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Planet-Hunter: We’ll Find An “Earth 2.0” Within “10 or 15 Years”

by MeiAllardyce Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Last week, a team of astronomers at the Gemini Planet Imager in Chile released the mysterious blue image above. That small bright dot in the lower right of the image is a planet—not a planet in our solar system like Mars or Neptune, but one 63 light-years away. It’s the planet Beta Pictoris b, which orbits the star Beta Pictoris in the southern constellation Pictor. But what’s most exciting about the picture is the technology used to make it, which represents a dramatic improvement in the speed and quality with which scientists will be able to look for other planets—including “Earth 2.0,” a theorized planet much like our own.

The first confirmation that planets exist beyond our solar system came in 1992, when a team of astronomers monitored changes in radio waves to prove that multiple planets were orbiting a small star about 1000 light-years away. Then, in 2005, astronomers created the first actual image of a planet beyond our solar system (the date is arguable because the observation was made in 2004, but not confirmed until a year later). Since then, hundreds more planets have been discovered, and a few others have even been photographed.

So when Gizmodo reported last week that the blue image above was the “first ever image of a planet, orbiting a star,” they didn’t have it quite right. In fact, the image wasn’t even the first time that planet had been photographed. But the GPI images are still extremely exciting: They could mark the beginning of a new era of planet-hunting, thanks to technology developed by a team of astronomers led by Bruce Macintosh of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Frank Marchis, who works for the SETI Institute, a non-profit organization that seeks to explore, understand, and explain the prevalence of life in the universe, is a key member of Macintosh’s planet-hunting team. I met with him in San Francisco last week to discuss the project and the search for Earth 2.0:

MJ: What exactly are we seeing in this image?

FM: Behind this image is a lot of work. This image is simply a planet orbiting around another star. So we call that an exoplanet – an extrasolar planet – because it doesn’t belong to our solar system. It belongs to another planetary system. So this is the grail of modern astronomy. We’re trying desperately now to image those planets because we know they exist. When you observe a planet with the now defunct telescope Kepler, what you’ve been doing is basically detecting the transit – the attenuation of the star’s light – due to the planet passing between us and the star. Now with GPI, the Gemini Planet Imager, which is mounted at the 8 meter class telescope in Chile we’re going to be able to see the planet itself.

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Planet-Hunter: We’ll Find An “Earth 2.0” Within “10 or 15 Years”

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Will San Francisco’s Plan to Charge Tech Buses $1.5 Million Satisfy Activists?

by jiigy3e Posted on January 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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On two separate days last month, buses carrying employees of major tech companies were blockaded by Bay Area activists. First, a bus bound for Google’s headquarters was stopped at 24th & Valencia in the Mission district of San Francisco. Activists from the anti-gentrification and eviction group Heart of the City boarded the bus and held a sign in front of it which read Warning: Illegal Use of Public Infrastructure. Meanwhile, union organizer Max Alper posed as a Google employee and shouted at the protestors (his real identity was later revealed.

The bus was one of hundreds in the San Francisco Bay Area that provide an estimated 35,000 boardings per day for private companies, who use the city’s MUNI bus stations as pick up and drop off points, free of charge.

A few weeks later, another round of blockades occurred throughout San Francisco and Oakland. Buses bound for Apple, in addition to buses bound for Google, were blockaded. This time signs read “Eviction Free San Francisco“, “Fuck Off Google” and so on. A Google bus window in Oakland was shattered during its blockade.

The blockades exemplified the San Francisco Bay Area’s rising income disparity and eviction rates, caused largely by the influx of technology companies.

So yesterday, when news broke that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was announcing a new series of proposed regulations for these tech buses, it appeared to be a win for area activists and organizers. Among the requirements for the mayor’s plan: shuttle providers would pay a daily fee based on the number of stops they make, plus they would have to yield to Muni buses and avoid steep and narrow streets.

But SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose told Mother Jones the recent blockades did not have any effect on the timing of the mayor’s announcement. And in fact, he says data gathering for the new policy began as early as 2011.

Plus, activists are not likely to find comfort in the mayor’s financial estimates for the pilot program. Due to California’s 1996 ballot measure Proposition 218, the new proposed fees are limited to the cost of providing the new policy. So Mayor Lee expects the permit fees to generate about $1.5 million over the first 18 months, and the new fees will reportedly cost shuttle operators only $1 per day per stop. Activists were demanding the industry pay $271 for each “illegal usage of a bus zone“, which they estimated would total around $1 billion in fines.

The mayor’s proposal must be approved by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors, which will vote on the proposal January 21. Final plans would be approved by public hearing in late Spring.

Read the full press release here.

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Will San Francisco’s Plan to Charge Tech Buses $1.5 Million Satisfy Activists?

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California’s cap-and-trade program could fund high-speed rail

by LamontMcdonald Posted on January 7, 2014

California’s cap-and-trade program could fund high-speed rail

By

California High-Speed Rail Authority

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) wants to take $250 million raised by the state’s cap-and-trade program and put it toward high-speed rail. That plan is expected to be part of the budget he unveils on Friday, The Sacramento Bee reports.

The rail project would carry passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours by 2029, then be extended to reach San Diego and Sacramento. A $250 million infusion “could provide a significant lift to the project,” the Bee reports — a lift that’s sorely needed. The project has been beset by problems, and finding tens of billions of dollars to pay for it has proven challenging.

From the L.A. Times:

Brown has sold his plan for a high-speed railway as an environmentally friendly alternative to air or automobile travel, but the plan has lost popularity with the public, been derided by Republican leaders in Congress and been dealt a number of legal setbacks in the courts.

In 2008, California voters approved the sale of $10 billion in bonds to help pay for the bullet train, but the courts have questioned Brown’s construction and financing plan for the project. State Treasurer Bill Lockyer said he will not sell any more bonds to pay for the project until the courts determine that the governor’s plan is legal.

Brown’s new idea for funding the rail line would still leave about $500 million in carbon-trading revenue for other environmental and climate initiatives, but some environmentalists “have bristled at the idea of using cap-and-trade money for high-speed rail, saying other projects could have a more immediate impact on greenhouse gas reduction,” according to the Bee.

Enviros are also still pissed that Brown borrowed $500 million of cap-and-trade funds last year to help fill a budget hole. He’s expected to propose paying $100 million of that back in his upcoming budget.


Source
Jerry Brown wants to use pollution funds for bullet train, Los Angeles Times
Jerry Brown’s cap-and-trade proposal for high-speed rail said to be $250 million, The Sacramento Bee

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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California’s cap-and-trade program could fund high-speed rail

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Photos of San Francisco Before the Silicon Valley Bros Invaded

by I ambit Posted on December 20, 2013

Mother Jones

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San Francisco’s housing market became the nation’s priciest this year, with a median rent of $3,414 across all units. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably come across a media report—or a lament, or a tirade—about what’s been happening in the City by the Bay as it increasingly becomes a bedroom community for Silicon Valley and a tech center in its own right. Namely: a 170 percent increase in Ellis Act evictions, an 8 percent rent hike during a single quarter this year, runaway gentrification, techie elitism, class warfare, and the end of everything artistic and independent as we know it.

South of Market, or SoMa, is one of the neighborhoods most affected by San Francisco’s post-millennial boom. Once a nondescript refuge for working-class families, SoMa has recently transformed into an epicenter for startups, luxury condos, tony restaurants and breweries, boutique shops, and lofts. It’s emblematic of both the city’s encroaching corporatism and America’s ever-widening income inequality. For many native San Franciscans, it’s also a harbinger of worse to come.

Janet Delaney’s new book, South of Market, is a photographic record of SoMa’s first great makeover, which began in the 1960s. That’s when the city announced plans to build a 300,000-square-foot convention center—named for slain San Francisco Mayor George Moscone—in the heart of SoMa. Poor and elderly residents protested, accurately, saying that they’d be displaced; the city nonetheless approved the construction, and by 1981 Moscone Center occupied 10 acres of prime downtown real estate. To make room for this gleaming testament to civic pride, scores of low-income housing units—including several historic residential hotels—were bulldozed. Nearby rents swelled almost 300 percent. A mini-exodus to the picturesque Tenderloin and points west ensued. Once the dust settled, it was clear the neighborhood had permanently changed. No longer affordable, it began its long second act as a playground for entrepreneurs and real-estate salespeople.

Delaney began documenting the neighborhood in 1978. Her book chronicles a city in flux, but it’s not unequivocally bleak. For every photo of a demolished hotel or evicted family, there’s an elegantly composed shot of children skipping rope, business owners posing proudly in their shops, and streetscapes of hushed, now elegiac, beauty. Her interviews with longtime residents reveal outrage at the city’s indifference and anxiety about climbing rents, along with fear of a new soullessness. “There’s a lot of people here that weren’t here yesterday,” says one, and we can see in Delaney’s photos a new architecture of privilege as well. “You’ll find a great deal of the present in the past,” Delaney told me.

Bobby Washington and her daughter Ayana, 28 Langton Street Janet Delaney

Park Hotel, 429 Folsom Street Janet Delaney

Longtime neighbors, Langton at Folsom Street Janet Delaney

Greyhound Bus Depot, 7th Street between Mission and Market Janet Delaney

Flag Makers, Natoma at 3rd Street Janet Delaney

Saturday afternoon, Howard between 3rd and 4th streets Janet Delaney

Langton Park, Langton and Howard streets Janet Delaney

Remains of a five-alarm fire on Hallam Street Janet Delaney

Market at 2nd Street Janet Delaney

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Photos of San Francisco Before the Silicon Valley Bros Invaded

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2015 in Film, as Predicted by the 2013 Black List

by EUNMadiezhk Posted on December 17, 2013

Mother Jones

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The 2013 Black List was announced Monday. No, it has nothing to do with communism (we think). Instead it is a collection of the top unproduced screenplays in Hollywood, according to various studio executive and readers who make up the judges. Making the Black List is a big deal! Loads of Oscar winners and box office triumphs have begun there. In two years, you’ll probably be seeing many of these scripts in theaters. We thought we’d give you a preview of those films. However, since we know nothing about these screenplays except for their titles, we had to get creative.

Here are the imagined plots of the 72 screenplays on the 2013 Black List:

1. Time and Temperature, Nick Santora
“All it takes is a little time and temperature,” Helena’s grandmother always said as they waited for their victims to roast in the cauldron.

2. Pure O, Kate Trefry
College sophomore Annie reads a New York Times article that says women aren’t having as many orgasms as men. Outraged, she sets about teaching every man, lesbian, and bi-curious woman at Oberlin how to give oral sex. Written with Evan Rachel Wood in mind.

3. The Company Man, Andrew Cypiot
Corporate lawyer gets subpoenaed by the SEC to testify against his shady company, refuses to rat, goes to prison for 18 months, is rewarded by the CEO with a secret Cayman account worth millions, lives a long and happy life, dies serenely with his family by his side, and burns in hell for all eternity.

4. Burn Site, Doug Simon
It’s 1997 and a Tower Records is haunted by the ghost of a witch who was burned at the stake in that very same location 300 years earlier. “Napster is coming,” she howls nightly.

5. Capsule, Ian Shorr
Sad 40-year-old man finds a time capsule from 30 years ago containing his hopes and dreams, goes looking for his best friends who also dreamed big. Surprise! None of them made it, so they band together to finally make their dreams come true.

6. Extinction, Spenser Cohen
The human race is basically extinct. All that is left are one man and one woman…and boy they can’t stand each other!

7. Bury the Lead, Justin Kremer
A newspaper staff facing big cuts gets together one night and kills the belt-tightening owner, burying him in coverage from Syria. No one notices.

8. Line of Duty, Cory Miller
Three unpopular undergraduates are dispatched by jocks to hold their place in line at the coolest club in Ohio. Over the course of a “wild and crazy night” they learn self-worth.

9. A Boy and His Tiger, Dan Dollar
Based loosely on the Allen Ginsburg poem “The Lion for Real”, this is the harrowing tale of a boy dealing with the shame of masturbation.

10. Inquest, Josh Simon
Who took the cookie from the cookie jar? A child’s introduction to the judiciary system (looking for a home at Pixar; would accept PBS).

11. Sweetheart, Jack Stanley
Man and woman in love are driving through the French Riviera. “Sweetheart,” they say to each other. Car crashes off a cliff and both die instantly. Their respective spouses come to retrieve the bodies, fall in love. Tagline: Sometimes it takes death to find your true sweetheart.

12. Shovel Buddies, Jason Mark Hellerman
“Usually, I can’t stand to look at your ugly face, but out here, in the quiet? Digging graves? You’re like the only person who understands me.” Two competitive hitmen exchange ribald barbs in this quirky buddy flick about killing people who don’t deserve it for money.

13. Fully Wrecked, Jake Morse, Scott Wolman
You’ve seen snowboarding movies. You’ve seen Jackass. You’ve seen the cat dressed as a shark riding a Roomba. But have you seen a man high on marijuana cigarettes, dressed as a vacuum, and holding a cat, wipe out on a black diamond while riding an unwaxed snowboard? And then find the strength of character to do it again? Not until now.

14. The End of the Tour, Donald Margulies
In this unauthorized sequel to Almost Famous, Henry goes to New York to make it as a journalist…just as the newspaper industry is imploding. Watch the sad decline of one of America’s most important institutions through the eyes of a boy who once held so much promise. Bonus: killer soundtrack (rights pending).

15. The Mayor of Shark City, Nick Creature, Michael Sweeney
Child prodigy Ethan Klein could have been anything and gone anywhere, but did he want a PhD at Oxford or the presidency of the United States? No. He wanted to run the drug trade in San Jose. And he’s doing an incredible job, an incredibly bloody job.

16. Spotlight, Josh Singer, Tom McCarthy
Good Samaritan saves old lady from oncoming subway train, becomes a hero, is given the key to the city, goes on the Today show, where his past DUIs are revealed. He later loses his government job. Moral: Never do anything for anybody.

17. Gay Kid and Fat Chick, Bo Burnham
We’re not touching this one.

18. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Alexis C. Jolly
A stirring portrait of Mr. Rogers’ clinical depression.

19. Ink and Bone, Zak Olkewicz
Oh, so you want to open an “artifacts shoppe” in San Francisco’s uber-hip Mission District? Welcome to the club. The real-life story of hipsters applying for building permits.

20. Dogfight, Nicole Riegel
Man who owns pit bulls that fight other pit bulls falls in love with woman who owns another pit bull his pit bull is supposed to fight.

21. Sovereign, Geoff Tock, Greg Weidman
Do you have ownership over your own thoughts, or is some unknown entity ruling your soul? I mean, like, when you really think about it, man, like think think? This movie follows four Sarah Lawrence undergraduates on a metaphysical journey.

22. I’m Proud of You, Noah Harpster, Micah Fitzerman-Blue
Two estranged, emotionally stunted brothers reunite to drive across the country, dig up their recently deceased father’s corpse, and “get some closure.”

23. The Special Program, Debora Cahn
Area special snowflake applies for MacArthur Fellowship, waits patiently to hear back while his life passes him by.

24. Faults, Riley Stearns
Who’s to blame for the Westing family’s hard luck? Jack the alcoholic dad, Gemma the cheating mom, Bertie the psychopathic son, or Joan, the daughter who cooks dinner every night and cries into her teddy bear. OK, clearly not Joan.

25. The Independent, Evan Parter
In a world gone mad, where depravity and sin fill the streets, only one man is brave enough to make unnecessary cuts to social security.

26. The Shark Is Not Working, Richard Cordiner
Behind-the-scenes look at “fish slavery” at SeaWorld, brought to you by the Defenders of Wildlife. “When you think about it, no one asked that shark to delight that horde of children, you know?” says co-creator Angela Sim.

27. Autopsy of Jane Doe, Richard Naing, Ian Goldberg
When it’s discovered that Jane Doe is in fact the beloved film actress Gwnyeth Paltrow—thought to be at a yoga retreat lo these many weeks—the vegan food lobby funds a massive manhunt to find the poor, pitiful, murderous soul who couldn’t stand seeing perfection exist in the world.

28. The Civilian, Rachel Long, Brian Pittman
Internet detective with no particular expertise investigates crime with no particular significance. First of a trilogy.

29. The Crown, Max Hurwitz
Dentist with a drug problem is cash poor but crown rich. Tries to unload $800,000 in dental prosthetics in Costa Rica.

30. Revelation, Hernany Perla
Man has a revelation: Buy gold.

31. The Killing Floor, Bac Delorme, Stephen Clarke
A young girl is traumatized when she wanders into a meat factory after a bouncy ball. The pools of blood haunt her dreams. She tries vegetarianism. She tries activism. But only revenge makes her feel better. The story of how sometimes murder is the only option.

32. Elsewhere, Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis
In this claustrophobic tale of obese twins working in a laundromat in Wyoming, we finally understand the meaning of hell.

33. Clarity, Ryan Belenzon, Jeffrey Gelber
Everyone starts taking Adderall all the time, and it’s really great for a while—until people lose too much weight and stop making sense.

34. 1969: A Space Odyssey or How Kubrick Learned to Stop Worrying and Land on the Moon, Stephany Folsom
Two people sit on a bench and talk about Stanley Kubrick movies with their mouths…but their eyes are saying, “Kiss me.” Will they or won’t they? Tensions run high in this talky. Run time: 2:26. (Mother Jones’ Asawin Suebsaeng spoke to Stephany Folsom about what her script is actually about. That interview is here.)

35. From Here to Albion, Rory Haines, Sohrab Noshirvani
American importer/exporter Henry Roth works hard to bring blue jeans to Britain.

36. Nicholas, Leo Sardarian
Nicholas is handsome, young, and has his whole life ahead of him, but when he impregnates Mrs. Claus, his future is set in stone. Adorable elf children make this a must-see.

37. The Golden Record, Aaron Kandell, Jordan Kandell
Everything in Scott Willard’s life comes easy to him—grades, girls, money—but one day at Harvard he takes mushrooms and realizes that despite his sterling credentials, his life is meaningless. He sets out to make it right. Conveniently, he’s rich, so he can do whatever he likes.

38. Man of Sorrow, Neville Kiser
The biography of Joe, who felt like a fraud even though really he worked pretty hard.

39. Dig, Adam Barker
One man’s journey of self-discovery while digging a hole, a really deep hole (based on the real-life blog).

40. Free Byrd, Jon Boyer
Unjustly convicted inmates escape from prison, are illiterate.

41. Reminiscence, Lisa Joy Nolan
A 27-year-old moves to the big city to pursue his dreams, gets an internship, has awkward sex with a lady in his office, lands a full-time gig at an art gallery, but can’t stop thinking of this one summer when he had sex with men back in Nevada.

42. Beauty Queen, Annie Neal
At 33, Miss America 1994 goes back to small-town Nebraska and opens a dry-goods store, dates a local contractor, gets pregnant, married, divorced, then makes her daughter enter pageants.

43. The Politician, Matthew Bass, Theodore Bressman
The President is forced to shoot down a hijacked transatlantic flight headed towards Washington, killing 211 Americans. Impeached by the House, he begins lobbying for support in the Senate. In the end, he is acquitted after agreeing to support increased ethanol subsidies in the farm bill.

44. American Sniper, Jason Dean Hall
We’re pretty sure this is based on the book American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History.

45. Tchaikovsky’s Requiem, Jonathan Stokes
It’s about hockey.

46. The Remains, Meaghan Oppenheimer
Elizabeth has a secret she’s never told anyone. But when a book is discovered on a park bench full of codes and high-level math, Berlin’s top code-breaker starts solving a riddle that leads straight to her.

47. Beast, Zach Dean
Sexy male underwear model Junot Grant has everything he’s ever wanted—his penis 50-feet tall on a billboard in Times Square, a gorgeous girlfriend—but he leaves the glamorous life behind to journey to his home village in Brazil and confront is oldest foe, Dad.

48. The Line, Sang Kyu Kim
Old dying theater director blames his failing heart on stress from years of being unable to mount a successful version of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy. With only days to live, he resolves to hunt down and kill every former cast member who ever uttered the word “Macbeth” backstage.

49. Half Heard in the Stillness, David Weil
The pretentious love story for the holidays. Poetry is whispered, sex is hinted at, and professors get tenure in “Half Heard in the Stillness.”

50. The Fixer, Bill Kennedy
The long-awaited sequel to Pulp Fiction starring an aging Harvey Keitel, a ranch house in the valley, and old cars. And brain pieces, of course.

51. Pox Americana, Frank John Hughes
This searing, multi-story Crash-like drama tells the tale of 17 interwoven lives over the course of 36 hours. The thesis: chicken pox parties are gross.

52. Broken Cove, Declan O’Dwyer
It was July and everyone was beautiful—Jacquelin, Janey, James, and Ralph. They frolicked when they wanted to frolic, they drank when they wanted to drink, they swam when the water was warm. Then summer ended and they lost touch and got jobs and their hair thinned, and now, when the light is just right, they think of that night they had that orgy in the cove, and they smile.

53. Last Minute Maids, Leo Nichols
When down-on-their luck duchesses are forced to be their own housekeepers, high jinks and mistaken identity ensue. Can the elder duchess catch a rich man before their mansion is seized?

54. Section 6, Aaron Berg
A soccer team that sucks and shouldn’t win somehow wins and the people who live in its vicinity are happy for a while.

55. Sugar in My Veins, Barbara Stepansky
From the flophouse to the boardroom: meet the heroin addict who taught Big Soda how to hook a nation on sugar.

56. Where Angels Die, Alexander Felix
Anaheim. It’s Anaheim. That’s where they die. This is about Anaheim.

57. Frisco, Simon Stephenson
Beautiful, smart Jessica is from New Jersey, but she really wants to fit in here in her new home of San Francisco so she calls it Frisco all the time. The mystery at the heart of this film: why can’t Jessica make friends?

58. Sea of Trees, Chris Sparling
This is a movie about a bunch of really pretentious people who live in a forest but insist on calling it a sea of trees.

59. Diablo Run, Shea Mirzai, Evan Mirzai
It’s about dogs.

60. Cake, Patrick Tobin
A man is addicted to cake, dies.

61. Seed, Christina Hodson
Jane and Jane were married in one of San Francisco’s first same-sex marriages at City Hall. Now they are ready to be parents. Join them on a journey of finding the right progenitor for their child, as they go from sperm bank to friend to sperm bank, and fall more in love along the way.

62. Superbrat, Eric Slovin, Leo Allen
The story of a former child reality TV star who learns to be a real person in middle age.

63. Pan, Jason Fuchs
A mysterious film critic who looks a bit like a goat teaches Hollywood to value art over profit but also, separately, and due to personal problems, hits a bunch of people in the face with frying pans.

64. Dude, Olivia Milch
“I warned you not to call me that. You knew I was capable of this,” opens this bro-tastic movie that starts at the end with a heinous crime and works its way backward.

65. Hot Summer Nights, Elijah Bynum
Seven friends think they’re going on a sun-filled summer vacation to Brazil. Little do they know that July is actually winter in the southern hemisphere. Four die immediately. The other 3 must make it through brutal terrain. A story of survival.

66. Holland, Michigan, Andrew Sodroski
Elon Musk creates a brilliant space colony on the moon, a one way ticket to which costs $500,000. Jealous, Richard Branson invades. The 99 percent watch the bloodshed from a small town in Michigan.

67. Mississippi Mud, Elijah Bynum
The artisanal Brooklyn-distilled moonshine one grad student turned into a household name.

68. A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
*ring ring*
“Hello?”
“Hi. My name’s Jeff. I’m an ad rep from Monster.com…”
*click*

69. Randle is Benign, Damien Ober
What if you thought you were dying of cancer, so you spent your savings, cheated on your wife, quit your job, and did everything on your bucket list you ever wanted to do—then found out the lump was benign? This is the story of Randle putting his life back together after cancer takes it away and then gives it back, broken in pieces.

70. Make a Wish, Zach Frankel
Sophie is about to turn 30 but she swears she isn’t freaking out that much. It’s normal to cry on the subway every night and booty-call her ex-boyfriend. He may be horrible, but he’s better than being alone, right? But then a funny thing happens: She makes a wish, blows out the candles, and her life begins to change. Coincidence?

71. Patient Z, Michael Le
Everyone on Earth has been turned into a zombie except Janet. She’s the last one left. She kills a bunch of them, but then they catch her and there are a lot of moral questions about who is in the right here. Also: Gore and explosions. Have you seen the Walking Dead?

72. Queen of Hearts, Stephanie Shannon
Callooh! Callay! O frabjous day! Lewis Carroll was probably a child rapist.

See you at the movies!

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2015 in Film, as Predicted by the 2013 Black List

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Pushing Poor People to the Suburbs Is Bad for the Environment

by caringk63 Posted on December 16, 2013

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the Grist website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In recent years, an overhyped counterrevolution has emerged in America. Millennials from the suburbs and their empty-nester parents have been flocking to certain desirable urban neighborhoods. This has led to a lot of chin-pulling about “demographic inversion,”wherein the cities become richer and whiter and the suburbs more non-white and poor. Skeptics note that suburbs are in the aggregate still richer and whiter than central cities and most middle-class families still settle in suburbia.

This sociological debate misses the important environmental question: What will we have achieved if we simply change the demographic complexion of who lives in walkable urban areas and who doesn’t? The answer is nothing. For the urbanist movement to be worthy of its name, the end result has to be that a higher percentage of Americans are actually living in central cities, and that the residents of both cities and suburbs represent the full spectrum of American life.

The evidence suggests that a combination of bad public policies is instead causing poor residents to be priced out of the most popular cities by well-heeled newcomers. Consider Annie Lowrey’s report on low-income renters in Tuesday’s New York Times. They are being squeezed by an economy where all the gains accrue to the top and new housing is built at the high end. Gentrification also brings wealthier renters into poor urban neighborhoods, bidding up the price of existing housing. Writes Lowrey:

The number of renters with very low incomes—less than 30 percent of the local median income, or about $19,000 nationally—surged by 3 million to 11.8 million between 2001 and 2011, according to a report released Monday by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. But the number of affordable rentals available to those households held steady at about 7 million. And by 2011, about 2.6 million of those rentals were occupied by higher-income households.…

Many of the worst shortages are in major cities with healthy local economies, like Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Washington.

Coincidentally, the Times is also running a moving, deeply reported five-part series this week on the life of Dasani, a homeless girl living in a shelter in Brooklyn. Her family lost their housing subsidy in 2010, when the New York state program was canceled for lack of funds. Dasani, her parents, and her seven siblings now crowd into one room in a squalid, vermin-infested building next to the Walt Whitman Houses, a vast public housing project in the swiftly gentrifying Fort Greene neighborhood.

From a housing perspective, three things stand out about Dasani’s family:

They would rather live in the projects than in a shelter. Public housing projects are supposedly a discredited form of big-government liberalism, and the federal government no longer appropriates much money at all for their construction. But in New York City, there are 167,353 families on the waiting list for public housing. (New York also has 123,533 families on the waiting list for Section 8 housing vouchers.)

Their homelessness is the direct result of being ejected from Advantage, a government rental assistance program. “By August 2010, bedbugs had infested the family’s house, just as their rent subsidy once again expired,” writes the Times‘ Andrea Elliot. “The city’s shelters were filling with former Advantage recipients—families who had been homeless before taking the rent subsidy, only to become homeless again.”

Their dream is to move to the Poconos because they could never afford an apartment in New York. The Poconos region in Pennsylvania has long been a rural area best known in New York City as a relatively cheap vacation spot. Now it is filling up with working-class New Yorkers priced out of the five boroughs. In other words, it’s the exurbs.

Living in the Poconos, where driving is a necessity and a commute to New York takes 90 minutes, is not environmentally efficient. If the wealthy in-migration to New York City forces an equal out-migration, there has been no environmental gain.

To provide affordable apartments in thriving inner cities and their inner-ring suburbs, we need to adopt both the conservative free-market and liberal big-government approaches to expanding housing supply. Zoning restrictions on density must be lifted, so that developers can increase supply to meet demand. But we must also realize that the market isn’t providing housing at the price points low-income families need. As Roger K. Lewis notes in The Washington Post, “there is not a single state in the United States where a person working full time and earning minimum wage can afford to rent, at fair-market value, a two-bedroom apartment or home.”

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias makes the point about zoning in reference to Lowrey’s article. Lowrey illustrates her story with a 54-year-old nanny facing skyrocketing rents in Columbia Heights, a neighborhood of Washington, D.C., that was predominantly low-income just a decade ago and is now heavily gentrified. Yglesias writes:

There are two questions unanswered… With demand surging, why doesn’t construction surge enough to keep vacancy rates roughly stable. The other: If builders are always aiming at that high end, why are they building in Columbia Heights rather than in the traditionally fancier and more expensive neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park.

The answers are “zoning” and “zoning.”…

You have a twofold limitation on supply. On the one hand, the total number of new units is capped so people only want to build luxury. On the other hand, new construction in the fancy neighborhoods is absolutely prohibited.

For example, you might walk up Connecticut Avenue just west of Rock Creek Park in D.C.’s tony Cleveland Park neighborhood and think it is fully built up because there are no empty lots. But why are all the buildings merely six or 10 stories tall? Why not 40, when the prices indicate that the demand is there? This is why D.C. must eliminate its building height restriction. But it’s also a matter of local zoning ordinances. The side streets in Cleveland Park are dominated by low-density single-family homes. If the market could support replacing them with apartment buildings, why shouldn’t developers be allowed to do that? D.C.’s density is only about one-third that of New York’s, and its population is only about three-quarters as high as its peak 50 years ago. So clearly there is room for more development, as there is in other expensive cities such as San Francisco and Boston.

At the same time, it makes no sense to assume the market will provide the poor with housing any more than it will provide them with health insurance. It’s true that massive, isolated housing projects have often bred social ills. But as the demand to live in New York’s projects demonstrates, it is better than forcing people to live in homeless shelters or more than an hour’s drive from the city where their jobs and social networks are located. The projects in New York are so destigmatized that developers are going to build market-rate housing right in their footprint. And housing projects no longer all look like vertical prisons. Innovative design can make subsidized housing green, human-scaled, attractive, and integrated into the streetscape.

Since even some conservatives agree with liberals that Section 8 vouchers, which allow low-income renters to find apartments on the market, are both the most efficient means of providing affordable housing and the best approach to encourage economic integration, we should appropriate more money for them.

Too often, after years of neglect, depopulation, crime, and disinvestment, cities have viewed recruiting richer residents as the essence of successful renewal. But a revival of urban America as a whole means that more people, from all walks of life, should be able to live safely, affordably, and comfortably in our cities.

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Pushing Poor People to the Suburbs Is Bad for the Environment

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Is This Plane the Biggest Pentagon Rip-Off of All Time?

by Jonelle8381 Posted on December 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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The passage of the Ryan-Murray budget plan in the House sends a strong signal that the Pentagon’s budget is basically untouchable. Under the deal, the military’s base budget (which doesn’t include supplemental funding for overseas operations and combat) will be restored to around $520 billion next year—more than it got in 2006 and 2007, when the United States was fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Erika Eichelberger reports, the deal could spell the end of efforts to make the Pentagon budget more efficient, particularly in the realm of procurement and contracting. Exhibit A is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the stealthy, high-tech fighter jets that are supposed to do everything from landing on aircraft carriers and taking off vertically to dogfighting and dropping bombs. Faced with sequestration cuts, the Air Force had considered delaying its purchases of the fighters, which are years behind schedule, hugely over budget, and plagued with problems. If the House budget plan becomes law and sequestration is eased for two years, those plans also may be shelved.

More on the pricey plane with a reputation as the biggest defense boondoggle in history:

Rolling out the F-35 originally was expected to cost $233 billion, but now it’s expected to cost nearly $400 billion. The time needed to develop the plane has gone from 10 years to 18.

Lockheed says the final cost per plane will be about $75 million. However, according to the Government Accountability Office, the actual cost has jumped to $137 million.

It was initially estimated that it could cost another $1 trillion or more to keep the new F-35s flying for 30 years. Pentagon officials called this “unaffordable”—and now say it will cost only $857 million. “This is no longer the trillion-dollar aircraft,” boasts a Lockheed Martin executive.
Planes started rolling off the assembly line before development and testing were finished, which could result in $8 billion worth of retrofits.

A 2013 report by the Pentagon inspector general identified 719 problems with the F-35 program. Some of the issues with the first batch of planes delivered to the Marines:

Pilots are not allowed to fly these test planes at night, within 25 miles of lightning, faster than the speed of sound, or with real or simulated weapons.
Pilots say cockpit visibility is worse than in existing fighters.
Special high-tech helmets have “frequent problems” and are “badly performing.”
Takeoffs may be postponed when the temperature is below 60°F.

The F-35 program has 1,400 suppliers in 46 states. Lockheed Martin gave money to 425 members of Congress in 2012 and has spent $159 million on lobbying since 2000.
Remember this bumper sticker?

And those are fancy, San Francisco foodie cupcakes.

We’ve got much more on the Pentagon budget here.

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Is This Plane the Biggest Pentagon Rip-Off of All Time?

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What Kind of Crazy Anti-Environment Bills Is ALEC Pushing Now?

by AlysaNivison Posted on December 6, 2013

Mother Jones

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The American Legislative Exchange Council may be hemorrhaging members and grappling with a funding crisis, but that hasn’t hampered its ambitions. In 2013, the conservative outfit, which specializes in generating state-level legislation, launched a multi-front jihad on green energy, with more than 77 ALEC-backed energy bills cropping up in state legislature. Among the most prominent were measures to repeal renewable energy standards and block meaningful disclosure of chemicals used in fracking. Most of these bills failed. But as state lawmakers and corporate representatives gather in Washington this week for the group’s three-day policy summit, ALEC is pushing ahead with a new package of energy and environmental bills that will benefit Big Energy and polluters.

More MoJo reporting on the American Legislative Exchange Council.


ALEC’s Campaign Against Renewable Energy


ALEC Boots Mother Jones From Its Annual Conference


What Kind of Crazy Anti-Environment Bills Is ALEC Pushing Now?


Study: ALEC Is Bad for the Economy


Forced to Work Sick? That’s Fine With ALEC


ALEC in 1985: S&M Accidents Cause 10 Percent of San Francisco’s Homicides

On Wednesday, The Guardian reported some details of ALEC’s anti-green-energy offensive and its new policy roadmap, which began taking shape at an August gathering of the group’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force in Chicago. The newspaper focused largely on ALEC’s efforts to undermine net-metering policies, which allow private citizens to sell excess power from rooftop solar panels to utilities. (“As it stands now, those direct generation customers are essentially freeriders on the system,” John Eick, an ALEC legislative analyst, told the Guardian.) But the group’s energy task force—which includes as members fossil fuel interests, such as Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil—will also be peddling other pro-corporate state initiatives, some with far-reaching implications. Below is a roundup:

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What Kind of Crazy Anti-Environment Bills Is ALEC Pushing Now?

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Conservative Group ALEC in 1985: S&M Accidents Cause 10 Percent of San Francisco’s Homicides

by ShannonEsh Posted on December 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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Gay people recruit small children in public schools and S&M accidents are a leading cause of death in San Francisco, according to a 1985 newsletter from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the national, corporate-funded conservative group best known for pushing stand your ground laws and union-busting bills.

The report was dug up and highlighted by the liberal watchdog group People For the American Way, which is organizing a protest of this week’s ALEC conference in Washington, DC. Titled “Homosexuals: Just Another Minority Group?,” the report reads today like the script for a bizarre nature channel program on gay people. In it, ALEC outlines six primary types of gay people: “the blatant”; “the secret lifer”; “the desperate”; “the adjusted”; “the bisexual”; and “the situational.” (The “blatant” homosexual “is the obvious ‘limp-wristed’ individual who typifies stereotype of the ‘average’ homosexual.”)

According to the report, 10 percent of all homicides in San Francisco at one point in the 1980s were “a result of S&M accidents among homosexuals.”

The newsletter also serves as a cheat-sheet for gay men or women looking to meet like-minded people. “If a bar scene is preferred, the ‘Gayellow Pages,’ helps the homosexual find appropriate meeting places for socializing with other homosexuals,” the report says. If that doesn’t work, the newsletter discusses “public restrooms” and “massage parlors” as havens for “the desperate homosexual.” Gay people even had their own language: “The homosexual’s vocabulary is another part of their culture that separates them from the heterosexual mainstream.”

The ALEC newsletter asserted that homosexuality was not only a choice (“the homosexual makes the conscious choice to pursue members of his/her own sex”), but one that its practitioners often came to regret. “Tom Minnery, who writes for Christianity Today, has written about homosexuals forsaking their homosexuality upon becoming Christian,” the newsletter notes. “He says, ‘the fact is, many people are experiencing deliverance from homosexuality. The evidence is too great to deny it.'”

But those who refused to abandon their homosexual urges were a risk to public health and children, according to ALEC. “Whatever the type of homosexual, one of the more dominant practices within the homosexual world is pedophilia, the fetish for young children,” warned the newsletter. The reason for this was simple. “What is important to remember here is the fact that homosexuals cannot reproduce themselves biologically so they must recruit the young.” And gay people came at a significant cost to the taxpayers, in the form of research for infectious diseases and tax-exempt status for LGBT non-profits. “In addition to federal funding of AIDS research, the federal government has been active in funding the homosexual movement.”

The report even took aim at the early stages of gay-rights legislation, which the ALEC newsletter warned would force conservatives into uncomfortable and perhaps dangerous situations. Under new anti-discrimination laws for some public employees, “parents will no longer be able to keep their children out from under the tutelage of homosexuals.” Bans on LGBT discrimination in housing would mean “Landlords will be forced to rent their property to a homosexual couple even if the landlord’s family shares the same building.” But the most ominous piece legislation concerned a proposal to end LGBT discrimination in immigration: “This bill would permit known homosexuals from other countries to become citizens of the U.S.”

The horror.

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Conservative Group ALEC in 1985: S&M Accidents Cause 10 Percent of San Francisco’s Homicides

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WATCH: How to Draw a Thanksgiving Turkey that Represents the Nuclear Deal with Iran Fiore Cartoon

by AracelisJrh Posted on December 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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WATCH: How to Draw a Thanksgiving Turkey that Represents the Nuclear Deal with Iran Fiore Cartoon

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