(More below - Sacred Elephant)
1. "Smart" Growth
2. Sunday Streets can't happen without you
3. San Bruno Mtn Facebook Photo Contest
4. Manchurian tiger has gone; the elephant is so big you can actually see it going
5. Senator Feinstein vs historic post offices
6. Senator Feinstein vs Drakes Bay oyster farm
7. Neil Armstrong got paid per diem/how much food do we waste?
8. Taste of fructose revs up metabolism
9. Feedback
10. DFG and media endanger California's lone wolf
11. Pointed pen calligraphy - Aug 31
12. More on Olmsted, Hall, Golden Gate Park
13. Atheists are getting more numerous and louder
14. River of Words Grand Prize Winner
15. Knowland Park supporters file suit against zoo
16. Army ants pic
17. Geologic time scales
1. Smart Growth (introductory paragraphs)
"Smart growth” is an urban growth management strategy that applies planning and design principles intended to mitigate the impacts of continued growth. If properly applied, these principles represent a positive contribution to new urban development. However, the rhetoric of “smart growth” is that population levels and growth rates are not the problem; it’s merely a matter of how we grow. According to the “smart growth” program, if we are less wasteful and more efficient in our urban growth, we can keep growing and everything will work out fine. The “smart growth” approach is fundamentally pro-growth and does not envision an end to growth or a need to end growth.
“Smart growth” is cast as a comprehensive solution, whereas it is merely a potential means of modestly reducing the environmental, social, and economic impacts of continued growth while failing to address its inevitable consequences. The “smart growth” formula has been used to discount and transform legitimate public concerns about the amount and pace of growth into a discussion about how we should best continue growing.
The Myth of Smart Growth: http://www.fodorandassociates.com/Reports/Myth_of_Smart_Growth.pdf
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2. Sunday Streets cannot happen without you!
Did you know the City pays for the street closures, but we need to cover the costs of managing every single event with private funds? Please, take a moment to make a donation to help us fund future Sunday Streets.
We can't wait for the next Sunday Streets car-free fun, on September 9th in the Western Addition. Help us spread the word by RSVP'ing and inviting your friends by clicking here. And mark your calendars, our last event of the season is a brand new route through the Excelsior on Sunday, October 21st! More details on that event to come!
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3. San Bruno Mountain Facebook Photo Contest
Enter your favorite photo taken of or from San Bruno Mountain!
Send us your photos and we'll put them into an album, which we will share. The photo with the most "likes" will win.
First prize: A $25 gift certificate redeemable at the Mission Blue Nursery sale in October.
There are prizes for 2nd and 3rd place as well.
Rules:
*Photos submitted must be your own;
*Photos must be of or on or from San Bruno Mountain;
*Submissions MUST be emailed to:
sbmwphotocontest2012@gmail.com
*Submissions will be accepted August 26th through September 14th.
*Limit of 4 photo entries per person.
*Individuals may only win once.
Winner to be announced on September 17th!
The prizes will be awarded by number of "likes" on individual photos.
By submitting a photo, you give San Bruno Mountain Watch the right to share the photograph on Facebook and use the photograph in other publications. Prizes will be awarded via mail.
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4. Sacred Elephant by Heathcote Williams, 1989
The elephant is so big you can actually see it going. The Manchurian tiger may already have gone without saying goodbye. In 1970 there were only seven left in the wild. None have been seen lately. The Florida dusky seaside sparrow went out publicly. In 1980 there were only six left, all males. The last of the species went into oblivion on June 16, 1987, at Disneyworld.
…the United States, which has so far spent $2 million trying to save the blackfooted ferret, from stealing away into the eternal night, announced this year that 680 species of US plants will be gone forever in the wild by the year 2000. And, as Heathcote Williams says “The elephant now has a depleted population the size of Willesden.”…It is a tragedy that calls for a Sophocles.
…But there is a real tragedy. Man’s dominion over the rest of creation is nearly complete. The elephant, no less than the Lulworth skipper, is now a “management problem.” If it survives, it will survive not in the wild, but in a series of extended, free-range, ranch-style zoos to be culled according to resource stress in a form of zoological accounting by people called environmental managers. It doesn’t seem much of a fate for the lord of two continents. Heathcote Williams has every right to his anger.
The blackest irony of all is that those creatures that flourish in spite of anything man may do are those that most resemble him: stubborn, resourceful, pliant, opportunistic, they can make their homes anywhere, eat anything, travel on almost any form of transport, breed energetically and take a great interest in sewage. They are, of course, the cockroach and the Norway rat. It’s a long time since anybody hymned a cockroach.
Excerpted from review by Tim Radford in Guardian Weekly
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5. From Gray Brechin:
I asked Steve Hutkins who runs the invaluable www.savethepostoffice.com website out of his home in Rhinecliff, NY what question he would ask, and he responded thus:
Hi Senator,
What's your position on the Postal Service selling off its historic, iconic, downtown, priceless, New Deal post offices, for a song,while your husband collects the commission?
Feinstein is notably imperious and insists that she and her husband maintain the strictest firewall between his private gain and her public service, I'm not sure that would go over well with her, so you can adapt it as you like. (Richard Blum owns and is the Chairman of CB Richard Ellis, the world's largest commercial real estate company, that last July got the exclusive contract with the USPS to sell its properties and to advise it on which ones it should liquidate regardless of historic or artistic merit.)
The following is a letter that the Senator's office sent to one of her constituents here in Berkeley about the (manufactured) post office crisis. It sounds good, but it does not really touch on the fire sale of public property now going on nor the fate of outstanding historical and architectural resources and the public art they contain. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has named America's post offices as among its most endangered treasures. This is getting almost no publicity, so few people know it is happening all over the country.
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6. Oyster Madness: The saga over protecting Wilderness at Drakes Estero in the Point Reyes National Seashore or managing the area as an oyster farm has ramped up in recent weeks as the time draws nearer for the Secretary of Interior to make a decision. In a lengthy feature article, the East Bay Expressdescribed the role of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), an ardent supporter of the oyster farm, in trying to pressure the Secretary to rule in the farm’s favor. In the meantime, the California Coastal Commission has sent an enforcement letter to the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, outlining how it has been continuously in violation of its State and National Park Service permits for the past six years. And the Coastal Commission is warning consumers to not eat oysters from the Drakes Bay Oyster Company because they may contain bacteria that is making people sick.
The oyster farm’s permit to operate in the Seashore is set to expire this year, at which time its operations were to be shut down and Drakes Estero would become part of the Philip Burton Wilderness. But a provision Senator Feinstein inserted into a law passed last year required the Secretary to consider re-issuing the permit for another ten years.
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7. Two from Marketplace
By Kai Ryssdal
Even Neil Armstrong got paid per diem
There's nothing especially Marketplace-y about a 40-year-old moon mission. Except this: I read today that Armstrong -- and all the other Apollo astronauts -- got per diem during their trips to the moon. Eight bucks a day. Minus a deduction for accommodations, since they had the spacecraft to stay in.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/final-note/even-neil-armstrong-got-paid-diem
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Unbelievable - yet true
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/food-9-billion/spilled-and-spoiled-exploring-two-worlds-food-waste
How much food do we really waste? And why does it matter?
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/food-9-billion/spilled-and-spoiled-us-consumers-are-food-wasters
A listener comment:
I don't use milk, so there is no waste.
I found many years ago better sources of nutrients which milk is suppose to be rich in. Namely seeds, nuts and greens.
The problem with dairy is that its overrated. Second is that it requires refrigeration. I have had raw milk right from a cow in India,Kenya and a dairy farmer in my area years ago. A bit strong, but tasty. However I find cow's milk is best for the calf. Human milk for babies.
The chemical composition of both are not even similar.
Cow's milk is rich is protein and calcium and low in phosphorus and lecithin. The opposite for breast milk. Protein and calcium is for building a large body. Phosphorus and lecithin are brain foods. People need to stick with breast milk until weaned off of it.
Also in the case of the US, the dairy lobby is right there to insure that you don't drink what they refer to as "unpasteurized milk". They refuse to call it "raw milk". They want you to think they know whats best for the consumer, but they don't.
Again, there are better choices than milk, and refrigeration is not involved.
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8. Taste of fructose revs up metabolism
Pancreas can pump more insulin in response to the sugar
Science News April 7th, 2012; Vol.181 #7
Insulin-producing pancreatic cells (red) have proteins (green) that can taste fructose, which boosts insulin production in some instances.Tyrberg lab, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute
Scientists have a greater appreciation of fructose’s full flavor. The sugar, which is found predominantly in fruit, honey and more recently high-fructose corn syrup, tickles taste cells found on the pancreas (that’s right, the pancreas) (SN: 3/27/10, p. 22). The interaction can crank up the body’s secretion of insulin, which may be a concern for people prone to diabetes, researchers report online February 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Experiments with mouse and human cells and living mice reveal that fructose activates the same proteins in pancreatic cells that the tongue uses to taste sweets. When these cells are exposed to glucose — the sugar that is body’s main source of energy — and then get a hit of fructose, the cells pump out more insulin than with glucose alone, the researchers found.
“This is really beautiful mechanistic work,” says nutrition and metabolism expert Kathleen Melanson of the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. The research adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that taste cells are not just the province of the tongue, says Melanson, who was not involved with the new study.
Insulin is a master regulator, keeping the right amount of glucose in the blood. So it makes sense that fructose alone doesn’t trigger insulin secretion, says cell biologist and physiologist Björn Tyrberg of Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in Orlando, Fla. If fructose triggered insulin release on its own, glucose levels in the blood could get dangerously low. “The system seems to be elegantly made to keep a balance,” says Tyrberg, who led the new work.
Fructose has recently taken some heat for whacking metabolism out of balance. An issue is where the sweet stuff enters the metabolic assembly line: Most sugars join the process at a point where a supervisory enzyme can control the flow of goods. But fructose comes in farther down, where it can lead to an overproduction of fat. And because fructose on its own doesn’t stimulate the same insulin response that glucose does, the hormone isn’t doing the other regulatory things it usually does, like moderating appetite. The sugar content of high-fructose corn syrup is typically 55 percent fructose; the rest is glucose. Molecules of sucrose, or table sugar, consist of a fructose linked to a glucose.
In general, people should keep an eye on their intake of all sugars, Melanson says.
“It’s amazing how much people consume — there’s a lot hidden, in things like stuffing and salad dressings,” she says. The quantities of fructose found in a spoonful of honey or an apple aren’t of concern, “but our metabolic pathways aren’t designed to handle Big Gulps.”
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9. Feedback
Eric Mills:
“Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.” Mark Twain
Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat. Mark Twain
Love Mark Twain!
My mom used to quote another favorite: "Faith is believing in something you know ain't true."
JS: I took this picture from current issue of The Economist
Is this free-range chicken? They have room to walk around; I think that fits in the definition of free-range, doesn't it? JS
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10. Eric Mills:
Lone California wolf's fascination with a wildfire
Make some comments!
And ask the DFG and the media to stop publishing this lone wolf's whereabouts--they're only going to get him killed by some rancher or a yahoo looking for bragging rights.
Chuck Bonham, Director of DFG - director@dfg.ca.gov
Fish & Game Commission - fgc@fgc.ca.gov
John Laird, Secretary of Resources - secretary@resources.ca.gov
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11. From Dave Goggin:
Friday, August 31, 2012 – 6:30pm to 8pm.
Hosted by the Red Vic Peaceful World Center, 1665 Haight Street, San Francisco
This event is part of the worldwide Summer of Peace 2012 initiative, see www.summerofpeace.net for details.
At this enjoyable, interactive event, San Francisco calligraphy teacher Dave Goggin will present the art of pointed pen calligraphy, focusing on Spencerian scripts and decorative design. This event will showcase the use of both traditional off-axis pointed pens and less formal writing implements like pencils and ballpoint pens. Also included will be a discussion of the history and philosophy of the style, its relation to other forms of world calligraphy, and the open-ended nature of calligraphical creativity.
Although calligraphy has long been part of meditative practice in Asia, such as the Japanese Zen art of shodo, Mr. Goggin will discuss how the Western art of Spencerian script calligraphy can also help to cultivate inner peace and increase the amount of beauty and goodness in the world. The practice of calligraphy may make one more mellow, may increase self-confidence, self-esteem, focus, patience, and/or concentration, and may help one feel more connected to humanity’s history and heritage -- all valuable virtues as we work to build a global culture of peace, compassion, and happiness.
Dave Goggin, M.S. is the founder of the San Francisco Pointed Pen Calligraphy Club. In addition to teaching individualized lessons in Spencerian script and other calligraphy styles, he also runs a mailing list devoted to pointed pen calligraphy and holds regular office hours to help club members.
The presentation is open to the public, with a $5 suggested donation to the Red Vic's Peaceful World Foundation.
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12. More on Olmsted, Wm Hammond Hall, and Golden Gate Park
Jake,
Olmsted was acutely attuned to land and climate as no one else that I know of during that period (and largely now as well.) He knew it was folly to try to create the illusion of what I have called Sussex in the Sahara, but that's not what the city builders and speculators wanted to hear; they wanted some sort of magnet in the Great Sandy Waste to raise the value of real estate there the way that Central Park had way up Manhattan where, many felt, no one would ever want to live.
Twenty years later after Olmsted recommended against putting Golden Gate Park where Hall did, Leland Stanford hired him to lay out his university. Olmsted recommended drought-tolerant plants (a Mediterranean landscape) which Leland and Jane did not want. Olmsted got his way in the university's central plaza, and they got their way in the green oval in front of it.
I wrote an essay on Olmsted's two years in California in the November, 1985 issue of San Francisco Focus when I was a columnist there. Focus, like KQED itself, then had educational content, as public broadcasting was expected to have. Its current descendant, the appalling lifestyle magazine 7X7, is virtually devoid of content as increasingly is KQED. I watched this all happening in the 80s and wrote about it.
I scanned the Olmsted article and attach it below. At the time I wrote it, I didn't know about the equally extraordinary contributions of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr in the 20th century. I hear that someone is FINALLY writing a biography of him. I am copying this to Terry Young who literally wrote the book on SF's parks. I'm sure he knows a great deal more.
I forgot to add that the editors at Focus had a graphic artist do an imaginary bird's eye view of what SF might have looked like if Olmsted's proposal had been realized. One reason he gave for a 120-acre park in Hayes Valley is that it could have taken advantage of springs and runoff from the hill that is now Buena Vista Park. I've always liked that graphic.
Gray Brechin
(JS: I will forward the pdf of Gray's article and illustration on request.)
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13. Atheism
Growing disbelief
Atheists are getting both more numerous and louder
Aug 25th 2012 | WASHINGTON, DC | from The Economist
AMERICA is not an easy place for atheists. Religion pervades the public sphere, and studies show that non-believers are more distrusted than other minorities.
Several states still ban atheists from holding public office. These rules, which are unconstitutional, are never enforced, but that hardly matters. Over 40% of Americans say they would never vote for an atheist presidential candidate.
Yet the past seven years have seen a fivefold increase in people who call themselves atheists, to 5% of the population, according to WIN-Gallup International, a network of pollsters. Meanwhile the proportion of Americans who say they are religious has fallen from 73% in 2005 to 60% in 2011.
Such a large drop in religiosity is startling, but the data on atheists are in line with other polling. A Pew survey in 2009 also found that 5% of Americans did not believe in God. But only a quarter of those called themselves atheists. The newest polling, therefore, may simply show an increase in those willing to say the word.
This change may have come about because of an informal movement of non-believers known as “New Atheism”. Over the past eight years, authors such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens have attacked religion in bestselling books, appealing to logic and science. Mr Dawkins, a British biologist, has especially encouraged people to declare their disbelief.
Earlier this year he spoke at the “Reason Rally”, a gathering of thousands of secularists on the Mall in Washington, DC. “We are approaching a tipping point,” he predicted, “where the number of people who have come out becomes so great that suddenly everyone will realise, ‘I can come out too’.”
Some are doing so loudly. When Democratic convention-goers arrive in Charlotte, North Carolina, they will be greeted by a billboard sponsored by a group called American Atheists that claims Christianity “promotes hate” and exalts a “useless saviour”. A similar billboard mocking Mormonism was planned for the Republican convention, but no one would sell the group space.
American Atheists is also trying to block the display of a cross-shaped steel beam at the September 11th museum in New York. The beam, found in the wreckage of the World Trade Centre, was a totem for rescuers. The atheists see its inclusion as an unconstitutional mingling of church and state. The museum says the cross is an historical artefact, and that anyway it is not a government agency. Fights like this are unlikely to enhance atheism’s growing appeal in America.
JS: I view this as good news, although I can't get my hopes up too much. I have been reflecting on the subject quite a bit in recent years and came to the conclusion that even in my younger "believing" years I could never really get into religion.
Whatever appeal it had to me, I now realize that it was the theatrical that appealed to me, not the religion. In the 1930s an itinerant evangelist came to our little town and held events for several days in a row. He was very theatrical and I got carried away with the quaking voice and emotional fervor. When he wound up his pitch and asked people to come forward to be saved, I did. He repeated the next night, and I came forward again. He muttered out the side of his mouth that I could only be saved once. I didn't see why, as I thought it was fun. My "beliefs" never went any deeper than that, and as an adult religion never had any appeal at all.
I now think Buddha had a handle on these things, and Buddhist philosophy makes a lot of sense to me. Even here, however, I can't seem to get into religion. Possibly that is the consequence of our culture's inability to translate profound Buddhist ideas into our language, which doesn't have even the concepts. Without a concept a word can't exist.
Postscript: In the 2008 election, friends were speculating about whether a black or a woman could be elected president. We agreed that voters were ready and were just looking for the right person. Homosexual? Pause--but we agreed that it could happen in the foreseeable future. Someone said "I don't think they will ever elect an atheist". Everyone agreed. Alas.
Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother's side. Archie Bunker
Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. — Woody Allen
“God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place.” J.D. McCoughey
All thinking men are atheists. — Ernest Hemingway
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. — Benjamin Franklin
Faith means not wanting to know what is true. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. — Kurt Vonnegut
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14. River of Words
Sisyphean
There was a time in my life
When I was the seagull, swallowing
Skin shed from all the flightless nights,
Sleepless nights. And everything
Seemed to resonate on the tips of my wings.
Then you came and laid a cold hand
On my head, fever nearly breaking my bones.
"Come on home," you whispered,
"the oaks are miserable without you."
And with that you returned to your home of leaves,
Made your bed with bees, and ate berries and seeds.
Meanwhile, I mended thirty pounds of weathered
Wings of all colors. I had been at the edge of town,
Reattaching the chords and breaking the boards.
Carving wood had never been a hobby of mine,
But I carved ten trembling towers that day.
You rose to your feet, as I rose to the top of the heap.
Dusting off the dangling beads, you wrote
A piece about the stars, and the sky, and the clouds.
Then I cried, fell to blistered knees and wept
For each word and rhyme that tickled my ears.
Penitence is it, Sisyphus?
I'd gladly clamber up that horrid hill
With you, only you.
Skyler Pham, age 17
Category IV (Grades 10-12) 2009 Grand Prize Winner, River of Words
Opelousas, Louisiana
Magnet Academy for the Arts
Teacher: Holly Schullo
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15. Dear Knowland Park Supporters,
We filed our Argument Against the zoo’s parcel tax measure (which has been given the title Measure A1 (!)) last week. Five organizations signed the argument: California Native Plant Society, Friends of Knowland Park, Alameda Creek Alliance, California Native Grasslands Association and Resource Renewal Institute (the parent group of our Coalition Partner, Defense of Place). If you are a member of any of these groups, please email or call them and thank them for their staunch support. The Sierra Club also authorized us to include the factual statement that they had opposed the Knowland Park expansion project—again, let them know you appreciate this.
For many groups, it takes real courage of conviction to go against the zoo’s political machine. Like many of us, they know that people working at the zoo do good work, and have some good programs. But zoo executives’ absolute refusal to make meaningful and substantive compromise to protect the important natural habitat of Knowland Park, and their blatantly deceptive claims, have begun to open a lot of eyes. For example, the zoo has been telling everyone the taxes from this measure won’t be used to fund the expansion development in Knowland Park, but the ordinance clearly states that they can be used for “construction” and “expansion.” When people actually read the measure and see how broadly it is written, they realize the zoo intends to drive a Mack Truck (and bulldozers) through those loopholes. One leader we spoke with, when we pointed out these and other loopholes, said he was “really disappointed” in the zoo. We are too.
We have been informed that our argument was selected to be included in the Voter’s Information book, so that is great news for us—and we have now been sent a copy of the zoo’s Argument in Favor, to which we are invited to submit a rebuttal. So the rebuttal is what we’ll be working on this week. Having never done it before, we have learned a lot about the process, which is fairly complicated for a newbie. If we were not very determined, well educated English speakers, we could see how it could be really challenging to do all this—much easier if you are well connected politically and can hire someone to do it! But we’ve been learning the ropes for almost 6 years now, and so many of you have been stepping forward to say you will help with our campaign that we are feeling stronger than ever!
It may be that the only way to get zoo executives to realize they are so profoundly out of step with the environmental community is to roundly defeat this measure at the polls. But as we noted last week, we’re definitely going to be in a David and Goliath fight. The zoo has powerful allies and money to hire political consultants—and given what we’ve learned from contacting other groups, the zoo has been hiring consultants, doing polling and getting its messages in place for months, without letting the public know anything about this measure. The measure was approved by the county supervisors at their last possible meeting and filed with the registrar of voters at the last possible moment on the very last day it could be filed for this election. That tells you the zoo wanted to avoid any real scrutiny by the public before filing. It’s very disrespectful to groups that normally have more time to vet a measure’s language before the ballot arguments are due. But unfortunately it’s entirely consistent with the patterns we have come to recognize after so many years of trying to persuade and push the zoo to do the right thing. (see http://tinyurl.com/9pfspy2 )
Thanks to all who have volunteered to help on the campaign and we need more, so please email us at info@friendsofknowlandpark.org if you can donate just a little time. We’re all busy, but if we all help we can accomplish so much. Some of you are already busy with research work we needed, and some have started to print and post flyers. We have just posted on the website a new version of our flyer (http://tinyurl.com/9jqhdc9 ) that includes the Measure number, now that we know it. Please print out and post or leave these at all the places you see public notices. (No telephone poles or mailboxes, please!)
Even if you never leave your house (except to visit beautiful Knowland Park!), there are things you can do to help. Are you on Facebook? On Twitter? If so, please forward our posts to your lists and re-tweet our tweets! If not, please sign up for one of these (we did recently for the first time and it’s actually pretty easy) to be our friend or follower! Just go to Twitter.com to sign up—it’s free and they don’t ask for much information. Our Twitter address is @KnowlandPark . This really helps our campaign reach more people—we can’t afford the fancy stuff of professional campaigns.
Also, are you a member of any organizations? If so, please forward our posts and let them know about our website. Each time one more person is reached, it helps!
Every environmental victory started out with just a few people who cared enough to get involved, who felt they had to make a stand for a place they cared about. They knew in some deep way that those places mattered. Knowland Park is our place and it matters—not just to we human beings, but to the wildlife who live there and will continue to live there, and to our children and grandchildren who can only experience its wonders if we protect it. Defeating Measure A1 is the next step in our campaign to save this place.
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16.
(this item omitted, as Google couldn't take the image)
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17. Band circling walls of classroom in the old California Academy of Sciences
mya=million years ago
January 1 4700 mya Precambrian
April 3 3500 mya Precambrian first life
November 8 700 mya Precambrian soft parts
November 15 600 mya Paleozoic hard parts
November 22 520 mya Paleozoic first vertebrates
November 30 410 mya Paleozoic onto the land
December 14 230 mya Mesozoic age of reptiles - dinosaurs
December 20 150 mya Mesozoic first birds
December 27 65 mya Cenozoic age of mammals
December 31, 8 pm 2 mya humans
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