The Chippewa

Here is a cleaner version, my personal choice of the two. The embedded file is a Movie Maker file. The other is a Soundslides project, and it's a lot slicker. The problem is that it doesn't -- at this time -- embed into Blogger posts. You have your choice -- one made simpler for public consumption but of lower quality, or one more catering to the creator but requiring the all-important investment of an extra click.

The photos were taken by Lisa Yanick, a photographer for our local paper, The Morning Sun. You can reach her at lyanick@michigannewspapers.

The music was a hastily written soundtrack by Bob Busch. He's got a MySpace page for his band, Bob Busch Package.

The words are mine. The other sounds are courtesy the Chippewa River. You can thank it (and me) by not throwing empty beer cans into it if you ever find yourself canoeing its waters. Give a hoot, d00d.

These are my home waters, so to speak. I spent five days canoeing down it a couple of years ago, the only person I know of who's done such a thing. It's not that it's a particulary scenic or difficult river, it's that no one ever does. You can read about my trip here and here.

Technical notes ... I recorded the sounds of the Chippewa with my beaten-to-pieces IBM ThinkPad laptop. Just hauled the thing down to the river, and started recording. The spoken word parts were recorded and edited with a program called Audacity. I don't know what Bob used to record his song, but I've got a full version for the curious (I edited out my favorite parts, sadly, for utilitarian reasons). The embedded file is a Movie Maker file, and the superior slideshow was created with Slidesounds.

Sniffle-ty snarggle-ty snoogle-ty

Hi all. Someone ... maybe you ... might be wondering what the hell's happened to the frequent posts.

Well, the truth is that I'm right now working on a project. I hope to have it up tonight, but there is this other project I am also working on, which might intrude. So, what you're seeing is the confluence of two projects at once, for which my lazy ass is just not prepared to incorporate into my daily routine of sitting around doing nothing in particular.

So, once I get it all cleared up, I'll be back, with a perhaps slightly different outlook on how this blog functions. Until then, here is this:

Getting around

Living here, in Mount Pleasant, without a car isn't so difficult. If you need something, all of the stores are within an easy five-minute bicycle ride. When the weather is particularly ugly, you stay inside or, if you have to go out, get around like everyone else -- by being more careful.

The drawback has always been that getting out of town has been tricky the last few years. There are no trains, and bus service ceased a few years ago. That's about to change, beginning next week.

It's limited, a kind of north-south movement. It won't get you deep into the state's interior, but it makes it possible to get from Mount Pleasant to, say, Baltimore's Inner Harbor, without actually getting behind the wheel yourself ... or mugging a ride from someone.

At $17 one-way, the price might seem steep. Perhaps, but I spent $20 in gas along just for a round trip to Lansing just last weekend, and had to contend with other, sometimes irresponsible, drivers and also snow and ice. That isn't to figure in long-term costs of maintenance, insurance, and assorted bureaucratic costs just to drive the car. In terms of combined costs, it's probably a wash either way.

Mount Pleasant is set to get even more transportation money in the near future ... 2010. The money is available for either roads, or for public transportation upgrades. Although Isabella County has a bus system funded through a countywide millage, there are also some big road projects looming tied to economic development. This is federal money, however, and not state transportation funds.

The state transportation fund was targeted last year by the Mackinac Center in an argument that there was no need to replace the revenue from the Single Business Tax. In addition to $500 million that would be replaced speculatively (well, the argument was, cutting that much in taxes would generate at least this much ... the place said it would do so in nothing shorther than five years), the report called for cutting funding to bus services, calling them "half-full or empty buses."

So much is true today, however, we're swiftly coming to a time when we'll need to rethink transportation. Gas will eventually get to permanently high levels (recent falls in the price of oil are due to a lack of disruptions of current supply, a mild winter, and other countries dropping out of the bidding process, rather than some new supply that's gone online), and our lifestyle is not well rigged for that.

Beyond that, and beyond things like the unnecessary greenhouse gases emitted by our one-car, one-drive, short-trip lifestyle, there are other considerations, like global warming and national security.

There's no sense in even discussing the link between national security and oil. We're not fighting in the Middle East because this is a Muslim country founded by fundamentalist Muslims like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. And, there's no denying that lots and lots of people in countries where we get oil dislike us intensely, and could easily grab us -- literally -- by the balls by seizing oil pipelines.

This makes money spent building public transportation networks an act of sound national security. And, of course, sound environmental policy. Cutting state funding to these things, right now, would be an act of short-term lunacy, in essence mortgaging future transportation plans for the short-term gain of making permanent a tax cut of highly dubious value. In fact, this is something lawmakers ought to be considering going forward with the issues of taxation and government.

Ideally, it'd be nice to see electric trains, powered by renewable energy sources. The trains could be coming, at least to the Detroit area.

I'm open to nuclear (note to Chuck Krauthammer ... "nuclear" ... and drilling in the Arctic is fine, if you're willing to wait a decade's worth of exploration for very little return), although I question how many nuclear plants we could get online in the near enough future to really make much difference (I don't see problems involving nuclear waste as an argument against nuclear power so much as a problem to be surmounted).

Project Rewire ... a national perspective

There is a version here that applies largely to Michigan.

The most interesting thing about Judy Daubenmier's "Project Rewire" is how it tells its story -- through a collection of blog posts and essays published online.

The meat of the book is fairly familiar -- the media failed in the run up and during the conduct of Iraq to do its job. There is no simpler way than that to put it.

We all know the media failed, and anyone who's followed the twin threads of media and the war knows that blogs and independent thinkers online followed closely the media's performance and complained sometimes bitterly about how the information was presented.

But, "Project Rewire" gives us a chance, in a kind of running format, to watch how coverage unfolded based on criticisms posted as the coverage took place. It's a way to rewatch the big, newsmaking events not through the media itself, but through the eyes of people consuming the media and finding that it wasn't a satisfactory experience.

Rewire helped point out that in the first major news event in which public opinion shifted dramatically as it played out, there was both flawed reporting and flawed media management. Dan Rather's memo-mess, for instance, and also the dismissive attitude towards the Downing Street Memo. Certainly, in the future, folks in the media will be more careful now that they are now in the same gunsights that they put public officials into. You would hope that primarily it would provide incentive for editors and media decision makers to make better decisions, but there is always the chance that they will instead opt to avoid the spotlight of trasnparency.

But, I'd be remiss in leaving the impression that the book is merely a collection of blog posts. It provides a basic history of the American media, building it to the present day. You get the story of how we got here, and the story of what has unfolded before our eyes, and are left with precisely what we have today -- a giant question mark.

Newspapers and television stations, practically every kind of media outlet in fact, are going through tremendous upheavals today, and the big question on everyone's mind is where it will eventually lead us. Ten years ago, if you'd asked me the question, my reply would have been boilerplate J-school stuff. Today, I'd tell you that Mama Baerren did raise any kids dippy enough to make a lot of predictions ... and especially make them in a blog post. The truth is that no one has a clear idea. Someone will probably figure out a way to make money, or at least enough money for their comfort. It will, as it always has, follow the readers, which means the Internet. But, the Internet offers potential for more than just typed out word. You can combine several elements into one package meant to convey an idea. In fact, it's already taking place, what with the rise of YouTube and podcasts.

You only smear the ones you love

Why should your kid have to stand out in the dark for longer, and why should your local unit of government have to pare down its public safety department?

Because, according to Nolan Finley, the governor's husband has a chief of staff.

At a time when Gov. Jennifer Granholm is mulling tax hikes, is she really billing Michigan's hard-pressed taxpayers $80,000 a year to pay for her husband's coach?

The tax hikes, mind you, are to cover a $3 billion deficit thanks to a) an incredibly irresponsible, politically-motivated tax cut last year by the state Republican Party, and b) 15 years of tax cuts made without the first thought about what might happen in the future.

This is the second time Finley has insisted on calling Nancy Skinner a "failed Congressional candidate," and I'm confident in predicting that it won't be the last. Probably we'll hear, ad nauseum, about how you can't trust the governor when she says we need to raise taxes ... she hired someone who lost a Congressional race to manage her husband's appointments.

I don't know why Dan Mulhern needs a chief of staff, either. I don't care. More to the point, I would be willing to bet that Nolan Finley doesn't, either. Why he'd work himself into a froth over $80,000 in a state budget of (about) $40 billion ($8-ish billion in the general fund) is fathomable only if you frame it in the context that probably he's only looking for an excuse to complain about the governor.

And, if it works, there will be budget cuts that will be excrutiating for those who rely on state services. So, the question here is whether Finley really thinks this is the thing to make the fight over -- rather than what's in the state's best interests -- or if he's just an asshole.

Update, 10:23 p.m.--I clarified the state's budget totals, since not all of it is there for the governor to use to hire former candidates.

The fat lady is tuning up

If the media is something that interests you, consider consuming this piece of radio-based media while you surf and read wrap ups of the State of the Union.

One of the most interesting comments was, to sum it up, is that media consumers are like tapeworms ... readership in general is going up, but in a way that effectively starves the company. By going to the Web, readers are taking about 75 percent of their revenue impact with them. So, like a tapeworm and host, a paper's readership grows, but the paper receives no sustenance and has to -- in a sense -- eat itself to maintain profitability.

"Suicide by Wall Street."

Update, 9:29 a.m.--There are lots of times I have to turn off radio segments or television programs because they suck so hard. This is the first time I've stopped listening to a piece of media because it blew my mind. From the economic realities of shifting operations to the Web to what will probably be a more specialized approach to the media in the future, there is practically nothing that has crossed my mind over the last couple of years about the media that has not been addressed in this program.

Close encounter of the blurred kind

I heard a fracas outside the front window, and the cat started chomping at the bit.

Outside, a pair of bluejays were tussling over the feeder with a couple of sparrows and this, a northern flicker. You can't see it very well, because I naturally didn't have the opportunity to set up the shot ... it was just a stick the camera towards the feeder and hope for the best.

I'm told by people who stop by that I no longer control the front part of my apartment. Birds will sit at the feeders and stare down anyone who approaches, and the squirrels will chatter at them from the trees.

Update, 6:39 p.m.--Holy smokes, folks. If you're going to be wrong, this is the way to do it. This is indeed a red bellied woodpecker, as noted in comments. Here's a different photo, from a different angle, that makes things even more clear (an close encounter of an even more blurred kind ... some day, I'll detail what I have to do to get photos of the feeder).

Here's another thing ... this is the first red bellied woodpecker to the feeder. And, I'll have to keep a close, close eye on it the next couple of days. I've got northern flickers in the yard, and I could swear that I had one at the feeder today ... but who knows, maybe my perception was a tad prejudiced.

Newspaper blogs

We regularly mock the Detroit News editorial page, but we have to confess to a certain admiration for the paper's overall Web site. It's the best, most robust newspaper Web site in the state, complete with its own communities that revolve around more than just politics ... there's a wine blog, for instance.

I don't know their precise strategy, but it appears to be paying off (hat tip, ironically, goes to George Bullard).

The looming question is whether they can translate this into a format that helps pay the bills. Generating traffic is one thing ... paying the bills for a newspaper's infrastructure is another.

The dead ender

We like to keep up on the latest on global warming around here, and we especially like to note the rapid political developments taking place on the issue. We were remiss, the other day, after noting the possibility that George Bush might pull a 180 on the issue in his State of the Union speech, in linking to a story that said he didn't plan to. Now, I can't find the link, but the result is the same ... he might, or he might not, but the real test will be how he backtracks in the days after the speech and his overall, five-day message on the issue.

This could very well be the year that he doesn't do that. Last year, he said that America had to break its addiction to oil, and over basically the next week effectively said that he didn't really mean it. At the time, it was widely speculated that he'd gotten some marching orders from Big Oil, which prompted his backtracking. This year, that pressure might no longer exist.

ExxonMobil defected last month, and even the Big Three, the lumbering oafs of industry, have enlisted.

Detroit's automakers no longer even debate whether global warming or climate change or greenhouse gas emissions are a problem (they'll tell you they are) or whether they will get some kind of political answer in this Congress (they'll tell you they will).

This leaves The Decider with very few friends, and little reason not to take an actual conservative position of global warming.

Pundits and the future of the media

The newest edition of The Nation features an interesting article on the death of the newspaper. Almost none of the information in it is either new or particularly revelatory. In essence, the article argues that the media landscape is changing rapidly, and declining newspaper circulations and profit-intensive outlooks have created a journalistic void.

One of the things the article just scraped the cover off was that the combination of constricting newsroom staff sizes and the desire by media companies to own all of the outlets in one town. There would be not only more overworked reporters, but also fewer voices interpreting events. The media, which often runs towards stories like a herd of frightened buffaloes, would be significantly culled so that the chances that it might change course during its charge would be further minimized, and if the one reporter on the beat for the entire city had a story fundamentally wrong, so would the entire reading public.

This kind of goes hand-in-hand with a thread that's been running across the internets the last week or so ... why the pundits who got Iraq so wrong are the ones whose careers have rocketed off. Notably, one of the pundits not covered was The National Review Online's Jonah Goldberg, a favorite target here because his sense of journalism typically mixes political advocacy and general laziness. Goldberg, who is the first to have referred to the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkies" back in 2002-03 and later wagered Middle East expert and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole over whether Iraq would deteriorate into a civil war, has since landed a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times.

Is the answer in questions about the punditry market? Doubtful. Pundits themselves offer no specialized opinions, and their use neither makes nor breaks a media outlet. So their use is essentially just to offer opinions. Consistency is a plus, but the appearance of diversity is more important. And, it's easier to use someone who is readily available than it is to find an actual expert on a topic.

That would explain this. You wouldn't think that a cable news network would seek out opinions on the inner-workings of the Republican Party from a 20-something whose claim to fame is an association with a Web site publishing conservative columns. And, on cue, when asked about why Republicans lost in November, the answer is this ... they lost because they weren't conservative enough. Iraq, scandal, an unpopular and ineffective president have nothing on fiscal policies ... as if these are more important to people than a floudering overseas war.

God knows why anyone would seek out these kinds of opinions, other than perhaps Mary Katharine Ham was the only person available who'd do it for what they were paying. But, it goes a long way to explaining why punidtry is so poor, and why it's likely to stay poor. There's not a great deal of incentive to improve it, and big incentive not to spend a lot of time worrying about it. If complex stories these days are covered too often in a he said/she said format, use of the standard issue pundit is the same approach ... but played out in different ways.

It could be that we're passing through the Golden Age of Punditry. As newspapers cut, and as more people look to the Internet for information, it could be that harder and harder for opinion writers and punidits to find an audience that pays them. They don't generate revenue on their own, after all, and has been pointed out here on more than one occasion -- the chief difference between blogger and editorial writer is typically just a matter of title.

pundits radar media newspapers The+Nation Jane+Galt

Death of the news cycle

I don't think this can pass by without acknowledgement. To be perfectly honest, I'm not a big Plamegate guy.

But, the idea of live blogging the trial ... the news cycle is now officially dead. I can be kind of dense, so I'm undoubtedly not the first person who's said such a thing, but the old news cycle was based on some kind of lag time between event and publication so television stations could get ready for air time, and newspapers go to press.

Now, that's all gone.

Three minutes of research, pt. 1 zillion

Jeffrey Hadden, the G.I. Bill is not a school voucher. It is a fund that you pay into over your first year of enlistment from which you can draw money for your education.

It is returned to you, the honorably discharged veteran, in the form of money to do with what you please. If you choose to pay your tuition with it, then I suppose you can put a gold star on your forehead. But, if you choose to spend it all on cheap gin and hookers, then you choose to spend your G.I. Bill money on cheap gin and hookers. No one is going to know the difference.

In fact, while we're sitting around chatting so enjoyably, each of the government programs mentioned by you, Jeffrey Hadden, is in fact money given by government to person. You are free to spend your "low interest student loan" on textbooks, tuition, car insurance, food, or whatever. Hell, back in the day, I knew someone who used their student loan to buy a huge stash of drugs he then turned around and sold for a substantial profit.

Update! Nov. 7! Dude, do you know how creepy it is to go looking into your site traffic and find "Jeffrey Hadden and Among the Trees" as a fairly common Google search thread? I can't imagine why anyone would dwell on a many-month's old blog post that's been read by maybe 40 people.

The beef with beef

How much in the way of greenhouse gases does your cheeseburger habit create?

At 2.85-3.1 kg of CO2 (equiv) per burger, then, that's 428-465 kg of greenhouse gas per year for an average American's burger consumption.

Follow the link ... it's an interesting read, and it does factor in methane from farting cows. In fact, most of it is from methane (... and again, we can't let this pass without pointing out that if Manny Lopez and Bob Lutz are so concerned about atmospheric methane created by farting cows, they should stop eating beef), and your ability to lower your personal impact by cutting transportation (buying local beef grown on a local farm and butchered locally) is really fairly minimal. Better to simply cut down on the number of burgers you eat.

Climate+change global+warming carbon+footprint beef methane

Bush U-turn on global warming?

Chatter in environmental circles in the last couple days has been the possibility that George Bush will announce a major U-turn on global warming in his State of the Union. If it doesn't make it into the speech, at least it appears that the Bush administration is weakening on action on global warming.

This isn't quite the Nixon-to-China that the columnist makes it out to be. As in Iraq, the Bush administration has been increasingly isolated on the issue, with two major developments in the last four months -- first, the takeover by Democrats of Congress and the promise of legislation requiring action; and second, the acknowledgment by ExxonMobil that global warming is real and something in need of addressing. Individually, both either signalled that once-formidable allies no longer existed, or were interested in pushing a favorable outcome in a changed political landscape by acknowledging what science has made clear -- the world is getting warmer, and its climate patterns are changing.

That means it's unlikely that the president is about to go more green on global warming than Democrats, which was the point of the column (I think, with the inclusion of this, the point gets sorely muddled). Anyway, cap-and-trade programs have always been more popular with industry than across-the-board regulation.

So, while attention would be nice, this is probably more the result of being painted politically into a corner than any real change of heart by the administration. If the Democrats have been sincere, and there's always the real possibility that they haven't been, then the president will probably get some kind of global warming-related bill sometime this year. This could be a signal of what kind of bill he's willing to sign that would make both parties look like they're serious about tackling global warming.

The real litmus test, however, isn't just addressing global warming in the State of the Union. This president has a habit of using that speech to say great things for which he has no intention of following through on. Who can forget his vow last year to break the nation's addiction to oil, and that for a week afterwards, there was a great deal of backtracking in subsequent press reports. In fact, at this point, what he says in the speech is less important than how those comments are clarified afterwards, when sometimes forceful declarations are turned into things of little form and substance.

climate+change global+warming George+Bush Sebastian+Mallaby

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Well, here, almost a month later, I finally have an opportunity to test the snowshoes I got for Christmas. It finally snowed last night and this morning, a fairly mild winter storm that's put maybe four or five inches on the ground. The plan is to lug them across the street to the city's park system and give them a whirl.

A friend tells me that it's not quite deep enough yet to really dig into snowshoeing, but I just want to strap them on. Sometime in the future, he says, we'll hit the woods around his grandmother's house, where he saw an owl the last time out.

Winter naturally means lots of interesting changes around here. The snow brings the birds to the front porch, which are essentially uncontrolled territory these days. The squirrels mock the cat, who watches them in the window; and chickadees, sparrows, and nuthatches vie for control of the seeds. It also looks like sparrows, juncos, and mourning doves have made short work of the seeds I threw on the ground.

I'm lucky in where I live. In years past, I'd maybe see one or two woodpeckers the entire season. Now, I've got some that show up regularly. Yesterday, the boy tried to snap a photo of a downy woodpecker that regularly patronizes the seed bell I have hung (the second of the season ... the first snapped off at the wooden popsicle stick by which it's hung, and was torn apart by squirrels -- one of the little buggers, the arrogant little fellow who stares at us through the window as if we were there for his amusement, has been eyeing this one in a way that's made me vaguely uncomfortable).

I've also got a hairy woodpecker that show up regularly. At least, I assume that since they're about the size of a blue jay, they're hairy woodpeckers. And, there's a northern flicker that hangs out in a tree in front of the house.

It is interesting, to me, that the feeders have been quiet (aside from the squirrels) today. Yesterday, at this time, they were crawling with sparrows. Today, after a night of snow, they're dead -- they aren't even crowding on the Direct TV antenna out front. Whether this is because they filled up yesterday in anticipation of snow, or because they've got different feeders they hit during the week, or because snow brings a change in habit, or because the red-tailed hawk has been around (I haven't seen it in a month) ... I can only guess.

Anyway, with them gone, and the snow stopped, it seems like a good time to head off and strap on the snowshoes for the first time.

Oh yeah, this is interesting.

birdfeeders downy+woodpeckers hairy+woodpeckers Michigan snow

Service tax vs. drug war

I understand the need for the governor to use as bipartisan a group as possible to start the ball rolling on a tax increase. It's not really needed, but I understand why she'd do it.

It's a symptom of the times. For the last 12 years, Michigan has been led mostly by a party that is ideologically opposed to increasing taxes, and has refused to even discuss it. Their method of encouraging economic growth for the last decade has been to cut taxes and then cut spending to balance the budget.

For all their work, they've created a state economy that languishes behind the nation. Most of that isn't really the work of government, but a historical fault in overreliance on the auto industry. When the auto industry has tanked, so has the state's economy.

But, the state finds itself in a difficult position. It's at a point where even prominent Republicans acknowledge that we can't cut our way out of trouble.

Ex-Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, R-Wyoming, told The Detroit News the panel would have more credibility if it included conservatives who favor streamlining government. But he said: "In their heart of hearts, there are plenty of Republican lawmakers who know we can't cut our way out of this huge budget problem.”

Sikkema is kind of an interesting guy. A one-time environmental activist, he introduced rigid groundwater withdrawal standards in the state four years ago that went nowhere.

So far, the talk's been about extending the sales tax to services like haircuts. In the last few days, I noted that one of the areas that would be affected, haircuts, would impact me directly. No doubt my barber would raise his rates by a whole dollar to pay for the extra $.60 in taxes. In the last five years, since he's been my barber, it'll mean a haircut by him will have increased from $8 to $11.

As a tax hike, it's not unbearable. It's certainly better than raising the income tax, the general sales tax, or taxing food.

On the other hand, there is the issue of cuts. It's a dangerous proposition. Things are already incredibly tight statewide. Th Mackinac Center, the privatizeers over in Midland, has recommended balancing the hole made by repealing the Single Business Tax by a bunch of reforms that includes cutting funding for public transportation and a phantom handful of cash that would just sort of materialize by way of the cuts, something that doesn't happen the way the Mackinac Center seems to thinks happens.

An alternative would be reforms in the way the state approaches drug enforcement. Would we rather put people in prison for selling marijuana, or fund the state's educational system? If it comes to that, and it should before we start talking about increasing taxes, then obviously you send kids to school first.

The problem? Just as with implementing Proposal 2, there are the question of programs that receive federal funding. How to stand down the drug war in substantial ways so that you don't lose a bunch of federal funding? Still, with budgets so tight, it's time to start thinking of alternatives to engaging a public health problem in ways other than arrest and imprisonment. For instance, every summer, helicopters from the local regional drug team BAYANET (BAY Area Narcotics Enforcement Team) fly overhead, looking for marijuana plants in the fields of local farmers. How much money could we save by grounding the choppers for a year, and pursuing something other than clandestine pot fields?

The next question is why the choppers go up every year, and why the detection equipment is continually improved so it can better find marijuana plants. The answer is obvious ... people continue to grow marijuana. Decades of increasingly harsh punishment haven't really dented the availability of drugs. So, money spent towards reducing both supply and demand through the criminal justice system has succeeded in nothing more than draining the budget -- first on enforcement costs, and then on the prisons.

It's frankly only a matter of time before we reconsider this, because as with the war on terror, I think we've kind of lost our way on this. It's so engrained that we have no idea what we're doing, and what we're doing -- and what's failing -- is never reconsidered because it's what we've always done. Corrections is currently the biggest department in the state, and one that in many ways is a mandate -- you can't not pay for prisons where you have people locked up. But each drug addict you lock up is, frankly, money and opportunity wasted.

If they're sick, they should get treatment ... not time. And, the state should should reconsider failed policies before asking me to pay more for a haircut to pay for them.

Michigan Drug+War service+tax sales+tax

The best for a speedy recovery

(Cross posted at Michigan Liberal.)

Here's an official, "Best hopes for a speedy, full recovery" to Mount Pleasant's own state Rep. Bill Caul. The Republican is reportedly doing well after suffering a minor stroke Christmas night.

Mary Babb

I didn't know Mary Babb, but her face was familiar to me. During my days with The Sun, I had a kind of rule -- don't get to know someone until you had to. Anyway, I primarily worked late afternoons and evenings, and when she worked out of the Mount Pleasant office, she worked the regular workday.

What I can tell you is that her death is part of a disturbing reality. Most violent deaths around these parts are the product of some form of domestic violence (or late-night drunken brawls). How many others in the recent past have been domestic in nature? There was the Wendt triple murder (in the courthouse parking lot) in 2002, a guy who beat his girlfriend to death in Clare a couple of years ago, and a couple more the details of which escape me.

Coffee blogging

There's no moment I look forward to each day more than the first sip of coffee. I just had my first sip of coffee from the bag of French Roast I bought yesterday from the local co-op (full disclosure: I sit on its board of directors). Nice and warm, full of flavor.

It's a Fair Trade coffee, and it's been certified at least 80 percent organic, which means for the most part it's grown by good, honest peasants in environmentally sound ways. I know people who suggest that buying Fair Trade is like shopping at the Wal-Mart of sustainable coffee vendors, that there are better places to buy, and I would if I could a) be sure that all of it was grown in a sustainable way, and b) it wasn't priced beyond my ability to pay.

The particular roast I'm drinking is allegedly 100 percent shade-grown -- you can look these things up, over time, on the Internet -- which I don't entirely believe, because the cooperatives in South America that produce some of the beans used are certified from 1 percent to 80 percent organic. This, too, is something you can look up.

Well, the cup is almost empty, time for a refill. But, there is this:

4. Don't think your lifestyle can save the world. I love slow food! I cook slow food! I shop at farmers' markets, I pay extra for organic, I am always buying cloth bags and forgetting to bring them to the supermarket. But the world will never be saved by highly educated, privileged people making different upscale consumer choices. If you have enough money to buy grass-fed beef or tofu prepared by Tibetan virgins, you have enough money to give more of it away to people who really need it and groups that can make real social change.

Sad times are these when respected progressive columnists for The Nation confuse lifestyle with spending habits.

coffee Katha+Pollitt Fair+Trade

ExxonMobil flies the bird at the Wall Street Journal ... a month later

Anyone remembers the outrage on the Wall Street Journal editorial page a month ago after two senators -- one from each party -- sent ExxonMobil a "knock this stupid shit off" letter over global warming? It included this incredibly childish passage:

Let's compare the balance of forces: on one side, CEI; on the other, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the U.N. and EU, Hollywood, Al Gore, and every politically correct journalist in the country. We'll grant that's a fair intellectual fight.

Yeah, well, today comes word that after funding skeptics over the last few years, ExxonMobil has seen the writing on the wall.

For its part, ExxonMobil—after promulgating, and then withdrawing 20 minutes later, a statement that called the report an “attempt to smear our name and confuse the discussion”—wants you to know that it now accepts some responsibility for global warming. Specifically, and in boldface, it admitted that “It is clear today that greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors that contribute to climate change, and that the use of fossil fuels is a major source of these emissions.”

That leaves, basically, conservative editorial pages and James Inhofe as the lone holdouts, global warming dead-enders, an insurgency of denial in its last throes.

ExxonMobil climate+change global+warming environment

Quality writing

This is a better-crafted sentence than you'll find almost anywhere these days:

It is hard to tell a booster that some kinds of growth come from the mulch born of decay.

Source is here.

Science experiment Friday

Before today, I'd never thrown a brick of dry ice into a tub of cold water. I don't know, maybe all of my science teachers were jerks or something. Luckily, one of my last Christmas presents arrived today, packed with the stuff.

It isn't terribly exciting, I know, to look at this photo. But, it was fun, especially poking and prodding the bubbling ice with a pair of scissors. Even broke off a chunk I hope to preserve until tomorrow and show the boy.

Huzzah for science!

By the time I took the photo, most of the fun was over. I'd just figured out that if you added hot water, the ice would melt faster and the billowing cloud of smoke would be bigger. But, yet, the dry ice melted faster. The candle that burns brighter, don'tcha know. I know, I know ... ice melts when thrown into water? ... that's quite a discovery you've made there, Einstein.

Buyer's remorse

I remember, back in the day, reading intelligence reports while deployed to the Mediterranean. At the time, ships deploying out of Norfolk could expect to spend a good deal of time hanging around the Adriatic, since there were frequent and small scale wars being waged there in and around the major flare ups that made the news.

But, yet, there was always noise coming out of the Gulf, and rumors flew frequently that we were headed there to assist in a new bombing campaign against Saddam. To those of us in the service, it was difficult to tell if the conflict was about weapons inspectors or about Bill Clinton's problems at home. So, I read up on Saddam's armed forces.

At the time, the reports laid out a very basic story -- Saddam was fully contained, was no threat, and would attack U.S. military assets only as a last resort to save his regime. To attack Americans otherwise, the reports concluded, would be to commit suicide, since an attack with mustard or nerve gas would undoubtedly invited swift, brutal, and total retaliation.

It was because of this that I never bought into the Saddam scare stories back in 2002-03.

Looking back on that has become something of an exercise in coming to terms with abominably bad judgment these days. Andrew Sullivan, who three years ago hurled the most despicable charges at those of us who doubted the justification for the war, salvaged what was left of his reputation with a very candid "I fucked up." It's an admission that is worthy of respect.

Jeffrey Hadden, of the Detroit News, on the other hand, suggests that bad judgment back then is excusable because it was widespread.

These chemical and biological weapons and amounts are not intelligence estimates; they are what Saddam himself claimed to the United Nations that he possessed.

These are the weapons, mind you, that he claimed at the end of the First Gulf War, 12 years before we invaded. What happened to them? Well, that's why the U.N. weapons inspectors re-entered the nation, but were driven out by our collective bad judgment. He goes on to quote Ed Bradley, thusly:

Bradley's commentary included the following: "Would Saddam think twice about attacking us with weapons of mass destruction? Consider the fact that the Iraqi dictator has already done just that to his own people. The three-day attack came in March 1988 in the northern town of Halabja. Clouds of poisonous gases killed as many as 5,000 Kurds . . . This land, once the most fertile in the area, looks like a nuclear wilderness."

The answer to his first question is, "Yes, he would think twice about attacking us." At least, that's what our military intelligence said back during the 90s. That being the answer, the rest of it is mostly an exercise in rhetorical masterbation.

But, the truth of the matter, the galling truth, is that Saddam didn't have his weapons. They weren't smuggled out of the country. In fact, they were destroyed by a combination of time and the airstrikes Bill Clinton launched in 1998 (which we, in the military, assumed were diversions from the Lewinsky affair ... but, not so, said David Kay). But, mostly, he's looking for a reason not to atone for collective bad judgment in which he took part. It's the reverse of the old libel defense -- he cannot be guilty because he's part of a group of many. Maybe that's what he needs to do to get by, but on the basis of Iraq position, I think Andrew Sullivan might be having an easier time looking at himself in the mirror these days.

This kind of second guessing in the hopes of deflecting blame for bad judgment is kind of common these days, shared by others who work for outlets not so vociferous in supporting the war.

In both cases, it's the execution of the war that's to blame, but supporting the war from the get-go is excusable for different reasons. On the one hand, the ideas were sound. On the other, everyone was in the grips of a group delusion that Saddam was about to launch his fleet of balsa wood drones to dust Omaha with mustard gas.

Mostly, I look at the mess we've created like you do a friend who just picked a fight with someone over an incredibly minor affair. No matter how it turns out, mostly your just embarrassed.

And, embarrassed to know that there are still some out there who think we're doing something swell. That anyone would still paint people who are opposed to the war as dirty, long-haired hippies is just plain sad. No doubt, that's what prompted this screed ... get yourself a bigger set of brass balls, and all will be well.

Oh dear God ... not the perch!

One of the things industry -- and its think tank allies -- always argues is that you won't reduce mercury in the water with regulation. The source for most of North America's mercury is actually China, where coal-fired plants are being built at a tremendous rate.

There is some truth to that ... China does indeed pump lots and lots of mercury into the air, some of which lands in North America. Yet, there's pretty strong evidence that reduced mercury emissions leads to localized drops in mercury concentrations in local water.

Pointing to historical data from the Merrimack River, the authors note that between 1997 and 2002 mercury emissions in southern New Hampshire declined by 45 percent because of regulations on municipal incinerators. As a result, mercury concentrations in loons decreased 64 percent, with an accompanying decline of accumulations in perch.

The relationship is a complex one, but there's no denying that requiring coal-fired plants to clean up their emissions works in reducing mercury in nearby lakes and rivers. This conclusion is documented well enough by other studies that if you don't think reducing mercury cuts local concentrations, it's because you've declined to do basic, honest research. To believe that you can't cut down local mercury concentrations in the water, you'd have to believe that all mercury emitted from coal-fired plants rockets up into the jet stream and is carried away to someplace else.

The article is striking in one other component -- the likelihood that market-based "cap and trade" programs are likely to lead to localized increases in mercury emissions. Cap and trade programs are the darling of free market environmentalism, the notion that the forces of the market can be harnessed to do more good than old fashioned regulation.

And, they did work, reducing sulphur dioxide emissions and consequently cutting down acid rain to the point where today, skeptics of environmental problems point to acid rain as a Chicken Little bogeyman, one that never panned out as promised but ignoring that it was instead solved. It's strong evidence that striking upon the best solution for everyone is a lot more likely to lead to progress than sitting on one's hands, grousing about how curbing emissions will kill the economy (a threat every bit as big a Chicken Little doom scenario as environmentalists are accused of whipping up ... and one for which there is less supporting evidence).

mercury environment michigan

Snowshoes for Christmas

I got snowshoes for Christmas, something I've considered buying for the last two years, but never got around to for a variety of reasons. So, I was happy to get a pair, and excited to try them out.

The problem?

I shot this Christmas Day. As far as Green Christmases are concerned, it was a dandy (Christmas Eve was downright beautiful).

The thermometer on my computer screen tells me it's already 37 degrees, and the sun hasn't quite broken over the trees. That means another day in the mid-40s probably, and perhaps again into the 50s.

It's tempting to assume that we're seeing global warming at work, but look first to El Nino (a stronger El Nino could be the product of global warming, but evidence linking individual weather events and global warming is still pretty sketchy).

Warmer, drier air for the upper Midwest? Sounds dandy, and nice and light on the wallet (winter heating bills, don'tcha know). Dave's got a link to a story about how the mild winter is hurting winter sports in Minnesota, which means there are probably thousands across the Gopher State who feel my pain.

There's always the possibility that winter will arrive late and want to make up for our spared wrath at its hands over the first couple of months, and if El Nino is weakening, that could mean two months of winter (mid-January to mid-March) before we can reliably expect temperatures to start inching upwards. Meanwhile, look at marvel at our early January forecast:
















winter michigan climate+change global+warming El+Nino weather

The Among the Trees Fantastical Annual* New Year's Day Omnibus Edition

Welcome to 2007! Today isn't just the day we celebrate the new year, but the first day of the new term of our new-old governor, Jennifer Granholm.

I was, according to something left on my desk by my secretary**, invited to the ceremony, but I instead chose to spend New Year's Eve with the boy popping a cork of sparkling grape juice***, so found myself detained with related events until just about 15 minutes ago.

What to say of her second term? Well, in a nutshell, it dawned on me, suddenly, yesterday that I'm suddenly accountable for the actions of my man in office (my man, in this case, is actually a woman, but the language flows better referring to her as a man, and as such is meant to be nothing but literary license and not an endorsement of any gender or gender role). Yes, folks, it's been nice ... and fun ... the last six years to complain about government because it wasn't really my government.

While it's true that I voted for her the last time around, the situation was different. Then, she had a Republican Legislature, which I expected to keep things bottled up in Lansing simply to give themselves an advantage to put a Republican back in the governor's mansion last November. What, put party loyalty before the state's citizens? Of course, and they played their role finely, right down to passing an irresponsible tax cut without a way to replace revenue as a platform plank for Dick DeVos.

Now, that they lost both in Washington, and in Lansing, I am obliged to actually hold her accountable for doing things I dislike, and to actually accomplish. My wish list:

*--Environment: On no other set of issues do I hope for so much, but have such low expectations. Granholm's first four years on the environment can be summed up by the number of times the word was mentioned during the campaign debates -- once.

I hope to see the state follow (instead of lead) New England states and California in addressing greenhouse gas emissions. Although she wrangled water withdrawal regulations out of the last Legislature, it would be nice to see more substantive action ... or as Dave says, each of the Great Lakes states are individually saying, "The Great Lakes aren't for sale, but we're happy to entertain offers." And, of course, it would be downright swell if the DEQ was funded properly and expected to act as a watchdog agency.

Update, 9:52 a.m. Jan.2: Yes, we have a long list of environmental priorities we'd like to see addressed. Give Granholm credit for tightening mercury emissions from coal plants, but her administration should take a more active hand in holding Dow accountable for mucking up the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers, and also helping the city of St. Louis with its contaminated drinking well problem. That also means taking leadership on updating the bottle deposit program (a dime ain't what is was back in the 80s, and also including water, juice, energy drink, and iced tea containers), which has the support of three-quarters of the state's residents; and also on recycling -- both access to easy recycling, and by being public about purchasing recycled products.

(She could, if she wanted, take some credit for reducing the creation of paper waste by pointing out how Web friendly state government is these days.)

And, yes, it would be nice to see her tackle pollution caused by the factory farms.

There are undoubtedly more, but like a kid who has a huge Christmas list, things will be popping into my head all day long.

-----End Update-----

*--Education: The way education is funded has led to rampant labor problems for school boards and local teachers' unions. The boneheads at the Detroit News, when not lecturing the governor on what voters they never spoke for want her to do, think that the governor's missing will to force teachers to pay for more health insurance is behind this. But, they would be wrong. Local boards negotiate health care with local unions (if the News bothered to do research, this might have jumped out). But, still, the primary funding mechanism for schools -- Proposal A -- has left boards and unions arguing and bickering and accusing each other of dirty tricks when it comes to money, and unable to ink long-term deals because of financial uncertainty. So, it would be downright dandy for state government (Leg. and Gov.) to take a long, hard look at whether it shouldn't be tweaked to stop this (since, you know, those are the folks who have the power to do so).

*--Net neutrality: The governor actually says she supports this, and will ensure it sometime this year with standalone legislation. It's hoped that she follows through on this without the need to hold her feet to the fire.

*--Jobs, jobs, jobs: A decidedly second-class issue with me, but probably the one that will see the best movement towards. The governor's plan, put simply, is to attract today's Henry Fords to the state, whereas Republicans (and their media megaphones) want to hold on to the Henry Fords of yesterday.

There will be more later. Right now, I'm tired.

Update, 10:07 a.m. Jan. 2: It would be nice if this new administration would, in conjunction with the state Legislature, call for a truce in the War on Drugs. So far, it's cost us millions, has infringed on civil liberties, and people are still getting stoned. It's been an abyssmal failure, and the measure of success is so far the number of people locked up. That's a poor way to address what should be primarily a public health issue. This doesn't mean letting people set up meth labs in their living rooms, but it does mean spending what money is devoted towards drug enforcement more intelligently. Is it a smart use of resources to put helicopters in the air looking for clandestine marijuana fields and throwing kids in jail for carrying a couple of joints in their pocket? It is not. Some of this, the governor can exercise little control. But, she can set the agenda, pointing out that Corrections is the largest state department, and alternative approaches to problems would save the state lots and lots of money. What better, locking someone up for having a pound of marijuana under their couch ... or ensuring a more stable source of revenue for schools.

There is more ... taxation with representation, we'll call it. Dave likes the idea of a green tax to replace the Single Business Tax. I do too, but I don't think there's a political will in this state to start funding general fund programs through environmental cleanups. But, there's loose talk of taxing services like haircuts and pizza deliveries that are currently not taxed. I suppose I don't mind paying my fair share (or even a little more, since I'm a charitable chap), but I'm not about to get soaked with a service tax as part of a Single Business Tax replacement plan.

*--First one ever.
**--Substitute "Inbox" for "desk," and "mailman" for "secretary," and "mailbox" for "Inbox" and the real chain of events unfolds.
***--He fell asleep at 11:10 p.m., and I wound up watching a reality show about Mount Everest as 2007 dawned.