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5 Ways to Save a Lake

by RenatoLind Posted on March 25, 2018

There has been a lot of bad news lately about Lake Winnipeg. Algae blooms occur regularly, and zebra mussels are settling into their new home. Lake Winnipeg was named the world?s most threatened lake in 2013 by Global Nature Fund, and some scientists have even declared that Lake Winnipeg is a lost cause.

Despite the current state of Lake Winnipeg and Manitoba?s other large lakes, there is both reason and evidence for hope. The current issues we are facing have occurred in other regions of Canada, including Ontario?s Great Lakes, and Manitoba?s large lakes have avoided problems, such as industrial pollution, that have degraded other large lakes. There are immense benefits that these lakes continue to provide to people, and they remain places of spectacular nature. Most importantly, there is still an opportunity to protect and restore the health of Lake Winnipeg.

Five ways to save a lake (Infographic by NCC)

1. Stop the establishment of new invasive species

Yes, zebra mussels are in Lake Winnipeg. And so are other aquatic invasive species, including common carp, rainbow smelt, white bass and Asian tapeworm. But these are still a small fraction of the species in the lake, which remains dominated by native species.

Management actions are limited once invasive species become established. The ideal scenario is to prevent these species from entering the lake and the watershed, and monitor our lands and waters so they can be detected early and eradicated. This is the opportunity we still have in Lake Winnipeg, in particular with quagga mussels and European common reed (phragmites).

2. Keep native fish populations healthy, particularly bottom feeders

Invasive species often spread rapidly because there are no natural predators to control them. In the Great Lakes, many native fishes, particularly bottom feeders, eat zebra mussels. Many of these same fish species are also found in Lake Winnipeg, such as lake sturgeon, freshwater drum and lake whitefish. The recent shift in the lake whitefish range to the southern basin of Lake Winnipeg may even be a response to the rapidly growing number of zebra mussels. Keeping populations of these fishes healthy may be our best defense in keeping zebra mussel populations in check.

3. Protect and restore shorelines

Lake Winnipeg and Manitoba?s other large lakes still have vast stretches of natural shorelines, such as coastal wetlands and sand beaches. These shorelines include areas designated as Important Bird Areas, such as Netley-Libau Marsh. In addition to providing important habitat for birds, and spawning and nursery habitat for fishes, shoreline vegetation plays a critical role in filtering lake waters. Lake Winnipeg still has many important coastal habitats. Protecting and restoring them is critical to the health of the lake. In urban and rural areas, including parks and waterfront communities, there are many opportunities to restore shorelines with native vegetation while maintaining access to the waterfront.

4. Find innovative ways to keep water on the land

This is a tough one. For over 100 years, we have been trying to get water off the land as quickly as possible. In some watersheds that are dominated by urban areas and farms, this can mean that the sponge that nature?s wetlands, grasslands and forests once provided to store and filter water has been replaced with hardened surfaces and drains. When water flows quickly from land to lake, it often carries nutrients. These nutrients, and in particular phosphorus, provide fertilizer for algae.

There are many examples of how this can be solved. Septic systems can be inspected and maintained to ensure that no nutrients are seeping into the lake. Protecting natural habitats that help hold water on the land, such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada?s work in the Interlake Region, is also part of the solution.

5. Celebrate what we have

Despite zebra mussels and algae, Lake Winnipeg remains an extraordinary place. From one of the world?s most productive freshwater fisheries, to white pelicans, to some of Canada?s largest freshwater wetlands, Lake Winnipeg is a unique and special ecosystem. We need to celebrate this lake and focus on the solutions, not the problems. As stewards of one of the planet?s greatest freshwater resources, we have the opportunity to demonstrate success to the rest of the world. These waters are a foundation of Manitoba and support our economy, lifestyle and identity. It is not a lost cause because options remain to protect and restore Lake Winnipeg.

This article was written by Dan Kraus and originally appeared in The Cottager magazine and is reposted with permission.

Post photo: Lake Winnipeg (Photo by Christine Chilton/NCC staff)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Ways to Save a Lake

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How to Ditch Your Air Conditioner Without Melting

by JerilynFremont Posted on June 16, 2016

During the summer of 2015the hottest summer in recorded historyI went without air conditioning.

I dont say this to brag: the decision was made mostly out of laziness. At the time, I was living in an apartment with big, beautiful casement windows. Big, beautiful casement windows that required a special air conditionerone that, at least according to my Google research into the costwas apparently hand-chiseled from Italian marble and installed by unicorns.

I hemmed and hawed. I spent weeks scouring Craigslist for a used (cheaper) model, finding it hard to justify the cost of a new one when I wasnt sure how long Id live in that apartment. I put off the purchase. And every day that I put it off, it got hotter. And every day, I dealt with ituntil, out of nowhere, the weather cooled and fall was in full swing. I had survived! I had prevailed! I had done what no one else had done (well, except for about a third of U.S. households).

So how did I do it? Glad you I asked. Heres how you can survive the summer without air conditioning and be smug about it just like me:

Draw the curtains.

Your plants may enjoy the sunlight streaming through the windows, but if you want to cool off, close your curtains. And make sure you choose the right ones: medium-colored draperies with white-plastic backings can reduce heat gains by 33 percent.

Close the blinds.

Yes, between the drawn curtains and the shut blinds, youll probably feel a little bit like youve been cast in a movie about an old, hunchbacked ghost who lives in an attic. But when closed and lowered, highly reflective blinds can reduce heat gains by 45 percent.

Go DIY

Take a tip from those living in the Arizona desert in the 1920sto get relief from the heat, people would soak sheets in water and hang them inside the windows, relying on fans to pull air in through the damp fabric, cooling the room.

Stock your freezer.

Shove those bagel bites out of the way, and make room for your undies, pajamas and sheets. Sure, the cooling effect isnt long-lasting, but it is powerful. Putting them on after a cold shower? Even better.

Pick the right pillow.

Not only do buckwheat hull pillows offer great neck support, the hulls have air space between them that help circulate air without trapping your body heat like regular pillows.

Fan out.

In addition to setting up your fans to create a cross-breeze, some swear by getting creative with ice. The trick? Fill a large bowl with ice cubes or ice packs and place it in front of a powerful fanthe air will whip off the ice for an extra chilly effect.

Check the ceiling.

If you have ceiling fans, a small adjustment can make a big difference: most have a counterclockwise option, which creates more air movement in the center of the room, creating a much-needed breeze effect.

Find your pulse.

Blood near the surface of your skin can transfer heat into the surrounding atmosphere, and it circulates back a bit cooler than it was before, Stephen Cheung, Canada Research Chair in environmental ergonomics at Brock University in Ontario, tells CBC News. “The blood vessels open near the skin and that allows us to cool down deeper tissues throughout the body. Apply ice cubes or ice packs to your head, neck and wrists to cool off in minutes.

Switch out your bulbs.

If you havent made the leap from incandescent bulbs to CFLs, now might be a good timeincandescent light bulbs waste 90 percent of their energy in the heat they give off.

Of course, when youre forgoing air conditioning, stay aware. If you have pets or live with older family members, keep in mind that they may not have the same tolerance for heat. Happy cooling!

Related:
3 Homemade Ice Cream Popsicles7 Amazing Things You Can Do With Watermelon
Why Veganism is the Future

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How to Ditch Your Air Conditioner Without Melting

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How You Can Be Green in the Office

by WendyWWQHcs Posted on March 5, 2016

I have a nine-to-five job, spending most of my day in front of the computer and far removed from any Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) property. I will likely not be doing hands-on conservation on any given work day. Sometimes, cubicle dwellers like me need to think hard about how we can contribute in environmentally positive ways in our workplace.

Recently, the NCC national office in Toronto opened a can of worms in hopes of closing the loop with our organic wastes. Up until November 2015, there had been no organic waste collection in our building. That all changed when a vermiculture start-up contacted NCC about composting our food waste through Green Bins Growing.

Owner and operator of WasteNot Worm Farms, Jocelyn Molyneux, is just about the most enthusiastic person Ive seen about red, wriggly worms. Over a lunch and learn, Jocelyn introduced our group to the important roles worms play in agriculture, the differences between traditional (hot) composting and worm composting and their fertilizer by-products. Of about a dozen attendees, only one had experience with worm composting and that was from the college she attended that had adopted this practice.

So whats the point of all this, and is it worth it?

Worms are the soils natural nutrient recycling squad and they are quite apt at this job. They eat decaying matter and produce nutrient-rich biofertilizer. By signing on for an office worm composting system, were looking to divert our organic waste away from landfill to a process that feeds back into our food system.

Jocelyn told us one pound of worms can eat up to one pound of food waste each day. The resulting manure material is called worm castings a dense, nutrient-rich humus that sequesters carbons, feeds soil with beneficial microbes that kick-start the soil food web and provides natural plant growth stimulators.

Compare this to conventional fertilizers, which are generally made from petroleum products: conventional fertilizers damage the natural soil ecosystem, reducing soil fertility by killing soil microbes and creating a dependency on further chemical fertilizer applications. Check out this fertilizer buying guide published by National Geographic.

Even when compared to traditional composting, worms come out on top. Traditional composting produces a low-grade soil mulch where the high heat treatment has killed most beneficial microbes and much of the carbon and other nutrients have broken down, Jocelyn says.

The price difference is telling, too. Worm castings weigh in at $400 U.S./cubic yard versus $30 U.S./cubic yard for compost.

A big incentive with WasteNot Worm Farm is that we receive 25 percent of our years castings to give out to employees or donate to a community garden. A good deal, compared to buying it at $5/lb, if you ask me!

Meeting our worms

Red wigglers are small but have a big appetite (Photo by NCC)

After receiving the 101 on worm composting, we had the chance to introduce ourselves to the red wigglers we had just employed. To our surprise, these are thin, spindly worms about two to four inches long; nothing like the big plump earthworms (night crawlers) some of us encounter while working in our gardens.

A brave few held their hand out to meet the worms, but were told not to handle them for too long as worms are photosensitive and can go into spasms under prolonged exposure to light.

We will not however actually have a worm bin in our kitchen, and for good reason! WasteNot Worm Farms collects our food wastes weekly, reducing the risk of fruit flies and limiting the waft of bad odors. Composting at a central farm facility (about 80 kilometres outside of Toronto) is more efficient for a small operation like WasteNot Worm Farms. Like the worms themselves, WasteNot Worm Farms is small but has a big appetite.

Ontario sends three million tonnes of organics to landfill each year, mostly because it’s cheaper to landfill in Michigan than it is to compost in Ontario.

Canadians are hungry for sustainable solutions, and worm farming is a simple, inexpensive biotechnology that recycles waste nutrients back to our soil. With early adopters like the Nature Conservancy of Canada leading the way, I’m confident that vermicomposting is on the verge of becoming a popular Zero Waste industrial recycling solution, says Jocelyn.

Trashing out then and now

Green Bin Growing (Photo by NCC)

It has now been four months since we started using the green bins and I can already see a drastic diversion of wastes. In the past without organic waste collection services, we had no choice but to dump our food scraps into the same bin as our non-recyclables. Since we signed on with WasteNot Worm Farms, our staff have been diligent in correctly sorting their organic, compostable items, recyclables and trash.

Our hope is that by paying a small premium for Green Bins Growing, we are supporting a waste management practice that promotes environmental sustainability. We are looking forward to seeing the volume of worm castings our wastes can generate over the year, ensuring were doing our part to cycle those nutrients back into our soil.

This post originally appeared on Land Lines and was written by Wendy Ho, editorial coordinator with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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WTO swats down India’s massive solar initiative

by RacheleODowd Posted on February 25, 2016

WTO swats down India’s massive solar initiative

By on 24 Feb 2016commentsShare

The World Trade Organization delivered a blow to India’s ambitious solar power program on Wednesday at the behest of the United States. So much for all that nice chatter about international climate cooperation back in December.

Responding to a U.S. complaint, a WTO dispute panel ruled that several provisions of India’s National Solar Mission were “inconsistent” with international trade norms. The point of contention? India’s solar plan, which seeks to install 100 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2022, requires a certain percentage of cells and panels to be manufactured locally.

These types of provisions, called domestic content requirements, are prohibited under most international trade agreements. Want to be part of the WTO? You gotta be open to trade — every time — or you’re guilty of the dreaded protectionism.

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An estimated 300 million Indians don’t have access to electricity. The country’s solar plan, launched in 2010, aims to change that — while simultaneously combating poverty via job creation. And while India has indeed made strides in adding solar capacity, the U.S. argues that the Solar Mission’s domestic content requirements have led to a 90 percent decrease in its solar exports to India since 2011. The export losses led the U.S. to file a WTO complaint, which has been staunchly opposed by several U.S. environmental groups. In August of last year, the WTO panel released a preliminary ruling against the Indian domestic content requirements, and Wednesday’s ruling finalized that decision.

U.S. solar industry leaders praised the WTO panel ruling. (Recall that they stand to make more money by selling their equipment in India.) “This decision helps us bring clean energy to the people of India, as that nation’s demand for electricity rapidly grows,” Dan Whitten, vice president of communications for the Solar Energy Industries Association, told PV-Tech. This, of course, ignores the fact that domestic content requirements allow a country like India to provide themselves with clean energy. (And to potentially do so with fewer emissions, as domestically produced solar panels don’t have to be shipped in from overseas — but this story isn’t exactly about what’s right for the environment.)

The ruling is a particularly harsh kick in the gut to climate cooperation, coming so soon after the (quasi-)promising results reached in Paris last December. “The ink is barely dry on the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement, but clearly trade still trumps real action on climate change,” said Sam Cossar-Gilbert, a program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International, in a statement.

You might be tempted to call the U.S. a hypocrite at this point: On the one hand, it led the Paris climate talks in all but name, while on the other hand, it pressed ahead with its WTO complaint against India. But this isn’t so much a demonstration of American inconsistency on the issue as it is of the disconnect between trade policy and climate policy more generally. If there’s hypocrisy to be found anywhere, it’s in U.S. trade policy itself: The United States supports some degree of subsidies for local renewables in nearly half of all states. India could likely file a WTO complaint against the U.S. if it wanted.

This isn’t the first time that trade agreements have cast a shadow over a domestic solar initiative. In 2012, for example, in response to a complaint filed on behalf of Japan and the E.U., the WTO ruled against the government of Ontario’s green energy program, which incentivized renewable producers to source goods and services from inside the province. As the free-trade logic goes, these types of local content requirements discriminate against foreign manufacturers.

Wednesday’s decision comes at a time of rampant coal and waste burning for India. In Delhi, air quality is now worse than in Beijing. While India will now consider an appeal to the WTO Appellate Body, it’s worth noting that when Canada appealed the Ontario WTO ruling, it lost.

Said Cossar-Gilbert: “Trade policies are preventing a sustainable future.”

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Yet Another Oil Train Disaster

by BridgetYGFX Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Another day, another oil train derailment. Early Saturday morning, a Canadian National Railway train carrying Alberta crude derailed outside the tiny town of Gogama in northern Ontario. Thirty-eight cars came off the tracks, and five of them splashed into the Mattagami River system. The accident caused a massive fire and leaked oil into waterways used by locals—including a nearby indigenous community—for drinking and fishing. No one was injured, but according to CN Railway’s Twitter feed, fire fighters were still suppressing fires earlier today. People in the area, including members of the Mattagami First Nation, have been complaining of respiratory issues from the smoke.

This oil train derailment was the second in three days in Canada and the fifth in three weeks in North America. An oil train derailed last week near Galena, Illinois. The oil boom in Canada and the United States has resulted in a dramatic increase in the use of these trains, and derailments now appear to be the new normal.

After the 2013 derailment and explosion of an oil train killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, many pointed to old, unsafe DOT-111 tanker models as a main reason for the disaster and others like it. But at least four of the five recent incidents have involved newer, and theoretically safer, CPC-1232 models.

Environmental and safety advocates say oil-by-rail needs even more stringent safety measures, but they have been slow coming. The US government reportedly balked at creating national standards to limit the amount of potentially explosive gas in tankers carrying oil from North Dakota. And the White House Office of Management and Budget has said it will need until May to finalize rules proposed by the Department of Transportation last summer that would slow down crude-by-rail deliveries and require tankers to have insulated steel shells. The CPC-1232 tankers that derailed in Galena did not have these shells. I asked the Canadian National Railway Company if the tankers involved in Saturday’s derailment had these shells. The company didn’t directly answer that question. In an email, it stated: “The tank cars involved were CPC 1232 tank cars. The exact specifications will be information gathered as part of the ongoing investigation.”

Below are Twitter pictures of Saturday’s derailment in northern Ontario.

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Yet Another Oil Train Disaster

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Exploding Oil Trains Could Become a Horrifying New Normal

by GuadaluG81 Posted on February 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last week, a train carrying oil from North Dakota derailed in West Virginia, spilled oil into a river, and sent a horrifying fireball shooting into the sky. The incident came only a few days after another oil train spill in Ontario. In fact, in the last few years the number of oil train accidents has skyrocketed, thanks to booming production in the northern US and Canada that has overwhelmed the existing pipeline network.

Oil train accidents like those could become a regular fixture in headlines across the US, according to a Department of Transportation analysis uncovered by the Associated Press over the weekend:

The federal government predicts that trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades, causing more than $4 billion in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people if an accident happens in a densely populated part of the U.S.…

If just one of those more severe accidents occurred in a high-population area, it could kill more than 200 people and cause roughly $6 billion in damage.

The report blamed the projections on the drastic uptick in oil-by-rail traffic, as well as on severely lagging safety standards for rail cars (check out our in-depth multimedia story on the latter here).

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Exploding Oil Trains Could Become a Horrifying New Normal

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Trains Hauling Crude Oil Across North America Just Keep Exploding.

by LouellaNewcomer Posted on February 17, 2015

Mother Jones

A train hauling more than 100 tankers from North Dakota’s booming oil fields derailed during a snowstorm on Monday in West Virginia. The accident sparked massive explosions that prompted the evacuation of two nearby towns, and an oil spill that threatened the water supply of thousands of local residents. The train was heading to Yorktown, Virginia, and came off its tracks 33 miles southeast of Charleston, West Virginia. A state of emergency was declared.

Oil spilled into the Kanawha River, and one home was destroyed during the inferno that continued for 10 hours after the derailment, according to CNN. One person was injured. Dramatic footage shows fire and smoke billowing through the snowy sky:

Bakken crude is regarded as potentially more flammable than traditional crude, thus posing an increased hazard. And since the derailment of a train hauling Bakken crude killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013, the type of tankers involved in these accidents has become the subject of intense scrutiny. Both Canada and the United States have called for tougher safety standards, including upgrading the tankers. In mid-January, Canada announced it would take older tankers, known as the “DOT-111”, off the network years sooner than the United States will, putting the two countries at odds over increased safety measures on the deeply integrated system.

Here’s a diagram of the weaknesses in the older DOT-111 model tanker, which is still in operation across the network:

Chris Philpot

You can read an in-depth Mother Jones report about the DOT-111 tankers here.

The train operator, CSX, has said that the train was not pulling DOT-111 tankers. Instead, the company says it was using a tougher, newer model, the “CPC 1232”, according to Reuters.

But even newer cars like these are evidently not invincible: when a 105-car CSX train derailed in Lynchburg, Va., last April, a fiery CPC-1232 tanker careened into the James River and spilled 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil. And Washington state regulators are investigating CPC-1232 tankers, after a BNSF train carrying Bakken crude oil across Idaho and Washington in January was found to have leaking cars. The CPC-1232 also doesn’t quite live up to the US regulators’ proposed rules to upgrade the system, according to Bloomberg, which reports that:

The draft rule also would require that new cars be built with steel shells that are 9/16th of an inch thick, people familiar with the plan said. The walls of the current cars, both DOT-111s and the newer CPC-1232 models, are 7/16th of an inch thick.

The West Virginia accident on Monday is the second major derailment in three days across North America’s booming oil-by-rail network. A Canadian National Railway train detailed northern Ontario, Canada, on Saturday night, again resulting in an inferno and an oil spill: 29 railway cars in the 100-car train derailed. Seven caught fire, according to CTV.

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Trains Hauling Crude Oil Across North America Just Keep Exploding.

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Whales start pulling their own weight, save us for a change

by well Posted on December 5, 2014

prince of whales

Whales start pulling their own weight, save us for a change

By on 5 Dec 2014 2:19 pmcommentsShare

Whales: what a bunch of majestic slackers. We’ve been saving them for DECADES, and only just now are we starting to see the favor returned, thanks to a go-getting group of belugas making moves to shut down a controversial pipeline in eastern Canada.

Preliminary work on the terminal of TransCanada pipeline Energy East was suspended this week due to concerns about the habitat of endangered beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River.

The Cacouna, Quebec marine terminal was proposed for the eastern shore of the St. Lawrence and would serve as a loading point for oil carriers. But COSEWIC’s endangered species classification for the population, which contains about 900 individual whales and is the southernmost population of belugas in the world, could make building the terminal in Cacouna difficult for TransCanada.

“We are standing down on any further work at Cacouna, in order to analyze the recommendation, assess any impacts from Energy East, and review all viable options,” TransCanada spokesman Tim Duboyce told Bloomberg.

I mean, FINALLY, belugas, you give us something to be grateful of besides that one terrible song. (I guess it might be worth considering the small point of humans having driven this particular beluga whale population from 5,000 in 1900 to 1,200 by the 1950s … technicalities!)

And Energy East, though less famous than KXL (the Kardashian of celebrity pipelines), is pretty bad news for humans, as well as the rest of terrestrial life as we know it:

The construction of Energy East would involve converting an existing gas pipeline that stretches across Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario into a tar sands pipeline. …

It would be carrying the same tar sands oil that Keystone XL would carry, but Energy East would have a higher capacity: about 1.1 million barrels of tar sands crude each day versus Keystone XL’s 830,000 bpd. Earlier this year, a report from Canada’s Pembina Institute also found that Energy East could create even more greenhouse gas emissions than Keystone XL.

Wow. Big first move, belugas. Maybe next you can think about chipping in on the rent.

Source:
Work Stops On Tar Sands Export Terminal Due To Endangered Beluga Whale Population

, Think Progress.

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Sexts from Scarlett O’Hara

by FelicitRooney Posted on November 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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For many people who grow up with their noses in books, meeting their favorite character is the ultimate fantasy. Mallory Ortberg isn’t one of those readers.

“They’re such assholes,” the co-founder of feminist website The Toast says when I ask her who in the Western canon she’d most want as a texting buddy. “I don’t know that I would want any of them to have my phone number, because they would all feel very free to text me at 2:00 in the morning just screaming.”

Ortberg has put a lot of thought into the phone etiquette of literary personalities. Her book Texts from Jane Eyre, published November 4, features imagined exchanges between characters both classic and modern. From Hamlet whining about the relish on his tuna fish sandwich to Scarlett O’Hara sexting Ashley, the conversations are both LOL-worthy and true to the spirit of the works they parody.

Mother Jones: Where’d you get the inspiration for your first “Texts From” piece?

Mallory Ortberg: This is actually one of the only projects I’ve ever done where I can 100 percent pinpoint where it got started. It was back on The Awl when The Toast co-founder Nicole Cliffe was doing her Classic Trash series, and she was talking about Gone With the Wind, and somebody in the comments said, “I’m from the South and it’s actually exactly like this now, except everybody has cell phones.”

As soon as I saw that I was just like, “Oh God, the idea of Scarlett O’Hara with the ability to get in touch with all of her friends at any time and ask them for favors is horrific and vivid and amazing.” And I immediately wrote “Texts from Scarlett O’Hara” in like 10 minutes. So weirdly something good has come out of Internet comments—I got a book deal from it.

MJ: Would you say your own texting style is similar to the way the book is written?

MO: As a medium, texting is a really great way to get out of stuff when you know that you’re wrong, but you want to minimize having to make eye contact with someone as you bail on them or tell them that you fucked up. So I have definitely in my in life used a text to be like, “Oh hey, dude, I’m sorry, turns out I can’t make it after all!” like five minutes before I’m supposed to be somewhere.

Texts from Scarlett The Hairpin

MJ: When did you realize that you were funny?

MO: Oh man. I’ve always thought that I was funny. The world has not always agreed, but…I’ve always just been like, “Yes, absolutely, let’s do this! I will make jokes come hell or high water! Even if no one laughs.”

There were a lot of different influences on me. I started reading P.G. Wodehouse when I was about twelve, and that was huge for me. And certainly the classics like Monty Python, The Kids in the Hall, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, very dry British humor. But also like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, your mid-century American humorists. And then I remember when I was a little kid my brother and I would stay up and watch Comedy Central specials and we saw Maria Bamford together. It must’ve been her first standup special, because I think it was 1999—she was a kid. And I just remember being captivated that someone could be that weird in a way that felt so universal.

Henry Holt & Company

MJ: Was the process of coming up with jokes for this book similar to how you come up with stuff you’ve done at The Toast? If you’re working on, say, Women in Western Art History, is that just you sitting in front of Google Images looking at old paintings until something comes to you?

MO: Often it is, yeah. I love the art history ones because it’s so little work for me. There’s so many paintings that when I look at them, the look on the lady’s face is like so clear and her body language and her posture or their physical situation is so immediately recognizable. Anyone who’s been in a conversation they didn’t want to have, or been getting harangued by a little kid they didn’t want to pay attention to or been tired and wanted to go to bed is just like, “Yes, of course.” You can instantly see in this person’s face the universal sense of “Oh God, please leave me alone.”

MJ: How did you know there would be an audience for something like that?

MO: It was really a calculated risk. At the time that we started it, Nicole was coming off about a year or a year and a half as co-editor of The Hairpin, and I had been working as the weekend editor for Gawker and also a place called The Gloss. So by the time we started The Toast it wasn’t a complete leap in the dark. We weren’t completely unknown. The time felt right enough that we were like, “Let’s give this a year, and if it turns out to be the kind of thing that six people love and adore and nobody else cares about, we’ll say that we had a fun time trying something new and we’ll call it quits.” But it was kind of—it wasn’t a shock, but it was a really pleasant surprise that within the first couple of weeks it was clear to us that there were people who felt like The Toast was home for them.

MJ: Do you have a favorite thing that The Toast has published so far?

MO: I have a lot of favorites. We had a woman who wrote a piece about her first name. It was also about her Muslim-American identity and being the daughter of immigrants, and it was just thoughtful and stirring and profound, and it really moved me. That’s definitely up there for me. I also love Nicole’s blind items from Ontario. That’s so weird. That’s so Canadian. Just the blind items about, like, who was late to the potluck and what person was growing medical marijuana. I just love everything Nicole writes.

MJ: So, you’re from the Bay Area—how do you feel about artisanal toast?

MO: You know, when I hear “artisan,” I think of being in social studies and learning about the old classes and the rise of merchants during the late Middle Ages. So that’s what I think of—I picture an old-timey guy at a fucking loom, maybe like trading with some Dutchmen.

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Sexts from Scarlett O’Hara

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Check Out the New Polar Bear Cam

by Traci B. Jackson Posted on November 8, 2013

Mother Jones

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

The bears that gather around Churchill waiting for the waters in Hudson Bay to freeze over are the most studied on Earth. Scientists have tracked their decline, linked to climate change, for more than 20 years. Conservation officials have tagged most of them. Locals have given them names – though some of those admittedly are less than complimentary: one of the large adult males is known as Lardass.

From Tuesday, anyone with a web browser can make their own observations of the polar bears of Hudson Bay, through a series of live feeds installed by the group Explore.org at a number of locations around the town of Churchill and along the shores of the bay.

The sites were chosen for their vantage points over the polar bears’ typical routes as they undergo their annual migration from a summer of fasting on land to newly frozen sea ice.

The cameras were positioned: atop an enormous grain elevator in the Churchill port; inside a historic fur trading fort; on a research tower in a national park; at a tundra lodge; and on tundra buggies, the trailers mounted on monster truck-sized tyres used to transport tourists.

“At Explore.org we can’t solve global warming but our live cams can bring the world up close and personal with nature,” said Charlie Annenberg, founder of Explore.org. “Simply put, the citizens are now the scientists.”

The warming of the Arctic is extending the number of ice-free days in Hudson Bay, forcing the bears off the sea ice, and away from their main diet of ring seals, and on to the land.

“Over time, as they return to the ice later and later, they return to the ice in poorer condition every year,” said Martyn Obbard, a research scientist with the Ontario ministry of natural resources who studies the bears of southern Hudson Bay.

Capturing that journey on camera, and then live-streaming the video over the internet from a remote, sub-Arctic location, presents obvious challenges. There is no road system around Churchill, and no communications outside town. “It’s a cold place to work, the weather never co-operates and of course there are polar bears running around,” said BJ Kirschhoffer, director of field operations for Polar Bears International, who worked with the Explore.org crew to help install the cameras.

The sites were chosen for their vantage points over the polar bears’ typical routes as they undergo their annual migration. Photograph: Explore.org

A few years ago, Kirschhoffer mounted a camera on a boom arm extending out of a tundra buggy. “It provided a low, eye-to-eye view with a polar bear, but could move up and out of the reach of the bear,” he said. The camera itself was mounted intside a protective plastic bubble.

“This bear just wandered over and the camera was low,” said Kirschhoffer. “I didn’t see it coming around the corner. It was very curious of the camera. It sniffed it for a moment. It opened its mouth, and then it put its canine teeth right on the plastic dome.”

By the time he could react and get to the controls to raise the boom, there were two puncture holes in the protective dome. “I still have the dome with the two little puncture holes in it, just perfectly sized for the canine teeth,” Kirschhoffer said.

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Check Out the New Polar Bear Cam

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