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Peanut, a very little parrot in central Michigan, has been feeling poorly. Bug doesn't know how much significance this little Greenrump Parrotlet has - he was among the many factors in the decision to bring Bug home instead of continuing my search for a good parakeet breeder.
The internet forum equivalent of well wishes is something called 
, at least in parrot circles. That hardly seems adequate in Peanut's case. This bird is too important for little gif images; I want to send actual medicine!
Here's hoping Peanut is up and flying again soon.
I'm still amazed that his person got got the above photograph. Bug goes by too fast to be photographed.
Editors Note, 9/6/06: Peanut didn't make it. I don't know what this means for the universe but Pamela, Peanut's person, could use your poofs now.
Slate covers the proper shipping of legless reptiles.
It may not be for everyone, but I'm really enjoying Blogging the Bible on Slate. [Warning: Irreverence ahead.]
"9:9-17. God announces His first covenant with man, that He will never again destroy the earth with a flood. He doesn't rule out other catastrophes. (God, apparently, is the opposite of an insurance company. He offers flood protection, but no other coverage.)" - David Plotz, Abraham vs. God
Sadly, he only seems to get as far as the end of Genesis by June 1. No sign he'll keep going.
ed. note (Aug. 26): I misunderstood the links which are divided by book. On to Exodus. . .
So, we drank a lot of bottled water in China. No one drinks the tap water straight – most of the locals boil it and fill their travel bottles with tea, which wasn’t practical for us – and bottled water consumption is on the rise in China. According to the Earth Policy Institute, sales increased by 250% between 1999 and 2004.
Here in the U.S., where we have some of the safest municipal water in the world, consumption of bottled water nearly doubled (from 4.7 billion gallons to 7.3 billion gallons per year) between 2000 and 2005. Most of this (40%), of course, is merely filtered tap water poured into bottles that probably don’t get recycled (only 35% are) and marked up about 100,000% (16 oz of tap water costs about 1/10th of 1 cent). Not only that, designer water with even bigger markups is becoming more popular – bottled water for dogs, bottled water that gives you a tan, and bottled water than transmits love (left) are just a few of the stupid waters on the market.
The ourtrage is twofold: 1) none of this water is required to meet the same standards as tap water so there is no guarantee that bottled is better or even as good as tap water and, 2) just half of the $100 billion that consumers spend on bottled water annually could be enough to provide world wide access to clean, drinkable water.
For more, check out Food & Water Watch’s bottled water page and/or sign up for the Aquabits newsletter.
Apparently the local Red Cross chapter is offering blood donors raffle tickets for free gasoline this summer. I don't really know where to begin with this one.
I was alerted to this particular "blood for oil" opportunity in an alert from a local public health organization .
The pavement. The rain. The building. The dog. The cherry blossoms.
My feet, rythmically pounding the earth. The scent of lilac. The air in my lungs.
It's all the same stuff arranged in complex patterns that cause each specific behavior that makes up this gigantic cosmic dance.
"A large, and growing, chunk of our collective resources is already allocated to the military on the basis of passionate claims about moral imperitives. Those who care about civilian objectives have to answer in kind, not imagine that they can win the debate with careful spreadsheets and subtle tradeoffs alone."
- Frank Ackerman & Lisa Heinzerling, Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing
What would have induced Sylvia Poggioli to utter "oh, s**t" and vanish off the air during her olympics report on All Things Considered yesterday?I haven't listened but, I'm sure it's been edited out of the webcast.
"Senior administration officials acknowledged Wednesday that even if the president's push for substitutes for gasoline and diesel were successful, the reliance on Persian Gulf oil by world markets - including the U.S. market - is unlikely to change.
Bush's main message, however, was about priming the budgets of federal laboratories and agencies to foster basic science research and strengthening math and science education." - Associated Press
Oh. Unfortunately, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere very seriously have increased by at least 30%, methane has doubled, and nitrous oxides have increaased by 15-20% in the last two centuries and we are seriously expecting an increase in global surface temperatures by 2 to 10 degrees by the end of this next century. (Rabe again)
The president spoke last night and Mac, Tom and I hid in the basement. Ok, that's more dramatic than it sounds. We were installing moulding and trying to get the kitchen drain hooked up (still need one more part).
From the recap news stories, I've found out that George W. proposed the U.S. reduce it's dependence on foreign oil by 75% by 2025. Now, the U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day and about 12.3 million of that is imported (1). If those numbers stayed the same (which they won't), to reduce our oil imports by 75%, we need to conserve or find domestic sources for 9.2 million barrels per day or 3.4 billion barrels per year (the Arctic Refuge is estimated to contain a total of somewhere between 9 and 16 billion barrels but only ~3 billion that would be profitable to pump out, by the way (2))
Since the president doesn't seem to want to increase auto fuel efficiency (cars being our #1 use of oil by far; about 2/3 of everything we use (3)), that's a pretty tall order. Ya see, U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and we have approximately 22 billion barrels of proven reserves to tap into (4). The only way to reduce the amount of foreign oil that we use is to reduce the total amount of oil that we use.
Exxon Mobil, which made a record breaking $25 billion in profits last year, isn't going to like that very much. To put that in perspective, let's compare ExxonMobil's profits to the gross domestic products (GDP, the sum of all the goods and services sold) of a few countries:
Cote d'Ivoire $ 24.8 billion in 2005, making it the 106th largest country by GDP
Zimbabwe $ 24.0 b.
Bolivia $ 23.6 b.
Qatar $ 22.5 b.
Panama $ 22.2 b.
Estonia $ 21.8 b. . . . and that's just profits. (5)
Should we talk about sales volume? Exxon moved $263.99 billion in product last year. (6) That's more than
Switzerland $ 262.1 billion, making it the 37th largest country by GDP,
Hong Kong $ 254.2 b. (yes, world financial markets calculate this separately from China),
Vietnam $ 251.8 b.,
Malaysia $ 248.0 b., and
Greece $ 242.8 b.. (5)
What's amazing is that, somehow, ExxonMobil can't find the money to just pay the $3 billion in punitive damages they were supposed to from the ExxonValdez oil spill 16 years ago (7). Perhaps the Exxon CEO should hear how you think he should cough it up and clean up his act.
Don't want to watch think about the math? Watch the flash file then: 
(1) Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico
(2) SavetheArctic.com
(3) & (4) U.S. Department of Energy: Demand, Reserves
(5) CIA World Factbook
(6) Forbes Magazine
(7) Houston Chronicle
Additionally, only 6 countries emitted more than the state of Texas! In fact, if you compare emissions from the 50 states to world countries, 17 of them rank in the top 50 global emitters!
I'm reading Statehouse and Greenhouse by Barry Rabe, whom I considered studying under at the University of Michigan. I'm on page 5.
How am I figuring that? Ok, by car, it's 10 miles from my house to campus. $2.35 isn't that different than the cost of a gallon of gas and I can get to campus, probably, 2.5 times on a gallon. Now, assuming the capital outlay of purchasing a car is a fixed cost and not relevant to the per trip cost (this is a standard microeconomic technique), even incorporating the cost of wear and tear on the car over 10 miles isn't going to make driving more expensive than taking the train. Since taking the metro is also longer (about twice as long) since it's an arterial system designed to take people to and from the center of the system rather than around the city, the decision for car owners is really about whether the value of reading on the train for a hour is worth more than 1/2 a gallon of gasoline and the 1/2 hour extra time the commute takes (and, for some of us, the enjoyment/excercise value of biking one way) . . . .
My point is: it should be no surprise to anyone that public transportation isn't getting the majority of commuters out of their cars. Once you've bought a car, it's cheaper and easier to drive . . . especially if you have to drive to get to the metro in the first place . . . and yet fares keep going up.
Now, parking
may actually be the cost factor that tips the scales but, in my case, the annual parking fee is quite modest. However, we've only got the one car and Mac uses it to commute to Towson, where, according to Maryland's online public transit planner, it is not possible to get to in one day by public transportation . . . but that's a whole other story.
It's late, I should stop doing math.
One of the biggest obstacles to DC voting rights is the complete lack of awareness on the issue. Nearly 80% of American's don't know that DC residents don't have the same voting rights as they do (1). Well, sports gets a lot of news coverage. We have more than enough marathoners, cyclists, rowers, and, apparently, curlers to field an enthusiastic team. I figured that even if we never get a team, holding an Olympic Trial would get some national attention.
Well, I clearly wasn't doing anything with this idea. Fortunately, it turns out that I wasn't the only one to think it and a few industrious souls are doing something about it. Check it out:
On the topic of livable communities . . . We absolutely adore the fact that we don't have to drive everywhere. We are 5-min walking distance from the grocery store and hardware store, a little farther from the video store, pet store and pharmacy (but a bicycle reduces that back to 5-min including parking). Parking the car, though, is a bit crazy. We'd never drive to the natural food store 8 blocks away because it would take longer to park then walk/bike there. Our neighborhood is actually rather mild on the parking crunch. I understand that Adam's Morgan has three times as many parking permits issued as curbside spaces (wow). Managing parking is part of an overall transportation plan that should serve drivers, public transportation commuters, cyclists, and (remember them) pedestrians. DC is considering various policy options but, unfortunately, some very short-sighted folks are making noise in favor of all the wrong non-solutions and capturing the ears of their city council members.
There's a bill before the City Council to make parking permit fees separate from car registration and to make permits for a 2nd and 3rd car per household more expensive (but actually quite modestly). Seems reasonable to me. But instead of embracing this reasonable solution, some folks are attacking parking spaces granted to Zipcar & Flexcar, car sharing programs that allow dozens of people in a given neighborhood not to own their own (or 2nd) car and share one car/one space - how short-sighted is that?
The City Council is taking comments on parking between now and Friday, January 27th. Weigh in! Environment and Public Works Committee Members Carol Schwartz (Chair, 202-724-8105), Kwame R. Brown (202-724-8174), Jim Graham (202-724-8181), Adrian Fenty (202-724-8052), and Marion Barry (202-724-8045) especially need to hear from residents who support increases in permit fees and car-sharing.
Climate Mash Flash Movie |
Not FunnyGoogle News search on Global Warming provides more sobering reasons to take action now.
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"A leading Senate Republican warned Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) yesterday that a move to recognize gay marriages in the nation's capital would trigger a sharp backlash from Congress, and the mayor acknowledged that the District could jeopardize its budget agenda and domestic partner benefits if it mishandles the issue." - Washington Post, 4/21/05
Good thing the Senate is looking out for us here in DC because who knows what would happen if we started making our own decisions . . . . A slightly more just and equitable world, maybe.
. . . but only the fair trade organic kind. 
My reasons are self-serving. The only dessert I've ever cared about is chocolate. The good stuff is more satisfying in smaller quantities than the cheap stuff. The student co-op in the basement of the union sells lots of chocolate. I'm picky and only like Divine and only buy the 45g bar ($1 and I can't be trusted with 100g bar all at once). That my chocolate choices do not encourage childhood slavery in West Africa makes my conscience happy too.
I started drinking coffee when I was 14 and started getting up for high school at the same time as my Dad got up to go to work. He had a carpool arrangement where he was in charge of the coffee so there was always a fresh pot at 6:15 am. I've gone from drinking Folgers automatic drip with non-dairy creamer to french press, fair trade, organic medium roast.
According to Global Exchange, "The United States consumes one-fifth of all the world's coffee, making it the largest consumer in the world. But few Americans realize that agriculture workers in the coffee industry often toil in what can be described as "sweatshops in the fields." Many small coffee farmers receive prices for their coffee that are less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt." [1]
So what is this Fair Trade thing?
"Fair trade means that farmers, workers, and artisans:
1. receive a sufficient price under direct long-term contracts,
2. are small-scale producers in democratic co-ops (coffee, cocoa, bananas, fruits, crafts) or workers on larger farms who receive a living wage and can bargain collectively (tea, bananas, fruits),
3. don't use abusive child labor or forced labor, and
4. use ecologically sustainable methods. " [2]
Fair trade coffee is even available in my grocery store now! But Dean's Beans roasts some nice stuff too.
The co-op sells nice coffee too but I have to stop buying it there. I stopped drinking coffee nearly two years ago because it messes with my digestion. 
But it's hard to break a 15 year pattern. A few weeks ago, a friend made a lovely pot of premium french press coffee. I had a little sip - it was so very good. A couple weeks later, we went on a "camping trip" (sleepover + hiking) and he did it again. This time I cracked and had my own cup. I have since bought my very own one-cup french press and have given myself permission to drink coffee once a day. Even though an early afternoon cup with a little chocolate bar is very lovely, the second cup of coffee pushes me over the edge.
Some Choice Tea, also fair trade, organic and available at the co-op, especially Earl Gray, goes very well with chocolate too.
If you're not from Washington, DC, you may not be aware that Washington does not actually have the right to elect Senators or Congressional Representatives. Honest to goodness. According to the Census Bureau, we have more residents than Wyoming. They get a senator and two reps. We get a non-voting delegate.
There are all sorts of arguments that the founding fathers wanted it that way - but the founding fathers never thought anyone would live in DC year round - heck, it was a swamp. The bottom line is that the U.S., the self-appointed defender of democracy worldwide, denies more than 500,000 of its citizens voting representation in Congress, didn't even grant them the right to vote in presidential elections until 1964, and continues to override their local government decisions by maintaining budget oversight in Congress (have I mentioned that we're not represented there?).
Because we are a "world class city", we are following the lead of states and cities all over the country and subsidizing major league baseball. A creative grassroots movement is taking pledges to buy naming rights to the ball field which they proposed as "Taxation without Representation Stadium". I pledged.
Want more info? Check out DC Vote.
Who was that St. Valentine guy anyway? Was he really a christian priest in the Roman Empire who was executed for performing marriages for draft-eligible young men against the emperors orders? Did he really fall in love with his jailor's daughter and send her letters signed "from your Valentine." Or, was this all just hyped up by the $7.5 billion per year greeting card industry and an excuse for Americans to eat an average of 24.6 pounds of candy per year?
I called my grandma anyway. It's not her fault that I'm cynical about consumerism and holidays.
On my way into the metro, a nice lady from Our Place, a local social work agency, gave me a little baggie with a heart shaped lollipop, some condoms, and educational material about sexually transmitted diseases and other health issues.
An economist on NPR this morning was discussing his research that determined that a marriage is equal to, on average, $100,000 worth of happiness per year.
On my way out of the metro, I was confronted with a wall of billboards from the Marriage Works people who promote that same message but want to deny that happiness to the 600,000 or so committed gay and lesbian couples in the U.S.
"I think we agree, the past is over."
- George W. Bush (1946 - ), On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000
Remember how I said that I'm not really a political junky? Well, I'm not. And here's the thing: neither is most of America, be they red, blue, or some shade of purple. Snarky political commentary doesn't move them.
I've been reading a lot about how a 21st century public is concerned with postmodernist values- quality of life issues like balancing economic growth with protecting the environment and consumers. Unfortunately for Kerry supporters, to the casual observer, Bush and Kerry sounded awfully similar on many of those issues. Both candidates used buzzwords like “freedom,” “fiscal responsibility,” “environmental stewardship,” and “the American way” liberally as they described their policy proposals. The Democratic Party did not do a good enough job defining the differences between the candidates on compelling issues that favor democrats. And, postmodernist values did not feature prominently in this election dominated by an Iraq war and economic policy.
Now, granted, no sitting president, uncontested in the the party primaries, has lost re-election in more than 50 years . . . Still, my husband once said to me, “I don’t know what it means to be a Democrat; I just know that I’m not a Republican.” Voters without a party affiliation to fall back on are forced to make decisions on nebulous attributes like leadership. Bill Clinton initiated a strategy of trying to beat Republicans on traditionally Republican issues. While it worked for the terribly charismatic Clinton, Kerry couldn’t pull that off. Until the democrats agree on what it means to be a Democrat and figure out how to communicate that to the public, it will be tough to win national office on the issues.
A few organizations seem to understand that the Democratic Party can't be defined during a presidential election at the same time as the party defines the candidate. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they can do it without the Democratic Party which appears to still be running against Bush.
I agree with the president (and he is the president) - the past is over.
Now, can the democrats move on? In the mean time, can environmentalists break out of the partisan trap? For a brief moment in the early 1970's (I missed it), environmentalism was truly a bi-partisan issue. How do we prevent the GOP from ramming through the president's "mandate for reform" (see resolution #3) and dismantling cornerstone environmental and social insurance laws along the way? And if the Dem's can't do this, how long until we ditch'em?
Okay, now you probably need a laugh so: watch "This Land" from JibJab (big, big file).
The District of Columbia voted 9:1 against George W. Bush.
And now George W. is my only elected official with any power. The residents of the capital of the United States (W. might say "capital of the free world" but I'm not going to go that far) have no voting representation in Congress. Regardless, we're shelling out $12 million for security today. Every other president paid for that out of the federal budget, but not W.