2. Winter birding schedule at Heron's Head Park - free
3. Audubon bird walk in McLaren Park Jan 22
4. SF Children in Nature Forum Jan 20
5. Environmental cleanup of Mountain Lake Park meeting Jan 25
6. Sunset District History Jan 30
7. Bay Nature's annual awards dinner
8. A plug for Chabot Observatory
9. New and better way to study animals/rodents exhibit empathy
10. Kidnapped monkey Banana Sam is home/SF Naturalist schedule
11. So - are you smart enough to work for Google?
12. SciAm potpourri
13. World pays Ecuador not to extract oil from rainforest
14. Mini-reviews: James Madison/deceit/Hunt for orderly universe
15. Look at a mountain for what it is
16. Trees, ants, and elephants: balance gone bad
17. Notes & Queries: What is my fair share of the wealth of the world?
1. Wendell Berry
"…if Americans don't take care of things, it's because it's not in their 'economic' interest to do so when labor, time, money, and just about everything else are more expensive than raw materials, 'the stuff of creation'. As individuals, we have lost our connection to the land, the best defense against our own excesses."
"You can't save what you don't love and you can't love what you don't understand."
Wendell Berry: 'Soil is not usually lost in slab or heaps of magnificent tonnage. It is lost a little at a time over millions of acres by careless acts of millions of people. It cannot be solved by heroic feats of gigantic technology, but only by millions of small acts and restraints.'"
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(JS: There are well over 100 kinds of birds at Heron's Head, so this should be rewarding)
2. Winter Birding at Heron's Head Park- FREE
Jan. 14, Feb. 11 and March 10, 2012
San Francisco Nature Education (SFNE) sponsors these annual birding tours at Heron's Head Park, led by High School interns.
Equipped with powerful spotting scopes, the interns will lead tours beginning at 10am, 10:30, 11:00am and 11:30.
Tours last about one hour. We are seeing incredible waterfowl including Eurasian Wigeon, Clapper Rail and Harlequin Duck.
Come out and see for yourself and learn the natural history of this beautifully restored wetlands.
Location: Jennings Street and Cargo Way. Free parking at the park, or plan your trip via MUNI's website:
www.sfmta.com/cms/mroutes/tripplan.htm
Information: SFNE: info.@sfnature or telephone 415-387-9160
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3. Audubon Bird Walk in SF's McLaren Park
Sunday, January 22 8:30AM - 1:00 PM
John F. Shelley Drive @ Cambridge St. (MUNI 29, 44, 54)
Located near San Francisco’s southern border, John McLaren Park is the second-largest City Park but is rarely visited by birders. The recent Audubon Christmas Bird Count found dozens of species in McLaren, from Yellow-Rumped Warbler to Golden-Crowned Sparrow to American Kestrel, from Northern Flicker to Hermit Thrush to Western Meadowlark.
Join The Expert on McLaren's bird life, walk leader Alan Hopkins, for a thorough exploration of the park's wilder corners. Alan is co-founder and co-compiler of the local Christmas Bird Count, is past president of Golden Gate Audubon Society, and has for many years led school children through McLaren and other parks with the wonderful Kids In Parks program.
The walk starts at the Cambridge Street park entrance. Then we will encircle the park clockwise, encountering grasslands, scrub, and mixed forest environments along the way. The last stop will be Yosemite Marsh, just a short distance from our starting point. Bring binoculars, water, layers, and snacks. The hike will cover about 3 miles on moderately hilly trails and paths.
This event is sponsored by GGAS, please contact Alan Hopkins, 415.794.0281 (after 3 p.m.), alanhopkins at att.net for more information. From Silver Ave., turn south onto Cambridge St. Follow Cambridge St. south for 6 blocks to the entrance to McLaren Park at John F. Shelley Dr.
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4.
San Francisco Children in Nature Forum
Promoting Local Opportunities for Connecting City Kids with Urban Nature
Friday January 20th, 2 pm - 5 pm
Randall Museum (click link for directions)
199 Museum Way
“In 1926 I was appointed Superintendent of the San Francisco Recreation Department, a post I held until my retirement in 1951. When I took charge of recreation in San Francisco I felt sorry for many of the children. They no longer had woodsheds where they could make things, they had no place to make a garden and no way to learn about the birds and insects and small animals that country children know so well. I felt that the finest form of recreation I could provide the city's children was a place where they could work at all kinds of crafts; where they could handle small animals, have their own gardens, and learn about many forms of living things.” ~Josephine Randall
PROGRAM of ACTIVITIES
San Francisco Film Premiere of Mother Nature’s Child: Growing Outdoors in the Media Age
One hour screening in the Randall Theater (with discussion)
Strategizing for 2012 collaborative projects:
• the legal perimeters of nature play in public spaces
• advancing a San Francisco Children’s Bill of Outdoor Rights
Update on the San Francisco Park Prescriptions Pilot Project
+ Networking time
Please subscribe to the new San Francisco's Children in Nature Forum on C&NN Connect:
http://childrenandnature.ning.com/group/san-francisco-children-nature-forum?xgi=09BDsWWktTYj8W&xg_source=msg_invite_group
About the San Francisco Children in Nature Forum:
There is a growing movement to reconsider children's experience of nature, but what does this mean for children in San Francisco? This time seem ripe to create an interdisciplinary group that seeks to understand the urban experience of "nature", in the broader context of the outdoor environments accessible to children we serve.
San Francisco is full of both innovative children's programs and microcosms of nature in the city. Please join us as we share practices, discuss current knowledge as well as innovative ideas and potential collaborations regarding San Francisco's children and the outdoors. This new forum will bring together an interdisciplinary group of educators, program directors, health care and urban planning professionals towards the end of ensuring that all San Franciscan childhoods flourish with meaningful experience in the outdoors.
Each quarterly meeting will feature short presentations on relevant research, programs and exemplary public outdoor spaces.
Guiding forum questions:
· What can be done to ensure and protect a San Francisco-based childhood rooted in local nature?
· How do we communicate and make visible the child’s right to explore nature?
· What public policies would support connecting families with nature?
· What would a vision of a SF childhood entail in terms of experiences of nature overtime?
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5.
A public meeting concerning the environmental clean up of Mountain Lake will be held:
Wednesday January 25, 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Golden Gate Club, 135 Fisher Look, Presidio of San Francisco.
The meeting is being sponsored by the Dept. of Toxic Substances Control and the Presidio Trust.
You will learn about the contamination, the proposed remedial action, the impacts of clean up activities and the plans by the Trust for the future restoration of this ecological area.
You are encouraged to attend and participate in the Q and A in order to fully understand the condition of the lake now and what it might be like in the future.
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6.
Monday |January 30, 7:00pm
Lorri Ungaretti on Sunset District History
Lorri Ungaretti gives a slide presentation about her new book of vintage and modern photographs from the Western Neighborhoods Project and private collections, showing the evolution of the Sunset District. She will also present a preview of her next book, "Stories in the Sand." Books will be available for purchase.
Sunset Branch Library - 1305 18th Ave at Irving Street – downstairs
Info: 355-2808 or www.sfpl.org/sunset
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7.
Thursday, February 9, 2012, 6:30-9:30 pm
Brazilian Room, Tilden Regional Park, Berkeley
featuring "An Expedition on the Northern California Coast", a presentation by renowned wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas and awards dinner with fine local food & wines - raffle prizes too!
$125 per person | RSVP by February 3 baynature.eventbrite.com tel: (510) 528-8550 x205
For more information about sponsorship, email judith@baynature.org
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8. LTE, Astronomy magazine
I was surprised and disappointed that Yvette Cendes' otherwise fine tour of Northern California astronomy sites did not include Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. Chabot is the only observatory in Northern California where visitors can observe the night sky through large telescopes on a regular basis (not just look at the telescopes during the day). The observatories are open for free on Friday and Saturday nights, weather permitting.
Chabot is home to two historic telescopes--an 8-inch refractor built in 1883 by Alvan Clark & Sons and a majestic 20-inch Warner and Swasey refractor dating from 1915--as well as a modern 36-inch Cassegrain reflector. The 20-inch was the only telescope in the right place to track the final approach of the disabled Apollo 13 capsule. The 36-inch reflector is used in near-Earth-object and exo-planet research. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteers primarily maintain and operate the telescopes.
In addition to these instruments, Chabot has a planetarium, an interactive climate-change lab, a megadome theater, and other exhibits, including a Soyuz space capsule. The center is open Tuesdays through Sundays. More information is available at www.chabotspace.org.
I hope all Northern California visitors with an interest in astronomy will add Chabot Space & Science Center to their itinerary. I'm a new volunteer at Chabot, but I loved the place even before I started volunteering.
Anthony Barreiro
San Francisco, California
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9.
A new and better way to study animals
http://www.care2.com/causes/5-animal-studies-courses-at-us-colleges-slideshow.html
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He's not a rat, he's my brother
Rodents exhibit empathy by setting trapped friends free
Calling someone a rat should no longer be considered an insult. The often maligned rodents go out of their way to liberate a trapped friend, proactive behavior that's driven by empathy, researchers conclude...
"As humans, we tend sometimes to have this feeling that there's something special about our morals", says (a researcher)..."It seems that even rats have this urge to help."
As many pet rat owners know, rats are highly social animals and (researchers) wanted to see whether rats would take action to ease the suffering of a cage mate. (Methodolgy omitted)
The rats would selectively take action when another rat was in distress: Empty cages didn't inspire rats to learn how to open the door nearly as well as those who were motivated to rescue a trapped rat..."If I open the door, that rat's distress goes away and my distress goes away," says (a researcher) who studies empathy in chimpanzees. "They are affected by what the other is experiencing, and that alone is remarkable."
To push the limits of the rats' goodwill, Bartal's team pitted a trapped rat against trapped chocolate, forcing a rat to choose which to release first. "These rats adore their chocolate," she says. The rats were equally likely to free a rat in distress as they were to free the sweets...."The most shocking thing is they left some of the chocolate for the other rat" Bartal says. The hero rat left a chocolate chip or two for its newly free associate in more than half of the trials. On purpose. "It's not like they missed a chocolate. They actually carried it out of the restrainer sometimes but did not eat it."
Excerpted from Science News 31.12.11
______________________________
How do I discourage pigeons from hanging out?
http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-discourage-pigeons-from-hanging-out/answer/Craig-Newmark-1
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10.
Banana-Sam is home safe!
One of our beloved monkeys at the Zoo was stolen during the last week of December. Two days later he was handed in to the police by a man who says he found him in Stern Grove. This fellow rather dubiously claims that the monkey climbed into his backpack. A police investigation is ongoing. The important thing is that Banana-Sam is home safe and unharmed. Jill did numerous television, radio, and newspaper interviews as the story spread around the globe. My favorite is this bit on the David Letterman show! Scroll forward to the 6:20 mark. http://www.cbs.com/late_night/late_show/video/?pid=R0PDYN1IkvW47ok4_xs7WHPbh8l414Jc
Finally, test your naturalist knowledge with our new trivia quiz.
Patrick Schlemmer
San Francisco Naturalist Society President
Upcoming talks
Thursday, January 12 What is A Mushroom Anyway? J. R. Blair. Randall Museum, Randall Room (upstairs), 199 Museum Way, San Francisco. 7:30-9 pm. For more information, go to www.sfns.org or contact Patrick at JKodiak@earthlink.net or (415) 225-3830. Free and open to everyone.
Thursday, February 9 A Visual Tour of San Francisco's Native Wildflowers, with Margo Bors. Margo Bors has been doing habitat restoration and documenting San Francisco's native plants and habitats for more than 15 years. She is an artist who has had numerous solo exhibitions in both art and photography, including several at the Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture in Golden Gate Park. Randall Museum Theater, 199 Museum Way, San Francisco CA 94114. 7:30-9 pm. For more information, contact Patrick Schlemmer at JKodiak@earthlink.net or (415) 225-3830. Free and open to everyone.
Thursday, Mar 8 Film showing: "Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time."
Thursday, April 12 The Green Hairstreak Corridor, with Liam O’Brien
Thursday, May 10 Urban Tree Ecology, with Ted Kipping
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11. So, are you smart enough to work for Google?
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/big-book/so-are-you-smart-enough-work-google-0
Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?: Trick Questions, Zen-like Riddles, Insanely Difficult Puzzles, and Other Devious Interviewing Techniques You ... Know to Get a Job Anywhere in the New Economy
Ryssdal: That part you heard about Marketplace hiring? It's true. So we came up with some Bill Poundstone-approved public radio interview questions for all you potential applicants out there. Take Marketplace's interview test here.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/big-book/can-you-pass-marketplaces-interview-test
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12. Scientific American potpourri
OCTOPUS CHRONICLES: Octopuses Reveal First RNA Editing in Response to Environment
The basic DNA tools of evolution don't entirely explain how we and other organisms have evolved to be so complex, but octopuses are shedding new light on the possibilities of RNA editing
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=67&ms=Mzg1OTczMjcS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTI2MzgzOTc1S0&mt=1&rt=0
NEWS: Can Mountain Dew Really Dissolve a Mouse Carcass?
Evidence suggests citrus sodas can eat away teeth and bones in months, an issue arising after a claim of a dead mouse in a soda
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=34&ms=Mzg1OTczMjcS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTI2MzgzOTc1S0&mt=1&rt=0
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE: Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity
Excess weight can harm health in ways that may come as a surprise
http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=57&ms=Mzg1OTczMjcS1&r=NTM5NzIzNTA1NgS2&b=2&j=MTI2MzgzOTc1S0&mt=1&rt=0
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13. World pays Ecuador not to extract oil from rainforest
Governments and film stars join alliance that raises £75m to compensate Ecuador for lost revenue from 900m barrels
John Vidal in Guardian Weekly 30.12.11
Supporters of the Yasunà 'crowdfunding' initiative say it could change the way important places are protected.
An alliance of European local authorities, national governments, US film stars, Japanese shops, soft drink companies and Russian foundations have stepped in to prevent oil companies exploiting 900m barrels of crude oil from one of the world's most biologically rich tracts of land.
According to the UN, the "crowdfunding" initiative had last night raised $116m (£75m), enough to temporarily halt the exploitation of the 722 square miles of "core" Amazonian rainforest known as Yasunà national park in Ecuador.
The park, which is home to two tribes of uncontacted Indians, is thought to have more mammal, bird, amphibian and plant species than any other spot on earth. Development of the oilfield, which was planned to take place immediately if the money had not been raised, would have inevitably led to ecological devastation and the eventual release of over 400m tonnes of CO2.
Ecuador agreed to halt plans to mine the oilfield if it could raise 50% of the $7.6bn revenue being lost by not mining the oil. While the world's leading conservation groups pledged nothing, regional governments in France and Belgium offered millions of dollars – with $2m alone from the Belgian region of Wallonia. A New York investment banker donated her annual salary and Bo Derek, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton and Al Gore all contributed.
The idea of asking people to pay for something not to take place was widely dismissed by national treasuries as holding the world to ransom. The German development minister, Dirk Niebel, said that the principle of paying for the oil not to be exploited "would be setting a precedent with unforeseeable referrals". However, Germany has now contributed $48m in "technical assistance". The former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was widely criticised after he wrote off $51m of Ecuador's $10bn external debt as Italy's contribution.
Other governments pledging support were Chile, Colombia, Georgia and Turkey ($100,000 each), Peru ($300,000), Australia ($500,000) and Spain ($1.4m).
Supporters of the scheme argued that it could be a model for change in the way the world pays to protect important places. The money raised is guaranteed to be used only for nature protection and renewable energy projects. Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon and other countries with oil reserves, have investigated the possibility of setting up similar schemes as an alternative to traditional aid.
The biological richness of Yasunà has astonished scientists. One 6sq km patch of the park was found to have 47 amphibian and reptile species, 550 bird, 200 mammal and more species of bats and insects than anywhere in the western hemisphere. According to Ecuadorean scientists, it would take in the region of 400 years to record YasunÃ's 100,000 or more insect and 2,000 fish species.
Of the 63.4% of Ecuadoreans polled last month who knew of the Yasunà initiative, 83.4% supported it.
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14. Mini reviews
Published by Basic Books
James Madison, by Richard Brookhiser
James Madison led one of the most influential and prolific lives in American history, and his story—although all too often overshadowed by his more celebrated contemporaries—is integral to that of the nation. Madison helped to shape our country as perhaps no other Founder: collaborating on the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights, resisting government overreach by assembling one of the nation’s first political parties (the Republicans, who became today’s Democrats), and taking to the battlefield during the War of 1812, becoming the last president to lead troops in combat. In this penetrating biography, eminent historian Richard Brookhiser presents a vivid portrait of the “Father of the Constitution,” an accomplished yet humble statesman who nourished Americans’ fledgling liberty and vigorously defended the laws that have preserved it to this day.
Folly of Fools
The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life, by Robert Trivers
Whether it’s in a cockpit at takeoff or the planning of an offensive war, a romantic relationship or a dispute at the office, there are many opportunities to lie and self-deceive—but deceit and self-deception carry the costs of being alienated from reality and can lead to disaster. So why does deception play such a prominent role in our everyday lives? In short, why do we deceive? In his bold new work, prominent biological theorist Robert Trivers unflinchingly argues that self-deception evolved in the service of deceit—the better to fool others. We do it for biological reasons—in order to help us survive and procreate. From viruses mimicking host behavior to humans misremembering (sometimes intentionally) the details of a quarrel, science has proven that the deceptive one can always outwit the masses. But we undertake this deception at our own peril. Trivers has written an ambitious investigation into the evolutionary logic of lying and the costs of leaving it unchecked.
Infinity Puzzle
Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe, by Frank Close
Speculation is rife that by 2012 the elusive Higgs boson will be found at the Large Hadron Collider. If found, the Higgs boson would help explain why everything has mass. But there’s more at stake—what we’re really testing is our capacity to make the universe reasonable. Our best understanding of physics is predicated on something known as quantum field theory. Unfortunately, in its raw form, it doesn’t make sense—its outputs are physically impossible infinite percentages when they should be something simpler, like the number 1. The kind of physics that the Higgs boson represents seeks to “renormalize” field theory, forcing equations to provide answers that match what we see in the real world. The Infinity Puzzle is the story of a wild idea on the road to acceptance. Only Close can tell it.
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15.
I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment
on my life.
~ David Ignatow ~
(News of the Universe, ed. by Robert Bly)
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16. Trees, Ants, and Elephants: Balance Gone Bad
Because elephants eat acacia trees…one might think that fencing them out would be good for the trees. Instead, excluding the elephants caused the collapse of a long-standing, mutually beneficial relationship between acacia trees and the ants that live in their branches.
For thousands of years, the ants had limited elephant grazing by swarming from the tree branches onto the animals’ sensitive heads and trunks. In return, the trees kept their guardian ants happy by producing food and living quarters.
But when (the researcher’s) fences took them off the elephants’ menu, the acacia trees cut the ants’ food and housing subsidies. The ants move away; tree-eating bugs moved in. Eventually the trees inside the fences were smaller and sicker than those outside, even considering the effects of elephants grazing on the unfenced trees.
“Elephants today occupy only a fraction of their historical range in Africa, and this is one of the negative results of their loss. That species as different as elephants, ants, and trees are so intimately interconnected shows, once again, that when we mess with nature, we should expect dire consequences that we cannot anticipate”, (says researcher Truman Young).
(The paper, “Breakdown of an Ant-Plant Mutualism Follows the Loss of Large Herbivores from an African Savanna,” is online at: http://www.sciencemag.org.
Type the title in the Search box.)
- http://www.sciencemag.org/search?site_area=sci&y=10&fulltext=Breakdown%20of%20an%20Ant-Plant%20Mutualism%20Follows%20the%20Loss%20of%20Large%20Herbivores%20from%20an%20African%20Savanna&x=27&submit=yes
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17. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
A member of the Eastern Arrernte Aboriginal people in Australia's Northern Territory. The carvings were made by her ancestors on Corroboree Rock in the Simpson Desert.
What is my fair share of the wealth of the world?
So many assumptions in one question: where to start? Common-wealth perhaps sums it up. The tragedy of the commons – ie over-exploitation – is the inevitable outcome of individuals and cultures valuing rights over responsibilities, as we see from the current capitalist model.
In Australia, as elsewhere, we have much to learn from our Aboriginal precursors regarding custodianship of the land for all creation and for our future generations. In these terms, your fair share is exactly what you need, not what you think you would like.
Noel Bird, Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
• Clean water and fresh air would be a nice start.
Barrie Sargeant, Otaki Beach, New Zealand
• The question seems to assume that everyone has a right to, say, one seven-billionth of the total wealth of the planet. This is a total misconception.
Wealth must be created, and if the method of creation is by hard work or superior knowledge and skill, and does not exploit other people but serves the common good, it will be judged fair.
Ted Webber, Buderim, Queensland, Australia
• As an educated subscriber to the Guardian Weekly, probably considerably less than the proportion you now own. A better question might be "What is my fair contribution towards the wellbeing of the world?"
Joan Dawson, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
• More than yours.
Margaret Wyeth, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Ants are just like people
Do any creatures besides humans and ants deliberately enslave their own species?
According to EO Wilson's Slavery in Ants (Scientific American, 1975), "Slavery in ants differs from slavery in human societies in one key respect: the ant slaves are always members of other ... species. In this regard the ant slaves perhaps more closely resemble domestic animals" – dare I say, pets?
Lee Hartman, Carbondale, Illinois, US
Any answers?
Why don't burglars use robots and terrorists use drones?
Neville Holmes, Bakery Hill, Victoria, Australia
Why do we jump for joy?
Elizabeth Silsbury, Tusmore, South Australia
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