Political Waves by Judith Gayle

Making alternative fuels from all the above is quite a breakthrough, don’t you think? Algae remains my favorite, especially now that climate change is creating more of it than we know how to deal with, but the concept of making something important out of readily available waste products — especially when we’re suffering from our oil addiction — seems so glorious it should be shouted from the rooftops. Only … we aren’t hearing about it.

I suspect you already know where the cover-up’s going on. You guessed it — Arkansas! Raw Story is reporting that the oil supposedly diverted away from Lake Conway, wasn’t — and it has video to prove it. As well, people in the effected area are reporting health issues and disputing media reports about the who, what, where and when facts, duly reported and caught in the spin cycle.

Meanwhile, Exxon — the #2 most profitable oil conglomerate globally — is behaving with a remarkably heavy hand, sequestering the town of Mayflower away from the prying eyes of the public; even requesting, and receiving, a temporary no-fly zone over the spill, while police screen people entering the area and weeding out reporters.

This ain’t pretty, kids and none of it should come as a surprise.

The larger question — the one we MUST ask and bring pressure to bare on — is what kind of energy can we ethically support? Carbon-based fuels are killing us and, as you’ll find below, R&D has a whole list of possible alternatives that might make all the difference.

Some fine day, coal, nuclear power and petroleum will be considered as antique artifacts from civilizations’ past, as outgrown as garters, bowler hats and chamber pots. It can’t come soon enough.

Here’s Bill McKibbon’s most recent explanation about WHY we can’t wait.

Jude

Biofuel breakthrough turns virtually any plant into hydrogen
Stephen C. Webster, Raw Story
Thursday, April 4, 2013

Researchers at Virginia Tech announced Thursday that their latest breakthrough in hydrogen extraction technology could lead to widespread adoption of the substance as a fuel due to its ease of availability in virtually all plant matter, a reservoir previously impossible to tap.

The new process, described by a study in the April issue of the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie, uses a cocktail of 13 enzymes to strip plant matter of xylose, a sugar that exists in plant cells. The resulting hydrogen is of an such a “high purity” that researchers said they were able to approach 100 percent extraction, opening up a potential market for a much cheaper source of hydrogen than anything available today.

“The potential for profit and environmental benefits are why so many automobile, oil, and energy companies are working on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as the transportation of the future,” study author and Virginia Tech assistant professor Y.H. Percival Zhang said in an advisory. “Many people believe we will enter the hydrogen economy soon, with a market capacity of at least $1 trillion in the United States alone.”
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This is Spanky, look at those Pisces eyes!

Here’s the link to this weekends Planet Waves post, where a recent accident with my little guy, above, is mentioned in the comments. Thought you might like to see him — he’s the sweetest, gentlest critter, atypical of his breed which is usually feisty. He’s mending, thanks for asking.

Come Again

Additionally, here’s a link to a Moyers episode discussing Martin Luther King in respect to the economy of his times, and King’s changing activist tactics. This is worth watching, if you missed it. Listening to intelligent conversation is a respite to a weary world!

The interview includes a clip of King’s declaration that there are “two America’s” — an echo we heard in 2008, from John Edwards; and, of course, as true today as in the 60s.

Most of you know I was sorry to see Edwards go, he had the fight in him to go after Wall Street and income inequality. We simply CAN’T put that off forever, if we’re to thrive into the new century and beyond.

Jude

… and even butterflies at risk from the mundane evils of human greed, arrogance and apathy.

Wish I had some happier news to share, but we have allowed ourselves a stunning disconnect from what is natural and normal and we need to take a good look before it’s too late. When the bees and birds disappear, the butterflies can’t be found, bats and insects, frogs and turtles begin to die from obscure maladies that disrupt the natural order our ancestors understood and revered, we’ve gone too far. You know we have. There’s no time to waste if we are to recover.

Easter is always a time of renewal, of redemption and hope. This Easter, take time to visit the great outdoors, seek out nature, bask in it. What we always thought was “forever” may not be. The natural world awaits our respect, appreciation and intention to protect it … and ourselves … from harm.

Blessed Equinox, Easter and Spring to you all — blessed restoration to the Earth, her systems and her creatures!

Jude

Not Just the Bees: Bayer’s Pesticide May Harm Birds, Too
Tom Philpott, Mother Jones
Wed Mar. 27, 2013

Once again this spring, farmers will begin planting at least 140 million acres—a land mass roughly equal to the combined footprints of California and Washington state—with seeds (mainly corn and soy) treated with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids.

Commercial landscapers and home gardeners will get into the act, too—neonics are common in lawn and garden products. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know all of that is probably bad news for honeybees and other pollinators, as a growing body of research shows—including three studies released just ahead of last year’s planting season.

But bees aren’t the only iconic springtime creature threatened by the ubiquitous pesticide, whose biggest makers are the European giants Bayer and Syngenta. It turns out that birds are too, according to an alarming analysis co-authored by Pierre Mineau, a retired senior research scientist at Environment Canada (Canada’s EPA), published by the American Bird Conservancy. And not just birds themselves, but also the water-borne insect species that serve as a major food source for birds, fish, and amphibians.
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Every once in awhile I read something … just for readings sake … that puts one of those little light bulb’s up over my head with an audible DING! The first is such a read, regarding my confusion over the reporting style of Bob Woodward. I never could figure out why he lucked out with Robert Redford — or why he was such a dufus when it came to the Bushies. Up until his orgasmic record with Dubby and crew, I’d thought of him as non-partisan. He’s not, good GRIEF is he not!! But HOW he does what he does, by innuendo and word-choice, comes clear in this first … and revealing … read.

Next, just to sweeten the pot, is a wrap-up of Nora Ephron’s last days by her — and Carl Bernstein’s — son. Ephron wrote often for Huffy, which was a pleasure. She was dear friend of the Clintons and enormously talented. You know her via her movie-making, if you can’t place her: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Julie & Julia, yadda.

Ephron was unfailingly progressive. I loved her wit, her whimsy and her dedication to life … even, as this read shows, as she was dying. Her 4-year marriage to Bernstein, immortalized in her screenplay (and movie) Heartburn, is what connects the pieces. That, and the fact that I enjoyed each.

I hope you do too … and that you make some time to read just for the pleasure of it.

Jude

Regrettable
The troubling things I learned when I re-reported Bob Woodward’s book on John Belushi.
Tanner Colby, Slate Magazine
Tuesday, March 12, 2013

A little more than a week ago, during an interview with Politico, Bob Woodward came forward to claim he’d been threatened in an email by a “senior White House official” for daring to reveal certain details about the negotiations over the budget sequester. The White House responded by releasing the email exchange Woodward was referring to, which turned out to be nothing more than a cordial exchange between the reporter and Obama’s economic adviser, Gene Sperling, who was clearly implying nothing more than that Woodward would “regret” taking a position that would soon be shown to be false.

A rather trivial scandal, but the incident did manage to raise important questions about Woodward’s behavior. Was he cynically trumping up the administration’s “threat,” or does he just not know how to read an email? Pretty soon, those questions tipped over into the standard Beltway discussion that transpires anytime Woodward does anything. How accurate is his reporting? Does he deserve his legendary status?

I believe I can offer some interesting answers to those questions. Thirty-one years ago, on March 5, 1982, Saturday Night Live and Animal House star John Belushi died of a drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles—which, bear with me a moment, has more to do with the current coverage of the budget sequester than you might initially think.*

Two years after Belushi died, Bob Woodward published Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi. While the Watergate sleuth might seem an odd choice to tackle such a subject, the book came about because both he and Belushi grew up in the same small town of Wheaton, Ill. They had friends in common. Belushi, who despised Richard Nixon, was a big Woodward fan, and after he died, his widow, Judy Belushi, approached Woodward in his role as a reporter for the Washington Post. She had questions about the LAPD’s handling of Belushi’s death and asked Woodward to look into it. He took the access she offered and used it to write a scathing, lurid account of Belushi’s drug use and death.

When Wired came out, many of Belushi’s friends and family denounced it as biased and riddled with factual errors. “Exploitative, pulp trash,” in the words of Dan Aykroyd. Wired was so wrong, Belushi’s manager said, it made you think Nixon might be innocent. Woodward insisted the book was balanced and accurate. “I reported this story thoroughly,” he told Rolling Stone. Of the book’s critics, he said, “I think they wish I had created a portrait of someone who was larger than life, larger than he was, and that, somehow, this portrait would all come out different. But that’s a fantasy, not journalism.” Woodward being Woodward, he was given the benefit of the doubt. Belushi’s reputation never recovered.
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Charlie Rose featured a short discussion with Gloria Steinem and Amy Richards last night about the state of feminism and their thoughts on the PBS special airing tonight, The Makers: Women Who Make America. You’ll find Betty Dodson in the preview, shown ‘faking an orgasm.’

This is a Don’t Miss, dearhearts … from what I can tell, it is an encouragement and that’s very good news for those of us worrying about the future of women’s rights!

Jude

Make Way for the “Makers” — Meet the Warriors of the Women’s Movement
Marlo Thomas via HuffPo
02/26/2013

Billie Jean King. Condoleezza Rice. Ellen DeGeneres. Hillary Clinton. Barbara Walters. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

We see their names and instantly picture their faces. We know their achievements and have grown to admire them. We think of them as “doers.”

But they’re more than that, actually. They are “Makers” — those who, early in their careers, had the determination and intuition to survey the cultural landscape and recognize not only what was there, but what wasn’t. And then they helped provide that missing piece.

This evening (7:00 to 10:00 PM), PBS will premiere “MAKERS: Women Who Make America,” a television special that tells the compelling saga of the American women who led the march to equality over the past half-century. It is inspiring to watch their stories on the special — and on the Makers website — and discover how their wildly different trajectories would eventually converge in the crucible of the women’s movement — whether they were reporting from a battlefield overseas, like Christiane Amanpour, or waging a different kind of war here on the home front, like Gloria Steinem.

I attended a screening of the film earlier this month, and, well, here’s a spoiler alert: You will be moved to tears, as many people in the audience were.
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