2. Attention: Supporters of Golden Gate Park
3. A history of Golden Gate Park
4. Knowland Park update
5. San Bruno Mountain field trip Saturday Oct 29
6. Feedback: Jerusalem cricket/Alex the Gray Parrot - candidate for GOP nomination?
7. How can we make Claremont Canyon more fire-safe?
8. New York's updated Johnny Appleseed
9. Open House and plant sale at Oaktown Nursery Saturday 29
10. Prayer for sleep - hyenas wait till darkness comes to pounce
11. What I have learned so far - Mary Oliver
12. Language at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests
13. Pregnant interview with author Michael Lewis on euro crisis
14. World population at 7 billion. Don't panic. (Uh, perhaps we should.)
15. Pumpkins and pollinators, a unique relationship
1. RE: HEARING ON GRAND JURY'S CENTRAL SUBWAY REPORT
SaveMuni.com's Comments on City's Respones
GOVERNMENT AUDIT & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2011, 10AM
CITY HALL ROOM 263
AGENDA ITEMS 2 & 3: See Links for City Responses to Grand Jury
http://www.sfbos.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=39945
Please attend. This is your opportunity to testify.
The City's Responses to the Civil Grand Jury Report are deficient and misleading. An independent audit of the Central Subway Project is needed.
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(I'm not a fan of Quentin Kopp, but everything he says here is smack-on. JS)
Hi Everyone, A really solid Op-Ed by Judge Quentin Kopp. Regards, Howard
http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/10/documented-true-facts-central-subway
Documented true facts on the Central Subway
By: Quentin L. Kopp | 10/23/11 5:00 Pm
Special To The Examiner
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, 10th edition, defines boondoggle as “a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft.” In one of the most remarkable and distorting set of glittering generalities in contemporary local public affairs, Steve Falk, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, in an Oct. 6 op-ed tries to justify the Central Subway project on the ground it would create construction jobs and put money in businesses.
He doesn’t tell us that most of those big businesses are headquartered elsewhere. He claims the project has been “politicized in the heated mayoral race.” He purports “to set the record straight.” Well, let’s do so.
If it weren’t for the unappreciated San Francisco civil grand jury’s June 11 report, titled “Central Subway: Too Much Money for Too Little Benefit,” and the unsung and uncompensated efforts of citizens Howard Wong, Gerald Cauthen, Aaron Peskin (two-term Board of Supervisors president), Jake McGoldrick (eight-year Board of Supervisors member), the Sierra Club, Save Muni and now others, this scandalous project would never have been the subject of mayoral candidate debate.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera, former Supervisor Tony Hall and Green Party member Terri Baum have unmistakably declared the project should be scrapped in favor of a more effective, considerably less expensive plan, which the appointed mayor never even knew about when first questioned this month. Public-Defender Jeff Adachi recommends thorough, public reexamination of this disgraceful, political waste of taxpayer money.
Falk mischaracterizes the Central Subway as a “fully funded $1.6 billion project.” It is not fully funded. The major source, the Federal Transit Administration, supposedly will supply $983.2 million, or 62 percent, of the June estimated total cost of $1.6 billion. For the record, in 2003, the estimated project cost was $648 million by 2004, it was $763 million by 2006, it was $994 million for a 1.7-mile project.
Omitted from Falk’s false rhetoric is that FTA final approval as part of its so-called New Starts program has yet to occur. Moreover, any FTA approval must thereafter be approved by both houses of the U.S. Congress, and on Sept. 8, 2011, an appropriations bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives; its effect will strip all federal funds from the Central Subway project.
Falk then talks of where the Central Subway will go, but not where it will not go. It will not go to the Market Street Subway System. The Central Subway’s Union Square stop is about 1000 feet from the BART and Muni subway stops. It also manages to miss connections with 25 of the 30 east-west bus and rail lines it crosses, thereby making connections to most of Twin Peaks longer and less convenient. And because it arbitrarily ends at Stockton and Washington streets, the subway would extend neither to the nine populous residential and commercial districts to the north and west of Chinatown, nor the northerly two-thirds of Chinatown itself.
Falk asserts the Central Subway would “provide direct, rapid transit from the Bayview, Mission Bay and South of Market areas to The City’s dense downtown core and Chinatown.” That’s untrue. The trip from the Bayview would continue to be virtually all by surface light rail, a service that today is slow and unreliable. “Direct service to the downtown core”? Also untrue. Union Square isn’t the downtown core — it’s our shopping center, featuring high-priced retail stores unlikely to be patronized by Chinatown or southeast San Francisco residents. And, “service to Chinatown”? Misleading. Chinatown extends at least as far north today as Greenwich Street, eight blocks past the end of the vaunted subway.
Next, Falk repeats The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s exaggerated contention that by 2030, “the new rail line will accommodate 43,700 daily riders in its opening year and more than 65,000 in 2030.” But here’s the rub: The SFMTA representations of 65,000 one-way riders includes ridership of the already completed and paid-for Third Street line; and according to reports The SFMTA filed officially with the FTA, by 2030, the Central Subway would carry only 35,100 one-way riders daily, of whom but 4,800 would be new Muni riders. If Caltrain is extended to First and Mission streets, Central Subway ridership is projected by The SFMTA to decline by another 8,000 or more riders per day. These are The SFMTA data, not political campaign talk. These are reasons Messrs. Peskin and McGoldrick, who approved the proposed project eight years ago as Supervisors, and the Sierra Club, which did likewise, now loudly proclaim opposition to an excruciatingly flawed project.
So, San Francisco City Hall is now poised to spend over $100,000 in capital for each daily rider added by the subway and force Muni to suffer $15,200,000 more a year in operating costs to its 2011-12 estimated $23,000,000 deficit. What Falk doesn’t tell readers is that Muni promulgated in 2002 a “transit-preferential streets” program, which included for Stockton Street traffic signal priority, transit-stop respacing and relocation, bus bulbs, and an extension of overhead trolley wires to Marina Boulevard, at a three-year completion cost of only $9,100,000.
Finally, Falk refuses to note that under applicable federal law and contractual requirements, San Francisco taxpayers will be responsible for all further cost increases of the project beyond the approximate $1 billion-per-mile current price tag.
In sum, Central Subway represents a garish, highly overpriced “loser” that if opened by 2018 (which it won’t) will fail to provide enough in transportation benefits to justify exorbitant cost and its baleful effect upon Muni operating expenses. Heed the facts, not the downtown propaganda.
Quentin L. Kopp is a retired Superior Court judge, a former state senator and San Francisco Board of Supervisors member.
Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/10/documented-true-facts-central-subway#ixzz1bfovMRbN
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2. TO ALL SUPPORTERS OF GOLDEN GATE PARK:
List of Mayoral Candidates who support Golden Gate Park! Vote for them, and tell your friends about them!
Write to the candidates who are undecided. There are still three weeks left for them to choose to support Golden Gate Park.
Ranked Choice Voting Strategies. Some insight.
Volunteer to flyer! Help us keep the momentum going!
Draft EIR scheduled for release at end of October. Write to Don Lewis to obtain a printed or digital copy to study for your comments.
Funding needed – $$$$$ - for flyers and for legal fees. Contribute now!
Please consider voting for these people:
Absentee ballots are out – vote, and tell your friends the names of those candidates who support Golden Gate Park
þ Candidates who have committed to natural grass and no factory building (in alphabetical order.)
Jeff Adachi
Cesar Ascarrunz
John Avalos
Terry Joan Baum
Paul Currier
Tony Hall
Dennis Herrera
Wilma Pang
Joanna Rees
Leland Yee
Mayoral Candidates who are NOT YET on our side can be emailed through this link. Ask them to support us, so that we can add them to our list of candidates!
o CLICK here to ask these candidates to support GGP
Ranked choice voting strategies:
o Some of our supporters have talked about various ‘strategies’ for ranked choice voting. George Wooding, columnist for the Westside Observer, interviewed some folks and learned the following:
· “People need not feel obligated to vote for all three choices. If they feel really strongly about only one or two choices, then put them down only. However, you do increase your chances of having a vote if you exercise all your choices, especially in races with a lot of people. Don't bother gaming your vote. Just vote for, in order, who you actually want to win. There's no way to predict how the rank order will turn out, so you don't even know if you're gaming the right way. . . .”
David C. Latterman, M.S., M.P.P., Political Consultant, Principle for Fall Line Analytics and USF lecturer:
There are two weeks left before the election! Help us get out the word to people all across San Francisco by volunteering an hour or two of your time.
· Upcoming events that we'd love to have your help with include:
o Mayoral forums
o Sunday Streets – October 23rd – Mission District –last one of the season!
o Weekend fairs and other events – let us know of any you would like to flier at!
o Come for an hour or as long as you can stay. Contact us for our locations.
· To help out at events, please contact us at sfoceanedge.volunteer@yahoo.com
Draft EIR (Environmental Impact Report) dates:
· October 26, 2011 – Beach Chalet Athletics Field Draft EIR released
· Start of 45 day comment period
Historic Preservation Commission – public hearing - 11-16-11
Planning Commission – public hearing - 12-1-11
Close of public comment on DEIR 12-12-11
· To obtain a printed copy of the DEIR, contact Don Lewis in Planning SOON
· Click here to write to Don Lewis
$$$$$ Funding needed! $$$$$
· We are raising funding for EIR legal fees and related expenses. See our website for various ways you can donate to protect Golden Gate Park! www.sfoceanedge.org
"A park should be an agglomeration of hill and dale, meadow, lawn and coppice presenting a series of sylvan and pastoral views, calculated to banish all thoughts of urban objects, and lead the imagination to picture space beyond as a continued succession of rural scenes and incidents." William Hammond Hall-1873
"Destroy a public building and it can be rebuilt in a year; destroy a city woodland park and all the people living at the time will have passed away before its restoration can be effected." Wm Hammond Hall, Surveyor, First Superintendent of Golden Gate Park
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3. A history of Golden Gate Park: http://www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com/
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4. Dear Knowland Park Supporters,
SETTLEMENT TALKS END
After almost two months of hard work to try to achieve a reasonable settlement of our lawsuit against the City/Zoo, we have regretfully determined that they have no interest in a real settlement and have ended mediation. We will be turning our attention back to the lawsuit and to further educating the community about the park and the effects of the Zoo's ill-considered and environmentally destructive development.
Without sharing the details of the mediated settlement discussions, which we are required to keep confidential, we can say that even before mediation began, we proposed a conservation easement that would have allowed the Zoo's approved project to proceed while permanently protecting the remainder of the parkland from further expansion. Even though we still felt the expansion was terribly designed and would destroy precious natural resources, we thought this could potentially be a win-win solution. But just getting to build their faux-conservation theme park the way they wanted without our opposition wasn't enough for them. Even before talks started, they refused to consider the easement. Over the course of discussions in which terms we thought we'd agreed upon continued to be watered down further and further, it became clear that the Zoo has no interest whatsoever in preserving the rest of Knowland Park for future generations, despite its claims to be a "conservation" organization.
So we are back to the fight. We can't let them believe that no one cares enough about the park and its existing wildlife, open space, and rare plants to defend it. Are you with us?
INAUGURATING THE 'TOUGH 200'
Right now, we are looking at big bills for both mediation and legal costs. Our board members have been digging deep, and we are applying for grants, but we need more help from all of you. We are inaugurating the "Tough 200" campaign because if each one of us gives just a little, it adds up to a lot.
Can you be one of the "Tough 200" who help us stay current with our bills?
If just 200 of you commit to donating just $25-35 a month for the next four months, we would know we could confidently focus our energies on our legal case without having to spend so much time fundraising. It's been a long haul--more than 4 1/2 years now, and more than that going back to 1998 when other community members tried to stop or shape this expansion for the first time. Somehow we have always kept going. We can't give up.
Please help us show the Zoo we will stand together for our park by giving just $25 and committing to be one of the Knowland Park Tough 200. Use the PayPal button on our website (www.saveknowland.org) to donate, or send a check made out to "CNPS" to our Treasurer, Lee Ann Smith, 111 Shadow Mountain, Oakland, CA 94605. All donations are tax deductible through our partnership with the California Native Plant Society (CNPS).
We will also be starting some further outreach activities soon, so watch for updates and volunteer opportunities. Meanwhile, do enjoy the park --it is at its most beautiful now, the grass all turning to green! Coyotes and deer are out in the early morning and early evenings, along with the hawks, owls and the occasional foxes. They've not yet heard that the Zoo plans to push them out of their traditional hunting and grazing grounds and homes!
Thanks for all you do to support our park.
Ruth, Tom, and the Friends of Knowland Park leadership group
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5.
California Native Plant Society field trip
Saturday, October 29th, 10 am to 1 pm
San Bruno Mountain
Join Doug Allshouse from the Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society for an educational and entertaining field trip to two north-facing ravines on San Bruno Mountain - Dairy Ravine and Cable Ravine. The ravines derive their names from past dairy ranching and from the buried communication cables that descend from the towers on the Summit.
To explore both ravines we'll walk the Dairy Ravine, the Summit Trail and the Eucalyptus Loop. We'll visit an area to inspect the long-term effects of Bermuda buttercup (Oxalis pes-caprae) on habitat.
Then it's on to Kamchatka Point to look at our endemic San Bruno Mountain manzanita (Arctostaphylos imbricata ssp. imbricata) and its recovery from an episode with the Western Tussock Moth (Orgyia vetusta). Also on the point are bearberry manzanita (A. uva-ursi ssp. coatilis), evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) and dwarf huckleberry (V. caespitosum). The dwarf huckleberry is widely distributed in North America but reaches it southernmost-known distribution on the mountain.
Contact Doug at: dougsr228@comcast.net 415-584-5114
Self-register ($6) at the San Bruno Mountain State and County Park entry kiosk. Meet at 10am at the parking lot south of Guadalupe Canyon Parkway. To get there, turn right just past the entry kiosk and follow the road under the parkway. Due to the ever-present marine influence the mountain offers box-of-chocolates weather - so bring layers!
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6. Feedback
John Rusk (re the moment of Creation being 23 October 4004 BCE):
Jake: Bishop Ussher was using the Julian Calendar rather than the Gregorian one in use today.
Mike Sullivan:
Jake – my son and I found the insect photographed below on Tank Hill. Do you know what it is?
It's Jerusalem cricket, also known as potato bug. It's a native insect that is commonly found in our natural areas, usually shortly below ground level. We find them while working in natural areas when we dislodge a rock or other shelter. They look fierce but are harmless to humans.
When I was arranging programs for the SF Natural History Series in the early 1990s I tried to get David Weissman (I'm quite sure that's his name), the only person who has done research on this creature (even though he was not trained as a scientist). He refused. I tried again about 15 years later, and he still declined. But the excellent Cal Academy magazine California Wild (now, alas, defunct) had a good article by Weissman on the cricket. If you're unable to find it in a library I could be persuaded to dig it up from my basement. It's a fascinating creature.
I'm so glad you're encouraging Joe's natural curiosity. That's a gift to last a lifetime. If only all parents would take the trouble. I find so many young people lacking this connection to the real world and they feel uncomfortable in it, not knowing what to make of it, or how to act when in its presence. Take them out of the human-created world and they are disoriented.
P.S. I first encounted the cricket in the 1950s when I lived in the Bayview. I was sitting on the toilet when I heard a loud rustling of paper. A cricket peered out; I thought it was something from Jupiter. I almost freaked out, not knowing what to make of it, but gathered it up and put it outside.
I love Wikipedia – here is a great article on the Jerusalem cricket: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_cricket
On Oct 22, 2011, at 9:49 AM, Sharon Muczynski wrote:
Hi Jake,
Enjoyed your article about Alex. As an owner of an African Grey, I can tell you that Alex's story is not unusual. Most African Greys combine words appropriately, and are extremely intelligent. Scary smart sometimes. I tried to count Brutus' vocabulary once, and I am sure it is close to one hundred words, plus he is only three years old, and learning all the time. It is a delight to live with such a wonderful creature. He is currently learning our address in case he ever gets lost. He speaks clearly and in my husband's voice.
Thanks for this tidbit, Sharon.
The world is hard up for political leaders; possibly he might make a candidate for US president? (The Constitution doesn't require it to be a human being, does it?) And I'll tell you, the GOP is desperate to find a candidate. Brutus is probably smart enough to parrot the GOP dogma, so he might get the nomination.
Pun intended.
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KAL's cartoon Oct 22nd 2011 | The Economist
P.G. Wodehouse (paraphrase): It's never difficult to distinguish between a right-wing politician and a ray of sunshine.
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." Herbert Spencer
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7. How can we make the Claremont Canyon more fire-safe?
Jerry Kent oversaw fire-related vegetation management programs during his long career with the East Bay Regional Park District. He will lead a tour of Claremont Canyon on Saturday, October 29 and discuss what has been done and what else can be done to increase fire safety. Traveling by car, we will stop at four strategic locations in Claremont Canyon to discuss the fire safety recommendations in the Conservancy’s Advocate Plan.
Meet at 10 AM Saturday, October 29th at the Four Corners (Claremont Avenue and Grizzly Peak Boulevard). We will caravan to Gwin Canyon, the Stonewall area, Panoramic Way (with a short walk up to the ridge), and finish at mid-canyon on Claremont Avenue. RSVP for this event to JKent58@aol.com.
Copies of the Advocate Plan will be available at the Conservancy's annual meeting at the Claremont Hotel, 4 PM, Sunday November 6th.
Questions?: info@claremontcanyon.org
For a summary of all of the Conservancy's current activities, please see the home page of our website: www.claremontcanyon.org
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8. MODERN-DAY JOHNNY APPLESEED Ed Toth runs New York City's native plant center.
A SEED, to most people, is an inscrutable thing, a closed box waiting to be unpacked. But for Ed Toth, the director of New York City’s native plant center on Staten Island, it is a wide-open window, with a view stretching back to the last Ice Age and forward into the future.
Mr. Toth, a botanist who has worked with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation for a quarter-century, is an updated, urbanized Johnny Appleseed, fired by the same spirit as those who champion locally grown food. He zealously advocates the use of not only native plants, but those propagated from seeds that were harvested as close to New York as possible....
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/nyregion/new-york-city-native-plant-centers-seed-is-for-the-future.html?_r=1&ref=lisawfoderaro
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9. Oaktown Native Plant Nursery
Join Oaktown Native Plant Nursery from 10 am to 5pm on Saturday, October 29 to kick off the growing season with an Open House and Plant Sale. A large selection of Bay Area natives will be available. Much of the older stock will be 20% - 50% off.
Oaktown is a production nursery specializing in natives specific to local microclimates and soils. Most plants are grown from locally collected seed and cuttings. The nursery’s mission is to provide custom grown plants for local restoration and re-vegetation projects. Surplus plants from custom grow projects are available to add habitat value to local gardens.
If you come by on a quiet Friday, there is plenty of time for a free consultation on the drought tolerant, shady, sunny, or riparian native garden you’ve always wanted. Or call for an appointment and we’ll give you plenty of encouragement on planting natives to create excellent habitat for birds, butterflies, bees, and other beneficial visitors to our ever-greening cityscape.
Oaktown is located at 702 Channing Ave in Berkeley. For Inventory and more information see: http://www.oaktownnativenursery.info/. Contact us at oaktown@oaktownnativenursery.info or (510) 387-9744.
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10.
A Prayer for Sleep
Grant me one good rest tonight, O Lord;
let no creatures prowl
the tangled pathways in my skull:
wipe out all wars,
throw guilt a bone;
let me dream, if I dream at all,
no child of Yours has come to harm.
I know, of course, that death's the norm,
that there are people who have yet to climb
the Present's rungs, who lag behind
(hyenas at the rim of civilization's light),
whose laughing hides a Stone Age howl,
who wait till darkness comes to pounce
and tear the guts of progress out.
Yet, grant me good rest tonight, my Lord,
blind my internal eyes;
guard my anxious baffled years
with Your protecting arm
and let me dream, if I dream at all,
no child of Yours has come to harm.
~ Michael Hartnett ~
(Collected Poems)
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11.
What I Have Learned So Far
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(New and Selected Poems Volume Two)
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12. Language
My iPad, their Toyota, her house... In a typical day we talk a lot about possessions: having things. The word possess is from Latin possidere, from potis (having the power) + sedere (to sit). So when you possess something, say a patch of earth, you have the power to sit upon it, literally speaking.
It's important to remember that the best things in life are not possessed, they are free. We don't say my ocean, his stars, or their sun.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Language is the armoury of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, and philosopher (1772-1834)
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13. JS: This interview is worth printing in its entirety, for a number of reasons. It illuminates aspects of the euro crisis that are crucial but seldom or never mentioned, and why it will become much worse, eg:
The institutionalized corruption of Greece, where tax collectors are forbidden to collect taxes;
The psychology and culture of the various countries that banded together to form a common currency (probably not a good idea);
The "prudent" Germans punished for their prudence (not so, I found to my surprise);
Observations on the U.S. psychology (our proverbial optimism, which poses a double-edged sword);
Icelandic "DNA";
The guilt of Ireland and its need to suffer (noticeable in the Irish, of whom Sigmund Freud said “This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.”)
Lewis's drawing attention to the vulnerability of local governments, starting with Vallejo.
ASKED what was the biggest test for politicians, the post-war British prime minister Harold Macmillan is said to have replied “Events, dear boy, events”.
NPR's Marketplace 21 Oct 2011
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec11/makingsense_10-21.html
PAUL SOLMAN: "Liar's Poker," "The Blind Side," "The Big Short" all by Michael Lewis, whose new much-hyped book about global debt is called "Boomerang."
We rendezvoused at an aptly named Washington restaurant, Old Europe.
"Boomerang." Why "Boomerang"?
MICHAEL LEWIS, "Boomerang": It's an image that captures the spirit of this moment, that this money was thrown out in hope and it's coming back in anger.
PAUL SOLMAN: Germany, Greece, Ireland, these major players each get a chapter and a sweeping character assessment. The book starts, though, with the first to go belly up, Iceland, a nation of 300,000 that turned itself into a banking hub, recycling the world's money to Icelanders themselves, a breed apart, says Lewis.
MICHAEL LEWIS: They borrowed money to go acquire things, Indian power plants and Danish newspapers and British soccer teams. And they did it willy-nilly, and they themselves a story, that Icelandic history and culture and DNA leaves us very well-suited to being investment bankers.
PAUL SOLMAN: You refer to them as inbred.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Well, they are inbred. And they have a sense of themselves as genetically special, and a history of risk-taking because they make their living on the high seas fishing.
Assets generally rose in value during this period, and so it looked like they actually knew what they were doing.
PAUL SOLMAN: And then it inevitably came a cropper.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Yes. The triggering event was Lehman Brothers going down, and people all of a sudden rediscovering risk and being afraid of who they lent money to.
PAUL SOLMAN: But they have done OK, right?
MICHAEL LEWIS: It's not a happy story. It's a little happier, because they walked away from a lot of their debts, but they're not OK. I mean, they're a society that's in a deep economic slump and still with some debt.
PAUL SOLMAN: Meanwhile, in debt-drenched Greece, Lewis claims, public workers and tax-dodging citizens have helped discredit government itself.
MICHAEL LEWIS: The reason the Greeks don't pay taxes is they don't trust where their taxes are going, because they know these other Greeks are taking money from the state for doing nothing.
So it's -- it's an essentially corrupt society. A Greek tax collector will tell you the way you get fired in the Greek tax collection service is by collecting taxes, that if you do it too well, they put you in a back office somewhere, and that you're allowed to take bribes not to collect taxes, but you can't do your job well.
PAUL SOLMAN: You have used the line that Greece is a society in total moral collapse.
MICHAEL LEWIS: This comes to me from Greek people. I didn't make that up. They will tell you that themselves. But what they will say is, I'm the only upstanding Greek. All these other people are cheating.
That's the attitude.
PAUL SOLMAN: Ireland, they borrowed money from abroad and then invested it back in Ireland.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Yes.
The Irish turned in on themselves and bid up their own land prices in the most extraordinary ways. You drive the countryside in Ireland, there are hundreds of these -- they call them ghost estates, little villages, basically, that are brand-new and uninhabited, that were built, I suppose, with the idea that, at some point, there would be massive immigration into Ireland.
The Irish people stepped in and guaranteed the banks, and committed to repay sums they can't afford to repay, and essentially committed themselves to generations of suffering.
PAUL SOLMAN: Why?
MICHAEL LEWIS: I think there's this Catholic guilt there. But I also think something else. And this is speaking as someone who's had intimate involvement with Irish Catholic families.
There's a certain status to suffering in Ireland, that the person who -- if you're sitting around a table, the person with the greatest status is the person who had the most horrible thing happen to them most recently. Another way of looking at it is that they have just owned up to obligations. They think that, actually, we're responsible for this and we're going to pay it back.
PAUL SOLMAN: Germany is like the parent that co-signs the loan for all the rest of the kids of Europe.
MICHAEL LEWIS: I always think of it as the rich man who thought he had a prenup, and then discovers that the prenup doesn't work.
PAUL SOLMAN: The prenup is that no bailouts.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Right. We're not going to have to pay for you people if you don't -- if you borrow money you can't repay, it's not our problem. And that was the deal Germany cut going into the euro.
PAUL SOLMAN: And now the Germans go, oh, my goodness, what did we do?
MICHAEL LEWIS: The Germans got fooled a little bit. But it wasn't just that.
The Germans made just about every bad investment you could have made in the last 10 years. They invested in Icelandic banks. They invested in Greek government bonds. They were heavy into Irish banks, big into Irish banks, and they bought U.S. subprime mortgage bonds.
PAUL SOLMAN: Lewis' controversial explanation is a German love of rules. The rules said AAA investments were safe. Since they weren't, Germans are now being asked to protect their own banks from ruin by bailing out the borrowers, like Greece.
Lewis claims a deep national neurosis was at work.
MICHAEL LEWIS: There's a wonderful little book called "Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder." And it was basically about purity and impurity. And the Germans had this tendency to get themselves in a position of kind of getting right up next to the impure, right up next to the dirt without getting themselves too dirty.
And I realized I was reading a story that explained their relationship to the current financial mess. They didn't borrow a lot of money. The German financial people kind of crept right up to all the filth in the financial system, with some fascination, I think, and a little mud splattered on them.
PAUL SOLMAN: Now, you probably won't be surprised to hear that such statements have been met with skepticism, even scorn. Several European embassies turned us down cold as interview venues.
We tried to get into a couple of these embassies, and when they heard it was you, they wouldn't let us in, because you had unfairly stereotyped them, stigmatized them.
MICHAEL LEWIS: I would like to think that the stereotypes are original. I don't deny the charge, but I would like to think that I invented the stereotype.
PAUL SOLMAN: Isn't it dangerous to be coming up with stereotypes that take a whole people, in the case of Germans, what, 60 million, 80 million people, something, and assigning them a national character?
MICHAEL LEWIS: So, I think you have got to ask -- all these different cultures, all these different societies were faced with exactly the same temptation, free money.
You're alone in a dark room with a pile of money. They behaved radically differently from one another. Why? It seems pretty obvious the cultures are very different. The problem with the euro is that the cultures they have welded together are pretty different. Why can't you say it?
PAUL SOLMAN: But Lewis doesn't just focus on the debt and cultures of old Europe. He ends his grand tour back in America.
MICHAEL LEWIS: The vicious cycle that is bringing down European states is not going to hit us, at least not for a while, at the level of the federal government. The same cannot be said of state and local governments.
PAUL SOLMAN: And you describe Vallejo, Calif., as the example of the place where this has already happened.
MICHAEL LEWIS: It's starting to happen there. Vallejo, Calif., was the first city in California to declare bankruptcy. And it was like a lot of cities in California, bankrupted essentially by deals that it did with its public safety workers for big pensions, a very Greek-like thing.
PAUL SOLMAN: But ultimately different from places like Greece, says Lewis, because of America's national character.
MICHAEL LEWIS: When an American declares bankruptcy, when he hits bottom, he can reinvent himself. There's a story he can tell.
We tolerate reinvention. We encourage reinvention. That's what this country has that Europe does not. It's not just a crisis; it's an opportunity.
PAUL SOLMAN: And that's how you end the book.
MICHAEL LEWIS: Yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: With the optimism that we can somehow use this as a way to recreate ourselves.
MICHAEL LEWIS: It's an idiot optimism, but it's optimism.
PAUL SOLMAN: Optimism that, though borrowing binges boomerang back on you, America at least will emerge bruised, but unbroken.
Do you think you've hit bottom? Oh no, there's a bottom below. old song
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14.
(The "don't panic" advice in the following article is typical of The Economist, which looks at the world almost exclusively through economic eyes--ie, biological considerations are nearly limited to whether we can grow the food for additional billions. Biodiversity is given a quick nod, and quality of life not even that. As readers know, I love the magazine, but I recognize its limitations and overlook them, even on such a deeply important issue. They have no ecologically literate writers on staff. I once pointed out to them the free ecosystem services we get--eg, the insect control services we get from frogs and bats, both groups which are in deep human-generated trouble. Even the journal may find out, and soon, the economic value of functioning natural ecosystems. JS)
Demography
The world’s population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don’t panic
Oct 22nd 2011 | The Economist
IN 1950 the whole population of the earth—2.5 billion—could have squeezed, shoulder to shoulder, onto the Isle of Wight, a 381-square-kilometre rock off southern England. By 1968 John Brunner, a British novelist, observed that the earth’s people—by then 3.5 billion—would have required the Isle of Man, 572 square kilometres in the Irish Sea, for its standing room. Brunner forecast that by 2010 the world’s population would have reached 7 billion, and would need a bigger island. Hence the title of his 1968 novel about over-population, “Stand on Zanzibar” (1,554 square kilometres off east Africa).
Brunner’s prediction was only a year out. The United Nations’ population division now says the world will reach 7 billion on October 31st 2011 (America’s Census Bureau delays the date until March 2012). The UN will even identify someone born that day as the world’s 7 billionth living person. The 6 billionth, Adnan Nevic, was born on October 12th 1999 in Sarajevo, in Bosnia. He will be just past his 12th birthday when the next billion clicks over....
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15.
PUMPKINS AND POLLINATORS
A Unique Relationship
Whether you wake to find mist hanging in damp hollows, snow draping the last of your tomato vines, or sunshine glinting off a warm sea, there is one thing that unites us all this month: pumpkins. With Halloween quickly followed by Thanksgiving, pumpkins seem to define this season. We make family trips in a quest for the perfect jack-o'-lantern, dress up in pumpkin costumes to go trick or treating, decorate our homes with them, and slice them up to make pies, bread, and soup.
Pumpkins are native to Central America and the desert Southwest. The pumpkin we typically carve or cook is a species called Cucurbita pepo, although there are four species of Cucurbita that include cultivars called pumpkins. With corn and beans, pumpkins and other squash form the "three sisters," a staple part of Native American agriculture. Because of this, pumpkins spread to new areas of North America, including New England, where Native tribes introduced the early Pilgrims to pumpkins. This was fortunate for the settlers, as pumpkins helped them fend off starvation during their first winters.
The squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa) relies on pumpkins for survival, and seems to have followed pumpkins across the continent. The bee is a specialist forager and will only collect pollen from squash flowers. Females often nest in the ground around the base of pumpkin plants, and males take shelter in flowers overnight. Because of this, it must once have been limited to areas in which pumpkins are native. Yet today the squash bee has expanded its range, adapting to dramatically different climates and environments, and is found as far south as Florida and north as Ontario. These bees can often be found in home gardens, and will even colonize newly created community gardens amid the tall buildings and parking lots of a city, witness to their amazing ability to follow squash plants!
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