dh.oregonwild

This delightful mashup album comes from French label Guerilla Asso. Via Google Translate:

Imagine that in the late 70s, Bob Marley crossed paths with the Ramones at the CBGB counter and they decided to make a record together. Here is the result: 10 rasta classics with punk rock sauce 1-2-3-4!

— Read the rest

Ever since the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica bombshell, online privacy has been on all of our minds. But it isn’t just Facebook that’s tracking you. From other tech giants to most store rewards credit cards, countless companies deploy similar tactics—even your favorite (or hated) forum site, Reddit.

Read more...

Chicago's Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) was formed in 2007 to review police brutality. Since that time, IPRA has investigated nearly 400 civilian shootings by cops. It has found only one shooting to be unjustified. But then Lorenzo Davis, 65, a former Chicago police commander who became an investigator for the IPRA, found "a few cases in which he believed police had inappropriately fired their weapons." Suddenly Davis, who had previously been getting stellar reviews for his work on the IPRA, was fired.

Through most of his IPRA tenure, Davis’s performance evaluations showered him with praise. They called him an “effective leader” and “excellent team player.”

The final evaluation, issued June 26, said he “is clearly not a team player.”

Radley Balko of the Washington Post writes, "'Team player' of course meaning 'willing to side with cops who shoot people.'"

And of course this is the city where police were found to have tortured suspects for decades. Conveniently, the city managed to cover up the mess long enough for the statute of limitations to prevent all but one of the officers from facing any criminal charges. In 2008, the city’s most elite police unit was disbanded after officers were accused of a host of crimes from assault to theft to burglaries to conspiracy to commit murder. And just earlier this year, the Guardian reported new allegations of torture, beatings, and other physical abuse at an abandoned warehouse.

Just a thought: Maybe the Chicago PD needs fewer “team players.”

Image: Shutterstock

Near the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter outside of Riley, Oregon, archaeologists recently discovered evidence suggesting one of the oldest known human occupations in the western United States.

“We were gathering samples of dead trees to reconstruct summer temperatures in western Norway, when our dendrochronological dating showed the wood to be much older than expected”, says Terje Thun, an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Museum of Natural History and Archaeology...

Thun says that when a pine tree dies, it secretes a great deal of resin, which deters the microorganisms needed for decomposition. “Nevertheless, preventing the natural breakdown of the wood for centuries is quite a feat”, he says...

Resin was one of the ingredients used in Ancient Egypt for mummification, so its conservation abilities have been known for millennia. However, that trees could “self-mummify” in such a humid climate for centuries was new to the NTNU scientists.

“Many of the trunks we dated turned out to have seeded in the early 1200s, and had lived for more than 100 years at the time of the Black Death around 1350”, Thun says. “That means that the dead wood has ‘survived’ in nature for more than 800 years without breaking down.”

More at the link. The tree in the photo grew began growing in 1334, and died in 1513!  
Reposted from 2009.  Photo credit: Terje Thun, NTNU.

Increased future plant growth will not reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere as much as we thought; so finds a new study published in Science. This means that we will not have that get-out-of-jail-free card that some of us were counting on.

For some background, it is clear that in some cases, increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can stimulate plant growth. It makes sense that this plant growth would help pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, buying us some time to get our act in order to reduce pollution.

According to the study,

“Earth system models project that rising atmospheric CO₂ will promote carbon uptake by the terrestrial biosphere (plants). The resulting increase in carbon stocks in plant biomass and soil organic matter would slow the rise in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and may help to slow climate change.”

The authors note that many experiments have shown the increased CO₂ usually helps stimulate photosynthesis and plant growth. Some of this extra CO₂ ends up in the soils where it is unable to participate as a greenhouse gas.

Soil-carbon test locations, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photograph: Bert G. Drake

The current authors went a step further though. They asked what happens to the carbon after it is in the soils. We know that microbes decompose soil matter and thereby release the carbon back to the air. Will this process increase, decrease, or stay the same as the climate warms and climate change progresses? It is important because soil stocks (the amount of carbon contained in soil) is determined by a balance between the influx and outflux of carbon.

The authors found that increased CO₂ in the atmosphere actually increased the outflux of carbon dioxide from the soils. That is, it increased the rate of decomposition. In the long run, the increases in influx and outflux will essentially balance out. This suggests that there will be little help from the biosphere for us humans – plants will not take up our emissions.

The authors have two competing hypotheses behind the physical mechanisms that drive the decomposition. They told me that it is possible the plants close their stomata (the tiny pores which allow water and CO₂ to pass into and out of leaves). As the stomata close, the soils become wetter and microbial activity increases. The authors also think that as atmospheric CO₂ increases, soil microbes respond by decomposing older soil carbon. They call this a “priming effect” which is a natural buffering mechanism that slows carbon accumulation in soils.

Author Dr. Bruce Hungate from the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society told me,

Click here to read the rest

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Located near the Red Sea in El Gouna, Egypt, Desert Breath is an impossibly immense land art installation dug into the sands of the Sahara desert by the D.A.ST. Arteam back in 1997. The artwork was a collaborative effort spanning two years between installation artist Danae Stratou, industrial designer Alexandra Stratou, and architect Stella Constantinides, and was meant as an exploration of infinity against the backdrop of the largest African desert. Covering an area of about 1 million square feet (100,000 square meters) the piece involved the displacement of 280,000 square feet (8,000 square meters) of sand and the creation of a large central pool of water.

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Photo by D.A.ST. Arteam courtesy the artists

Although it’s in a slow state of disintegration, Desert Breath remains viewable some 17 years after its completion, you can even see it in satellite images taken from Google Earth. You can learn more about the project in the video above or read about it here. (via Visual News, Synaptic Stimuli)

This building has apparently lost its Ivy League status. There’s no word on where the building is, or whether the “vertical garden” was removed deliberately or just fell by its own weight. I’m also not sure if this vine is some kind of ivy or euonymus or creeping fig or ficus. But it’s a certainly an a-peeling picture! The downside is all the birds and bugs and spiders that are now looking for a new home. -via reddit

Scientific illustrator and artist Noel Badges Pugh has an incredible knack for drawing flora and fauna. He recently illustrated an entire field guide about bees and keeps a regular Tumblr, Art in Progress & Completion, where he posts these tantalizing drawings of buds and blooms. Maybe it’s because this is the coldest winter in 30 years, but I’m spending the rest of my day looking at these. (via Gaks)

Controversial wildlife bills are only part of it-

Most of the attention by those interested in wildlife in this year’s Idaho legislature have focused on Governor “Butch” Otter’s 2-million dollar wolf killing bill as it continues to advance toward law. Nonetheless, there are other wildlife bills and a host of additional scary, strange, and backwards bills making public controversy.

There is the “let’s test fewer game farm elk for chronic wasting disease, bill.”
There is the “let’s make it a crime for people to gather information about Idaho agriculture, bill.”
There is the “let’s have guns in college classrooms, bill.”
There is the “I get to be a bigoted professional if I am religious, bill.”

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is an always fatal disease of deer, elk and moose. It is caused by the deformed proteins called “prions.” They lie in the soil pretty much forever after it has become contaminated by a CWD-infected animal. You can’t tell if an elk is infected until it starts to show symptoms, but it can spread the disease before symptoms show. Presently in Idaho, all elk on an elk farm that die of their own accord must have their brains tested for CWD. A bill just passed the Idaho House reducing this test to just 10 %, meaning that, on the average, an elk farm will have ten elk dead of CWD before it is detected. A lot of people don’t like elk farms in general — thought to be very unsporting with a guaranteed “hunter” success rate of 100%. Should big antlered game farm elk be counted as records? World Record Bull Elk, Sort of. By Randy King. Boise Weekly.

Some people engage in criminal actions to release farmed furbearers such as mink or destroy crops that have artificial DNA, but others try to expose animal abuse in farming, or the use of illegal and/or toxic chemicals or additives. Still others concentrate on farm substances that don’t stay put, such as big ponds of shit, a.k.a., animal waste. There are also those who worry about and report on the creation and effects of today’s food from a myraid of crop and livestock derived substances and other chemicals. Many of these food products would have been unrecognizable as food 50 years ago.

To counter the above, there is the idea that if folks don’t know, and are not allowed to learn of these things, they will be happy and buy food products without complaint. As result we have amendments to Idaho’s Interference With Agricultural Production” Act. This bill S.1298 (now S.1337) is  based on a Koch Brothers (ALEC) template. The bill defines agricultural production so broadly that any private rural land, fenced or not, would subject activities by the public that are now often legal to be made criminal.  Mere entry becomes criminal trespass. The bill would even criminalize any audio or video recordings made of agricultural land, buildings, or operations. This probably includes still photos made from cell phones.

A controversial non-wildlife bill is guns on campuses. All the colleges have weighed in against it. The bill is not nearly as broad as often portrayed. Presently the bill allows only retired law enforcement officers or those with an enhanced concealed-carry permit to carry a gun on campus. However, as an ex-professor I wonder about the right of faculty to be armed? Retired law enforcement officers or students with an enhanced concealed-carry permits might well want to shoot you for a bad grade or a lecture topic they don’t like. Do faculty have a “stand your ground” defense to pop a dangerous appearing student first?

There is the “rights for (sincerely) religious bigots bill,” at least if the religious bigots are professional people delivering a service. They will get to refuse service to gays, lesbians, bisexual, transgenered if these people violate the professional’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.”. . . single mothers too.

Those who are atheists, agnostics, or just don’t go to church often will not gain this “right” to discriminate against people on the basis of whatever. “Whatever” is because the bill doesn’t actually mention the two groups above, although news reports often say it does. Instead, the bill (H0426) appears to allow freestyle bigotry for sincerely religious professionals. The relevant actual text of the bill follows.

“No occupational licensing board or  governmental subdivision or entity shall deny, revoke or suspend a person’s professional or occupational license, certificate or registration for any of the following and the following are not unprofessional conduct:
(a) Declining to provide or participate in providing any service that
violates the person’s sincerely held religious beliefs or exercise of
religion except where performing emergency response duties for public
safety.
(b) Refusing to affirm a statement or oath that is contrary to the person’s sincerely held religious beliefs or exercise of religion.
(c) Expressing sincerely held religious beliefs.
(d) Providing faith-based services.
(e) Making business-related decisions in accordance with sincerely held religious beliefs or exercise of religion including, but not limited to:

(i) Employment decisions;
(ii) Client selection decisions;
(iii) Financial decisions . . .”

At least 16 fraudulent sites attributed to the National Republican Congressional Committee have been discovered. These sites, whose domains are the names of Democratic candidates, use large type and photos that make them appear to be fundraisers for those candidates, though the small-print text makes it clear that these are actually sites set up opposing their apparent candidates. The NRCC claims these are all fair game and blame Democrats for not registered their candidates' names as for campaign sites. But when there's a site at AnnKirkpatrick.com, with the words ANN KIRKPATRICK FOR CONGRESS and a DONATE button beneath it, and when that DONATE button sends money to Ann Kirkpatrick's GOP rival, the intent to deceive is pretty clear.

At first glance, AnnKirkpatrick.com looks like any normal campaign website. A big picture of the smiling Arizona Democrat stands next to a “Kirkpatrick For Congress” banner above a fat “DONATE” button, all in the same colors as those used by the real website for Kirkpatrick, who’s fighting to keep her House seat. Read closer and the text of the site reveals lines like “Kirkpatrick is a huge embarrassment to Arizona,” but anyone who didn’t bother to read the site closely (or who couldn’t due to bad eyesight) before trying to make a donation to Kirkpatrick’s campaign would find that they’d just contributed to the coffers of the National Republican Congressional Committee—the House GOP’s campaign arm backing Kirkpatrick’s opponent.

Annkirkpatrick.com is one of a series of websites (TIME has found 16, so far) the NRCC has set up that are clearly designed to trick the viewer—at least at first—into thinking they’re on a legitimate campaign website. The tactic smacks of “spoofing” scams, whereby spammers masquerade under fake phone numbers or email addresses to win trust (it’s how you might have once received an email that looked addressed from a friend but turned out to be a plaintive plea from wealthy Nigerian prince). But the line between clever and criminal is an ambiguous one in American politics, and anyone claiming to be shocked by less-than-truthful campaign materials hasn’t been around much.

Campaign Websites in 2014 Aren’t Always What They Seem [Denver Nicks/Time]

(via Wil Wheaton)

5 Keys to Reforming Wildlife Management in America-

Over the years, I have come to realize that the current wildlife management model in America, at the federal level, and particularly, the state level, is broken. The system is such, in which, politics trumps the best-available science, the special interest-minority overwhelms the democratic-majority and the almighty dollar is more powerful than ethics, heritage and legacy. Can this be found throughout the American political landscape? Of course, the answer is yes. But when applied to the current wolf slaughter taking place in the West, and in the Great Lakes, it fits perfectly. In fact, it embodies it.

During my brief time working in the conservation community, I have sadly concluded that both grassroots and national conservation groups, and every-day citizens, are limited to the degree, in which, they can enforce public lands laws, ensure that the best-available science is used and entrust that public sentiment is reflected in wildlife policy and management decisions. Recent examples of this include–with all, unfortunately, taking place in Idaho–are the Wolf-Coyote Derby in Salmon, the killing of two wolf packs in the Frank-Church River of No Return Wilderness by a 21^st Century bounty hunter and the efforts of Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter to launch a predominantly tax-payer funded, $2-million dollar independent wolf control board to wipe out another 500-grey wolves. If this were to occur, wolves would be reduced to the bare-minimum of 150-wolves in Idaho (federally mandated), would not be able to fulfill their ecological niche, and most importantly, could be on the precipice of yet, another extinction.

The conservation community, and the American people at-large, is now approaching the crossroads. Do we continue to take the band-aid approach (attending public meetings, issuing action alerts, circulating petitions, and filing appeals/lawsuits) or do we step out-of-the-box and confront the root causes of the problem? While some may respectfully disagree with me, or question the feasibility of such a challenge, I advocate for the latter.

So what solutions do I offer? The 5 Keys to Reforming Wildlife Management in America, are as follows:

1. Restructuring the way state Fish & Game departments operate. Politics: western governors appoint agency commissioners, which essentially, tell the state departments what to do. This is cronyism at its worst. Economics: state departments are mostly funded by the sale of hunting/fishing tags or permits. These agencies are bound into serving the interest of “sportsmen” because it’s the hand that feeds them. Modern funding mechanisms, the application of best-available science and genuine public involvement are sorely lacking in these institutions and it must be addressed. Another option would be to empower the federal government to manage wildlife on federal public lands.

2. Removing grazing from all federal public lands. The “management” or “control” of native wildlife to benefit the livestock industry is ground zero. It is also well documented the damage that grazing causes when livestock infests wildlands. Livestock are non-native and largely responsible for soil compaction, a decrease in water retention and aquifer recharge, erosion, destruction of wetlands and riparian areas, flooding and a net-loss of biodiversity. Grazing enables invasive plant species to proliferate, which greatly affects the West’s historic fire regime.

3. Abolishing Wildlife Services. Hidden within the US Department of Agriculture, is a rogue agency that is essentially the wildlife killing-arm of the federal government. For over 100-years, this federal tax-payer supported agency has largely worked on behalf of the livestock industry and is responsible for the death of tens-of millions of native wildlife. Methods of killing include trapping, poisoning and aerial gunning. Conservation efforts are currently culminating into a potential Congressional investigation of this corrupt agency.

4. Banning trapping/snaring on all federal public lands. We must evolve as a society and move away from this barbaric, unethical, cruel and tortuous method(s) of killing native wildlife. Leg-hold traps, conibear traps and other devices are indiscriminate killers. Over the past couple years, there has been an increase in the number of dogs caught/killed by traps when recreating with their owners on public lands. When is an adult or child going to step into a leg-hold or body-gripping trap? Some states currently require individuals to check their traps every 72-hours, while other states only recommend that trappers check them, at all.

5. No killing of predators, except for extreme circumstances. For example, an aggressive and/or habituated bear may need to be killed after non-lethal measures have failed. Otherwise, non-lethal measures should be implemented in rare instances where there are actual human/predator conflicts. The best available science suggests that predators, including wolves, are a self-regulating species. In other words, predators don’t overpopulate. Instead, their populations naturally fluctuate, as do prey or ungulate populations. We need to better understand and embrace the trophic cascade effect predators have within ecosystems.

How do we take that ever-so-important first step, you may ask? We embark on this journey, together, on June 28 – 29, 2014 at Arch Park in Gardiner, Montana.

Speak for Wolves: Yellowstone 2014 is an opportunity for the American people to unite and demand wildlife management reform. It’s about taking a critical step towards stopping the grey wolf slaughter. It’s about hope, our collective-future and restoring our national heritage and legacy. The weekend-long event is family friendly and will feature prominent speakers, live music, education and outreach booths, children’s activities, food and drink vendors, video production crews and the screening of wildlife documentaries.

On June 28-29, 2014, Americans from all walks-of-life will converge at Arch Park in Gardiner, Montana to tell the government we need to reform wildlife management, at both the state and federal level. With your support and participation, this will be the event of the year in the northern Rockies. Together, we can make history and embark on restoring our wild national heritage. The time to be bold is now.

Part collage, part photography, part tapestry, these fragmented interpretations of iconic buildings and landmarks by Seung Hoon Park (previously) are truly something to ponder over. Each image begins with 8mm or 16mm camera film strips which he lays down in rows to create a larger surface that effectively acts as a single piece of film. Park then exposes two images in a large format 8×10″ camera using sets of vertical and horizontal strips which are woven together to create a final print. The photographer has traveled to locations around the world including Rome, Milan, Venice and Prague to shoot images for this ongoing series titled Textus. Several limited edition prints are available through Susan Spiritus Gallery.

From a story at PRI:

It's a twist on Lucha Libre, Mexico’s version of pro wrestling, where competitors put on masks and pseudonyms to duke it out in a ring.

Peru's Lucha Libro is kind of like that, without the violence. It's literary "wrestling." New writers don masks, and head onto a stage where they’re given three random words, a laptop hooked up to a gigantic screen, and five minutes to write a short story.

At the end of a match, the losing writer has to take off his or her mask. The winner goes on to the next round, a week later. And the grand prize? It's a book contract...

The first contestant is a guy who goes by the name "Chicken Wilson." He's tall and goofy, but when he sees the three words projected on the screen behind him, he gets serious. He's got monkey, plane ticket, and dictionary to work with.

The announcer counts to three, and the clock starts. No one's talking, but just a paragraph in, Chicken Wilson freezes. The seconds are ticking by, so the crowd starts cheering him on. He rallies, dashing off a short story about monkeys living in the city, and an American girl on vacation in Peru...

“It's also about changing the idea that literature is boring. This turns it into an event. Because it's not just about the opportunity for a young person to become a writer,” he says. “It's also about having a place for young people to hang out - and to read.”

It seems to me the way to game the system would be to have three or four stories already "written" in one's mind, and then figure out into which one you could insert the three words.  Kudos to the promoters for developing the event.

In 1984, Robert Nelson was convicted of rape in Kansas City, a crime that he insisted he did not commit, and was sentenced to 50 years. Nelson had requested DNA testings, but the judge denied his motions because they weren't properly done. After serving thirty years behind bars, Nelson was freed when he successfully petitioned to have his DNA tested against the evidence from the case.

That in itself is a case of miscarriage of justice, but, according to MSN Now, the story didn't end there. Turns out, Nelson's latest petition was only successful because it was modeled after a copy of a motion filed in a different case. That motion was provided by Sharon Snyder, who had been working as county clerk for 34 years.

And what did Snyder get for providing a copy of a public document that set free a man wrongfully convicted of rape? She was suspended without pay and then fired (by the same judge that denied Nelson's original motions):

Five days after Nelson was released, Court Administrator Jeffrey Eisenbeis took Snyder into Byrn’s office near closing time and told her the prosecutor and defense attorney “had a problem” with her involvement in the case. She was suspended without pay, ordered to stay out of the courthouse unless she had permission to be there and scheduled to meet with a human resources investigator June 20. [...]

Byrn fired her June 27, telling her she had violated several court rules by providing assistance to Nelson and talking about aspects of the case, even while under seal, to attorneys not involved in the matter.

In an interview with Chris Hayes of MSNBC, Sharon felt that she was being "severely punished" and forced to retire earlier than she'd planned. But, regardless, she said that she would do it again. "I am so happy that he got exonerated on this charge, and felt that would happen or he wouldn't have filed that motion to start out with."

The world's oldest continuous "social settlement" is der Fuggerei in Augsburg, Germany. It was established 1521 by Jakob Fugger, a wealthy banker, merchant, and mining investor, to house the needy. The rent is the same as it was then, one Rhenish Guilder, which is less than one euro. Per year. The 67 houses of Fuggerei hold 140 apartments, with 150 residents. The neighborhood is a gated community, so to speak, with enclosed walls, its own church, and a museum. It is still supported by the Fugger Foundation, through returns on its investments over almost 500 years, supplemented by admission to the enclave and museum, which costs 4 euros. Link -Thanks, Bill Badrick!

(Image credit: context medien und verlag Augsburg)

British biologist/comedian Simon Watt is teaming up with the National Science + Engineering Competition to bring attention to endangered species that are not magnificent, cute, or even plain. In fact, they are downright ugly. The Ugly Animal Preservation Society is a campaign to aid conservation efforts for these creatures. Watt has recruited other scientists, comedians, and science comedians for a series of live shows and videos to promote the conservation of the proboscis monkey, the blowfish, the Titicaca 'scrotum' water frog, the greater short-horned lizard, the dromedary jumping slug, the flightless dung beetle, and other ugly animals. Vote for your favorite ugly animal to become the campaign's mascot at the shows or at YouTube.

The Ugly Animal Preservation Society is dedicated to raising the profile of some of Mother Nature’s more aesthetically challenged children.  The panda gets too much attention.

Our society needs a mascot, one to rival the cute and cuddly emblems of many charities and organisations. And so I have gathered a terrific line up of comedians who will each champion a different ugly endangered species and at the end of the evening the audience shall vote for what will become our society’s symbol.

Link -via Treehugger

(Image credit: Simon Watt)

Picture the scene: a quiet moment between Russian president Vladimir Putin and his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev. A momentary intersection between two lives made busy–so busy–by the hard work of government. Medvedev has just put his bra back on. He is disheveled. Putin grabs a comb and runs it lazily through his deputy's hair. Medvedev's eyes firmly engage the viewer, but Putin looks oddly to one side. What is he looking at? Perhaps his eye falls upon the Romanov Tercentenary Egg on his desk, adorned with portrait miniatures of the dynasty.

They seem to gaze back at him, no longer lost within Fabergé's gilded relic. Putin once saw their deaths in his mind's eye, over and over, that invigorating minute in Yekaterinburg. Now he hears only their voices, the whispers that wake him. Though both men creep toward the threshold of the golden afternoon, the evening is yet young.

Alas, this delightful set-piece is no more: police raided the gallery and took it away without a word of explanation. [BBC]

“I think that people have in mind that this was some violent, forcible, horrible rape," said Montana District Judge G. Todd Baugh. "It was horrible enough as it is just given her age, but it wasn’t this forcible beat-up rape."

Stacey Dean Rambold, 54, will spend just 31 days in jail after almost all of his 15-year sentence was suspended.

The 14-year-old Rambold assaulted isn't around to be revictimized by this extraordinarily creepy smalltown judge: she committed suicide after her rape. [Billings Gazette and the LA Times. Photo: Bob Zellar]

National Corn Growers Association

Farmers in Minnesota soon could be turning wind energy into fertilizer. Research funded by the Minnesota Corn Growers Association is developing a way to have the wind turbines put up in corn fields produce the very nitrogen fertilizer that helps those same crops grow.

“We take water, and we separate the hydrogen and oxygen. We pull nitrogen from the air and combine the hydrogen and nitrogen to form anhydrous ammonia, the predominant nitrogen fertilizer source farmers use,” explains Mike Reese, the Renewable Energy Director for the University of Minnesota at the school’s West Central Research Station in Morris, Minn.

This first-in-the-world research project still uses the tried-and-true process of producing ammonia for fertilizer… but hopefully more locally and efficiently. Reese says they need to figure out how to make this wind-powered process commercially scalable.

“Right now, anhydrous ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer is produced on a massive scale in central locations. What we’re trying to do is make this so we could have community production or co-op facilities to produce the nitrogen fertilizer locally,” he said.

Reese added that there are enough resources in Minnesota to make all the fertilizer needed for the state’s entire corn crop, a possible $400 million industry that is now done completely out of the state.

Creative naming practices have been an essential tool for many in the marketing field for centuries. The practice of carefully selecting a name that will appeal to consumers has become an art form that heaps lucrative rewards on those truly skilled in this craft. While exaggeration may play a key role (who wants to buy from the company named “second best widgets), blatant deception often irks the public when the word gets out about what really is in a name.

Consider Breitbart a whistleblower in the public health battles over the dietary differences between sweeteners then. August 1, the online news source offered a scathing story blowing the sugar lobby’s cover – specifically their pseudonym “Citizens for Health.”

Cloaked in the disguise of a grassroots consumer movement aimed at improving public health, the sugar lobby has waged a war of deception on high fructose corn syrup. Issuing press releases and conducting a suspiciously professional public relations assault on HFCS, the front for sugar-backed interests fought a strategic campaign to confuse consumers and influence public sentiment.

The most effective tactic? Their name. Anyone reading information released by a group that sounded as if it promoted sugar would automatically view that story with a well-deserved dose of skepticism. By creating the illusion of a source interested only in what is actually best for consumers, they filched the credibility necessary to gain unquestioning acceptance of their pro-sugar propaganda.

What’s the best way to let the sugar-pushers know that consumers see through their self-serving scam?

Enjoy your food free from fear. Buy whatever products you personally see as the best option for your family and feel no shame. The truth – that sugar is the same from a health perspective whether made from corn, cane or beet – does set you free from their bitter war.

To learn more about what real doctors and dieticians are saying about HFCS, click here.

Mirror Spider / Thwaitesia sp. / Singapore

Long Horned Orb Weaver / Macracantha arcuata / Singapore

Bird Dung Spider / Pasilobus sp. / Singapore

Ladybird Mimic / Paraplectana sp. / Singapore

Eight-Spotted Crab Spider / Platythomisus octomaculatus / Singapore

Tree Stump Orb Weaver / Poltys illepidus / Singapore

Net-Casting Ogre-Face Spider / Deinopis sp. / Singapore

Ant Mimic Jumping Spider / Myrmarachne plataleoides / Singapore

Wide-Jawed Viciria Spiderlings / Viciria praemandibularis / Singapore

Wow! Ick. Oooh. Whaaaaaaat. No. No. NOPE. That pretty much summarizes my reactions while looking at these incredible macro shots of spiders photographed by Nicky Bay who lives and works in Singapore. The boundless biodiversity found on the country’s 64 islands includes a vast array of insects and arachnids, many of which Bay has painstakingly documented up close with his macro photography and published on his blog and Flickr account.

Despite being creepy crawly spiders, it’s impossible to deny the endless creativity employed by evolution to create such amazing creatures. It’s hard to believe these lifeforms came from the same planet let alone the same country. For instance the Mirror Spider has an abdomen of reflective panels that glitter like a disco ball, or the various colors of Ladybird Mimic spiders that are almost indistinguishable from the insects they are camouflaged to look like. But there’s also the more frightening Two-Tailed Spider or the Bird Dung Spider that would have me scrambling for a frying pan and a quart of poison before I would even consider picking up a camera.

Nadia Drake over at Wired put together an informative gallery of Bay’s work along with a bit more detail than you’ll find here. All images above courtesy the photographer. (via Coudal)

The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer and Brett Max Kaufman have compiled a NSA lexicon, listing the made-up, nonsensical meanings that the NSA has assigned to common words, in order to defend their criminality. For example:

Surveillance. Every time we pick up the phone, the NSA makes a note of whom we spoke to, when we spoke to him, and for how long—and it’s been doing this for seven years. After the call-tracking program was exposed, few people thought twice about attaching the label “surveillance” to it. Government officials, though, have rejected the term, pointing out that this particular program doesn’t involve the NSA actually listening to phone calls—just keeping track of them. Their crabbed definition of “surveillance” allows them to claim that the NSA isn’t engaged in surveillance even when it quite plainly is.

Collect. If an intelligence official says that the NSA isn’t “collecting” a certain kind of information, what has he actually said? Not very much, it turns out. One of the NSA’s foundational documents states that “collection” occurs not when the government acquires information but when the government “selects” or “tasks” that information for “subsequent processing.” Thus it becomes possible for the government to acquire great reams of information while denying that it is “collecting” anything at all.

Relevant. The NSA’s call-tracking program is ostensibly based on the Patriot Act’s Section 215, a provision that allows the government to compel businesses to disclose records that are “relevant” to authorized foreign intelligence investigations. The theory, it seems, is that everybody’s phone records are relevant today because anybody’s phone records might become relevant in the future. This stretches the concept of “relevance” far beyond the breaking point. Even the legislator who wrote Section 215 has rejected the government’s theory. If “relevance” is given such a broad compass, what room is left for “irrelevance”?

Targeted. The call-tracking program is only one of the NSA’s surveillance efforts. Another is what’s been branded PRISM, a program that involves the acquisition of the contents of phone calls, emails, and other electronic communications. Americans need not worry about the program, the government says, because the NSA’s surveillance activities are “targeted” not at Americans but at foreigners outside the United States. No one should be reassured by this. The government’s foreign targets aren’t necessarily criminals or terrorists—they may be journalists, lawyers, academics, or human rights advocates. And even if one is indifferent to the NSA’s invasion of foreigners’ privacy, the surveillance of those foreigners involves the acquisition of Americans’ communications with those foreigners. The spying may be “targeted” at foreigners, but it vacuums up thousands of Americans’ phone calls and emails.

How to Decode the True Meaning of What NSA Officials Say (via Techdirt)

Arizona Public Service Co. will file a request today with the Arizona Corporation Commission to add a surcharge to customers who generate their own electricity with solar panels. The power company's proposal has two possible formulas to use for the extra charge, which are estimated to add between $50 to more than $100 to a solar customer's monthly bill. The reason is to offset the costs of maintaining the power grid.

APS officials said solar customers are not paying enough for the services they get from the power grid, which enables them to get electricity at night when solar panels don’t generate power and balance their household energy needs during the day when their solar-panel output and home demand don’t match up.

The change would only affect new solar customers, not those that already have solar on their homes, and would significantly reduce the savings associated with generating power using rooftop systems.

On the one hand, maintaining the power grid is a necessary service. But then you look at the details of the power company's reasoning. The system in place now allows solar customers who generate more electricity than they need to send electricity to the power company, which pays for it in kind, by crediting customers on their electric bills. For each kilowatt hour a solar customer sends to the grid, they are discounted one kilowatt hour from their bill. Therefore, generating extra power during the daylight hours helps to pay for a household's use of power at night.

APS charges its customers between about 9 cents to 17 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity, with prices increasing the more electricity a customer uses. Solar customers tend to be more affluent, with larger homes that use more electricity, so the average price they pay for a kilowatt-hour is about 15.5 cents, APS officials said. That means that when they get a credit for a kilowatt-hour of electricity from solar, the credit is worth about 15.5 cents.

APS officials said it is unfair to pay those customers a 15.5-cent credit when the utility could contract to buy solar power for 8 to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour from large power plants.

So the more they charge a customer, the higher the reimbursement rate, and that's not fair? The idea behind charging more for higher-use customers is already solved for solar users, because they take less power from the grid. Isn't that what the graduated pricing is supposed to encourage? What do you think? Read more about the case at AZ Central. Link -via Simply Left Behind

(Image credit: Flickr user Dominic Alves)

POLL: Is it okay for a power company to charge household solar customers extra?

• Yes, we have to keep the power company running.
• Yes, maintenance is important, but $100 a month is too high.
• No, this is gouging and will discourage solar use.
• It's complicated. Just show me the poll answers.

1846, Hannah and Mary Townsend of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society wrote a primer for the English alphabet. Staunch abolitionists, they made it very clear to children what the continuation of slavery in the United States meant. Click on "Continue reading" to view more pages from it.

Link -via Kuriositas

Images: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

I was at science writers’ summer camp last week (I'll probably write more about that later) when Razib Khan, on his blog Gene Expressions, wrote about my forthcoming book,  The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine’s Deepest Mystery. It’s a thoughtful post, and I was particularly struck by his observations about cause and effect -- how the human mind demands reasons, preferably simple ones, even when none may exist. That is one of the obsessions behind Fire in the Mind (the book and the blog), a

If I were a coal executive I wouldn't worry about a solar and wind revolution (see Germany's Energiewende) or President Obama putting me out of business. I'd be worried about the shale gas revolution (and I'd hope environmentalists were successful in stopping it). If I were a coal executive, I'd want fear to continue dominating public discussion of nuclear power. I'd want nuclear reactors to remain prohibitively expensive. And I'd want climate hawks to keep chasing green energy pixie dust.

Artist Faig Ahmed creates amazing handmade rugs that appear to have been melted, stretched, or otherwise distorted. They're a blend of digital glitch-aesthetic and analog, hand-crafted beauty.

Faig Ahmed Carpets (via Crazy Abalone)

Channel Island fox population grows from 50 to over 2000 in just 9 years-

There are many species of fox around the world — 37 or so. Those fox with a naturally limited geographic range are likely to become the most quickly threatened by extinction. So it was with the (California) Channel Island Fox, which had always inhabited just the Channel Islands.

This tiny fox (Urocyon littoralis) lived on six of the eight Channel Islands, and as a different sub-species on each of them. Sub-species most often emerge when they are isolated by breeding barriers, and islands are a classic kind of breeding barrier. This fox, perhaps the smallest canid, evolved over the last 10,000 years after the mainland gray fox reached the islands when the Ice Age lowered sea level and came close to forming a land bridge to six of the islands. Presumably the gray fox was able to swim the short Ice Age distance or float on debris to the islands

Once the islands were cut off, the fox began to evolve according to the prey available, and the prey was different on each island. According to the National Park Service, “On San Rosa Island, where food item diversity is high deer mice, Jerusalem crickets, beetles and earwigs are the preferred food. On other Channel Islands, diets included plant items such as fruits from cactus, manzanita, saltbushes and seafigs, as well as insects and deer mice when they are present. Occasionally, foxes foraged along the shoreline for crabs and other marine invertebrates.”

Because the prey was small, the gray fox itself grew smaller and smaller, something called “island dwarfism.” This has been observed in many other species that made it from the mainland to isolated islands.

The Channel fox had no natural predators, but the fox populations went into a steep decline when a predator inadvertently emerged after the 1960s DDT poisoning of the bald eagles in these islands. The bald eagle did not eat the foxes, but it was replaced by the larger golden eagle 30 years later. The golden eagle thrived on the islands’ non-native feral hogs which the bald eagles had ignored. The goldens eating the hogs was, of course, a good thing, but, unfortunately they also ate the small foxes even though they were to the eagles little more than an incidental catch.

Canine distemper virus probably reduced the fox population too.

Recovery of the fox was accomplished by catching the golden eagles. They were not killed, being a protected species themselves. Most importantly the threat of new golden eagles was eliminated ridding the real source of golden eagle nutrition, the fat hogs. Bald eagles were reintroduced later. The bald eagles find their food at sea and in the intertidal zone.

These things accomplished, the fox population has grown from just 55 to estimates as high as 2500 since the fox was listed under the ESA.

 

Team Telecom is a group of lawyers from the FBI, DoJ, DHS, and DoD who were empowered to enter any US network operations center of companies like Global Crossing on 30 minutes' notice, allowing them to secretly audit and intervene in the maintenance of the Internet's biggest backbones. The employees who dealt with the team were required to be US citizens, sworn to secrecy, and unable to discuss what they did, sometimes even with their own employers.

The security agreement for Global Crossing, whose fiber-optic network connected 27 nations and four continents, required the company to have a “Network Operations Center” on U.S. soil that could be visited by government officials with 30 minutes of warning. Surveillance requests, meanwhile, had to be handled by U.S. citizens screened by the government and sworn to secrecy — in many cases prohibiting information from being shared even with the company’s executives and directors.

“Our telecommunications companies have no real independence in standing up to the requests of government or in revealing data,” said Susan Crawford, a Yeshiva University law professor and former Obama White House official. “This is yet another example where that’s the case.”

The full extent of the National Security Agency’s access to fiber-optic cables remains classified. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement saying that legally authorized data collection “has been one of our most important tools for the protection of the nation’s — and our allies’ — security. Our use of these authorities has been properly classified to maximize the potential for effective collection against foreign terrorists and other adversaries...”

...Lipman, a partner with Bingham McCutchen, based in Washington, said the talks with Team Telecom typically involve little give and take. “It’s like negotiating with the Motor Vehicle Department,” he said.

Agreements with private companies protect U.S. access to cables’ data for surveillance [Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima/WashPo]