturus, part II (continued from last newsletter)
Arcturus is located at a distance of 37 light years, and became famous when its light was used to open the 1933 world's fair in Chicago, as that light had left the star at about the time of the previous Chicago fair in 1893.
To the eye, it shines 113 times more brightly than our Sun. Its lower temperature, however, causes it to radiate considerable energy in the infrared, which isn’t visible to the eye. When this infrared radiation is taken into account, Arcturus actually shines almost twice as brightly, releasing 215 times more radiation than our Sun, from which we find a diameter 26 times our sun, about a quarter the size of Mercury's orbit.
Arcturus has a velocity relative to the Sun that is higher than other bright stars. Compared with the set of surrounding stars, which orbit the Galaxy on more or less circular orbits, it falls behind by about 100 kilometers per second. An intriguing suggestion is that the star actually comes to us from a small galaxy that merged with ours some 5 to 8 billion years ago.
“Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.” R. Buckminster Fuller
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27 One Night Only! As heard on NPR's Science Friday with Ira Flatow...
Science Comedian Brian Malow presents
Rational Comedy for an Irrational Planet
An evening of science humor
“It’s as much about expanding the mind as it is tickling the funny bone.” - The Washington Times
8pm, Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Rooster T. Feathers Comedy Club
157 W. El Camino Real
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Information and Reservations: 408-736-0921
Or BUY YOUR TICKETS ONLINE: http://www.ticketbiscuit.com/RoosterTFeathers/EventPage.aspx?EID=90504
Get your geek on! From the lighter side of helium to the darker side of the moon, join science comedian Brian Malow on a rocket ride through the humorverse. Brian will dispel myths & misconceptions about science, explore the science in science fiction films, and exercise your brain as well as your funny bone. For all audiences!
Music is not just for musicians. Art is not just for artists. And science is not just for scientists.
**********
Brian Malow is Earth’s Premier Science Comedian (available for off-world appearances if transportation is provided). Based in San Francisco, Brian has appeared on “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” and performed for NASA, JPL, NIST, OSA, ACS, and other acronyms. He also makes science videos for Time Magazine’s website, and is a contributor to Neil de Grasse Tyson’s radio show. Brian has been featured in the Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Jose Mercury News.
For more info, check out
http://www.sciencecomedian.com
http://www.youtube.com/sciencecomedian
http://www.twitter.com/sciencecomedian
Three more upcoming California shows:
Tuesday, May 17 - San Francisco Punch Line
Friday, May 20 - Sacramento Comedy Spot
Saturday, May 21 - Marsh Theatre, Berkeley
Details will be on my website soon-ish! But, hey, you're smart! That's all the info you really need - or you wouldn't be my fan! :)
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28. Scientific American
OBSERVATIONS: BPA Linked to Wheezing in Babies
Could plastic bottles and metal food-can liners be contributing to the American asthma epidemic?
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=46&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE: Climate Change Will Bring More Extreme Precipitation and Floods
Is human influence on climate anything to do with this nasty bit of weather we’re having?
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=47&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
GUEST BLOG: Slabs, Sneakers, Gyres and the Grotesque
With a touch of whimsy, tales of the grotesque, and the barest hints of essential mathematics, Curtis Ebbesmeyer provides us with an overview of his life (thus far) in the science of physical oceanography
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=24&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
OBSERVATIONS: Buzzing: 13-Year Periodic Cicadas Emerge
The humble vibrato of summer will crescendo a bit earlier this year in the U.S. South
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=21&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
GUEST BLOG: How does a floating plastic duckie end up where it does?
In Moby-Duck, Donovan Hohn tracks the fate of 28,800 plastic bath toys (“rubber” ducks, frogs, turtles and beavers) across the northwestern coast to their origins in China
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=25&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
EARTHTALK: Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?
Because of soil depletion, crops grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=20&m=36576823&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNTc2OTE2S0&mt=1&rt=0
NEWS: Mouse Study Suggests Why Addictions Are Hard to Forget
A new study finds that alcoholic mice more readily form Pavlovian associations with addictive substances. Similar subconscious memories may haunt recovering addicts
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=19&m=36576823&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNTc2OTE2S0&mt=1&rt=0
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29. Tractors can be very sexy
Opposites may attract, but can a bird ever find love with a piece of agricultural machinery? Ja, says a German hotelier, who claims that a swan is besotted with his tractor.
The eight-year-old mute swan, uncreatively known as Schwani, has allegedly become so obsessed with the 39hp vehicle that every time the engine starts up, he waddles over to say hello. This is no fling, according to observers from the village of Velen in northwest Germany: Schwani has been devoted to the tractor for years.
"Ever since we bought the tractor three years ago, Schwani has been following it everywhere it goes," Hermann-Josef Hericks told the tabloid Bild. But Veronika Schwill, who works at the hotel, said Schwani was not monogamous. "Schwani also finds diggers and machines on the building site next door interesting," she revealed.
Why can't Schwani find love with another swan? wondered Bild. Animal behaviouralist Daniel Fiutak has a theory. "The swan presumably had contact with machines during puberty," she said. "He sees the tractor as a sexual partner."
Shortcuts, Guardian Weekly 29.04.11
_____________________________________________
Coroner details 2 bizarre deaths
Farm machinery involved
The Ventura County coroner has published details on the only two known cases of men who died while using hydraulic-powered heavy machinery for sexual gratification, circumstances seen as bizarre and baffling.
Writing in the March issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Ventura County Medical Examiners (names of writers and affiliations omitted here) present a study of two men who were killed while they suspended themselves from the equipment…In one case, the man apparently “developed a romantic attachment to a tractor, even giving it a name and writing poetry in its honor,” the doctors wrote. This man, a 42-year-old, died accidentally while he hung himself from the tractor by the neck.
In the second case, a 62-year-old died when he was pinned under a tractor’s shovel after suspending himself from it by the ankles.
(JS condensation and paraphrase of balance of article: One case was discovered in Ventura County, but the writer would not say which one, and would not reveal the site of the other case, and would not discuss the report, and would not answer questions because they believed that reporting the information in a non-scientific publication was irresponsible. An excerpt was published in the October [1993] edition of Harper’s, a national general interest magazine. The writers declined an invitation to discuss the issue on a TV talk show and tried to dissuade the show’s producers from airing the subject. The producers did the show anyway and a number of cases of autoerotic asphyxiation occurred as a result, the staff workers said. Dietz—one of the authors—is also the author of a report titled “Television-Inspired Autoerotic Asphyxiation.”)
Excerpted and condensed from News Chronicle (Thousand Oaks, California), Friday 8 October 1993
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30. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
Where does hope come from and how do we keep it?
From the eternal springs we live in.
Judy Kellaway, Mount Stuart, Tasmania, Australia
• Where does hope come from? Pandora's box. And how do we keep it? With foolhardy determination and willful optimism.
Stephenie Cahalan, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
• I don't know; it's a mystery. But it is there; we, as individuals, may lose it from time to time, but hope itself never dies. As the protagonist Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), in a letter to fellow inmate Red (Morgan Freeman), comments at the close of that wonderful Frank Darabont movie, The Shawshank Redemption: "Hope is a good thing, and a good thing never dies."
James Stevens, Volos, Greece
• I believe it springs eternal in a woman's breast.
Adrian Cooper, Queens Park, NSW, Australia
I hate being snored at
Why is snoring such a disturbing sound as opposed to laughter?
The judgment of the sound of both snoring and laughter is in the ear of the hearer. Snoring can be a pleasant sound if a sick insomniac has dropped into a deep sleep, whereas laughter can be an unpleasant one if you are being laughed at.
Other bodily expulsions of air are equally variant: belching is accepted in some countries as an appreciation of food given, whereas in others it is unseemly behaviour. Breaking wind can be an amusing diversion in a classroom, whereas doing so in a lift accompanied by only one other person can be an embarrassment.
Dick Hedges, Nairobi, Kenya
• Laughter comes in spontaneous bursts; it expresses amusement that is usually shared with others, and it is therefore normally an enjoyable, sociable sound.
Snoring is a continuous, solitary, unsociable activity; its sound is enjoyed by neither the perpetrator, who is not awake to hear it, nor by the involuntary listener, who hears it only too well. It becomes increasingly irritating until the sleeper wakes up, either spontaneously or with a sharp poke in the ribs.
Joan Dawson, Halifax, NS, Canada
• Duration.
Donna Samoyloff, Toronto, Canada
• The answer turns on the listener's own level of consciousness.
Philip Stigger, Burnaby, BC, Canada
• You never know what they're snoring at.
Alan Gabbey, New York City, US
• Ask any stand-up comedian.
Mark Hainge, Canberra, Australia
Let's stick it to the Man
When it is said, "they can't take that away from you", who are "they"?
Certainly not the tax man at Canada Revenue Agency.
Art Hunter, Napanee, Ontario, Canada
• The Man.
David Fenderson, Canberra, Australia
• The racists, homophobes, snide critics and bullies of every variety, who exist simply to test our mettle.
Richard Orlando, Montreal, Canada
Is it well in your sole?
Why do cockroaches die on their backs?
To save their soles.
Jim Neilan, Dunedin, New Zealand
Any answers?
Why are some orders tall and others short?
Elizabeth Quance, Almonte, Ontario, Canada
Why are only three months of the year girls' names?
Edward Black, Sydney, Australia
2. LTE on dogs
3. Rising waters at Ocean Beach
4. Presidio Habitats extended - outdoor art exhibit celebrates wild Presidio
5. Inner Sunset Free Fix-It Fair Saturday May 7
6. Restoring native oysters to the Bay - May 12
7. Helping two worthy groups is easy - vote for them every day: Citizens for Sustainable Pt Molate/Alemany Farm
8. Sunday Streets returns to the Mission for Mother's Day
9. Beyond Searsville Dam Coalition
10. Request for bids for 2011 Invasive Species eradication projects
11. SF Naturalist Society: The Wild World of Frogs - May 12
12. Living with Coyotes - May 12
13. Celebrate Endangered Species Day May 20
14. Acterra: Guided bird walk May 7/Green@Home Energy Specialist Volunteer Training May 10
15. Feedback: solar highways/Facebook, Twitter
16. The great human characteristic of our age, - gender equality? wealth? social mobility? sexual freedom? Try solitariness
17. George Monbiot wonders what the basis of his belief is....(me too)
18. Blue Greenway Planning - save the dates
19. Early-bird registration for September native plant gardening symposium
20. Annual UC Berkeley hydrology symposium May 7, 1-5 pm
21. Challenges facing preservation of culturally significant places - May 11 in Presidio
22. Scottish philosopher David Hume, born 7 May 1711 - important to founders of this country
23. Bioregional Ecology Workshops May 7, 14, June 4
24. Nature in the City: Treks/announcing brand-new gardener's collective/three volunteer intern positions
25. Year 2 for mission blue butterfly reintroduction on Twin Peaks
26. Arcturus, part II - its relation to Chicago World Fair in 1893
27. Science comedian Brian Malow (Rational Comedy for an Irrational Planet) - several Bay Area presentations in May
28. Scientific American potpourri
29. Tractors can be very sexy - two stories
30. Notes & Queries
1. Words, words, words: San Francisco Bay Guardian GGNRA dog issue poll
(The dog groups have posted this poll on their websites, leading to a lopsided result so far.)
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2011/05/04/guardian-poll-dogs-and-next-mayor
The Bay Guardian article has sub-head "...leaves environmentalists cheering". Not that I'm aware of it. Changing National Park Service policy because of one interest group in one geographic area? Better a funeral dirge. Off-leash dog owners should be cheering over their palpable victory.
“Wilderness, above all its definitions and uses, is sacred space, with sacred powers, the heart of a moral world.” -- Michael Frome
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2. LTE on GGNRA website, from Louise Lacey:
A dog is a pet, not wildlife. There are certain very important differences.
A pet must be fed and housed. It focuses on its "owner" to decide its mental health.
A member of wildlfife does not need humans. It feeds and houses itself.
However, wildlife can have it's food and/or housing stolen or put in what amounts to a zoo.
Now: When the two meet, without humans, the pet is most likely to lose the interaction. I lived for 14 years in a place called Wildcat Canyon, in the hills behind Richmond. There were cougars and bobcats and coyotes there. I watched a cougar eat a deer. I watched the heads of cats in the gutters along the road.
So, to protect pets from wildlife, if possible, humans take over the territory, one way or another. Wildlife loses.
The GGNRA must remain firm in it's decision to keep unleashed dogs outside. Absolutely.
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3. Ocean rising - Ocean Beach: http://spur.org/publications/library/article/future-ocean-beach
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4. PRESIDIO HABITATS EXTENDED - OUTDOOR ART EXHIBIT CELEBRATES WILD PRESIDIO
Presidio of San Francisco (May 3, 2011) -- The Presidio Trust and the FOR-SITE Foundation announce that Presidio Habitats, a unique, site-based art exhibition celebrating Presidio nature and wildlife, has been extended through the summer. The exhibit has attracted more than eight thousand visitors to the Exhibition Pavilion since it opened last May. Tens of thousands more have experienced the art along Presidio trails. Originally scheduled to close May 15, Presidio Habitats will now run through September 30.
“I’m personally thrilled at the public response we’ve received for the Presidio Habitats exhibition and the opportunity to share this project with new audiences through the summer months,” says Cheryl Haines, the executive director of the FOR-SITE Foundation, which organized the exhibit in partnership with the Presidio Trust. “We are very grateful to our vocal supporters—they have shown that the Bay Area can foster the creation and experience of dynamic contemporary art about place.”
The first site-based art exhibition in a U.S. National Park, Presidio Habitats began in mid-2009, when more than two dozen artists, designers and architects were asked to design habitat sculptures for selected “animal clients” of the Presidio. From 25 proposals, eleven were selected to be created and installed along Presidio trails and walkways.
“This has been a wildly successful exhibit,” says Michael Boland, chief planning, projects and programs officer for the Trust. “We’re extremely excited about the opportunity to reach even more people over the next four months. The exhibit draws visitors to the Presidio’s trails and allows them to explore the park’s diverse landscapes.”
An audio tour, available by cell phone, an indoor Exhibition Pavilion, and an array of special events accompany the exhibit and invite the public to interact with the art and the park. Created from three repurposed shipping containers arranged around a covered central atrium, the Exhibition Pavilion is the starting point for Presidio Habitats. The pavilion exhibits all 25 proposals submitted for the exhibition, scale models, and other artist material as well as video about the Presidio’s plants and wildlife. An exhibition guide and map will lead visitors on a self-guided journey of all installation sites. Located at the corner of Ralston and Storey avenues, directly across from the historic Log Cabin, the pavilion is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11am to 5pm. Admission is free.
The Log Cabin Series—a series of talks, multimedia presentations and performances inspired by the Presidio, its wildlife and the art of Presidio Habitats—will continue over the summer, as will the other public programs, guided hikes, and family-oriented events that have accompanied the exhibit since its opening. For details and a schedule of events visit www.presidio.gov/habitats.
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5. Inner Sunset Free Fix-It Fair
Saturday, May 7th 10a - 4p, Irving at 6th Ave.
Last items in at 3p.
We’ll try to fix anything—except electronics & relationships—for FREE.
Yes, for free. No hidden charges, no fees, no gobbledegook.
Bring your wobbly, loose, broken, frayed, splintered, torn, ripped, cracked, or severed item. We will glue, solder, clamp, re-wire, sew, chop, sharpen, file, cut, adjust, weld, screw, etc. If we can’t fix it, we’ll give you twice your money back!
Barbara: 415/246-4748 (for questions or to volunteer)
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6. Bubbles & Bivalves
Thursday, May 12, 2011, 7:00pm - 9:30pm
The Aquarium of the Bay
San Francisco Bay was once home to the West Coast’s largest oyster industry. More than seven decades after the last commercial oyster harvest, award-winning oyster author Rowan Jacobsen is coming to San Francisco to support The Watershed Project’s efforts to restore native oysters to the Bay.
Join Jacobsen and other special guests for oysters, champagne and libations, and sustainable bites from the Bay Area’s finest sustainable restaurants, wineries, and breweries. Guests will learn about our native oysters while helping restore the critical underwater ecosystems of our magnificent San Francisco Bay.
Participating restaurants include: Waterbar, Farallon, Slanted Door, Greens and Slow Club. Oysters will be provided by Hog Island Oyster Co., Drakes Bay Oyster Co. and Tomales Bay Oyster Co.; wine and beer by Hess Collection, Radio-Coteau, Handley Cellars, Unti Vineyards, Anchor Brewing and Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery; and desserts by Bi-Rite Market, Scream Sorbet, and TCHO Chocolates.
All of the restaurants, wineries, and breweries serving at Bubbles & Bivalves are committed to protecting our environment and have donated their time and talent to the event. All proceeds from ticket sales go directly to funding The Watershed Project's Living Shoreline program.
There are 3 ways to purchase tickets:
1) Online via Eventbrite (a small service charge will apply).
2) Call Event Coordinator Diana Dunn at (818) 298-5824 with any major credit card.
3) At the event (we highly recommend purchasing tickets ahead of time as we expect to sell out).
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7. Two worthy groups you can help by your vote:
Citizens for a Sustainable Point Molate
Help us Win Bay Citizen's Citizen of Tomorrow Award! Every Vote Counts
CFSPM has been chosen as one of five finalists for the Bay Citizen's 'Citizen of Tomorrow'
Award. Each year, Bay Citizen selects five individuals or groups in the Bay Area who are making a difference, and hosts a contest to determine the winner. CFSPM is honored to have been chosen as one of the finalists based on our community visioning work to create a new destiny for Point Molate.
The contest ends on May 16th and you can vote each day until the contest closes. Help us achieve our goal to bring a lively and interactive visioning event to Richmond's neighborhoods so that the community at large can have a voice in defining Point Molate's future.
View our contest entry on YouTube and learn about our community design plans.
AND, while you're in the voting mood:
Alemany Farm right here in SF is in the running to be one of 5 community gardens in the US awarded $4000. Whether it gets the money or not depends on votes from the public. Like yours. They will use the money for plants, tools, and programming at the site.
Here are the instructions:
Go to http://www.deloachcommunitygardens.com
That will get you to a colorful display of 15 small photos, each one of which represents a community garden somewhere in the US. Alemany Farm's photo is the one in the upper left corner.
Each photo has a whitish arrow in the middle of it, Click on the whitish arrow.
You will then be linked to a box in which you may vote. You need to type in your email address and your name, and, presumably click on the little box that says you don't want to get messages from the nice folks at Deloach. Click on "Submit your vote". That's it! You should see the total of votes go up by one.
Here's the most important thing of all: EACH PERSON MAY VOTE ONCE PER DAY FROM NOW UNTIL AUGUST 1. SO DON'T JUST VOTE ONCE! BOOKMARK THE SITE, AND VOTE EVERY DAY!
For more info on the farm, and volunteer workdays visit alemanyfarm.org - 3rd Sundays, 1:00-4:00 is the native plant area workday
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority." E.B. White
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8. Sunday Streets returns to the Mission for Mother's Day
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/417137/a038757ef3/1490000697/c6af090a69/
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(JS: Yet another issue descended on me from cyberspace just now. It was much too long to post in its entirety, so I drastically condensed to this. Go to the webpage to get grounded in the issue.)
9. Beyond Searsville Dam Coalition
In light of Stanford's recently proposed and significant alteration to their Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) to exclude Searsville Dam and all "activities", following public review and comments, we are sending out the following press release today and have submitted the following letter to National Marine Fisheries Service and US Fish & Wildlife Service, as they continue to consider the HCP and prepare the EIS.
REPORTS AND DOCUMENTS CITED IN OUR LETTER CAN BE VIEWED AT OUR HOMEPAGE: www.BeyondSearsvilleDam.org
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10. BAY AREA EARLY DETECTION NETWORK (BAEDN)
REQUEST FOR BIDS FOR 2011 INVASIVE SPECIES ERADICATION PROJECTS
go to BAEDN.org
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11. SF Naturalist Society
Thursday, May 12 - The Wild World of Frogs
How long do frogs live? How many types of frogs are there? What's the difference between a frog and a toad? Why are frogs disappearing worldwide and what can be done to save them? Dr. Kerry M. Kriger answers all these questions and more as he introduces the audience to The Wild World of Frogs.
Dr. Kriger is the Founder & Executive Director of SAVE THE FROGS! (www.savethefrogs.com), America's first and only public charity dedicated to amphibian conservation.
Randall Museum, 7:30-9 pm. For more information, go to www.sfns.org. Free.
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12. Living with Coyotes: May 12, 2011 (6:30pm PST)
Gina Farr- guest speaker; presentation- Living with Coyotes. Sponsored by San Francisco Recreation & Parks and Project Coyote. San Francisco County Fair Bldg, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. more info.
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13. Celebrate Endangered Species Day - May 20, 2011
On May 20, our nation will celebrate America’s commitment to protecting and recovering endangered species. As we well know in Southern California, without the Endangered Species Act, our natural heritage would be hopelessly lost.
Let's celebrate successes, like the brown pelican and gray whale, as well as our own endeavor to protect the California gnatcatcher, arroyo toad, and quino checkerspot butterfly in a regional reserve network.
The goal of Endangered Species Day is simple – to educate people about the importance of protecting endangered species.
Click here to visit the Endangered Species Day website <http://www.stopextinction.org/esd.html> and:
• Find a worthwhile and fun event near you
• Get help in planning an event
• Access educational materials like 10 Things You Can Do at Home to Protect Endangered Species
• Send an Endangered Species Day e-card
• View the winning entries in the Endangered Species Day Youth Art Contest
• Meet Endangered Species Day Ambassadors
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14. Acterra
Guided Bird Walk
Saturday, May 7, 9:30 am - 12:30 pm
Pearson-Arastradero Preserve [map]
Learn about bird habitats and local species during this FREE guided bird hike at beautiful Pearson-Arastradero Preserve.
The hike will be led by John Wills of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society (SCVAS), who actively monitors the bird boxes at Arastradero Preserve and is a wealth of avian knowledge. Acterra's Arastradero Preserve Project Director Joan Dudney will also share Acterra's latest accomplishments in habitat restoration at the Preserve.
Scopes and binoculars will be provided. To register for this hike, please visit the Acterra Stewardship Events webpage.
Green@Home Energy Specialist Volunteer Training
Tuesdays, May 10 AND May 17, 5:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Menlo Park (location TBA)
Want to help hundreds of local residents reduce their energy use by providing free home energy assessments and installing basic energy saving devices? Then become a Green@Home Energy Specialist Volunteer!
The next two-part volunteer training session will be held in Menlo Park. For more information and to register for the training, please visit the Green@Home webpage or call Deb Kramer at (650) 962-9876 ext. 353.
Green@Home is now doing HouseCalls in Mountain View! For more information, please visit the Green@Home HouseCalls webpage.
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15. Feedback
ML Carle (re solar roads):
From an ex- reviewer for the old Whole Earth Catalog which some of you may remember:
Cool, but they carefully avoid the price (including making the panels and installing them), traction, (especially ice) fire, snowplows and snow chains, glare, frost heaves, potholes (Inevitable if the underlayment shifts a bit), theft, tornado damage, maintenance, steel- wheeled farm tractors, drag racing, speed and location monitoring, route choice, destination, time records, etc.
Jay Baldwin
And from Vishnu, who elaborates on the traction problem:
They didn't quite explain, once it started to drizzle, what would keep every car driving south from sliding into every car driving north, if you get my drift.
And from me: How about grasshopper plagues?
Jenny Ta:
Hi Jake: Thanks again for posting my request for Boston area conservation-related organizations. I got some good tips from people who responded. I'm now a land steward intern at the Mass Audubon Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary helping with GPS mapping of invasive species. Learning lots about the invasive plants here in New England!
John Bosley:
Greetings, Jake, from the shores of the Chesapeake Bay--which shares a very doubtful eco-future with that other great estuary out your way, San Francisco Bay. Both are sore beset by man's idiotic habits and perverse practices.
I just hollered with glee when I read this exchange in the latest Nature News:
On Apr 29, 2011, at 6:25 PM, Christina Salvin wrote:
Have you considered Facebook? We would so easily read your posts--some could be long and some could be short and many could have pictures or video. It's super user-friendly even for non-techies.
Christina: I don't even know what Facebook is--or Twitter or LinkedIn either. And I don't want to know.
Good for you, Jake! And your added comments weren't necessary. These are truly insane social tumors that I hope and pray will collapse soon of their own weight and sink into a much-deserved oblivion.
Yah, but of course, John, we know Mark Zuckerberg et al are laughing all the way to the bank. What fools these mortals be. Sinking into that deserved oblivion may be the whole of Western civilization. Facebook was only a pustule on the disease-wracked corpse.
Yes they are, Jake--but I think it's another bubble. A bubble made from bubbles. I mean think about it! An actual value for Facebook or Twitter stuff? What? Where? To whom is it valuable? I just don't get it. Well, I DO get it; Wall Street will sell anything if it can find people silly enough to buy it. And such people apparently exist. Sigh.
Our economic system is largely supported by trivia and non-substance. In that case, will Facebook last as long as the system does? I think of Twitter, Facebook, &c as froth, as symptoms of a dis-ease. Our sense of community is selling stuff to each other; it doesn't matter what the stuff is, as long as exchange is happening and people have the illusion that something is going on. It's an irrational, functionless, purposeless world. And very destructive.
Oh, I do get the idea, Jake. My friend David Harvey, in his 2009 book "Enigma of Capital," refers to "fictitious markets." Markets that are just made up to move money around. There were numerous fictitious markets involved in the 2008 crash bubble creation. The core theme of the book is this: Capital ("Capitalism") requires 3% annual growth per year, compounded. Harvey asks, "How long can Planet Earth afford such a system?"
Postcript: Several years ago, David Brooks remarked about the cell phone (not exact quote): Most of the conversations are trivial and inane, eg, 'Yah, the takeoff was just fine; they're serving coffee and juices now.' (Wife): 'I decided to stop at the hardware store on the way home. I think I'll get that new can-opener we talked about.'
Most of the conversations I have overheard (involuntarily) have been of this nature. It gives those who don't know who they are a temporary sense of identity.
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16. Review extract by Jeremy Paxman in Observer of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Johnathan Coe
Reprinted in Guardian Weekly 28.05.10
If someone asked you to identify the great human characteristic of our age, what would you say? Gender equality? Wealth? Social mobility? Sexual freedom? It seems to me the answer could just as easily be solitariness. This, surely, is one of the oddities of the present: at a time when there have never been more of us Britons crowded on to a small island, it has never been easier to be isolated.
The biggest household change mapped by sociologists is the steady growth in single-occupancy dwellings. You can travel to work alone, spend your day communicating with others only by screen or telephone, eat a solitary lunch in your workplace (if you have one), and then return home for a ready meal for one and a screen in a darkened room.
Communal travel on trains or buses is for losers, the mechanised bubble of the motorway for the successful. And it is not just that the automobile is superior to the omnibus. Autolatry is the religion of the age, autoeroticism its romance, autocide the freedom we cry out for. Being alone may not be the same as being lonely. But it sure as hell makes it a lot more achievable….
________________
"Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there by car." E.B. White
..."There is," Lewis Mumford wrote in the Myth of the Machine, "only one efficient speed: faster; only one attractive destination: farther away; only one desirable size: bigger; only one rational quantitative goal: more."
Denise D'Anne: "Oil is a curse to the world, destroying indigenous people, the environment and foreign economies. Cars are a bargain with the devil."
We have one globe, and it has one atmosphere.
"...People’s optimism about improving their communities often wavers when they talk about the clutter, confusion, and congestion they see through their windshields. It falters again when they reach inside themselves to describe the absences sprawl imposes on their lives: It steals time, choice, and proximity to others—not just open space. We are not only farther away from schools and shops, from friends and neighbors, from fields and woods; more and more of each day is given over to a tense, effortful, unnourishing, and for now unavoidable in-betweenness. This townless, countryless, road-bound running around stretches us thin; our bodies are in motion—but what is there around us to anchor our hearts and minds?"
From ‘Man About Towns’ by Tony Hiss, Sierra, November-December 2001
The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars...is sure to be noticed. Soren Kierkegaard
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17.
"We wonder whether in the present pattern the pieces are not straining to fall out of line; whether the paradoxes of our times are not finally mounting to a conclusion of ridiculousness that will make the whole structure collapse. For the paradoxes are becoming so great that leaders of people must be less and less intelligent to stand their own leadership." John Steinbeck, The Log From the Sea of Cortez 1941.
I shop, therefore I am
"The only permitted answer to the effects of greed is more greed."
"The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend to take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less.
"I refuse to believe that there is not a better means of averting disaster than this. I refuse to believe that human beings are collectively incapable of making rational decisions. But I am beginning to wonder what the basis of my belief might be."
George Monbiot, Guardian Weekly 22-28 July 2005
“Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much....the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.” Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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18. Save the following dates for the next series of Blue Greenway Planning community meetings at the Port at Pier 1:
May 25th - review revised Concept Plans for Port Blue Greenway open spaces, project cost and a draft project prioritization based upon available funding; and
June 15sth - review Concepts for Blue Greenway, Linking Streets, Signage Program and the revised Site Furnishing standards.
A final notice and meeting agenda will be distributed prior to the meeting. A document supporting the community workshop and previous material prepared
through the Blue Greenway planning process will available on line at www/sfport.com/bluegreenway by 5/20. Please visit www.sfport.com/bluegreenway for previous material prepared for the Blue Greenway planning.
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19. Save the date
CNPS, Friends of Regional Parks Botanic Garden, and Pacific Horticulture are collaborating once again to present a two-day symposium on native plant gardening and design on Sat-Sun, Sep 17-18, 2011 in Lafayette & Berkeley. Featured speakers include Carol Bornstein, David Fross, Steve Edwards, Don Mahoney, and other native plant professionals.
Earlybird registration deadline is June 30, 2011 - http://gns.cnps-scv.org
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20. You are invited to the annual UC Berkeley hydrology symposium this Saturday, May 7 from 9am-1pm. Coffee and registration will begin at 8:30. The event will be held in Wurster Hall room #112 at UC Berkeley.
The day will include:
- Student presentations from independent research projects.
- A keynote address titled "Restoring streamflow in coastal California watersheds: lessons learned through a science-based process" by Matthew Deitch (Center for Ecosystem Management and Restoration)
- A panel discussion and Question/Answer session on current issues and future trends in hydrology and restoration.
Panelists are:
Herman Garcia, Executive Director, Coastal Habitat Education & Environmental Restoration, Gilroy
Barry Hecht, Senior Principal, Balance Hydrologics, Berkeley
David Hines, National Marine Fisheries Service, Habitat Conservation Division, Santa Rosa
Christian Nilsen, Senior Hydrologist, ESA PWA, San Francisco
The event is free, but please RSVP to ensure a space. (ucbriverrestoration@gmail.com)
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21. Contemporary Historians at the Presidio features nationally known historians speaking at the Presidio of San Francisco. Some talks will be about the Presidio, while others will cover larger themes in American and world history that help put the Presidio into context as a former military post and now an innovative national park.
Wednesday, May 11, 7 pm
Golden Gate Club 135 Fisher Loop
Global Historic Preservation Today
Frank Matero, University of Pennsylvania
The challenges facing the preservation and conservation of culturally significant places around the world are many and rapidly changing. This talk will look at a variety of international sites, examining new responses in preservation. For more information visit www.conlab.org and www.design.upenn.edu/historic-preservation/degrees-offered.
FREE. NO RESERVATIONS REQUIRED.
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22. 7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776 David Hume
Hume was one of the shapers of the Scottish Enlightenment, which America's founding fathers drew so heavily upon in fashioning the foundation of the country. A down-to-earth sensible man. JS
“Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.”
“I have written on all sorts of subjects . . . yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”
“When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities."
“He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances."
“The law always limits every power it gives.”
“It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”
"And what is the greatest number? Number one."
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23. BIOREGIONAL ECOLOGY WORKSHOPS
Learn about our Northern California Bioregion
At Heron's Head Park EcoCenter or Glide Foundation’s Rooftop Garden in San Francisco
Join Peter Berg, Director of Planet Drum Foundation, for an inspiring full day workshop on:
May 7th or June 4th, 2011
Heron's Head Park EcoCenter in the Bayview/Hunter's Point neighborhood. Anthony Khalil, Heron's Head Park Educator/Ecologist will provide background on the Park as well as information on HHP's new EcoCenter and the wonderful ongoing community outreach work conducted by Literacy for Environment Justice.
May 14th, 2011
Glide Foundation's Rooftop Garden in the Tenderloin neighborhood. Josephine Quiocho, Glide Foundation/Graze the Roof, Project Organizer and Educator will provide information on this outstanding model of urban sustainability and talk about Glide's "green" Cecil Williams Community House.
The workshops will provide a holistic ecological approach to identifying and understanding Northern California's unique climate, weather, soil, landforms, watersheds, native plants and wildlife. Emphasis is on observation of natural characteristics, discussing interrelationships of natural systems, and on-site learning in an amazing environment. This is a must for learning about and seeing what makes our bioregion distinct from any other on the planet and for UNDERSTANDING what we must do to restore and maintain healthy natural systems within San Francisco.
We will begin at 10AM at each location and continue until approximately 4PM. Additional information, including site addresses and MUNI information, will be provided to you when you register for either or both workshops.
The workshop includes:
• Participation in an easy-to-follow bioregional map-making of your own life-place
• Exploration of native habitats that coexist with urban surroundings
• Acquisition of new environmental skills to share with students, colleagues, family, and friends
• Observation and discussion of restoration and urban sustainability activities
• Take-home materials
Workshops are partially funded by a grant from the Bill Graham Foundation.
Thank you!
Call now for more information and to reserve your place in one of the following workshops:
Saturday, May 7th - 10:00 am to 4:00 pm at Heron's Head Park
Saturday, May 14th - 10:00 am to 4:00 pm at Glide's Rooftop Garden
Saturday, June 4th - 10:00 am to 4:00 pm at Heron's Head Park
Workshops will fill up quickly! Call Planet Drum Foundation, (415) 285-6556 or email mail@planetdrum.org today to register and/or learn more details.
Sliding scale $35-$50 (full scholarships for SF-USD teachers, limited work exchanges available). Fee includes workshop participation and project materials. Bring a bag lunch and wear comfortable shoes.
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24. Nature in the City
1. Announcing Habitat City, a Brand New Gardener's Collective
Several former Nature in the City employees, including its founding director, have teamed up to offer San Franciscans and Bay Areans local native plant landscaping services. If you or someone you know wants to build habitat for birds, bees, butterflies and frogs, contact Habitat City, and they can help you implement your part of our vision for a San Francisco Restored.
2. Nature in the City TREKS in the City
Check out Green Hairstreaks, the Presidio's rich and fascinating dunes, spring bird migration, or Yerba Buena Island.
SATURDAY | May 7
Green Hairstreak Butterfly Corridor
with Liam O'Brien
SATURDAY | May 14
Wildflower Power in the Dunes of the Presidio
with Lew Stringer
SUNDAY | May 15
Spring Bird Migration at Mt. Davidson
with Dominik Mosur
SATURDAY | May 21
Exploring Yerba Buena Island
with Ruth Gravanis
3. Nature in the City Needs your Passion and Expertise
We have openings for three volunteer intern positions: Membership, Web Developer/Manager, and Community Outreach. If you are in a position to offer your services to Nature in the City, then you stand to have a terrific experience working for our celebrated organization.
We need your technical skills managing our database and sending bulk mailings;
and we need someone who wants to wrap themselves in the gift that is Nature in the City's website, the online resource for natural San Francisco - we need someone to manage our current website, and someone to build our new one;
finally, we need somebody who loves working with people and contacting the media to keep our publicity and outreach dynamic and current.
Email peter@natureinthecity.org.
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25. Mission Blues to Twin Peaks: Year 2
The mesh enclosures on Twin Peaks. The females are immediately observed ovipositing. They are released within the hour of transport. Eggs have now been observed throughout the release sites.
SF Recreation and Parks Natural Areas Program, in cooperation with US Fish and Wildlife Service, has succeeded in importing a few more mission blues from San Bruno Mountain to further augment the population on Twin Peaks of this federally listed endangered species.
"...it was a long, beautiful mid-afternoon along theridge. Saw my first Callippe Silverspot (Speyeria callippe callippe ) of the season (kinda early for that bug), as well as my first Ringlets (C. tullia californica) bopping about. The marine layer moved back in after 1:30 and we lost our butterfly weather. The transport is made with small tupperware bowls this year -- less impact on the creatures than glycine envelopes." Liam O'Brien (I believe this was when collecting on SBM. JS)
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26. Arcturus, part II (continued from last newsletter)
Arcturus is located at a distance of 37 light years, and became famous when its light was used to open the 1933 world's fair in Chicago, as that light had left the star at about the time of the previous Chicago fair in 1893.
To the eye, it shines 113 times more brightly than our Sun. Its lower temperature, however, causes it to radiate considerable energy in the infrared, which isn’t visible to the eye. When this infrared radiation is taken into account, Arcturus actually shines almost twice as brightly, releasing 215 times more radiation than our Sun, from which we find a diameter 26 times our sun, about a quarter the size of Mercury's orbit.
Arcturus has a velocity relative to the Sun that is higher than other bright stars. Compared with the set of surrounding stars, which orbit the Galaxy on more or less circular orbits, it falls behind by about 100 kilometers per second. An intriguing suggestion is that the star actually comes to us from a small galaxy that merged with ours some 5 to 8 billion years ago.
“Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.” R. Buckminster Fuller
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27 One Night Only! As heard on NPR's Science Friday with Ira Flatow...
Science Comedian Brian Malow presents
Rational Comedy for an Irrational Planet
An evening of science humor
“It’s as much about expanding the mind as it is tickling the funny bone.” - The Washington Times
8pm, Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Rooster T. Feathers Comedy Club
157 W. El Camino Real
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Information and Reservations: 408-736-0921
Or BUY YOUR TICKETS ONLINE: http://www.ticketbiscuit.com/RoosterTFeathers/EventPage.aspx?EID=90504
Get your geek on! From the lighter side of helium to the darker side of the moon, join science comedian Brian Malow on a rocket ride through the humorverse. Brian will dispel myths & misconceptions about science, explore the science in science fiction films, and exercise your brain as well as your funny bone. For all audiences!
Music is not just for musicians. Art is not just for artists. And science is not just for scientists.
**********
Brian Malow is Earth’s Premier Science Comedian (available for off-world appearances if transportation is provided). Based in San Francisco, Brian has appeared on “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” and performed for NASA, JPL, NIST, OSA, ACS, and other acronyms. He also makes science videos for Time Magazine’s website, and is a contributor to Neil de Grasse Tyson’s radio show. Brian has been featured in the Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Jose Mercury News.
For more info, check out
http://www.sciencecomedian.com
http://www.youtube.com/sciencecomedian
http://www.twitter.com/sciencecomedian
Three more upcoming California shows:
Tuesday, May 17 - San Francisco Punch Line
Friday, May 20 - Sacramento Comedy Spot
Saturday, May 21 - Marsh Theatre, Berkeley
Details will be on my website soon-ish! But, hey, you're smart! That's all the info you really need - or you wouldn't be my fan! :)
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28. Scientific American
OBSERVATIONS: BPA Linked to Wheezing in Babies
Could plastic bottles and metal food-can liners be contributing to the American asthma epidemic?
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=46&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE: Climate Change Will Bring More Extreme Precipitation and Floods
Is human influence on climate anything to do with this nasty bit of weather we’re having?
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=47&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
GUEST BLOG: Slabs, Sneakers, Gyres and the Grotesque
With a touch of whimsy, tales of the grotesque, and the barest hints of essential mathematics, Curtis Ebbesmeyer provides us with an overview of his life (thus far) in the science of physical oceanography
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=24&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
OBSERVATIONS: Buzzing: 13-Year Periodic Cicadas Emerge
The humble vibrato of summer will crescendo a bit earlier this year in the U.S. South
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=21&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
GUEST BLOG: How does a floating plastic duckie end up where it does?
In Moby-Duck, Donovan Hohn tracks the fate of 28,800 plastic bath toys (“rubber” ducks, frogs, turtles and beavers) across the northwestern coast to their origins in China
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=25&m=36586151&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNzQyNDgyS0&mt=1&rt=0
EARTHTALK: Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?
Because of soil depletion, crops grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=20&m=36576823&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNTc2OTE2S0&mt=1&rt=0
NEWS: Mouse Study Suggests Why Addictions Are Hard to Forget
A new study finds that alcoholic mice more readily form Pavlovian associations with addictive substances. Similar subconscious memories may haunt recovering addicts
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=19&m=36576823&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTAwNTc2OTE2S0&mt=1&rt=0
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29. Tractors can be very sexy
Opposites may attract, but can a bird ever find love with a piece of agricultural machinery? Ja, says a German hotelier, who claims that a swan is besotted with his tractor.
The eight-year-old mute swan, uncreatively known as Schwani, has allegedly become so obsessed with the 39hp vehicle that every time the engine starts up, he waddles over to say hello. This is no fling, according to observers from the village of Velen in northwest Germany: Schwani has been devoted to the tractor for years.
"Ever since we bought the tractor three years ago, Schwani has been following it everywhere it goes," Hermann-Josef Hericks told the tabloid Bild. But Veronika Schwill, who works at the hotel, said Schwani was not monogamous. "Schwani also finds diggers and machines on the building site next door interesting," she revealed.
Why can't Schwani find love with another swan? wondered Bild. Animal behaviouralist Daniel Fiutak has a theory. "The swan presumably had contact with machines during puberty," she said. "He sees the tractor as a sexual partner."
Shortcuts, Guardian Weekly 29.04.11
_____________________________________________
Coroner details 2 bizarre deaths
Farm machinery involved
The Ventura County coroner has published details on the only two known cases of men who died while using hydraulic-powered heavy machinery for sexual gratification, circumstances seen as bizarre and baffling.
Writing in the March issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Ventura County Medical Examiners (names of writers and affiliations omitted here) present a study of two men who were killed while they suspended themselves from the equipment…In one case, the man apparently “developed a romantic attachment to a tractor, even giving it a name and writing poetry in its honor,” the doctors wrote. This man, a 42-year-old, died accidentally while he hung himself from the tractor by the neck.
In the second case, a 62-year-old died when he was pinned under a tractor’s shovel after suspending himself from it by the ankles.
(JS condensation and paraphrase of balance of article: One case was discovered in Ventura County, but the writer would not say which one, and would not reveal the site of the other case, and would not discuss the report, and would not answer questions because they believed that reporting the information in a non-scientific publication was irresponsible. An excerpt was published in the October [1993] edition of Harper’s, a national general interest magazine. The writers declined an invitation to discuss the issue on a TV talk show and tried to dissuade the show’s producers from airing the subject. The producers did the show anyway and a number of cases of autoerotic asphyxiation occurred as a result, the staff workers said. Dietz—one of the authors—is also the author of a report titled “Television-Inspired Autoerotic Asphyxiation.”)
Excerpted and condensed from News Chronicle (Thousand Oaks, California), Friday 8 October 1993
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30. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
Where does hope come from and how do we keep it?
From the eternal springs we live in.
Judy Kellaway, Mount Stuart, Tasmania, Australia
• Where does hope come from? Pandora's box. And how do we keep it? With foolhardy determination and willful optimism.
Stephenie Cahalan, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
• I don't know; it's a mystery. But it is there; we, as individuals, may lose it from time to time, but hope itself never dies. As the protagonist Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), in a letter to fellow inmate Red (Morgan Freeman), comments at the close of that wonderful Frank Darabont movie, The Shawshank Redemption: "Hope is a good thing, and a good thing never dies."
James Stevens, Volos, Greece
• I believe it springs eternal in a woman's breast.
Adrian Cooper, Queens Park, NSW, Australia
I hate being snored at
Why is snoring such a disturbing sound as opposed to laughter?
The judgment of the sound of both snoring and laughter is in the ear of the hearer. Snoring can be a pleasant sound if a sick insomniac has dropped into a deep sleep, whereas laughter can be an unpleasant one if you are being laughed at.
Other bodily expulsions of air are equally variant: belching is accepted in some countries as an appreciation of food given, whereas in others it is unseemly behaviour. Breaking wind can be an amusing diversion in a classroom, whereas doing so in a lift accompanied by only one other person can be an embarrassment.
Dick Hedges, Nairobi, Kenya
• Laughter comes in spontaneous bursts; it expresses amusement that is usually shared with others, and it is therefore normally an enjoyable, sociable sound.
Snoring is a continuous, solitary, unsociable activity; its sound is enjoyed by neither the perpetrator, who is not awake to hear it, nor by the involuntary listener, who hears it only too well. It becomes increasingly irritating until the sleeper wakes up, either spontaneously or with a sharp poke in the ribs.
Joan Dawson, Halifax, NS, Canada
• Duration.
Donna Samoyloff, Toronto, Canada
• The answer turns on the listener's own level of consciousness.
Philip Stigger, Burnaby, BC, Canada
• You never know what they're snoring at.
Alan Gabbey, New York City, US
• Ask any stand-up comedian.
Mark Hainge, Canberra, Australia
Let's stick it to the Man
When it is said, "they can't take that away from you", who are "they"?
Certainly not the tax man at Canada Revenue Agency.
Art Hunter, Napanee, Ontario, Canada
• The Man.
David Fenderson, Canberra, Australia
• The racists, homophobes, snide critics and bullies of every variety, who exist simply to test our mettle.
Richard Orlando, Montreal, Canada
Is it well in your sole?
Why do cockroaches die on their backs?
To save their soles.
Jim Neilan, Dunedin, New Zealand
Any answers?
Why are some orders tall and others short?
Elizabeth Quance, Almonte, Ontario, Canada
Why are only three months of the year girls' names?
Edward Black, Sydney, Australia
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