2. City of Santa Cruz bans importation of bullfrogs
3. Help oak woodlands - contribute observations, review content
4. Feedback: Sunflower Power, Fibonacci, and the Golden Mean
5. Good restoration news from Potrero Hill
6. News from Nature in the City - an interesting mix
7. Possums in the city/albino hummingbird pics and story
8. Art exhibits at SFO
9. Oaktown Nursery has shooting stars
10. Food for 9 billion?/dim prospect for next 2 billion
11. Heard of a New York Minute? How about a YouTube Second?
12. Expect nothing - Alice Walker
13. Seeking Nominations for Silicon Valley Water Conservation Award
14. SciAm on bedbugs
15. Notes & Queries: History written by winners?/English breakfasts
16. Reflections on American election/Ron Paul action figures - you can own one!
1. JOB OPPORTUNITY: CONSERVATION PROJECT COORDINATOR
The San Mateo County Resource Conservation District (RCD) seeks to fill the part-time position of Conservation Project Coordinator. The RCD is a special district that
acts as a focal point for local conservation efforts on private and public lands. The RCD partners with land owners and managers, area jurisdictions, government agencies, and others to protect, restore, and enhance natural resources by providing technical assistance and education, project management, and coordination.
The deadline for applications is February 1, 2012. The position is open until filled. If you would like additional information, please contact the RCD at 650.712.7765.
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2. City of Santa Cruz bans American Bullfrogs!
The City of Santa Cruz voted unanimously yesterday to ban the sale, release, importation and possession of American Bullfrogs. This makes Santa Cruz the first city in the country to take such a step, and sets an important precedent for other localities to follow. The non-native bullfrogs spread chytrid fungus and prey on native wildlife, and California is currently importing several million of the bullfrogs into the state each year.
This is the first piece of legislation SAVE THE FROGS! has gotten passed. On February 28, 2012 the County of Santa Cruz will vote on similar legislation and we are currently petitioning the Governor Jerry Brown to make statewide bullfrog legislation. Our ultimate goal implement similar bans in all the western states to which they are non-native; this is one of the simplest steps legislators can take to benefit their local environments.
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3. You can help our oak woodlands by contributing observations and reviewing factual content
On Jan 24, 2012, at 12:06 PM, Kate Marianchild wrote:
Dear Jake,
I've been reading your wonderful posts for about eight months now...I can't remember how I got on your list, but thank you! I'm in Ukiah and it's great to be connected with the wider world of nature, naturalists, and poets through your Nature News.
I'd like to let you and your readers know that I am a lover of all things wild writing a book for Heyday on selected plants and animals of California's oak woodlands––plants, fungi, insects, spiders, herps, birds, and mammals. Each chapter will feature fascinating facts about a particular species as well as interrelationships between it and other species. The book is intended to open the casual observer's eyes to the wonder and complexity of life among the oaks and to inspire a desire to protect and preserve California’s vanishing oak woodlands.
I'm including my draft table of contents and would like to invite your readers to contribute cool facts or observations about any of the listed species (ideally with pdfs or citations if not based on observations). Or, if anyone wants to convince me of the importance of adding a species not listed, I'm open to that. I should warn you, however, that I'm a bit behind schedule and may need to delete one in order to add one. I'd like people who email me to put "J.S./(species name)" in the subject line. I'd also be interested in offers by knowledgeable people to review factual content.
Thanks!
Kate
Kate Marianchild, Nature Writer
Currently researching and writing
Secrets of the Oak Woodlands, a book
of fascinating and little-known
facts about plants and animals
that live among the oaks;
to be published by Heyday in 2013.
katem@mcn.org
707-463-0839
Kate: I'm glad to post this in toto. It's a worthwhile thing, and we have to hurry before the oaks disappear.
DRAFT TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction: Oaks as Habitat and Current Status of California's Oaks
II. Selected Native Species of the Oak Woodlands
Criteria for inclusion in the table of contents:
1) Species that people might actually see or see sign of (e.g. woodrat houses);
2) Species that are widely distributed throughout California
3) Species that are unusual or fascinating;
4) Species that are widely useful to other species or that have a large impact on them.
Plants
1) Oak mistletoe
2) Common and bigberry Manzanita
3) Poison oak
4) Toyon
5) California buckeye
Fungi
6) Cantharellus californicus (California chanterelle)
Lichen
7) Ramalina (old man's beard)
Insects
8) California sister butterfly
9) Oak gall wasp
10) Sonoran bumblebee
Spiders
11) Tarantula
Herps
12) Western fence lizard
13) Western rattlesnake
14) Rough-skinned newt
Birds
15) Acorn woodpecker
16) Western scrub-jay
17) Oak titmouse
18) Western bluebird
19) California quail
Mammals
20) Western gray squirrel
21) Dusky-footed and big-eared woodrats
22) Black-tailed jackrabbit, brush rabbit, or California deer mouse
24) Bobcat
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4. Feedback
Kate Marianchild:
Here's what my friend Phil Cool had to say about the solar power station/sunflower story:
137.5* to be more exact, which is 360 degrees minus {(golden mean)x360 degrees}, or
{sr (square root of) 5 - 1}/2 = golden mean=0.618034
360 - (0.618034)x360 =137.50776 degrees
This turns out to be the precise angle, in the case of a plant--like a succulent or cactus--with whorled leaves, at which you would "put" a successive leaf in relation to a previous leaf in order to result in all leaves having the most optimum exposure to the sun, shading each other the least. Which came first, numbers and the math, or nature? What is nature, anyway? Are numbers our invention or just a discovery of some sort, of something inherent in nature?
If you count the spirals in the above sunflower, 34 spiraling out counter-clockwise and 21 spiraling out clockwise, these are members of the fibonacci number series, 1 1 2 3
5 8 13 21 34 55.....
And of course the ratio of n/(n+1) approaches 0.618 (the golden mean) as n approaches infinity.
Thanks for this, Kate. I have a humongous file on Fibonacci and the Golden Mean and I wanted to do a newsletter item about it. That sunflower story was the place to do it, but, alas, I had no time to put it together, so I just let it pass. I don't need to do it now, as this is a pretty good short version. (See, put things off long enough and they do themselves!)
I've done the Fibonacci count on pine cones, pineapples, and sunflowers; it's fun to ponder the hidden beauty of mathematics--especially since I am not talented at math. It gives you subliminal peeks into the universe.
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5. Hey Jake --
Thought I'd let you in on Cris Rys' good work mobilizing his neighborhood in restoring the native plant community over on Potrero Hill.
I spoke to his group last week on the importance of the host plant/butterfly relationship. A tsunami of invassives pulled out and a community of good ones go in...by a "Community of Good Ones" Check out their blog:
http://mckinleysquareblog.blogspot.com/
Liam O'Brien
http://www.sfbutterfly.com
"Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we help. Only if we help shall they be saved." - Jane Goodall
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6. Spend this Saturday with Nature in the City and Friends
This Saturday, January 28, 2012, Nature in the City and partners will be out and about - in the field and at the Randall Museum on Corona Heights.
Between 10 am & 2 pm, head up to the Randall to join the Urbia Adventure League and Bay Nature for a special indoor-outdoor urban nature event.
At 1 pm, continue your hilltopping by ascending to Grandview Park for Nature in the City's first Green Hairstreak workparty with SF Recreation and Parks Natural Areas Program. We'll be planting the host and nectar plants for the butterfly in the native dunes.
TALKS: Lost and Found!
Save May 23, 2012, for a TALK at Counterpulse, organized by the SF Planning Department and hosted by Shaping San Francisco.
As part of the Green Connections program, the panel will explore the intersection of restoring biodiversity and sustainable transportation to our City's streets. SFBC, WalkSF and Nature in the City will be on hand to delve deeply into truly transforming our urban landscape.
If you want to see what ShapingSF is all about, head on down to Counterpulse this Wednesday at 7:30 pm for Occupy Everything, an Open Discussion.
Natural Areas in 2012
Last fall saw the the Planning Commission public meeting for the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Significant Natural Resource Areas Management Plan. Some time later this year, the City will issue a Final Environmental Impact Report, which may be appealed by opponents of the Natural Areas Program.
Unfortunately, a handful of people are still propagating misinformation about the rationale, values, and intention of ecological restoration, management and stewardship, and of the City's celebrated Natural Areas Program. Contrary to the many myths that continue to percolate, the Natural Areas Plan and Program seek to do the following (among other worthwhile endeavors):
1. Protect and conserve our City's natural heritage for its native wildlife and indigenous plant habitats and for the overall health of our local ecosystem;
2. Educate our culturally diverse city about the benefits of local nature and about helping with natural areas stewardship in your neighborhood;
3. Manage the City's wildlands for public access, safety and the health of the "urban forest."
We hear occasional complaints about public access and tree removal. Three simple facts are thus:
1. Every single natural area in the City has at least one trail through it, where one can walk a dog on a leash;
2. The act of removing (a small subset of) non-native trees, e.g., eucalyptus, that are in natural areas has the following benefits:
a. Restores native habitat for indigenous plants and wildlife;
b. Restores health, light and space to the "urban forest," since the trees are all crowded together and being choked by ivy;
c. Contributes to the prevention of catastrophic fire in our communities.
3. The overall visual landscape of the natural areas will not change since only a small subset of trees are planned to be removed over a 20-year period.
Please feel free to email steward@natureinthecity.org if you would like more clarification about the intention, values and rationale of natural resources management.
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7. From Pam Hemphill:
There was a NYTimes.com article...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/nyregion/in-brooklyn-suspicious-passenger-with-a-tail.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=opossum&st=cse
...and then another article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/nyregion/life-for-opossum-after-it-rode-the-d-train.html?scp=1&sq=opossum&st=cse
...and an excellent letter
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/hello-big-rat-the-possum-in-the-subway.html?scp=3&sq=opossum&st=cse
Education continues!
and from Jeanne Halpern:
A rare treat... an albino hummingbird. Something that is seldom seen and almost never photographed.
Fifteen-year-old photographer Marlin Shank was fortunate enough to capture several images of a rare albino ruby-throated hummingbird while in a park in Staunton , Va
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8. From Lee Rudin, re art exhibits at SFO:
Free (parking cost us $8) and very interesting/fun-something for everyone. Look at the map, most personnel don’t know where the exhibits are.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/19/NSG61MO5C2.DTL
international terminal
Visit the "Automata" exhibit of 19th century mechanical wonders. Made of wood, fabric, hair, porcelain and leather, these doll-like mechanical figures were made by famous artisans and given as treasured gifts. There are clowns, musicians, barbers, dancers, drunkards and magicians. Most of them contain a music box and a mechanical spring motor. A nearby video lets you see the figures in motion.
Must see! http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/sfo_museum/exhibitions/international_terminal_exhibitions/north_20.html
terminal 1
brilliantly colored poisonous dart frogs.
http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/sfo_museum/childrens_programs/aquarium
Live from the Tropics: Animals of the Rainforest and Coral Reef
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9.
Oaktown Nursery
For something extra cool - we've got soon to bloom Shooting Stars for sale. Also see up dated inventory on the website.
http://www.oaktownnativenursery.info/
Kristen Hopper
Oaktown Native Plant Nursery
(510) 387-9744
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10. by Sam Eaton, Marketplace for Monday, January 23, 2012
Transcript
The maternity ward at the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila is packed beyond capacity with new mothers who have no choice but to share the limited number of beds. More than 2 million babies are born every year in the Philippines.
Explore an interactive map breaking down the global food challenge
Kai Ryssdal: Over the past 50 years, the amount of food that we as a planet produce has doubled. So too has the number of people who depend on that food. There are 7 billion of us now. The United Nations says we're on the way to 9 billion by the middle of the century.
So that's what we're calling our year-long series on how we're going to feed them all. Food for 9 Billion is a partnership with Homelands Productions, the Center for Investigative Reporting and PBS NEWSHOUR. Last month, we took you to Egypt and the realities of food and revolution. Today, the Philippines, where a growing population means the country can't feed itself anymore. And that leaves them with two options: Increase supply and try to do something about demand.
From outside Manila, Sam Eaton reports.
Sam Eaton: There's a saying in the Philippines, "pantawid gutom." It means to "cross the hunger." When a family can't afford rice, they'll water down a pack of instant noodles or feed their babies brown sugar dissolved in water to ease the hunger pangs. The fact that this saying even exists should tell you something about what it means to be poor here.
Clarissa Canayong is 42 years old. She has 10 surviving children -- the youngest only a year old. And she lives in an urban Manila slum called Vitas, at the edge of a garbage dump.
Clarissa Canayong: Normally, you have three meals in a day, but sometimes we eat only once. Other times, the children just have bread twice a day because we don't have money.
Canayong's house, her food, all the money she earns -- around $7 a day on the good days -- comes from garbage. Her family picks through the trash heap to find things they can use or sell. She's lost four of her children to measles and dengue fever. This is the face of population growth. And not just here in the Philippines.
Most of the world's next 2 billion people will be born into conditions similar to these, in countries already struggling to feed their populations.
The Philippines has one of the highest population growth rates in all of Southeast Asia. Its population, today just shy of 100 million, is expected to double by the end of the century.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/food-9-billion/philippines-too-many-mouths
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11. More from Marketplace:
Kai Ryssdal: Listeners of a certain background might have heard the phrase "a New York minute" -- how fast something can get done. Herewith, a suggestion for a new time-reference to add to the popular lexicon: How about 'a YouTube second'?
The popular website for all things video has announced its latest figures for how much material is being uploaded. YouTube is now taking in one hour of video every second of the day.
A resounding success for its basic premise. But even with that, parent company Google is still struggling to make it pay. Here's our senior business correspondent Bob Moon.
Bob Moon: Think of it this way: If you set out to watch every single video posted to YouTube just in the past week and a half, it would take you 100 years. You heard that right.
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12.
Expect Nothing
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny a human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
~ Alice Walker ~
(Anything We Love Can Be Saved)
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13. Seeking Nominations for 2012 Silicon Valley Water Conservation Awards
A coalition of 20 organizations – including water agencies, business networks and nonprofits – is accepting applications and nominations for the fourth annual Silicon Valley Water Conservation Awards. The Awards are presented to organizations, agencies, businesses and individuals whose programs and leadership have advanced water conservation in Silicon Valley (San Mateo County, Santa Clara County and Alameda County from Hayward south).
Award Categories are:
• Government Agency/Water Utility
• Business
• Organization
• Agriculture
• Greenscape Management
• Education
• Water Champion
Additional information and an application/nomination form can be found at http://www.waterawards.org.
The application/nomination process will close on February 3, 2012. Winners will be recognized at an Awards Ceremony on World Water Day – March 22, 2012.
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14.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE: How Scientists Are Tackling the Bed Bug Nightmare
Studies of the bed bug's bizarre biology have revealed potential vulnerabilities
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=26&ms=Mzg3NDQ2MDYS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTI4MDQ2MjQxS0&mt=1&rt=0
ASK THE EXPERTS: Bed Bug Confidential: An Expert Explains How to Defend against the Dreaded Pests
Everything you ever wanted to know about bed bugs but were afraid to ask
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=23&ms=Mzg3NDQ2MDYS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTI4MDQ2MjQxS0&mt=1&rt=0
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15.
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs -- jolted by every pebble in the road. -Henry Ward Beecher
Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
Waterloo winner? Napoleon.
It is said that history is written by the winners, but how does the teaching of history differ between European nations? Does France teach Napoleon differently, or Germany have a different view of the world wars?
Eventually it's rewritten by the ancestors of the winners to favour the losers.
I don't remember being taught much about Napoleon (I assume you mean the 1st) at all when I was at school in France. However, I remember vividly the way the Dunkirk episode of the second world war was depicted – the English army escaping and leaving what was left of the French troops behind for the slaughter/capture. When I came to the UK, only a few years later, and I heard the English talk about how Dunkirk was a triumph, I was shocked. This is a striking example of how history is often taught from a very ethnocentric point of view.
Nobody in France knows what Agincourt was either, but the Brits tend to think that this was the only battle fought in the middle ages, and that England never lost one, although in fact English troops were pretty much fully withdrawn from mainland Europe by the end of the middle ages.
Alain Léger, Cupar, Fife.
When I was a pupil at the French Lycée in London in the 1950s, we were taught that the French won the battle of Waterloo. What appalled my parents more than that was the day I came home from school and announced that Oliver Cromwell was a very bad man. It made life rather confusing when I had to learn the opposite at the English school I went to later.
Bridget Patterson, Woodbridge, Suffolk
What constitutes a full English breakfast?
Toast.
ajaxxx
Devilled kidneys and a little kedgeree.
LadyEff
According to Jennings, the butler in the film Gosford Park, an Englishman is never served breakfast, he must choose for himself, buffet-style. With that as a guide, the true full English breakfast would appear to be anything you fancy as long as the staff have prepared it for you in advance.
Skinz
At a five-star hotel in Hull I inquired about the possibility of a kipper. "Fish for breakfast, sir? I've never heard of that." As readers might expect after such a remark, there wasn't any porridge either.
Angus Doulton, Bletchingdon, Oxon
There used to be a cafe in Sheffield that did a full Yorkshire breakfast: bacon, sausage, egg, black pudding, tomato, beans, and a yorkshire pudding with gravy.
AgentPunk
If you're having beans, you need to use the sausage as a breakwater to prevent contamination with the egg.
jonnycusack
Once, in a motorway service area, I was charged 10p more to have my breakfast without baked beans.
Aireman
I think the essential ingredients have been pretty firmly nailed down. However, where does this leave us on the sauce debate? Red, brown or both?
Vonloopinstab
What is the most unflattering description of a town in literature?
PG Wodehouse, The Girl on the Boat: "All watering-places on the south coast of England are blots on the landscape, but though I am aware that by saying it I shall offend the civic pride of some of the others – none are so particularly foul as Bingley-on-the-Sea. The asphalte on the Bingley esplanade is several degrees more depressing than the asphalte on the other esplanades. The Swiss waiters at the Hotel Magnificent … are in a class of bungling incompetence by themselves, the envy and despair of all the other Swiss waiters at all the other Hotels Magnificent along the coast. For dreariness of aspect Bingley-on-the-Sea stands alone. The waves that break in its shingle seem to creep up the beach reluctantly, as if it revolted them to have come to such a place."
frankcahill
Any answers?
Why do men shave? Being bearded is a natural state; shaving takes time and costs money.
David Cockayne, Lymm, Cheshire
What is the best last line of a novel?
Susan Ley, London NW5
Sherlock or Doctor Who – who would win in a chess match?
Rory Williams, Manchester
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16.
Johnathan Freedland in Guardian Weekly:
There is a bitter irony here, that the party that insists it is conservative and patriotic now threatens the centuries-old political system that lies at the core of the US's national identity. The ideal remains true, but it is being warped almost to breaking point by the very people who claim to be its loudest defenders.
______________________________
The Ron Paul action figures come with their own mini-U.S. Constitutions.
- ronpaulactionfigures.com
by Kai Ryssdal, Marketplace for Monday, January 23, 2012
• Full Story
This final note today, the Marketplace entry in the sometimes super PACs do more harm than good sweepstakes.
The super PAC that's supporting Ron Paul -- RevolutionPAC, it's called -- is out with a new fundraising idea today: A collectible action figure of the candidate himself.
I could stop there, but this is really too good. For just $94.95 -- plus $7.50 shipping and handling -- you can get either Commander-in-Chief Ron Paul or Superman Ron Paul. They're 12 inches tall, the website tells us. Comes equipped with a mini-U.S. Constitution.
Also? Comes fully clothed. So there's that.
(JS: I heard Robert Segal interview Ron Paul on All Things Considered yesterday, in which the clear implication was that Paul will run as an Independent when he fails to get the GOP nomination. Fasten your seatbelts; it may be an interesting election.)
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author
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