Effects of the Anthropocene on the Earth's largest mammals

Let's get one thing straight: I don't have a spiritual bone in my body. The existence of the human mind is a product of the biochemistry of phosphates altered forever by the transition from hunter-gatherer to agrarian accompanied by the deleterious effects of sedentarianism. Human migration should be embraced, not outlawed.

Krista Tippet examines two worlds being disrupted by human earth hatred:

Apache 8: native women wildfire crew; Carter in Cuba

KUAZ brings a story of hope and sisterhood in this Arizona film documentary produced by Native American Public Telecommunications:

Apache 8 tells the story of an all-women wildland firefighter crew from the White Mountain Apache Tribe, who have been fighting fires in Arizona and throughout the U.S., for over 30 years. Four extraordinary women from different generations of the Apache 8 crew share their personal narratives with humor and tenderness.

Sen. Max Baucus in the Montana Standard on the deficit:

1. Stop erroneous tax refunds for prisoners
2. Cut aid to Iraq, which is running a budget surplus
3. Cut aid to Pakistan, which hasn't spent last year's aid
4. Limit the number of government employee credit cards
5. Cut unneeded Census funding
6. Carry out the Defense Department's plan to reduce reorganization funding
7. Make NASA deliver on existing projects before funding new programs
8. Cut millions of dollars for rehabilitating lakes in the desert
9. Eliminate the duplicative federal agency that focuses on development for Alaska only
10. Eliminate highspeed rail funding for East Coast cities

Al Jazeera reports that former President Jimmy Carter is in Cuba:

Carter last visited Cuba in 2002, in a groundbreaking trip that made him the only US president, former or sitting, to visit Cuba since a 1959 revolution brought Fidel Castro to power. In his 2002 visit, Carter urged Washington to end its long trade embargo against Cuba.

Colorado wildfire may be linked to UFO

From NPR's the Two-Way:

"Three red lights in a triangle ... spotted hovering in the sky" over Lafayette, Colo., on Monday have folks there talking about aliens and UFOs, Boulder's Daily Camera says. Joe Valadez, 47, also posted a video to YouTube of the lights in the sky. Some of the commenters on Valadez's video were skeptical. One user, Lonnie Sexton, 33, wrote: "I want proof as bad as the next guy, but these are just hot air candle balloons folks."

The cause of the Indian Gulch Fire remains under investigation. Maybe they should look here:



March 25, 2011

Heavy initial attack activity continued in the southern states. Thirteen new large fires were reported. Seven large fires were contained. Weather: Fire potential continues across eastern New Mexico, west Texas and eastern Colorado due to high wind speeds on Friday.

DUSEL immune to EMP weapons, solar flares

Dakota Midday is a great show, that and Statehouse are the last programs standing for ip at Bill Janklow's idea of public radio. Yesterday, Paul Guggenheimer hosted a segment when:

former Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney talks about the documentary "Iranium." It is showing next Tuesday in Sioux Falls. Gaffney is also a part of the national security panel leading a discussion after the film.

The guy is an Islamophobe and a whackjob of the nth order, but I think he's got the weapon right:

Electromagnetic pulses (EMP) are oversized outbursts of atmospheric electricity. Whether powered by geomagnetic storms or by nuclear blasts, their resultant intense magnetic fields can induce ground currents strong enough to burn out power lines and electrical equipment across state lines. The threat has even become political fodder, drawing warnings from former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a likely presidential contender. "We are not today hardened against this," he told a Heritage Foundation audience last year. "It is an enormous catastrophic threat."

EMP weapons have been part of the US arsenal for decades and are likely being deployed in Libya right now. Knowledge of their operation has been coming home steadily in the minds of radicalized warriors where in a remote scenario they could be built in Ryder trucks to be randomly detonated near grid junctions. Solar events and asteroid strikes are more likely events.

Let's flash back to 2000 where the future looked like:

Dark Angel, an American biopunk/cyberpunk science fiction television program created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee. Dark Angel premiered in the United States and Canada on the Fox network on October 3, 2000, but was canceled after two seasons. The show chronicles the life of Max Guevara (X5-452), a genetically enhanced super-soldier, portrayed by Jessica Alba as an adult, and Geneva Locke as a child.

Then September 11 and the anthrax attacks happened. Bill Janklow went on his idea of public radio where he and a caller created DUSEL.

Here are the geothermal gradients (pdf) of the deepest rock in the former Homestake showing potential for the steam power necessary to generate lighting and life support for large numbers of people sustainably if the planet's surface became a hostile environment. Ceramics could support and insulate the miles of stopes in the old mine connecting a network of gardens, living and work spaces.

Episode one.




EcoRover brings some stunning pictures of the Big Hole.

Radiolab host Robert Krulwich on the 1967 death of a Russian cosmonaut for the forthcoming book, Starman:

The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes — though no one knows this — won't work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, "cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship."

Commies, Limbaugh hooking up; O'Keefe WNYC rant

The president of Bolivia and Russian Liberal Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky are calling for the repeal of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. The Forbes article is cited in this Huff post:

"These developments in Libya are another outrageous act of aggression by NATO forces and, in particular, the United States," Zhirinovksy's statement, which appeared in Russian, is quoted by Forbes as saying. He went on to call the strikes part of a "colonial policy" with the goal to control Libyan oil. Bolivian President Evo Morales echoed those sentiments. "How is it possible that a Nobel Peace Prize winner leads a gang to attack and invade? This is not a defense of human rights or self-determination," Morales, who is among of number of left-leaning Latin American leaders who have denounced the Libya attacks, is quoted by Digital Journal as saying. "Obama gives speeches trashing his own country and for that gets a prize, which is now worth as much as whatever prizes they are putting in Cracker Jacks these days," Rush Limbaugh told Newsweek. "The Nobel gang just suicide-bombed themselves."

Far more immediacy to commit US firepower in Libya than Iraq, innit? Seems to me that had the first Bush marched on Baghdad in '91 with UN support far less bloodshed would have resulted. Standing up to bullies is liberally compassionate, too.

On the Media interview with James O'Keefe. Listen as he gets shitty with Bob Garfield:

Republicans vote to gut The Peoples' radio

As a founding listener and devotee of Bill Janklow’s idea of public radio for 37 years, my affirmation was cemented by this story:

In ’97, I performed my first of six seasons as Mother Ginger in the Black Hills Dance Theater’s production of the Nutcracker; Vanessa Short Bull danced the Sugar Plum Fairy. On opening night, her dad brought her likely centenarian grandmother backstage before the show to watch her warm up. The vision of three Sicangu generations attending a Tchiachovski ballet was all it took for me to understand how public media funds bridges.

Kristi Noem, Cynthia Lummis, and Denny Rehberg know not of these things; they, and their families are victims of televangelism and commercial broadcasting as they tout the wonders of jesus and white bread to children.

Rep. Lummis, bless her earth-hating heart, proposed in a media release that:

NPR must stand on its own. However, she noted that she prefers what she calls a "glide path to self-sufficiency" for Wyoming Public Radio.

Doc Blanchard hosted a fascinating discussion about NPR.

This, too, shall pass.

stone house, super moon

All mergers considered: NPR, PBS, Stars and Stripes

The other morning NPR's Frank Deford told us how The US Department of Defense funds the national spectacle of earth hatred through its mouth organ, the Stars and Stripes:

Even sports has gotten into the budget-cutting, when a House amendment was offered the other day that would prevent the Army from spending $7 million to sponsor NASCAR race car No. 39. But even in a slash-and-burn atmosphere, the amendment was soundly beaten. There are a lot of congressmen prepared to do away with a lot of good old-fashioned all-American stuff, but keep your hands off my NASCAR.

The Stars and Stripes isn't my GI father's newspaper any more. This 2004 NPR story on Pentagon funding for the military's media machine popped up and reminded me to wonder, after practicing some April Fools ideas, about how it's ok that three US public broadcasting networks are reporting three different versions of world history.

Then, like a vision from Tommy Chong it hit me: let's just merge 'em.

Pravda has a lengthy history of journalistic integrity, right?

11:14 MST: The President announces in his press conference that funding cuts should found in other areas, "not CPB."

WBUR's Here and Now host to NPR's board chair: Vivian Schiller should have stayed to defend organization's integrity.

Al Jazeera English reports on BP/Gulf sickness. Where the hell is the American press?

Just in case you're not pissed off enough, here's the Utne's Read on Citizens United v. FEC.

What can one say?

MSU confers honorary doctorate upon South Dakotan

A Bozeman audience applauded uproariously as a Webster native and USD grad received honors from MSU president, Waded Cruzado.

From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle:

At the end of a stirring speech about the challenges America has faced and the ways it has overcome them, journalist and author Tom Brokaw asked a sold-out audience of 1,400 at Montana State University to "take a pledge." He gave a timeline of 1968: the Vietnam War raged, Martin Luther King, then Robert Kennedy, were assassinated, a generation of young Americans rebelled against the conventions of mainstream America. Yet at Cape Canaveral, Fla., scientists and pilots were hard at work to send Americans to the Moon, and launched a preliminary mission that year that gave astronauts an outside look at Earth in all its beauty. "Education is the great coin, the currency of the challenges that are before us," he said. "We cannot go forth as a great nation if we are constantly involved in a series of accusations and food fights," he said. "We cannot get stalled by petty feuds. We need to look at the big picture. We are at a pivotal time in this nation."

No, we didn't go.

Bozeman has a rich history of journalism and love of Montana.  Chet Huntley, who was born in Cardwell and attended then-Montana State College, was building the resort at Big Sky even as ip, and Joani it turns out, were living in Bozeman in 1976.

In other Bozeman news, a bar owner, unhappy with now-tabled Senate Bill 202, reacted to the brewer of famed Bozone Amber with the removal of its microbrews from his taverns.

The Montana Standard reports that hope has risen for Butte's endangered Miners Union Bar in the form of preservation savior, Nick Kujawa.  Butte is enjoying an encouraging surge of investment in spectacular Uptown.  Montanans can start a look for earthquake insurance here.

Buffalo Post brings news of Tim Giago's retirement.

NPR's Goddess of SCOTUS reports on the Court's strong defense of hideous public political farce even if it's "repugnant."  If that body has a blog, does that make them Scroggers?  I crack myself up.

Dakota Territory celebrates 150 years of rape, death, racism, and dismemberment on Bill Janklow's idea of public radio.

KJZZ reports on the resurrection in the Arizona legislature of the State of Baja while Texas tells Spring Breakers to stay the hell out of Mexico.

The Arab League (yes, Iraq is a member) mulls joining the African Union in enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya.  My guess?  Jordan and a coalition of the willful stumbling over their dicks.

Rehberg Dennygrates Groundhog Day's Bill Murray while blowing smoke up Montana's assets. 

National Weather Service, USGS at risk to GOP 2011 government shutdown

From MPR's god (blod?) of weather:

There is big talk in Washington these days about proposed budget cuts for NOAA and the National Weather Service. Some proposals cut the NWS budget by about 30%. Suggested impacts of such cuts could include closing NWS offices reducing maintenance on the doppler radar and NOAA weather radio networks and even reducing the number of upper air soundings from every 12 hours to once daily or even once every two days. If we had to wait even longer to sample storms coming off the Pacific it could be a disaster on model accuracy with winter storms. Forecasting winter storms is already one of the most difficult forecasts a meteorologist in Minnesota has to make.

The USGS could lose $94M to the Earth-hating Koch fiends now stealing the tools the People need to protect families and expose the ecocide.

Contact Koch 'hoes don Juan Thune, Dennybriated Rehberg, and Krusti Noem and give them a piece of my mind.

You might be a TEAbagger if:

Hypocritheocrisy exposed

The Zionist Right is a den of pornographers and masturbators flinging jiz at those that enjoy cannabis.

Pornography is the elephant in the pews, says Craig Gross [It's gross, all right]. "The statistics say that 48 percent of Christian families are dealing with the issue of pornography in their home," Gross says. "I would say the other 52 percent are just unaware of it being an issue in their house." Even some Orthodox Jews now struggle with porn. The most traditional used to shun the Internet, says Yaakov Gold [C'mon, Jack-off Gold?], who runs a website for Jews struggling with pornography. But now 80 percent have Internet access, he says, and that has opened up whole new opportunities. "Never in history have we had such a situation where everyone basically has a whorehouse in their home, in the privacy of their office when no one's around," Gold says.

170 Million Americans

This isn't up on Bill Jankow's idea of public radio.

Yeah, THAT Safeway

We had been planning this for months.  The goddess has a public health conference in Scottsdale on Thursday.

Bizbee's human, Kim, convinced us to stay at Catalina State Park for at least one night (we spent two) where hiking trails at the foot of the mountains just north of Tucson would give us ample opportunity to explore before tackling traffic trying to find Joani's niece's condo on the other side of town.  The Mapquest directions took us off I-10 onto Ina Road at about 7:30PM and after a bite to eat at a Subway (because there was a line out the door of a Mexican Restaurant, our first choice) we headed east.

After misreading the Mapquest directions we crossed Oracle Road where a Safeway entrance looked eerily familiar in the dark.  It struck us as just an odd coincidence before it hit us two days later.

ip photo

And so forth....

I had to laugh like hell during Peter Overby's report on the alphabet sludge being scooped to run the GOP presidential primary.  The incredulity and disgust was clearly evident in his voice as he announced the bundlers, the fondlers, and the Earth rapers:



How about the Capitalist Childrens Fund or Americans for Gluttonous Rights or Mormons for a Whiter America?

Your choice?

"Epic" flooding predicted for Upper Midwest, Plains

The Updraft Blog is written by Minnesota Public Radio's meteorologist, Paul Huttner. 

He has just made the startling prediction that the Red River and Minnesota River drainages can expect flooding events never seen in recorded history.  His conclusions are based on findings that high pressure is being created by steady Arctic warming adding moisture and diverting the Siberian Express then precipitating into the basin created by Lake Agassiz producing elevated snow water equivalents.

The James and Big Sioux, higher now than ever seen in my lifetime, are also expected to see record events this Spring

Anybody invent that snow baler yet?

South Dakota-trained Native journalist leading media effort

The Buffalo Post alerts ip to Nez Perce journalist Brian Bull, a former intern and news producer for Bill Janklow's idea of public radio.  He is part of a group hoping to create a Native-themed news section at Huffington Post. 

Indian County Today reports:

“I think a mainstream media site could feasibly host a Native American section,” said Brian Bull, assistant news editor at Wisconsin Public Radio. “We’re the First Nations… as far as relevancy’s sake, there’s history, politics and financial influence galore within Indian country, which can certainly establish Native people as a relatively small—but significant—demographic.” He noted that there are 565 federally recognized tribes and many state recognized ones with unique and powerful stories to share in every major news-making area.

An on-air interview with a former UN ambassador and South Dakota senator was a laugh out loud moment when Mr. Bull asked his esteemed guest how he'd like to be addressed to which Ambassador McGovern replied, "George."  To listeners' aghast amazement, that's how cub reporter Bull began every question.

Another SDPB/radio alum, Curt Nickisch, is based at WBUR in Boston.

A hundred heads on pikes

The United States was founded on the backs of slaves as systematic genocide became a way of life for white christians quoting scripture as they slaughtered their fellow humans.  Here's another horrific story that was swept under the rug of American history in the name of manifest destiny.

Daniel Rasmussen tells Diane Rehm:

Well, it's amazing, Diane, that on the bicentennial of the revolt, you know, so few people have heard about this. And the reason is, those newspaper accounts and letters from William Claiborne describe an insignificant insurrection led by slave criminals. So let me tell you about the strategy they used to suppress the news and cover up what happened. The first thing they did was to kill as many of the slaves as they could identify who participated in the revolt. They beheaded about 100 of them, put their heads on poles, dangled their dismembered corpses from the gates of New Orleans. And then in newspaper accounts and letters, they wrote about these brigands. They described them as guilty as criminals. Charles Deslondes, they chase into the swamps, they capture him, they shoot him in both thighs, chop off his limbs and then burn him alive.

We are all children of Africa.

On the day Americans celebrate one patriot's opus, red states conspire to build more walls.

ip confesses

My dad was the last Republican for whom ip had any respect whatsoever.  The ten months since he's been gone have been tremendously reflective and cathartic.   Friday always leads me to the same place:  EJ Dionne and David Brooks sum up the week.  It was not until this lecture that ip knew that there might be one more Republican worth listening to:

Public radio in South Dakota falls victim to Republican Party

On Dakota Midday Paul Guggenheimer interviewed, or to be more accurate, gave a virtual blowjob to Lucas Lentsch, the apparatchik mouthpiece of the South Dakota Republican Party.  Ben Nusselhuf, the hapless chairman of the bankrupt Democratic Party in that state who was also a guest on the program, managed to bumble through the show.

In his opening remarks, Lentsch willfully deployed the malapropism, "Democrat Party" that went uncorrected by the host.  Lentsch then lobbed the code words, "adult conversation" into a prolonged soliloquy that reminded Mr. Guggenheimer that his employer serves at the pleasure of a legislature looking again to cut with capricious whimsy the very programming that was chartered as a government-partnered watchdog.  In the smoky darkness of Bill Janklow's minds, a dog yelped.

It was horrifying.

----------------------------------------

1/25 Update.  It's only fair to share.  ip emailed into Midday asking a question to a visiting Canadian lobbyist who gave it an expectedly blythe brush-off.   Email addresses have been redacted.

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Kurtz
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 12:34 PM
To: BIT PBS VERMILLION MIDDAY
Subject: Keystone XL


What percentage of tar sands oil goes to China and why won't Canada
build a pipeline to its own coasts?

Larry
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry



------Original Message------
From: Paul Guggenheimer
To: Larry Kurtz

Subject: RE: Keystone XL
Sent: Jan 25, 2011 1:58 PM

Larry,

I would like very much to know who is behind the disgusting, neanderthal
comments made about me on the "interested party" site or blog or
whatever it is. I don't mind if someone has an issue with how I
conducted an interview as long as it's done with some level of class and
intelligence, which this anonymous person clearly lacks. I don't like it
when a coward doesn't have the guts to put his name behind his words.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would tell me who this person is
and how I can contact them.

Thanks,

Paul Guggenheimer


-----Original Message-----
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:48:51
Reply-To:  Paul Guggenheimer

 Subject: Re: Keystone XL

I am that disgusting neanderthal, though not quite anonymous, coward with no class or level of intelligence, commenting on another red state failure with biting satire and disgust.

A comment from either you or Anonymous, under that post would serve as a public rejoinder to interested party that you vehemently and vigorously protest such barbaric and vituperative use of the English language at your expense.

It is with a light heart and heavy bowel that ip wishes you a great day,

Larry Kurtz

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

More fallout at NPR

An independent review of Ellen Weiss' decision to jettison Juan Williams by phone from NPR has resulted in her resignation. 

Weiss spoke to James Rainey in the LA Times:

Weiss stressed that she did not make the decision to fire Williams alone. She acted after the comentator [sic] went on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" and described his occasional discomfort flying with people in "Muslim garb." NPR Chief Executive Vivian Schiller, who remains in her job, approved the firing. "What I would say is that the decision to terminate the Juan Williams contract by NPR, of which I was a participant, was based on the highest journalistic standards," Weiss said Thursday. Meeting with a small group of confidantes inside the network Thursday, Weiss said she previously had advised others that any organization had to prepare for the loss of the boss. "If you get hit by a bus, you want to make sure you have the right people in place, you want to make sure it doesn't end," Weiss said. "I feel I have an incredible newsroom in place, with fantastic leadership and unbelievably courageous reporters. I am glad I followed my own advice. Because the bus came, and I am gone."  "It was extremely hard," she said of her decision, finalized with NPR chief Schiller on Thursday. "It was not the hardest decision I ever made in my life but certainly one of the hardest."

Why Ms. Weiss didn't also push the button that activates Mara Liasson's ejection seat remains a mystery.

Fertility vaccine pending for wild horses works for cougars and wolves

This story aired on Yellowstone Public Radio the other day that reinforces ip's rant on a non-lethal compromise to manage predators, especially cougars and wolves:

The federal Bureau of Land Management announced Wednesday it will use fertility treatment on some 900 wild horses that it hopes to round up in western states during the current fiscal year. The "catch, treat and release" approach comes amidst ongoing controversy over the roundups, which are designed to control the population of horses on federal rangelands.

The BLM argues that reducing herd sizes are necessary to protect the range and to keep the horse populations healthy into the future. The agency intends to apply a fertility vaccine called PZP to 890 mares, then release the animals back to the areas from which they were captured.

The technology exists to administer this drug to predators without capture even as western states are suing to force the United States Fish & Wildlife Service to remove gray wolves from the endangered species list pressured by livestock producers. The South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks has ordered the extermination of 50 cougars under pressure from hunting industries who rely on tourist dollars.

ip has jammed this concept into numerous western blogs with mixed success. Selling licenses to track and identify females then administer these drugs could capitalize its application. PZP is effective for a year. DepoProvera renders males sterile for three months.

Here is an article on the contraindications associated with the long-term use of PZP, it's environmental effects are noted.