Author Archives: Christinef76

Legend of the Falls: Revisiting the Evel Kneivel Story

by Christinef76 Posted on October 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Amid the disillusionments of the ’70s—the Vietnam War, racial strife, Watergate, lines around the block for gasoline—America needed a hero. And many, especially us kids, found one in the motorcycle daredevil Robert “Evel” Knievel. Boy, did my brother and I get amped for his audacious stunts (and epic wipeouts!), from the record-breaking jump over 19 cars at Ontario Motor Speedway to the ludicrous scheme to leap the Snake River Canyon in a star-spangled rocket cycle. Only later did I learn how deeply flawed our fearless showman was.

In Being Evel, an engaging documentary, director Daniel Junge supplements a wealth of archival and press footage with recollections from spouses, kin, and business associates—including promoter Sheldon Saltman, whose 1977 memoir of touring with Knievel prompted the incensed stuntman to attack him with a baseball bat. The film gives Knievel his due, but also strips away the layers to reveal a checked-out father, a philandering husband, and a complex American icon whose identity was subsumed by his camera-ready persona.

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Legend of the Falls: Revisiting the Evel Kneivel Story

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Evangelical Christians call on Florida politicians to take climate action

by Christinef76 Posted on May 20, 2014

WWJD?

Evangelical Christians call on Florida politicians to take climate action

By

Paul Simpson

When it comes to using energy, what would Jesus do?

We’re guessing he wouldn’t use more than he needed, and he wouldn’t condemn generations to climate hell by burning fossil fuels when cleaner options were available.

Some Evangelical Christian leaders in Florida are making just that point, calling on Republican politicians in the state to take climate change seriously. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recently went full-on climate denier, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) is a denier too.

Rev. Mich Hescox, president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, has started a petition drive calling on Scott to make climate change and “creation care” priorities. Here’s an excerpt:

We are failing to keep our air and water clean for our children, contributing to a changing climate that most hurts the world’s poor, and putting Floridians at risk as temperatures and sea levels continue to rise. To meet these challenges, we need leaders who understand our duty to God’s creation and future generations. That’s why we are calling on Gov. Rick Scott to create a plan to reduce carbon pollution and confront the impacts of a changing climate.

And the Tampa Bay Times reports that Hescox and prominent Evangelical pastor Joel Hunter are taking part in a panel discussion tonight titled “Climate Change: Should Christians Care?” From the Times article:

Evangelical leaders in Florida have taken on climate change as a cause and are trying to increase pressure on Gov. Rick Scott to take action, while criticizing Sen. Marco Rubio’s stance on the issue. …

Hunter, who is a spiritual advisor to President Obama, says he’s taken to urging congregants to do their part: Turning off lights that aren’t needed, setting air conditioning at a reasonable temperature, keeping car tires properly inflated.

He said he was neither panicked nor preoccupied with the issue. “But this is part of what I think is the moral responsibility of the church to lead in areas that can benefit and protect people.”

Should Christians care? The answer seems obvious to those who put their flocks before politics.


Source
Evangelicals in Florida turn to climate change and call on Gov. Scott to act, Tampa Bay Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Danish Wind Turbine Maker Appoints New Leader

by Christinef76 Posted on August 21, 2013

green4us

How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Black Legion – A Codex: Chaos Space Marines Supplement – Games Workshop

The Black Legion are among the most hated foes of the Imperium, vile traitors and fearsome warriors responsible for ten thousand years of terror and murder. About this Book: This Codex: Chaos Space Marines Supplement charts the history of the Legion, along with their Warmaster Abaddon, who stands poised to lead them to victory over the Imperium. Also inside […]

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Scent of the Missing – Susannah Charleson

An unforgettable memoir from a search-and-rescue pilot and her spirited canine partner In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, Susannah Charleson clipped a photo from the newspaper of an exhausted canine handler, face buried in the fur of his search-and-rescue dog. A dog lover and pilot with search experience herself, Susannah was so moved by the image tha […]

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Farsight Enclaves – A Codex: Tau Empire Supplement – Games Workshop

Commander Farsight was once hailed by every Tau caste as a genius warrior-leader without compare. As his career blazed a bloody path across the Damocles Gulf and back again, O’Shovah split away from the Tau Empire, doggedly pursuing the Orks that had killed so many of his Fire caste comrades. It was the first overt sign of a rebellion that was to change the […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of German shepherds and as t […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw […]

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Merle’s Door – Ted Kerasote

Now including a wonderful new photo insert chronicling Merle’s life, this national bestseller explores the relationship between humans and dogs. How would dogs live if they were free? Would they stay with their human friends? Merle and Ted found each other in the Utah desert— Merle was living wild and Ted was looking for a pup to keep him company. As their b […]

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Marley & Me – John Grogan

The heartwarming and unforgettable story of a family and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life. Now with photos and new material

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Dogtripping – David Rosenfelt

David Rosenfelt’s Dogtripping is moving and funny account of a cross-country move from California to Maine, and the beginnings of a dog rescue foundation When mystery writer David Rosenfelt and his family moved from Southern California to Maine, he thought he had prepared for everything. They had mapped the route, brought three […]

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A Penny Saved – Tamara Berg

This interactive multi-touch ebook, with photo galleries, embedded video, and web links, shows how to transform mere pennies into expensive designer-looking jewelry. No one will believe you made these stunners from scraps of titian-colored metal! Inside, step-by-step instructions for five projects are fast, easy & fun, with tips and tricks to elevate you […]

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Danish Wind Turbine Maker Appoints New Leader

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Offshore auction signals start of wind bonanza

by Christinef76 Posted on August 1, 2013

Offshore auction signals start of wind bonanza

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Coming soon, to a coastline near you …

Wind developers have accepted invitations to the government’s New England offshore wind energy party.

There are currently no offshore wind farms in U.S. waters, but the Obama administration intends to change that. On Wednesday, the government auctioned off the right to construct turbines in nearly 165,000 acres of federal waters south of Massachusetts and Rhode Island — the first of many offshore auctions the Interior Department has planned.

The brown bits should get turbines within a few years.

Hedge fund-backed Deepwater Wind LLC beat out two other bidders at the auction, agreeing to pay $3.8 million for the development rights. The Providence, R.I.-based company said it could spend as much as $6 billion building up to 200 wind turbines in the area plus transmission lines, with construction possibly beginning in 2017 and power production in 2018.

From Bloomberg:

“We’re hoping that this year and next year we can start putting the power purchase agreements together,” [Deepwater CEO Jeff] Grybowski said. The project will likely be built in phases with 200 megawatts to 400 megawatts of generating capacity, he said. …

Deepwater hasn’t selected a wind turbine vendor and plans to use “at least 6-megawatt turbines, and possibly larger,” Grybowski said.

The Interior Department’s next offshore auction will be on Sept. 4, for nearly 113,000 acres off the coast of Virginia. On the auction block later this year and next: areas off the coasts of Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Offshore auction signals start of wind bonanza

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Ron Wyden Has a “Feeling” Obama May Halt Bulk Phone Record Collection

by Christinef76 Posted on July 12, 2013

Mother Jones

The New York Times reports that privacy advocates may soon win a bit of a victory:

Signs of a popular backlash against the security agency’s large-scale collection of the personal data of Americans have convinced a leading privacy advocate in Congress that the Obama administration may soon begin to back away from the most aggressive components of the agency’s domestic surveillance programs.

The advocate, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview Thursday that he believed that the security agency might soon abandon the bulk collection of the telephone calling data of millions of Americans.

….“I have a feeling that the administration is getting concerned about the bulk phone records collection, and that they are thinking about whether to move administratively to stop it,” he said. He added he believed that the continuing controversy prompted by Mr. Snowden had changed the political calculus in Congress over the balance between security and civil liberties, which has been heavily weighted toward security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

I’m not holding my breath on this, but good news on the civil liberties front is hard to come by these days, so I wanted to pass it along.

And while we’re on the subject, here’s something I want to toss out. As we all know, the NSA collects records of pretty much every phone call made in the United States and stores them in a database. Everyone agrees that there would be no problem if NSA accessed only specific phone records via a warrant approved by a court, but this mass collection has raised fears that they’re accessing records that no court would allow them to if they had to apply for a particularized warrant. They can just trawl through the records anytime they want with no oversight.

Now, NSA would argue that they have good reason for collecting all this data. If they don’t, phone companies will purge it and it will be gone forever. What’s more, if you’re doing contact chaining, it’s genuinely more efficient to have a single database, rather than having to track down the chains via multiple phone companies.

So here’s my question: Why can’t we authorize some other agency to preserve this data, and allow NSA access to it only via a particularized warrant issued by a court? NSA claims they only access the records a few hundred times a year, so it wouldn’t be a big imposition. Are there legal issues that would prevent this? Or what? One way or another, it seems like there ought to be some way to preserve records in a useful form but guarantee that they can’t be misused by the intelligence community.

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Ron Wyden Has a “Feeling” Obama May Halt Bulk Phone Record Collection

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If the Economy Is Back, Why Are Wages Still So Low?

by Christinef76 Posted on June 14, 2013

Mother Jones

Five years after the Great Recession began, the US economy appears to be rebounding a bit. But two recent bits of evidence suggest that the impact of the recession on ordinary workers may have been even worse than we thought—and that the impact of future recessions might be worse too.

First off, a new paper by a trio of researchers confirms some old news: Adjusted for inflation, wages began stagnating for both men and women 10 years ago. Men’s wages have actually decreased slightly since 2000, while women’s wages, which had been rising steadily for decades, flattened out nearly to zero. But it could have been worse. Economists have long known that there’s a floor to wages because employers don’t like to reduce nominal wages. If you make $10 per hour, they won’t cut your wage to $9 per hour. They’ll just hold it at $10 and let inflation eat it away. This phenomenon is called wage stickiness.

But in “Wage Adjustment in the Great Recession,” these researchers have found that wage stickiness, which is driven mostly by social convention, not economic law, might be dying out. During the Great Recession, employers were increasingly willing to cut nominal wages. Among hourly workers, the usual number who experience wage cuts is around 15 percent. That had risen to 25 percent by 2011. Among nonhourly workers, the number rose from about 25 percent to nearly 35 percent. Increasingly, it seems, wage stickiness isn’t acting as a barrier against wage losses.

So what does this mean in the real world? Economist Jared Bernstein points us to the chart below. It shows growth in nominal wages, growth in benefits, and growth in total compensation (wages plus benefits). The news is grim. Total compensation (the gray line) grew at about 3 to 4 percent per year during most of the aughts. Since the Great Recession hit, that’s dropped to 1 to 2 percent. This is less than the inflation rate, which means that even when you account for benefits, real compensation has been declining since 2008.

Bottom line: Wage stickiness is disappearing, and with it a social convention that prevented wages from dropping too harshly even during recessions. As a result, wages are getting cut in bad times and never catching back up in good times. This is the world we live in today.

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If the Economy Is Back, Why Are Wages Still So Low?

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Fuel barges explode, burn through night in Alabama

by Christinef76 Posted on April 25, 2013

Fuel barges explode, burn through night in Alabama

By John Upton

REUTERS/Dan Anderson

Two fuel barges exploded in flames and burned through the night in Mobile, Ala., critically injuring three people and causing minor injuries to emergency responders.

A fire chief initially said the two barges were loaded with a type of gasoline, but the owner of the barges told the AP they had been emptied of their loads of fuel and were being cleaned before they exploded.

The first explosion was reported at about 8:30 p.m. local time, with six more explosions shaking the area during the subsequent six hours as the barges burned uncontrollably. The fire was extinguished Thursday morning.

From the AP:

Authorities say three people were brought to University of South Alabama Medical Center for burn-related injuries. The three were in critical condition early Thursday, according to hospital nursing administrator Danny Whatley. …

“It literally sounded like bombs going off around. The sky just lit up in orange and red,” [said nearby resident Alan Waugh.] ”We could smell something in the air, we didn’t know if it was gas or smoke.” Waugh said he could feel the heat from the explosion and when he came back inside, his partner noticed he had what appeared to be black soot on his face.

From AL.com:

Firefighters on MFRD’s “Phoenix” Fireboat determined around 6:30 a.m. that temperatures appear[ed] to be dropping in the barges approximately four and a half hours after a final explosion threw metal into the air, according to Steve Huffman, MFRD spokesman.

“It was pretty powerful,” Huffman said. …

Personnel working on the first truck on scene were sent to the University of South Alabama medical Center after a second explosion was reported at the barges around 9 p.m.

“They got close to it,” Huffman said.

They were released without any “noticeable injuries,” and relieved of their duties for the night.

The cause of the accident wasn’t known on Thursday morning. But we can safely assume the cause had something to do with the dangerous nature of fossil fuels.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

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Fuel barges explode, burn through night in Alabama

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for April 24, 2013

by Christinef76 Posted on April 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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A U.S. Marine Corps CH-53 Super Stallion helicopter lands at Camp Al-Galail, Qatar, to drop off several Marines assigned to Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, for Exercise Eagle Resolve April 21, 2013. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Kenny Holston/Released.

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for April 24, 2013

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As Tigers Dwindle, Poachers Turn to Lions for ‘Medicinal’ Bones

by Christinef76 Posted on April 23, 2013

Photo: Kevin H.

In South Africa, lion bones are selling for around $165 per kilo (2.2 pounds). That’s about $5,000 for a full skeleton. The skull is worth another $1,100, according to the Guardian.

Over the past several months, officials in South Africa have noticed a steady increase in the number of permits they’re issuing for export of lion bones from certified trophy dealers. Such establishments breed lions for the express purpose of allowing wealthy tourists to engage in a controlled lion hunt. After killing the animal, if the patron does not want its body or bones, the breeders can then turn a large profit by stripping the lion down and selling its parts to Chinese and Southeast Asian dealers. The Guardian explains:

In 2012 more than 600 lions were killed by trophy hunters. The most recent official figures date from 2009, certifying export of 92 carcasses to Laos and Vietnam. At about that time breeders started digging up the lion bones they had buried here and there, for lack of an outlet.

In China, Vietnam and some other Southeast Asian nations, lion bones serve as a stand-in for tiger bones. Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine believe the bones help with allergies, cramps, ulcers, stomach aches, malaria and a host of other ailments. As with many other purported traditional Chinese medicine “cures,” tiger bones ground into a powder and mixed with wind is also said to boost a man’s sexual prowess.

Despite the lack of scientific proof this potion is very popular, so with tiger bones increasingly scarce, vendors are replacing them with the remains of lions. Traders soon realised that South Africa could be a promising source. It is home to 4,000 to 5,000 captive lions, with a further 2,000 roaming freely in protected reserves such as the Kruger national park. Furthermore such trade is perfectly legal.

But just because trade in legally-sourced lion bones is given the green light from the South African government does not mean illicit activities are not underway. One investigator told the Guardian that he estimates that the legal market only contributes half of the lion bones currently leaving the country. That means poaching is responsible for the rest.

More from Smithsonian.com:

State Department Takes on Illegal Wildlife Trade 
China Covertly Condones Trade in Tiger Skins and Bones 

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As Tigers Dwindle, Poachers Turn to Lions for ‘Medicinal’ Bones

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In This One California Town, New Houses Must Come With Solar Power

by Christinef76 Posted on April 22, 2013

A house in Lancaster, California gets a solar power retrofit. Photo: KN6KS

A desert terrain, a southerly latitude and a “colorful mayor” have joined forces to turn Lancaster, California, a city of around 150,000 that lies northeast of Los Angeles, into the solar capital “of the universe” says the New York Times. The city, says Geek.com, “now officially earned the distinction of being the first US city to mandate the inclusion of solar panels on all new homes built within the city limits.”

Technically the solar powered mandate isn’t so hard and fast, and builders have a bit of wiggle room. Starting January 1st, either they can build solar panels into their designs, producing one kilowatt of electricity for each city lot, or the builders can buy a “solar energy credit” to offset their non-energy-producing ways—money which would go to fund larger solar developments.

The city’s push into solar, says the Times, is being spearheaded by its Republican mayor Robert Rex Parris.

His solar push began about three years ago; City Hall, the performing arts center and the stadium together now generate 1.5 megawatts. Solar arrays on churches, a big medical office, a developer’s office and a Toyota dealership provide 4 more.

The biggest power payoff came with the school system. After the Lancaster school board rejected an offer from SolarCity, saying it was unaffordable, the city created a municipal utility. It bought 32,094 panels, had them installed on 25 schools, generated 7.5 megawatts of power and sold the enterprise to the school district for 35 percent less than it was paying for electricity at the time. Another 8 megawatts now come from systems operating at the local high school and Antelope Valley College.

Parris’ goal for Lancaster, says a 2010 story from the Los Angeles Times, is to see the city “produce more energy than we consume before 2020.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Island Nation Now Runs Entirely On Solar Power

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In This One California Town, New Houses Must Come With Solar Power

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