Kauai Transportation Meetings

SOURCE: Ken Taylor (taylork021@hawaii.rr.com)
SUBHEAD: Kauai Multimodal Land Transportation Plan public meetings - Bus, biking, walking & local roads.

 By Staff on 26 July 2011 for Move Kauai - 
 (http://movekauai.net)


Image above: A portion of the eastside Kauai bike path looking north in front of hotels and timeshares.  

The public Is invited to five workshops on transit, bikes and walking in Kauai's towns and neighborhoods. We need your participation! All ages welcome. (Bring the keiki!) The County will be hosting transportation workshops around the island in August to talk with people about their mobility needs and their hopes for the future of getting around in our communities. We will provide food and refreshments, including ICE CREAM! And there will be DOOR PRIZES! We will talk story about:

• TRANSIT. The Kauai Bus has grown over the past several years, adding new buses and routes. Ridership has grown in response. In fact, ridership on The Kauai Bus has more than doubled in five years from 25,403 monthly riders in May, 2006 to 58,210 in May, 2011. Would you like to see the bus service continue to grow and improve? Where? Are there schedule changes that would help you? How can we improve The Kauai Bus? 

• BICYCLING. How could the County improve the environment for biking in your neighborhood and in your community? Are your children able to bike safely? Would you ride a bike to catch the bus if this was safe and convenient? What and where are the barriers to bicycling?

• WALKING. Is your neighborhood safe for pedestrians? What should the County do to make your community more walkable? Are there locations that are especially unsafe?

•  LOCAL ROADS AND STREETS. Are your local roads and streets safe? Do people speed today? Are there parking issues in your neighborhood? Where are the local congestion points? How should the County address our local driving needs?

These will be interactive workshops. We will draw on maps, develop lists and talk in small groups. No experience is required and all ideas and opinions are welcome. We need YOU! Workshop Schedule:  

West Side: 
Waimea Neighborhood Center - August 16, 6 to 8pm  

Koloa-Poipu-Kalaheo: 
Koloa Neighborhood Center - August 17, 6 to 8pm 

 Lihue: 
Lihue Neighborhood Center - August 18, 6 to 8pm  

East Side: 
Kapaa Neighborhood Center - August 23, 6 to 8:pm  

North Shore: 
Kilauea Neighborhood Center - August 24, 6 to 8pm 

 For more information visit: http://movekauai.net
 

Over the Edge Lies Fear

SUBHEAD: The demand artificially brought forward during the boom years must be repaid with years of falling demand for almost everything. By Ilargi & Stonleigh on 10 August 2011 for the Automatic Earth - (http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/08/august-10-2011-over-edge-lies-fear.html) Image above: painting "The Promised Land" by Mark Bryan 2003. From (http://www.artofmarkbryan.com/promised%20land.html). Ilargi: Amidst another entire slew of bad news in the markets, the claim to fame for story of the day must go to French bank Société Générale, and the over 22% drop in share price it had at a certain point today - though it was pushed up back to (only?!)-14%-, and the persistent rumors of major trouble and even a potential bankruptcy that have been making the rounds for a few days now. President Sarkozy cut short his holidays to address the situation (other French banks joined the plunge, and France itself may be downgraded). The best part of it all, however, if you ask me, was this from Bloomberg:

Société Générale "categorically denies all market rumors," Emmanuelle Renaudat, a spokeswoman for the French bank said in an interview. She declined to be more specific.

Well, hey, Emmanuelle, sorry I asked... But wouldn't you want to know what rumors you're denying exactly, before denying them? This is going to sound to a lot of people like you're admitting your company is in trouble. Just saying... Wall Street, and its banks in particular, once again and still, have their own rumors to deal with. And most of all, they now have to deal with encroaching fear. A fear that is starting to look like it might be very hard to shake. The Dow closed down 520 points today. 520, or 4.63%! Citi, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs all lost over 10%. It's like we've shifted into a whole new mindset. And Stoneleigh explains why that is: Stoneleigh: The nature of markets has long been a major focus here at The Automatic Earth. Whereas most commentators treat markets as being driven in some kind of rational fashion by external events, we have concentrated on the irrational endogenous dynamics and the role of sentiment in creating the perceptions that drive positive feedback loops - either virtuous or vicious circles. Sentiment, and therefore perception, can change very abruptly, with far-reaching effects. The events of this past week or so have been a prime example. The rally of the past two and a half years continued longer than we had anticipated, but on balance of probabilities it is now over, and we are entering the next phase of the credit crunch - the period where a majority begins to appreciate what a credit crunch really means. The first phase, from October 2007 to March 2009, was little more than a mild introduction for many, although even that was enough to push a large number of casualties silently over the edge. With the dramatic end to the rally (and a loss of over $7.8 trillion in mere days) comes the end of the complacency it engendered. Fear is in the ascendancy once again, and fear is extremely catching. We are already seeing it spread like wildfire and begin to feed upon itself, creating self-fulfilling prophecies. The fundamentals have not changed materially, but the perception of them has, and that is the game changer. When markets are rising, thanks to optimism and hope, people develop a false sense of predictability, as if events were somehow proceeding as they were meant to, and that they should, by rights, continue to do so. Under such circumstances, market volatility is typically low. In contrast, when markets decline, as fear tightens its grip, that comforting sense of pseudo-certainty evaporates very quickly. Fear breeds extreme volatility as investors try to second guess rapidly unfolding moves, and also each other. The best measure of this volatility is the VIX index.

Initially investors look to buy the dips, on the assumption, born of three decades of expansion, that every decline represents a buying opportunity. Later that assumption will falter, and then fail, but residual optimism takes time to dissipate completely. Every temporary upswing all the way down will rekindle echoes of it. The only relative safety is to be found on the sidelines in cash. While there is money in volatility for some aggressive (and lucky, or well-connected) traders, there will be far more opportunities to lose a fortune than to make one for those who cannot stop playing the game. Going forward, we can expect more of the stomach-churning market declines we have seen over the past week, but also apparently rocket-fueled, yet short-lived rallies. The sharpest and largest upswings happen in bear markets, interspersed with cascading movements to the downside. We advise our readers to proceed with great caution and to ignore rationalizations and spurious causation discussed in the mainstream media. In extrapolating past trends forward, failing to anticipate discontinuities, and propagating the smoke-and-mirrors posturing of central authorities desperate to obscure what is happening for as long as possible, they will be arriving at completely incorrect conclusions as to the financial consequences we are facing and what actions we may be able to take in order to protect ourselves. They will also be unhelpfully fanning the flames of fear. Global commentators have focused recently on the pure political theatre of the rise in the debt ceiling in the US, and subsequently on the downgrade of the US by a single credit-rating agency, but these events do not presage what mainstream opinion has suggested at all. Quite the opposite in fact. The debt ceiling debate was merely a staged game of brinkmanship, softening up the US population for austerity measures and coming cuts in entitlement programmes targeting the weakest members of society. Imminent default was never a risk. The real risk is the acceleration of the wealth and power grab that has been going on under the guise of quantitative easing for the duration of the rally. The coverage of the ratings downgrade likewise obscures the real threat. Commentators boldly assert that the US will inevitably have to pay more to borrow, that treasuries are increasingly risky, that the US dollar is doomed and that inflation is an imminent threat. The Automatic Earth has long held diametrically opposed opinions with respect to the next few years, and those are already being vindicated by events. Our position has long been that the US will benefit from a flight to safety as the least worst option, initially at Europe's expense. Money will flood from where the fear is to where the fear is not, and one look at bond rates and credit default swap spreads is all it takes to see that the fear is concentrated in Europe, while the US is seen as a safe haven. When fear rules, small relative differences are enormously amplified, leading eventually to record spreads between debts and debtors perceived to be risky and those perceived not to be, even if that perception is distorted or outright incorrect. As we have said, fear generates self-fulfilling prophecies. As interest rates spiral higher for supposedly risky borrowers, they become less and less able to pay, and default becomes a certainty. Imposing austerity measures only makes the situation worse, as it forces a contraction that further impairs ability to pay. This is the situation the European periphery finds itself in, and the fear is spreading to include the centre. Today France is in the crosshairs, and even German bond rates are rising. In contrast rates in the US are falling into negative territory, reflecting the desperation of investors looking for a safe haven and prepared to pay for the privilege. Yields are low because the market is not asking for higher returns, but for a means to preserve capital. The market sets interest rates, not central bankers or governments who only chose a rate to defend, and not ratings agencies without a shred of real credibility left after their performance of recent years. Interest rates on short term US government debt should stay low throughout the coming period of deleveraging. Short term treasuries represent one of the safest options available, as they are highly liquid, and liquidity will matter more than almost anything else in the depression we are rapidly descending into. Longer term debt may well be a different story, as that has the added risk of having to wait far too long to be repaid, or selling into the secondary market. Asserting that US treasuries are risky deters ordinary people from seeking the relative safety they offer, even while the insiders take full advantage of it. Similarly, warning people away from US dollars while telling them to hold their nerve in the markets, benefits only those insiders who seek to keep the bubble inflated for long enough to extract their own wealth from a collapsing system. The US dollar (and other safe haven currencies such as the Swiss franc) is set to benefit, during the period of deleveraging, from the same flight to safety that treasuries will enjoy. It is still the reserve currency, and is likely to stay that way for several years at least. As dollar denominated debt (of which there is more than any other kind worldwide) deflates, demand for dollars, from those seeking to pay down that debt, will push up their value. The inflation obsession, which central bankers are only too pleased to encourage, also continues to deter people from protecting themselves. Those who are afraid of inflation or hyperinflation will not address the threat of debt or hold the cash that will remain king as the debt bubble bursts and deleveraging aggravates the credit crunch. It is deflation - the collapse of a pyramid of excess claims to underlying real wealth - that we are facing. That is the inevitable result of a bursting bubble. Widening credit spreads will send the interest rates payable on the debts of ordinary people, companies, banks and lower levels of government through the roof, even as the rate payable on the debts perceived to be safest falls and remains low. At the same time, monetary contraction, credit destruction, spiking unemployment, benefit cuts and skyrocketing bankruptcies will increase the burden that debt represents. Actual cash will be scarce and few will have access to much of it. Under such circumstances, people will be forced to sell assets for pennies on the dollar to those who still have purchasing power. This is a recipe for extreme wealth concentration, and that, as we are already seeing around the world, leads to increasing social unrest. People need to protect themselves while they still can, but listening to the mainstream media and central authorities is emphatically not the way to do so. The effect of the US downgrade is ironically far more likely to be felt in Europe than in America. Other triple-A sovereign debtors perceived to be riskier than the US are now at risk of being downgraded, and where fear has already a foothold with respect to sovereign debt default, such moves are likely to aggravate it. Attempts to restore confidence are likely to backfire badly, as existing adverse risk perception merely makes such moves appear desperate, so that they tend to be interpreted as evidence of major problems rather than as reassurance. Failure is likely to be followed by overtly defensive moves such as the reimposition of capital controls and increasing protectionism, which will only encourage greater fear and greater capital flight. Confidence is ephemeral, and once damaged it can be almost impossible to revive until the underlying imbalance has been resolved, and we are years of deleveraging away from that point. It is clear the the European Financial Stability Fund, recently increased but still obviously insufficient to cover even the sovereign debt problems already admitted to, cannot solve the rapidly escalating crisis. The scope of this is increasing dramatically as financial contagion spreads to larger states with more intractable debt problems. The European Stability Mechanism, intended to be implemented as a permanent solution in 2013, will never have a chance, as monetary union will long since have been overtaken by events before it can be established. The European centre has no mandate for further integration, bought, as it would have to be, through the centre agreeing to shoulder far more financial risk than it has done so far. That will likely prove to be politically impossible. The countries of the periphery, caught in a downward spiral of increasingly severe austerity measures and exploding debt, will ultimately resist, perhaps violently, the enormous loss of sovereignty greater integration would involve. The goodwill necessary to build consensus or render burden-sharing acceptable does not exist, and acrimony is increasing as the situation continues to deteriorate. Larger political accretions become fissile as there is not enough to go around and divisions grounded in history become accentuated anew. This is clearly the risk for Europe. While rallies are kind to policy makers, casting them in a gloss of apparent competence and effectiveness, declines abruptly strip away the comforting illusion of central control. Policy makers appear increasingly incompetent and out of touch with reality as events unfold far more rapidly than they can be responded to. In reality there is little they can do faced with a bubble blown over at least three decades. Once blown, bubbles always implode. The demand artificially brought forward during the boom years must be repaid with years of falling demand for almost everything, as difficult as that is to imagine from the top of the pyramid. That is the last thing people are expecting, but it is already underway. Even commodities appear to have topped on speculation going into reverse, and falling demand will accentuate falling prices. The growth dynamic is going into reverse, and with it many of our preconceived and deeply held notions. .

The Lazy Goat Keeper

SUBHEAD: If you are milking for your own use, and not maximizing for production, you can make it a lot easier on you and your goats.  

By Sharon Astyk on 8 August 2011 for SharonAstyk.com - 
    (http://sharonastyk.com/2011/08/08/the-lazy-goatkeeper)

 
Image above: Children with Nigerian Dwarf Goats at Sharon's farm. From (http://sharonastyk.com/the-goats-of-gleanings-farm/).

 
I get a lot of inquiries about goats that go pretty much like this: “I’d love to have fresh goat’s milk all the time, and cheese, but my schedule just isn’t compatible with milking twice a day at 5am and 5pm, 365 days a year, so I guess I can’t have dairy goats, but I love to hear about yours.”

Well, let me start by saying that my schedule is also not compatible with milking twice a day on that schedule. Once upon a time I was routinely up at 5am, and I still start my day between 5:30 and 6, but now that my children sleep later, I’m into sleeping too. Moreover, I can’t face a warm goat until I’ve had one cup of hot tea. I don’t milk twice a day. I don’t milk 365 days a year, and I do go away on vacation. In large measure, we have shifted our milking schedule so that it fits with our lives.

How is this possible? Well, it is not if you plan to run a goat or cow dairy for profit – in that case, you will be tied to the same schedule, because 12 hour, twice per day milkings are necessary to maximize production. Most of us who want a couple of goats, however, do not have to maximize production – in fact, we may not want to. It becomes pretty feasible to make milking work for you.

First of all, no goat milks 365 days a year, unless you choose not to breed her annually. Generally speaking, the last two months of a doe’s pregnancy, they are dry – ie, not milking so that they can put their energies into kid development. If all your goats are dry at the same time, this is an excellent time of year to go on vacation, since they only need to be fed and watered. If you don’t want kids, you can breed every other year, and in this case, you will have to milk all year ’round.

Generally, however, it is pretty feasible to work around goat biology. We milk once per day, in the morning, at about 7am. Because goats, like all mammals must have a kid in order to produce milk, we separate out their kids, starting at two weeks old, at night. From 7pm to 7am (actually we start out with 10pm and gradually move backwards to adjust the kids), the kids are in their own pen or section of the pasture (depending on age of kids and season). At 7am, we milk the does, and then let them out with their kids. During the day, the kids have all the milk.

I could also milk once a day during the evenings, and keep the kids separate during the daytimes, but this works better for us – and I think is preferable for the kids as well, since goats are diurnal and do eat more during the daytime – a day separation would be feasible, however. You can schedule your milking for whatever time is convenient to you. I do try not to push milking much past 8am, since a full udder is uncomfortable for them, but I have no difficulty milking earlier than usual, if we need to be somewhere early, or occasionally even leaving the kids on their mothers overnight so that we don’t have to milk at all on a particularly rushed morning (say, if we have to leave at 5am – this is rare thing, however).

Left to themselves, the kids will nurse for 5-7 months after birth (actually, they’d do it a lot longer, but the Moms get annoyed after a while when a kid nearly as big as they are practically lifts them in the air). So for the first six months (average) after birth, if you keep the kids that long, you can go away. All you have to do is put the kids in the pasture with their Moms and they will be fine – no milking needed.

Some people worry about scours (diarrhea) if the goats were getting all their milk – we’ve never had a case of scours except in goats bought from other farms. Our goats tend to do very well on free choice nursing – and this is, of course, what they’d do in nature. No, the don’t get fat, either – they eat as much as is appropriate to them. Indeed, we recently had a goat from another farm come to ours who had been bottle fed, and we got to see the dramatic difference in size and vitality between bottle and mother fed.

You cannot do this if you have CAE in your herd or are engaged in CAE prevention. Our herd comes only from tested CAE negative herds, and we don’t show or otherwise bring our goats out into the world, so we feel very comfortable with dam-raised kids. Some people will tell you that dam-raised kids are unfriendly and can’t be handled – ours are not. They like to play with us, eat treats and be petted. Indeed, again, our experience with bottle babies is that they don’t fully know how to work in the larger herd – they aren’t sure if they are goats or humans. We like goats who are goats. I would recommend that you purchase goats only from CAE negative herds if you want to be a lazy goatkeeper.

If you kid in springtime, a six month nursing cycle will coincide with the cycle of the grass in most northern areas that get summer moisture. One thought is to milk only on this seasonal cycle – following the grass and drying the goats off during the winter, as they would naturally have dried off. You can then eat your residual milk in the form of cheese that you made over the summer, and milk can be frozen if you have space for it. You will, of course, get less milk in total, but the economics of this are pretty good, because goats need less grain during summers when pastures are lush and may well be able to do acceptably on grass alone. This allows you to be flexible all year round – you can leave the kids on the does in spring, summer and fall and in winter, they will be dry. The only time of year you won’t want to leave the farm is kidding season.

The main disadvantage of this situation is that it sets you to selling the goat’s offspring in late fall. Now if you plan to butcher males and keep females, this works very well – your goats are mature at precisely the point at which you’d want to butcher them anyway. If you plan to sell offspring, most people want their livestock earlier in the year, and more people don’t want to winter goats over, so prices fall – and most people prefer young goats when they are small and cute. One option is to breed the doelings (if you have a breed that can be bred at 7months – some breeds wait longer) and sell them as bred does – which bring higher prices. Another is to overwinter them yourself and sell them in the spring as milkers, after they have kidded, which also bring higher prices. In many breeds, twins are the norm, and you can sell one of the goat’s babies at 8 weeks, so you can partially obviate this problem, if not wholly. Do remember to wether your boys if you are doing this – by six months, they could easily impregnate Mom – in some breeds significantly earlier.

What if you want year ’round milk? This is the case for us – and the reason we have two kiddings a year, one in July and one in April. In that case, actually going away becomes more complicated, and there are periods of the year in which it is necessary that someone be around to milk if you are going to leave.

Working on that schedule, we can go away and leave the kids with their Moms from May (after the first cycle of kidding) through June, come back in July (for the second cycle) and then are free from August to November. Depending on how long the April babies nurse, we might even be able to get away with December (if you routinely travel for Christmas or other December holidays, it might make sense to have May babies – we do our travelling at Thanksgiving in general). From December to May, if we want to leave the farm, we have to get help milking.

Which is where this thing comes in handy – the Maggidans Milker. Essentially a manual breast pump for goats (the first one was, I believe a modified human breast pump), this takes the skill out of milking, and means that a competent 12 year old (I know this because we used one for several years) can handle the day-to-day ins and outs of goat care. You will see some decline in production if you go away for an extended period and have someone milk with only this – the milker gets the majority of milk, but for maximum production, you want to strip the goats teats afterwards, to get the last of it (the hindmilk is also the richest).

 But for a couple of days, we’ve seen no significant drops in production in a doe that is established, and you may find it worth it. There’s another brand as well, the EZ Milker that is more expensive, but we have had a great experience with this one. Given that I have carpal tunnel syndrome from too much time in front of the computer, the Maggidans is helpful – we’re milking 12 does right now, and while two or three are easy, after a point without the milker, it got painful.

If you are prepared to pump and dump for a few days, (ie, give the milk to other animals), you don’t even have to take the time to sterilize. We had no trouble teaching a 12 year old to handle our goats for a few days – and it allowed us to go away and feel comfortable about it. Many more people could have goats if they could rely on a local teen, just as they do to walk their dogs.

The economics of this model work well for us – including the cost of hay, grain, fencing, amortized goat cost (over 10 year breeding life), medical care, etc… my summer milk cost for organic raw milk is $3.11 per gallon. My winter milk cost (where more hay and a bit more grain are involved) is about $4.00 – well below the price of a gallon of organic milk. Besides this our milk has much higher butterfat (ie, more cheese = not all goats have the same butterfat ratios), tastes like sweet cow’s milk (no goaty taste) and we get manure, companionship and kids for sale, replacement or meat. Because I have dwarf goats, two does can easily fit in many backyards, eating weeds and brush and garden wastes for part of their diet. Larger breeds are more appropriate for larger lots.

Although you will not maximize milk production this way, generally speaking lower input (less grain, more flexibility) milking has good economics – yes, you could get more milk out of your doe, but with more concentrates that many of us do not grow. Summer-only production probably has the lowest cost to production, but if you want year-round milk, the numbers still add up.

For many people, concerned with sources of good milk, and with the high (legitimately so – the cost of dairy certification adds a lot) cost of good milk, a couple of dairy goats and lazy goatkeeping could make it feasible.

See also:
The Goats of Gleanings Farm 8/10/10

.

Defending Agrarian Anarchy

SUBHEAD: They call it paradise. I don't know why. You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.  

By Guy McPherson on 10 August 2011 for Nature Bats Last -
 (http://guymcpherson.com/2011/08/defending-agrarian-anarchy)

 
Image above: "Hay Harvest at Eragny" by socialist, anarchist & atheist Camile Pissarro, 1901. From (http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2010/11/pissarro-degas-zola-and-capt-dreyfus.html).

 I can scarcely believe agrarian anarchy needs defending from anybody, much less me. After all, this close-to-nature, close-to-our-neighbors approach was the Jeffersonian ideal for the United States, as evidenced by Monticello and the occasional one-liner from Thomas Jefferson:

"The result of our experiment will be, that man may be trusted to govern themselves without a master."

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

Jefferson did not call himself an anarchist, but his words and ideals indicate he strongly supported the rights and role of individuals, as well as a small government that minimally oversaw the citizenry. The Greco-Latin roots suggest the absence of a ruler, which seems like a good idea to me.

Like Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau idealized an agricultural society that was close to nature. Thoreau was a staunch defender of agrarian anarchy, and he focused even more closely on the individual than did Jefferson: “That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” To my knowledge, no state governments believe we’ve yet reached that point.

Fast forward to the late twentieth century, and we find several other philosophers defending agrarian anarchy. Perhaps the best known examples are radical thinkers Wendell Berry, Noam Chomsky (linguist, philosopher) and Howard Zinn (recently deceased historian). But the clearest voice for agrarian anarchy came from iconoclastic Tucson writer Edward Abbey in the years before he died in 1989:

"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners."

"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others."

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

In my dreams, industrialized nations are headed for agrarian anarchy. Many countries have been there for years and can show us the way, if only we allow them. If a region never acquired ready access to cheap fossil fuels, agrarian anarchy was an obvious approach. How else but a strong sense of self-reliance and dependence on neighbors to grow and distribute all food locally? How else but reliance on those same traits to secure the water supply, and protect it from insults? How else to develop a human community dominated by mutual respect and mutual trust? Contrary to our current set of living arrangements, no currency is needed: barter fills the bill.

For all these reasons, I’m less than thrilled with the United States as a place to mitigate in place and particularly impressed with many countries in central and South America. Belize remains my first choice, for reasons including English as the official language and a long history of multiculturalism (including neither a majority race nor a majority culture). Electricity is spotty at best, most people harvest rainwater and use hand-dug wells, and food is brought into every town every day. Big government is largely absent, and the notions of Big Ag, Big Ad, and Big Pharma are laughable.

Mind you, I’m not recommending Belize or any other central American country for anybody younger than my half-century of years. I suspect climate chaos will make equatorial regions particularly uncomfortable within a decade. Mitigating in place seems dicey at best but if you’re willing to pull up stakes and head for the poles, central American might well serve as an intermediate step on the way to a reasonably long life.

There are many disadvantages associated with a sedentary life. We don’t know how soon, nor how quickly, climate chaos makes any particular place uninhabitable for humans. Ditto for environmental collapse. But if you’ve considered these factors and concluded you’d prefer mitigating in place to hitting the road, I suggest thinking outside national boundaries.

"The Last Resort" - The Eagles 

She came from Providence, the one in Rhode Island 
Where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air 
She packed her hopes and dreams like a refugee 
Just as her father came across the sea 
She heard about a place people were smilin' 
They spoke about the red man's way, and how they loved the land 
And they came from everywhere to the 
Great Divide Seeking a place to stand or a place to hide 
Down in the crowded bars, out for a good time. 

Can't wait to tell you all, what it's like up there 
And they called it paradise I don't know why 
Somebody laid the mountains low while the town got high 
Then the chilly winds blew down 
Across the desert through the canyons of the coast, to the 
Malibu Where the pretty people play, hungry for power to light their neon way and give them things to do 

 Some rich men came and raped the land, 
Nobody caught 'em Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus, people bought 'em 
And they called it paradise The place to be 
They watched the hazy sun, sinking in the sea 
You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina just like the missionaries did, so many years ago 
They even brought a neon sign: "Jesus is coming" 
Brought the white man's burden down 
Brought the white man's reign 
Who will provide the grand design? 

What is yours and what is mine? '
Cause there is no more new frontier 
We have got to make it here 
 We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds, in the name of destiny and the name of God And you can see them there, 
On Sunday morning 
They stand up and sing about what it's like up there 
They call it paradise I don't know why 
You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.

   
Video above: The Eagles perform "The Last Resort" live. From original article and at (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfVYCQUZvNk). .

Tropical Fruit Growers Meeting

SOURCE: Ken Taylor (taylork021@hawaii.rr.com)
SUBHEAD: Fruit growers and bee keepers will get together at Kauai Nursery on Thursday 8/11 from 5-7pm.  

By John Anderson on 8 August 2011 for HTFG -  
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2011/08/tropical-fruit-growers-meeting.html)

 
Image above: Tropical fruit from a Hawaiian farmer's market. From (http://www.soniatasteshawaii.com/2007/12/tropical-ambros.html).  

WHAT:
Hawaiian Tropical Fruit Growers meeting with Kauai Beekeeper Association  

WHEN:
Thursday 11th August 2011 from 5pm - 7pm  

WHERE:
Kauai Nursery and Landscaping

We will be meeting at Kauai Nursery and Landscaping Thursday (2nd Thursday, every other month) 5-7pm.

We will be sharing fruit,seeds, and trees. We will also have a raffle of a tissue cultured banana thanks to the nursery, t-shirts(20$), and copies of Craig Elevitches latest pacific isles crops textbook (500+pages-wow)(50$)

Then we will have as a special guest presenter Jimmy Trujillo of the Kauai Bee Association discuss bees and latest implications for farming. We will be seeking donations for the conference silent auction.

Also, the Hawaiian Tropical Fruit Growers (HTFG) has money to buy interesting fruit (including shipping to big island) for our annual conference thisSeptember 9-11th in Kona... so, we will be discussing coordinating that and other stuff.

Also, following the conference, Ken Love , our Executive Director, will be coming to Kauai (sept 13) with some of the speakers at the conference so we will have some sort of meeting with them.

As usual we will have cold water, and I will bring some smoothies as well. Kauai Nursery and Landscaping is on the highway just south of the college in Puhi, makai side, which is just south of Lihue. If you have any questions, I welcome your call at 635-2880. I also want to thank Ken Taylor for helping bring together the fruitgrowers and beekeepers.

Contact HTFG:
John Anderson - Kauai
(j.anderson@mail.com)
http://www.hawaiitropicalfruitgrowers.org/pages/bod.html

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Molten salt vs light water reactors

SUBHEAD: The road to Fukushima - The nuclear industry locked into light water reactors in order to make nuclear weapons.

 By Kurt Cobb 11 April 2011 for Scitizen.com -  
(http://scitizen.com/future-energies/the-road-to-fukushima-the-nuclear-industry-s-wrong-turn_a-14-3645.html)

 
Image above:This produced model by Blickensderfer was the first truly portable typewriter. It came with a 3-row keyboard having the "Scientific" key configuration. From (http://athena.rider.edu/riderana_pages/Historic_Business_Machines/index.html).

  Imagine a nuclear reactor that runs on fuel that could power civilization for millennia; cannot melt down; resists weapons proliferation; can be built on a relatively small parcel of land; and produces little hazardous waste. It sounds like a good idea, and it was a well-tested reality in 1970 when it was abandoned for the current crop of reactors that subject society to the kinds of catastrophes now on display in Japan. This rather remarkable design is called the molten salt reactor (MSR), and it lost out for two reasons: 

1) It wasn't compatible with the U.S. government's desire to have a civilian nuclear program that would have dual use, that is, that could supply the military with nuclear bomb-making materials. 

2) Uranium-fueled light water reactors, which are in wide use today, already had a large, expensive infrastructure supporting them back in 1970. To build MSRs would have required the entire industry to retool or at least create another expensive parallel infrastructure. And, that's how MSRs became the victim of lock-in. One familiar example will show how lock-in works. 

Anyone who types on a standard English keyboard may already know that the arrangement of the letters was designed to slow down typists so that the typebars--the things which strike the paper in a typewriter to make the letters--would not get jammed together. Other keyboards have since been designed to allow much faster, less error-prone typing, but few people have adopted them--even with the advent of computers which, of course, have no typebars to worry about. 

Decisions made early on in the history of keyboard technology locked in a path for nearly all subsequent adopters. Everyone learned to use the so-called QWERTY keyboard, and so manufacturers only made this configuration, which then obliged all those new to typing to learn it, and so on. So strong was the lock-in for QWERTY that it's been that way since the 1870s regardless of changes in typing technology. 

Lock-in has worked in much the same way for the nuclear industry. The decision within U.S. government circles to focus on light water reactors and abandon MSRs relegated the latter to a footnote in the history of civilian nuclear power. And, because the United States was the leader in civilian nuclear technology at the time, every nation followed us. So, should the world look again at this "old" technology as a way forward for nuclear power after Fukushima? 

 My sympathies are with the MSR advocates. If the world had adopted MSR technology early on, there would have been no partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, no explosion at Chernobyl, and no meltdown and subsequent dispersion of radioactive byproducts into the air and water at Fukushima. It's true that MSR technology is not foolproof. But its very design prevents known catastrophic problems from developing. 

The nuclear fuel is dissolved in molten salt which, counterintuitively, is the coolant. If the reactor overheats, a plug at the base melts away draining the molten salt into holding tanks that allow it to cool down. Only gravity is required, so power outages don't matter. As for leaks, a coolant leak (that is a water leak) in a light water reactor, can quickly become dangerous. If there is a leak from an MSR, the fuel, which is dissolved in the molten salt, leaks out with it, thereby withdrawing the source of the heat. 

You end up with a radioactive mess inside the containment building, but that's about it. If the world had adopted MSRs at the beginning of the development of civilian nuclear power, electricity production might now be dominated by them. And, we might be busily constructing wind generators and solar panels to replace the remaining coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. Would there have been accidents at MSRs? Certainly. Would these accidents have been large enough and scary enough to end new orders for nuclear power plants as happened after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States? I doubt it. Having said all this, I believe that MSR technology will never be widely adopted. 

The same problem that derailed it early in the history of civilian nuclear power is still with us. We still have lock-in for light water reactors. Yes, the new designs are admittedly quite a bit safer. But these designs still don't solve as many problems as MSRs do, and they continue to rely on uranium for their fuel. MSRs have shown themselves capable of running on thorium, a metal that is three times more abundant than uranium, and 400 times more abundant than the only isotope of uranium that can be used for fuel, U-235. This is the basis for the claim that MSRs fueled with thorium could power civilization for millennia. Attempts have been made to run current uranium-fueled reactors using thorium. But all the dangers remain because the reactors are still subject to catastrophic meltdowns.

 Only in the MSR, where the fuel is dissolved in molten salt, is this danger avoided altogether. The Chinese have announced that they are interested in pursuing MSRs and the use of thorium to fuel them. Perhaps in China--where the nuclear industry is synonymous with the government and therefore does what the government tells it to--MSRs might actually be deployed. I have my doubts.

 Even China suffers from the lock-in problem. Back in the United States it is easier to predict that we'll see little progress. In the U.S. it is the industry that tells the government what new nuclear technologies will be developed rather than the other way around. And, the American nuclear industry is committed to light water reactors. I believe that even if the Fukushima accident had not occurred, nuclear power generation would probably have done no more than maintain its share of the total energy pie in the coming decades. 

Now, I am convinced that that share will shrink as people in democratic societies reject new nuclear plants. This could, in turn, free up funds to pursue energy sources that could serve us well and permanently. The cheapest is conservation. We desperately need to reduce our energy use significantly so that we can come into balance with the amount of power that renewable energy can realistically provide us. 

And, we need to build that renewable energy infrastructure, primarily wind and solar, while solving the problem of electricity storage that currently plagues it. The nuclear future we were promised in the 1950s and 1960s never arrived. Fukushima tells us that it probably never will. We need to get on with the business of constructing an energy infrastructure that provides all of us a decent, healthy and dignified life while accepting the limits suggested by wisdom and ultimately imposed upon us by nature.
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Talk Story Revives Hanapepe

SUBHEAD: Hanapepe is definitely on the map with its active salt ponds, lively Friday-night cultural scene and now Kauai’s only bookstore. By Jon Letman on 9 August 2011 for Hawaii Business - (http://www.hawaiibusiness.com/Hawaii-Business/August-2011/Talk-Story-Bookstore-Revives-Hanapepe/) Image above: Facade of Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe, Kauai, Hawaii. Photo by Jon Letman.

Hanapepe was one of Kauai’s most vibrant communities until hard times fell. Competition from a new shopping center in Lihue and hurricanes in 1982 and 1992 closed businesses and wounded Kauai’s “biggest little town.”

But Hanapepe is definitely on the map with its active salt ponds, lively Friday-night cultural scene and now Kauai’s only bookstore. Since opening Talk Story Bookstore in 2004, owners Ed and Cynthia Justus have proven themselves savvy entrepreneurs and have garnered a string of awards, including a Better Business Bureau Torch Award this year.

The couple – die-hard Hanapepe supporters – have now launched a project that, even in a healthier economy, would be daunting.

Image above: The long abandoned Aloha Theater that is next door to the Talk Story Bookstore. Photo by Juan Wilson.

Adjacent to the bookstore stands the old Aloha Theatre, a 1930s, pink, tumbledown cinema with an art-deco facade that hints at the building’s erstwhile charms. The Justuses plan to renovate the main building and two smaller structures, salvaging roughly half the original materials, rejuvenating the vintage facade and transforming the interior under the name Aloha Theatre Marketplace.

They formed a nonprofit (Hanapepe Aloha Theatre & Cultural Renaissance Center) and are working with community volunteers and a general contractor through the permitting process.

With two levels and 6,500 square feet of usable space, they envision one dine-in and two takeout restaurants, six shops, restrooms and a 30- to 40-seat mini-theater/event space. When complete, the Justuses say, the project will allow existing businesses to expand and will invigorate commercial activity, while increasing property values and helping preserve a historical look consistent with the town’s character.

Ed Justus likens it to a “heart transplant for Hanapepe” that he hopes will bring new life.

Talk Story Bookstore 3785 Hanapepe Road PO Box 770 (mailing address) Hanapepe HI 96716 Phone: 808-335-6469 Email: talkstorybooks@hotmail.com Website: http://www.talkstorybookstore.com Monday - Thurs 10am to 5pm Friday - 10am to 9:30pm Saturday & Sunday - Closed See also: Civil Beat: http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2011/08/09/12426-black-white-and-read-all-over .

Owl Lands in Slo-Mo

SUBHEAD: Slow-motion hi-definition video of owl flying to camera and landing. Amazing coordinated sureness.  

By Staff on 8 August 2011 in Huffington Post -  
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/slow-motion-eagle-owl-video_n_921033.html)

 
Image above: Still image of an Earasian Eagle Owl landing. From video below.
 
We know that vibrations, huge bursting water balloons and sonic booms look pretty cool when viewed in slow-motion.

But wild animals are especially awesome.

Although this slow-motion video of an owl landing was uploaded over two years ago, it's making the rounds on the Web after being posted on Videosift, The Daily What and Arbroath.

According to the video's description on YouTube, the footage is taken at 1,000 frames per second using a Photron SA2 HD camera.

Although the YouTube user only describes the animal as an "eagleowl," the Oregon Zoo says that Eurasian Eagle Owls "are large owls with prominent ear tufts that are usually not raised upright. Because of this, their feather tufts probably help them more with communication and recognition than camouflage."

Can't get enough birds? Check out these videos of baby geese growing up and a beautiful, endangered Albatross soaring through the sky.


Video above: Original source of owl video we are aware of was BuzzFeed.com. From (http://youtu.be/37MNE8tOBG4)

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LGBT Labor Leadership Workshop

SUBHEAD: A LGBT Labor Leadership Workshop is taking place on August 27th at 9am to noon.  

By Ray Catania on 7 August 2011 for Pride at Work Hawaii - 
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2011/08/lgbt-labor-leadership-workshop.html) 


Image above: From (http://thehawaiiindependent.com/story/civil-unions-a-view-from-the-pew).  

WHAT:
LGBT Labor Leadership Workshop

 WHEN:
Saturday 27th August 2011 from 9am to 12 noon.  

WHERE:
ILWU Hall 4154 Hardy Street, in Lihue, Kauai

A LGBT Labor Leadership Workshop is taking place on August 27th at 9am to noon. The workshop is sponsored by Pride at Work Hawaii. Pride at Work Hawaii invites Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender individuals as well as straight allies to learn how to organize for your rights on the job and in your union. The workshop will be at the ILWU Hall 4154 Hardy Street, in Lihue, Kauai.

The 3 hour workshop costs $15 but scholarships are available. For more information or applications please call Steve at (808) 543-6054 or email prideatworkhawaii@hawaiiantel.net. This workshop is being supported by a grant from the McElrath Fund for Economic and Social Justice.

 Locally you can also call Ray Catania at 634-2737 or email (may11nineteen71@gmail.com). .

Change is Here

SUBHEAD: Change you don't have to believe in, because it going to bite you in the ass. By James Kunstler on 8 August 2011 for Kunstler.com- (http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/08/change-you-dont-have-to-believe-in.html) Image above: Tony Glenn from Quality Towing comes up for air after attaching a towing cable to a car caught during Las Vegas desert flood in October of 2000. Photo by Sam Morris. From (http://m.lvsun.com/photos/1905/may/15/3977/). A waterfall of woe broke over all the realms of money last week - including especially the realm where we determine just what money is supposed to mean - and a lot of folks barely made it to a rooftop, or a floating log, or some scrap of high ground, where they sit wet and shivering, expecting to get slammed again. The torrent of events is still flowing and there are countless dangerous objects bobbing in it. Remember what that in-rushing ocean was like in the Fukushima tsunami? A wall of miso soup strewn with Toyotas and houses instead of squid rings and fish balls. Try swimming in that. (Try swimming in your Cuisinart on the guacamole setting.)

Europe is telling itself one cockamamie story after another. We've got a rescue fund! Only it has no money! But we will bail out Italy nonetheless! But Italy is too big to bail out - and we tried stuffing it under the carpet, but there's no more room with Greece, Ireland, and Portugal already suffocating in there. The whole G-20 is yakking on the phone as I write, hatching fresh cockamamie stories. Oh, now it looks like the European Central Bank will ride to the rescue with a dispatch satchel full of good intentions. They said the same thing last time, a month or so ago, when a caryatid fell on Greece's head. They are not so sure what money is either. Is a bond like money? Maybe not so much anymore. A stock portfolio? Feh! A Euro? The damned thing is starting to look like a ball-and-chain custom-crafted to weigh down Germans. (And, let's face it: they never did pay any of us for World War Two, really, except what they had to fork over to get the communist side of their own country out of hock. Their guilt-o-meter is still buzzing, I'm sure.) All I know is I hope the whole gang printed up some fresh lira, francs, marks, drachma, pesetas, punts, and whatnot. It would be nice to go back to one of these cute places some day at a discount.

Did you admire Standard and Poor's sly, Friday night downgrade of the United States Treasury bond rating? I was probably the only one in the whole country besides Anderson Cooper not out eating something bigger than my own head at Applebees, or watching the "Footwear Clearance" show over on the Shopping Network. However, I'm not the only one in America asking where do these S and P punks get off downgrading US bonds when three years ago they wore out their Triple-A rubber stamps on the cartloads of stinking offal that Angelo Mozillo and other mortgage rustlers were pawning off as bond-fodder on every Frankenstein "investment opportunity" pumped out of the Wall Street CDO mills. Government officials were righteously seething over S and P's chutzpah, but I suppose when they tried to ring-up Eric Holder over at the DOJ they got connected to some call center in Uttar Pradesh where a friendly fellow named "Dale" picked up. China's government-run newspaper virtually spanked the US: "Learn (thwack) to live (thwack) within (thwack) your (thwack) means!"

I'm not convinced that the US bond rating will even matter that much because nobody knows what anything is worth anymore - especially when governments teeter and the folks in the public square (or the parking lot in America's case), start yelling for blood. Merkel, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Zapatero, will soon be swept away by that selfsame rolling torrent of dreck-strewn woe - in their case a bouillabaisse - while poor Obama looks like one of those hapless, floating creatures in the second-to-last scene of O Brother, Where Art Thou. Even the gold bugs are scared the price will collapse in a debt deflation, or that the federal government will slap a giant extra-special punitive capital gains tax on precious metal sales, or will try to confiscate it from the public altogether like Franklin Roosevelt did - though, given the vast arsenals of private firearms across this land, and the martial spirit lingering in many pissed-off factions of the Tea Party ilk, nothing would invite a revolution, or civil war, or civic upheaval as surely as trying to snatch folks' gold. As a capital preservation refuge, I'm sympathetic to gold, of course, though not so much to buggery.

Everybody is broke now: national treasuries, giant banks, pension funds, insurance companies. The wonder so far is that credit default swaps have not yet been triggered by interest rate changes or some other silly shit, but when that comes to pass there is no way the counterparties can settle their contracts. Ruin will thunder through the financial system like winged death. Everybody is broke and there's a lot less real "money" (whatever it is) out there. Everybody's quailing at the prospect of QE 3, in all its cosmic futility. The United States has already half killed itself at the Golden Corral steam-table of deep-fried debt. I guess we could go all the way and shoot what remains of the dollar in its pitiful, lolling head.

There is a welling recognition that the dice have been cast and the world has rolled snake eyes. The casino is on fire and a flash flood is boiling down the strip. It's no fun running to the exits only to find the revolving doors already eyeball deep in dirty water. America gibbers to itself but nobody has a clue. I'll try to help: this is a compressive financial and economic contraction (one is money, the other is activity). Late-summer storm that it is, it looks to be intensifying. Everything that's super-big is going down sooner or later. The exact sequence of failures is unpredictable. But you can be sure Nature is telling you to get local, get smaller, get finer, downscale, solidify your friendships, and drop your stupid grandiose fantasies about running WalMart on algae. This is change you don't have to believe in, because it is about to jump up and bite you on the ass.

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Fox News Sunday Madness

SUBHEAD: Republicans say they saw the credit rating downgrade coming and this is more vindication of their action. [Editor's note: This is only the first section of Linkins' Sunday Talking Head TV Sound Off] By Jason Linkins on 7 August 2011 for Huffington Post - (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/07/tv-soundoff-sunday-talkin_n_920402.html) Image above: Top Ten conservative pundits on TV. From (http://conhomeusa.typepad.com/survey/2010/12/the-republican-grassroots-ten-favorite-pundits.html). From Fox News Sunday Hooray! Paul Ryan is here today, with his famous haircut. If you're just now joining us, in America, Paul Ryan is the Wisconsin Representative whose plan to reduce taxes is to raise them on nearly everybody, whose plan to balance the budget is to not balance the budget, and whose plan to "save Medicare" is to stop paying for it, with vouchers that diminish in value over time, relative to rising costs. Only in Washington could someone with the ambition to work little and accomplish less find a field of endeavor suited to those limitations. Naturally, he is a superstar.

Also, Tim Pawlenty is here, in one of his last ditch efforts to get someone to pay attention to him. Plus, it looks like the dregs of the Fox Panel universe are out in force today -- Byron York and Kirsten Powers And Susan Something-Or-Other will be today's troika of pundits belittling Juan Williams.

But first, here's some guy from Standard And Poors to explain how all those toxic-tranched credit derivatives and swaps from 2008 could have possibly attained a top rating from an agency whose mission it is to safeguard the global economy what the American people have done to so displease the great God Moloch.

The S&P guy says that there's been a "mild deterioration in the country's credit rating" and he doesn't expect much financial impact. Wallace points out that the Tel Aviv markets opened very badly. Should we expect the same when our markets open? The S&P guy says that the market is reacting to a lot of factors.

Who is responsible for the dysfunction? The S&P guys says that all of Congress and the White House are responsible. He says that "credibility" means that both political parties support S&P's vague notions of what "good" is. Wallace asks if that means that fiscal policy that includes entitlement reform without revenue increases would not be seen as credible? The S&P guy sort of hedges, but says that entitlements are a major source of spending, in case that's a newsflash for anyone.

He says that critics should step off, because his company is all about "making highly technical assumptions." This must be a nice job to have!

Wallace asks the S&P guy if the credit downgrade is an "effort to get their reputation back" after choking on their own dumb failure for a year while the economy collapsed in a heap. Naturally, the S&P guy says that's "completely untrue." He is very haughty about it! Even his mustache is high and mighty about it.

Should we expect further downgrades? The S&P guy says that the expectation is one of "downside," but of course, he and the other S&P high-priests will have to enter in to their Friday morning blood-orgy and read what the entrails of the dead goat carcasses they rut upon have to say about the market outlook before they make that determination.

So, now Paul Ryan will yell at the Democrats who are not invited on the show, and also there is the guy from Legg Mason, who I think is here only because he was sitting around with nothing to do now that the Legg Mason tennis tournament is winding down.

Ryan says he "more or less saw this downgrade coming" and "this is more vindication of our actions." Yes, it was those actions, debt ceiling hostage-taking that led to the downgrade. And the end result of the negotiations was massive budgetary austerity, so...what sort of vindication is being claimed here?

Wallace, feeling me, quips to Ryan, "Isn't that like a doctor saying 'I did the operation perfectly but the patient died?'" That's an almost-good analogy. The problem with it is that the doctor in that scenario is not some disingenuous hack, but is sincerely trying to save a life, and sometimes death just happens. So, it's hard to fit Paul Ryan into that model.

Wallace also points out that S&P condemned the "brinksmanship" and asks, "What about the failure to compromise?" Ryan says, everyone's to blame, but he is the least to blame, because he's the only one who has a plan for health care entitlements. (The Affordable Care Act is actually a "plan for health care entitlements." Maybe not the best! But the reason Ryan opposes it and doesn't count it as a "plan for entitlements" is because it insists on preserving them in some form, as opposed to ceasing to pay for them, and handing customers worthless chits.")

The Legg Mason guy says that the debt deal isn't so big that it will drag the economy down, but the drag is going to come from the fact that there's nothing the government can do to stimulate the economy. This seems to be true: the only bullet left in the chamber might be a QE3, but reasonable people tell me that sooner or later, the Fed's classic "even a tiny bit of inflation unleashes poltergeists" paranoia kicks in and the full employment mandate gets tossed on a fire.

So, Wallace points out that the White House wants to extend a payroll tax cut and create an infrastructure bank (public money is spend to manage an influx of private money; government involvement at this minimal level prevents the "infrastructure" created from being nothing but toll roads and "fee-for-service" things that exclude the participation of the middle and lower class) and extending unemployment benefits so that a few million Americans don't die. Ryan basically says that he would support none of those things. "It would exacerbate our debt problem." Sorry, unemployed people, but did you ever think about the problems you were causing for our elite politicians, whose children will never go wanting? Maybe you all should think about crawling off into the woods to die right now?

Who's got the better plan? The Legg Mason guy won't make it that simple: he favors both an extension of the payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits. He also agrees in principle with Ryan that long term tax reform would a useful endeavor. (Unfortunately, tax reform will now be another thing that won't be hasked out in the light of day by our sworn representatives. Instead, it's likely to be a matter taken up by the SuperCommittee.)

Speaking of! Who will be on the SuperCommittee? Ryan says he doesn't know if he'll be on the SuperCommittee.

Ryan also lies about what the White House offered in terms of the debt ceiling negotiation -- per Ryan, it was "blank check" to "big tax increase." In actuality, the guy who made the "blank check" proposal was Mitch McConnell, and the White House, most notably, offered four trillion in cuts and included changes to Medicare eligibility. Because it hurt the GOP's chances of being able to tag the White House as unserious, they rejected it, predicting (correctly, as it turns out) that the media wouldn't remember the "grand bargain" and its terms. Indeed, I seem to be one of the few people who do remember it.

(Though this week, the RNC did this Mediscare thing where they yammered about how Obama wanted to cut Medicare -- a policy position the RNC supports, so I didn't understand the negativity -- that recalled, nonetheless accurately, a plan the White House put forward. But toward the end of the negotiations, the GOP insisted that the White House never put forward a plan! No one in the media had the basic wherewithal to note these discrepancies either.)

Anyway, the Super Committee will save us, and Ryan would join, if asked, but he's not itching to join it.

Wallace asks Ryan if he'd be as open-minded to compromise as he insists the Democrats need to be, and the answer is "it depends on the spending side of the ledger," and at the very least, he seems to reject the notion of "revenue-neutral tax reform."

Legg Mason guys says that the only thing that will ensure that the very richest people in America will have "confidence" and "certainty" is for old, poor people to get sicker and poorer and die sooner than they might ordinarily have.

Paul Ryan reiterates that he won't be running for president.

But, here's someone who is running for President. Tim Pawlenty! Here is his campaign song:

This guy! I actually thought in 2008 that he might have a future in presidential politics, and it's like he's gone out of his way to chip away at my instincts. Anyway, hit us with your best shot, Tim! Tim? Tim? Can you hear what's going on? No, he evidently can't. He's sitting there with this dumb expression on his face as Wallace tries to get his attention. Man. This is not Pawlenty's fault, but this brief moment is the indelible image that sums up his entire candidacy.

After a second, we're fixed. Will Pawlenty surprise us in the Ames Straw Poll? Pawlenty says, sure but he'll be here for the caucuses! Seriously! He'll make it!

He's getting beaten in the polls by Bachmann, who's spent a sliver of the time in Iowa that Pawlenty has, and Romney, who has gone out of his way to NOT come to Iowa at all. So what gives? Pawlenty isn't worried about the "early polls."

What about all the fussing and feuding with Bachmann? Is it fair to say she's without accomplishments? (Actually, it totally is!) Pawlenty says that he's got the ability to unite people. He's been the guy who "ran an enterprise" and "accomplished things." He compares Bachmann's rhetorical flourish to Obama's suggesting that they are similarly bereft of accomplishment. Wallace asks, if that's a comparison he's making and will stand behind, and the answer of course is no, he'd rather people just learn to like him, instead of always asking him to stand behind his criticism of other people.

The Cato Institute, who have no experience running anything, think that Pawlenty is very good at running things, says Pawlenty, bringing forward an opinion of his leadership that doesn't quite align with, say, "residents of Minnesota."

I think that Pawlenty has said some of the same sentences three or four times in this interview already.

How about that credit downgrade? Wallace points out that S&P didn't like the brinksmanship or the gridlock, but that Pawlenty opposed the deal that WAS eventually struck. "Doesn't that mean that President Pawlenty would be part of the gridlock?" He says, "Absolutely not." Because he will have the "courage to lead support policies that are anathema to the people who voted for him." (Pawlenty wouldn't have that problem, of course, but it's weird to hear him define "doing whatever the House GOP wants" with "being courageous.")

Doesn't he have to finish 3rd at Ames to stay credible? Pawlenty says he just needs to "show progress" at moving from the back of the pack.

And so it's third-string panel time!

Who has the most "riding" on the debate and the straw poll? York says Pawlenty, because he was just a guest on this show, so SYNERGY. Susan-Person says that TPaw has "a better ground game," and Bachmann is newer at running for President. Wallace points out that the Ames Straw Poll is something like a big dumb game of organization, in which whoever has the best BBQ wins lots of votes.

Powers says, "Mitt Romney is the one to go after." Man, this conversation is so trenchant! Romney is the frontrunner, or something! Good to know!

Williams says that "it's going to be a rough road for Romney." Why? Because maybe in this upcoming debate, people will hit Romney. Williams predicts that "the entire target" of the debate field will be Mitt Romney. (Last time, though, it was President Obama. The only person who got slagged for not hitting Romney was Pawlenty, and that's only because CNN put them in the box together for a moment.)

Rick Perry, is he going to get in, or is he just going to get all revival tenty in Texas with people, forever? York says, "When he enters the race, we'll find out he's not every Republican's cup of tea." Sure thing, mate! Of course, we could say the same thing about everybody in the field. It won't hurt him in Iowa, however, to show "religiosity," says York.

Williams says that the downgrade will be blamed on everyone: Obama's approval rating is low. But Congress, he says, will be the biggest recipient of blame. (Of course, Congress' incumbents are good at dispersing blame across the body and getting re-elected -- if voters were to punish just 20% of incumbents, it would be a demonstration of rage with few precedents.

Wallace wonders if we're going to have another "change" election, and Susan Person says yes, probably, maybe. The economy is bad, so poor politicians!

I like how people are quick to attribute the market falloff to a single recent event, and not just assume that massive swings in the Dow won't just be a feature of the system during this period of time when the economy is totally destroyed! When the market climbed, did everyone really assume that everything was fixed? People are just strange!

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Atomic Bomb Big Lie

SUBHEAD: Sixty-six years ago the USA said Hiroshima was a military base and never mentioned a word about its lethal radiation. By Greg Mitchel on 6 August 2011 for Huffingron Post - (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/66-years-ago-when-truman_b_920095.html) Image above: This is what the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs looked like when detonated. From (http://www.nucus.com/funzone/?p=12443).

In a piece earlier this week I mentioned the decades-long U.S. "coverup" of facts and options related to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 66 years ago today, including the Truman White House censoring the first Hollywood movie about The Bomb. But that shaping of the full impact, and ramifications, of the new weapons -- which would continue for years -- began within hours of the first use.

On Aug. 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman faced the task of telling the press, and the world, that America's crusade against fascism had culminated in exploding a revolutionary new weapon of extraordinary destructive power over a Japanese city.

It was vital that this event be understood as a reflection of dominant military power and at the same time consistent with American decency and concern for human life. Everyone involved in preparing the presidential statement sensed that the stakes were high, for this marked the unveiling of both the atomic bomb and the official narrative of Hiroshima.

When the astonishing news emerged that morning, exactly 66 years ago, it took the form of a routine press release, a little more than a thousand words long. President Truman was at sea a thousand miles away, returning from the Potsdam conference. The Soviet Union was hours from declaring war on Japan ("fini Japs" when that occurred, Truman had written days before in his diary).

Shortly before eleven o'clock, an information officer from the War Department arrived at the White House bearing bundles of press releases. A few minutes later, assistant press secretary Eben Ayers began reading the president's announcement to about a dozen members of the Washington press corps.

The atmosphere was so casual, and the statement so momentous, that the reporters had difficulty grasping it. "The thing didn't penetrate with most of them," Ayers later remarked. Finally, they rushed to call their editors, and at least one reporter found a disbeliever at the other end of the line. The first few sentences of the statement set the tone:

"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. ...The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. ...It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe."

Although details were modified at the last moment, Truman's four-page statement had been crafted with considerable care over many months. From its very first words, however, the official narrative was built on a lie. Hiroshima was not an "army base" but a city of 350,000. It did contain one important military base, but the bomb had been aimed at the very center of a city (and far from its industrial area). This was a continuation of the American policy of bombing civilian populations in Japan to undermine the morale of the enemy. It was also to take advantage of what those who picked the target called the special "focusing effect" provided by the hills which surrounded the city on three sides. This would allow the blast to bounce back on the city, destroying more of it, and its citizens.

Perhaps 10,000 military personnel lost their lives in the bomb but the vast majority of the dead in Hiroshima would be women and children. Also: at least a dozen American POWs. When Nagasaki was A-bombed three days later it was officially described as a "naval base." Film footage shot by the Japanese and later the Americans showing the full extent of the human damage would be suppressed by the U.S. for decades. (See some of the footage in video below or here.)

There was something else missing in Truman's announcement: Because the president in his statement failed to mention radiation effects, which officials knew were horrendous, the imagery of just a bigger bomb would prevail in the press. Truman described the new weapon as "revolutionary" but only in regard to the destruction it could cause, failing to mention its most lethal new feature: radiation.

Many Americans first heard the news from the radio, which broadcast the text of Truman's statement shortly after its release. The afternoon papers quickly arrived with banner headlines: "Atom Bomb, World's Greatest, Hits Japs!" and "Japan City Blasted by Atomic Bomb." The Pentagon had released no pictures, so most of the newspapers relied on maps of Japan with Hiroshima circled.

It wasn't until the following morning, Aug. 7, that the government's press offensive appeared, with the first detailed account of the making of the atomic bomb, and the Hiroshima mission. Nearly every U.S. newspaper carried all or parts of 14 separate press releases distributed by the Pentagon several hours after the president's announcement.

Many of them written by one man: W.L. Laurence, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, "embedded" with the atomic project. General Leslie Groves, military director of the Manhattan Project, would later reflect, with satisfaction, that "most newspapers published our releases in their entirety. This is one of the few times since government releases have become so common that this has been done."

The Truman announcement of the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, and the flood of material from the War Department, firmly established the nuclear narrative (see much more on this in my new book, Atomic Cover-up and e-book).

One of the few early stories that did not come directly from the military was a wire service report filed by a journalist traveling with the president on the Atlantic, returning from Europe. Approved by military censors, it went beyond, but not far beyond, the measured tone of the president's official statement. It depicted Truman, his voice "tense with excitement," personally informing his shipmates about the atomic attack. "The experiment," he announced, "has been an overwhelming success."

The sailors were said to be "uproarious" over the news. "I guess I'll get home sooner now," was a typical response. (Whether the declaration of war by the Soviets might have produced surrender in a few days or weeks remains an open question.) Nowhere in the story, however, was there a strong sense of Truman's reaction. Missing from this account was his exultant remark when the news of the bombing first reached the ship: "This is the greatest thing in history!"

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Dr Strangelove & Global Warming 2/27/11 .

Farming is a terrible idea

SUBHEAD: Evidence supports that first farmers were shorter, weaker and died younger than their wild-foraging forebears.  

By Michael Hanlon on 28 July 2011 for Daily Mail - 
  (http://hanlonblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/07/farming-a-terrible-idea.html)

 
Image above: Illustration of hunter-gatherers in temperate climate springtime. From (http://www.dangerouscreation.com/2009/04/is-this-our-future).
 
Progress, we tend to assume is, well, a Good Thing. Things that are new, and better, come to dominate and sweep aside old technologies. When they invented the car, the horse was rendered instantly obsolete. Ditto the firearm and the longbow, the steamship and the clipper, the turbojet and the prop. It’s called the ‘better mousetrap’ theory of history – that change is driven by the invention of superior technologies.

Except it really isn’t that simple. Sometimes a new invention, even if obviously ‘better’ than what came before takes a surprising amount of time to become established.

The first automobiles were clumsy, unreliable and expensive brutes that were worse in nearly all respects than the horses they were supposed to replace. The first muskets were less accurate and took longer to reload than the long- and crossbows which had reached their design zenith in medieval Europe. The last of the clippers were far faster than the first steam packets designed to replace them.

A fascinating essay in this week’s New Scientist points out that perhaps the second-greatest human invention of all (after language), that of farming, was not immediately successful at all. In fact the big switch from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to settled farming communities 11,000 years ago in the Neolithic had more to do with the creation of new social and economic structures than increasing food supply.

It has long been realised that the advent of farming was not necessarily good for humans. Skeletal evidence tends to support the idea that the first farmers were shorter, weaker and died younger than their wild-foraging forebears.

Indeed, people have been shrinking for millennia since paleolithic times and only very recently have those in the rich world begun once again to approach the statures of our prehistoric ancestors. In his 2010 book ‘Pandora’s Seed’, geneticist Spencer Wells argues that farming made humans sedentary, unhealthy, prey to fanatical beliefs and triggered mental illness.

It is certainly true that large settled communities – possible only with specialisation of labour and organised food production – are more prone to diseases. Of course Stone-Age people got sick, but they tended not to get the plagues and epidemics that are associated with more recent history. A lot of this is speculation, but in his New Scientist essay, Samuel Bowles, describes his quantitative analysis of the relative effectiveness of foraging versus farming - in terms of which provides the most calories for the least effort.

Using a whole host of data, collected by anthropologists studying hunter-gatherer tribes and analysing the effort needed to wield replicas of ancient farming implements, he has come to the conclusion that, like the first cars, the first farmers were no better than what came before in terms of feeding the masses. Indeed, they were probably worse.

So why did we do it? Farming, Bowles points out, ushered in a new era of property rights, created huge inequalities, paved the way for a wealth-based economy, divided the sexes and led to the creation of militaries needed to defend all this. Along with farming then, we got war and crime, madness and disease, cruelty, dictatorship and religions that were all about telling us what to do rather than emphasising our links with the Earth. The writer Jared Diamond has called agriculture ‘the biggest mistake humans have ever made’ and it is tempting to see the story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall as an allegory for the descent of Man into settled barbarism.

It is a persuasive thesis. For most of our hundred-thousand-year history human beings have not lived as we live today. Perhaps a great deal of our problems, from the modern plagues of depression and anxiety, obesity and environmental issues, can be ascribed to the Neolithic Revolution. In the end, though, there was no stopping the farmers. Along with the bad stuff we also got art, medicine, science and literature – all more or less impossible in a nomadic, Stone Age society.

Cars eventually got better than horses, guns won out over longbows and steamships overtook the graceful clippers. But the success of the new is rarely as obvious, at the time, as it seems with historical hindsight. A thought that must have occurred to those first labourers, breaking their backs on someone else’s field, wondering why on earth they were doing this rather than picking fruit off a tree like their grandparents had done.

See also:
Island Breath: Is sustainable agriculture an oxymoron? 8/31/06
 Island Breath: The Garden of Eden 4/19/07

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Massive solar flare affects Earth

SUBHEAD: Solar flare is interfering with satellite and radio signals. On a scale of 1 to 5 it is probably a 2 or 3.  

By Randolph Schmid on 5 August 2011 for Huffington Post - 
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/05/solar-flares-effects-earth_n_919935.html)

 
Image above: Computer generated fractal portrait of our Sun's solar storm. From site monitoring solar activity (http://www.nicolyachristi.com/current-emf-and-solar-activity-monitor).

The impact of a series of eruptions on the sun began arriving at Earth on Friday and could affect some communications for a day or so.

Operators of electrical grids are working to avoid outages, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says some satellite communications and Global Positioning Systems could face problems.

Three solar flares erupted on the sun starting Tuesday, and the strongest electromagnetic shocks were being felt Friday by the ACE spacecraft, a satellite that measures radiation bursts a few minutes before they strike Earth, said Joseph Kunches, a scientist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo.

Tom Bogdan, director of the center, said the sun is going from a quiet period into a busier cycle for solar flares and an increase in the number of such blasts is expected over the next three to five years.

Solar flares send out bursts of electromagnetic energy that strike the Earth's magnetic field. The most common impacts for the average person are the glowing auroras around the north and south poles, and the researchers said those could be visible this weekend.

The magnetic blasts, which Bogdan likened to a tsunami in space, can also affect electronic communications and electrical systems. A 1989 solar flare knocked out the electrical systems in Quebec, Canada, but the current solar storm is not expected to be that powerful. On a scale of 1 to 5, he said, it is probably a 2 or 3.

But more significant solar storms are expected in the next few years, he said.

The most powerful known solar storm occurred in 1859, Bogdan said. There were not as many vulnerable electrical items then, but it did knock out telegraph services, even burning down some telegraph stations, he said.

Other serious solar blasts occurred in 1921 and 1940, he noted, and Kunches recalled one on Halloween in 2003.

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