The horrible oil spill off Tauranga in New Zealand affected vast numbers of birds, in addition to all the other catastrophes. Some of those birds are little blue penguins. Some of the birds could be cleaned off in time and have been saved.

But it’s essential to prevent the birds from trying to preen their crude oil-covered feathers before the people can bathe them. And for that, there are penguin jumpers. (Or, in the US, “sweaters.”)

I’m not sure why two self-important birds make me feel happy, but they do.

These are the people who work for your kids. Teachers. Go read one of the most powerful essays I’ve seen on any topic, anywhere.

Brandi Martin, Learning from the LuminousPage:

I Ruined Everything (& Why It Was More Work Than You Thought) @INTERNETTAXTROLLS

…

To earn this $20k I taught art on a cart to 850 kids at 3 different schools every week. Almost every kid was on free lunch. My budget was $1.50 per child per year. … We made puppets, paper mache, tissue snowflakes, and lots of chalk and tempera paintings. I loved going to work every day. I loved festooning each little school with the happy art.

…

I feel less and less that way when I read angry tweets and newspaper comments about my profession. Maybe I shouldn’t read what angry tax paying trolls write and say on the internet, but I’m so appalled I keep checking to see if it’s still there. I’m told I’m ungrateful. I read that I am greedy, or a tool of greedy union bosses. I am a selfish son of a bitch, one guy informed me, when I was trying to explain the details and the facts of current legislation. I read that everyone’s life is going down the toilet, because I am breaking their backs. I have ruined everything. Everything is ruined.

Please know it did not feel like ruining everything. It felt like sitting in a tiny plastic chair at a tiny table, cajoling an autistic preschooler into brushing watercolor across a white wax face i had pre drawn, then watching him laugh at the big reveal. It felt like receiving a drawing as a gift from a talented little boy who drew like an adult, but suffered crippling arthritis in his hands and for whom i had arranged free classes at SAIC. … It feels like a 6’2 kid standing up from his computer animation to announce loudly “I AM AN ARTIST”.

…

After you take every tool and incentive and support away from me, and millions like me, you won’t suddenly have anything great that you don’t already have. And then you will be terribly disappointed to find out that this isn’t a scam after all.

…

Go read her post and see how it all comes out in the end. Really. Go.

I’ve been watching, like everyone else. I don’t think I remember such a glad time since the Berlin Wall came down. Humanity at our best.

from BBC

So much so, I didn’t even mind President Pinera showing up forever where nobody needed him that much. He really cared, and not just about the cameras. So much so, that even the flag waving didn’t bother me. Usually it does. But this time, honestly, the Chileans have a lot to be proud of. The way they searched for the miners without giving up, without worrying about how much it cost, or even mentioning it. The way the miners held on, the way their families and friends waited. And waited, and waited.

People say of the final rescue, the bringing up of each miner, one by one, the meetings of the people whose love had kept them alive, people say that the whole media angle was minutely managed.

I think that’s true. The media were managed. They weren’t allowed to overwhelm the quiet dignity and the unassuming humanity of all the people involved. That was Chile’s biggest gift to all of us.

You know, one of the side effects is going to be an increase in tourism. There have to be lots of people like me, who are now fascinated by the country. I want to go see it for myself. I want to see these remarkable people. I want to find out how they pulled themselves out of such a deep dark hole.

Although, if the secret ingredient is modest people who soldier on, people who can control even the media, that’s maybe not so good. They seem to be in short supply. But still, after this, I feel hope:

(Was: Q.barrales, Wikimedia. Now no longer there.)

When reports of heat waves started back in June, a countdown timer started in my head. The media would start yammering in 3 … 2 … 1 …, “ZOMG! Global warming!”

Fools.

The hallmarks of greenhouse gas-induced climate change are, in approximately this order:

• higher night time temperatures and warming at high latitudes (Arctic and Antarctic)
• ocean acidification and thermal expansion (that cause one type of rising sea level)
• reduced rainfall in dry areas, increased in wet areas
• desertification of continental interiors, including hotter summers, droughts, water shortages, and the rest….

We’ve had the first two sets for a couple of decades already. But that wasn’t a problem because nobody felt hot, except maybe a few polar bears and glaciers.

(There were also a bunch of scientists running around with their hair on fire, but scientists do boring stuff like talk about evidence and numbers –even when their heads are burning — so that didn’t count.)

Now we’re well into the phase where warming starts to bite. Floods and droughts seem to be larger, longer, and harsher. Russia is burning. Desertification in China is proceeding on schedule. Huge dust storms blanket Beijing and dump Chinese particulates all the way over here, where I live, near Los Angeles.

Now the media are starting to notice, now that they had to turn up the A/C. Hell, now Presidents are starting to get a vague sense that maybe, perhaps, there’s a problem here somewhere.

The Russian President has been shocked — shocked! — to find his country in a huge heat wave that’s ruined at least a third of the grain crop and fosters wildfires. Last year, he said, “We will not let anyone cut our development potential.”

Sure.

Floods, fire, and famine are cheap.

I’ve been looking into conviction by repetition for another project, and landed on a long-time favorite of mine, The Hunting of the Snark. Re-reading it now gave me an uncanny sense of double vision. The bit that did it follows the First Fit of the poem, in which the other crew members are described.

The crew was complete: it included a Boots–
A maker of Bonnets and Hoods–
A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes–
And a Broker, to value their goods.

A Billiard-maker, whose skill was immense,
Might perhaps have won more than his share–
But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.

Then he gets to the Bellman.

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies–
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face!

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!

“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best–
A perfect and absolute blank!”

This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out
That the Captain they trusted so well
Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,
And that was to tingle his bell.

He was thoughtful and grave–but the orders he gave
Were enough to bewilder a crew.
When he cried “Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!”
What on earth was the helmsman to do?

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, “snarked.”

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!

You see what I mean? Eerie. Lewis Carroll didn’t even know any of our politicians.

The long silence is about sadness. It’s not personal sadness. I kind of live in paradise. But watching the US political system go to ruin is depressing.

I started writing a post talking about the Administration’s plans for education — which look shrubbier than the Shrub’s — and found out when I was looking up links that it’s even worse than it sounded at first.

There’s another post in the, ahem, pipeline about the BP oil spill. Actually, no, not about the oil spill. About how the spill will be used to shill for nuclear energy the minute the lobbyists think they can get away with it. They’ll tell us it’s our only choice. We have a polluting disaster here, so the solution is obvious. Put all your money on another polluting disaster!

It goes on and on. So my heart fails me, and I go off into my own world and write instead about how government should be.

It all hurts. The Health Insurance Profit Protection Plan. The government mandate to fork over money to private companies. The lies. The flimflam. (“It’s called ‘Health Care Reform.’ That means ‘Health’ and ‘Care’ and ‘Reform’!”)

But what hurts worse is all the people who I thought knew which end was up, who knew right from wrong, who cared. Krugman, even, so help me God, Kristof — practically the only widely visible man out there who’s aware that women are people. All of them not noticeably conscious that women’s most fundamental right was trampled for . . . well, for the obligation to fork over money to private companies. For nothing.

Because that’s what this is. The right to control your own body is so basic that you can even kill in self-defense. The right to control what is done to your body is fundamental to every other right. There is no freedom of speech or thought, no life, no liberty, no pursuit of happiness, if there is no control over your body. This is an issue like slavery. It is fundamental. It cannot be harmlessly traded away for anything.

But people don’t see anything wrong. A headline on the McClatchy site is about the eventual silence of the Tea Partiers. The delusions of a few paranoids are visible. The human rights of half the population are not.

Knowing right from wrong is like knowing which way is up. It’s essential to digging out of a hole.

How did we come to this place where women get shoved further and further down, and even women barely notice?

That hurts worst of all.

We’ve had states passing anti-evolution stuff. Now this.

Utah delivers vote of no confidence for ‘climate alarmists’

Utah’s House of Representatives [has] adopted a resolution condemning “climate alarmists”…. The measure …passed by 56-17….

I don’t know why I never saw it before, but do you realize how many problems this approach could solve?

Gravity, for instance. All that lugging things around. Having to build cars, trucks, roads, airplanes just to move from point A to point B. Forget it. Levitation now!

And don’t get me started on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I mean, who the hell passed the damn thing? Nobody, that’s who. One day a bunch of pointy heads said it existed. Who made them God? I am so tired of dusting and things falling apart and my car’s last repair bill. Enough already. Time to insist on a “full and independent investigation” until entropy “can be substantiated,” in the brave words of the Utah Resolution.

Are you with me? Call your congresscritters!

Do you wonder why the nuclear power industry needs government insurance? Why they need government loan guarantees just to build the plants?

It’s simple. Without the Price-Anderson Act, without the taxpayer-funded construction loan guarantees Obama wants to triple, nobody who hires professional actuaries will touch the nuclear industry. Actuaries assess risk, as we all do every time we cross a street or get on a plane. We do it by gut feelings. Professional actuaries use statistics based on actual past risk.

And nobody who hires professional actuaries will touch the nuclear industry.

But we have no choice, people say. We need the energy.

We do have a choice. Look at some brief stats on what’s possible by 2050: Solar could provide 100% of our energy needs. Efficiency could reduce needs by 50% without affecting standard of living. (Links and calcs here, and here.) Nuclear could satisfy some 15% of our energy needs if we build a new gigawatt plant every six weeks (pdf). Even with guarantees tripled to $54 billion, that only provides some nine plants. That buys about a year’s worth of plants. Then we need to do it again. And again. And again. Every year for 39 years. And money spent on nuclear energy can’t be spent on real solutions.

(In case you’re wondering why nukes get built at all, remember that it funnels billions to huge corporations now. The fact that it doesn’t solve any of our problems ten years from now is not their concern. I think we’ve seen that movie a couple of times recently.)

But nuclear is safe, people say. It’s safer than driving a car.

Well, sure. The difference is that if a car crashes, in the worst case it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses and lost wages. If a nuclear plant has a disaster, it means total ruin. Yes, the chance of nuclear disaster is very low. But given the costs if it happens, even the hugest insurance or energy companies would go bankrupt. Nobody who knows the meaning of the numbers thinks the risk is worth it. Even the nuclear industry doesn’t think it’s worth it. They’ll take any profit, but they won’t build without someone else to take on the risk.

So you, Jane and Joe Taxpayer, get to do it. It gets worse. You’re not only on the hook for billions in insurance and construction loan guarantees. The industry are pretty much the ones who’ve decided how much money will be needed, so the estimates are, shall we say, rosy. Guess who’s on the hook for all the rest of the costs? That’s right. You.

You are the insurer and guarantor of last resort for the nuclear industry.

I guess that model worked so well in the banking industry, it’s a good idea to do it again.

nuclear, loan guarantees, Obama

In these times when we’re headed off a cliff, and no way of knowing whether we can fly, it’s good to see that sometimes troubles end.

A guard tower on the East German border is now a summer house. (From Paul Kaye’s series on the BBC about the Iron Curtain.)

A happy New Year to all.

(I’ve been out with swine flu. It was so peaceful, not knowing the news, I kept floating in blissful ignorance as long as I could. As far as I can tell, the Copenhagen climate summit hasn’t been discussed much in the US. Or maybe I’ve just been too out of it?)

First, a bit of backstory. For years, most of the world’s countries have been preparing for the UN summit on climate change at Copenhagen. They see climate change coming, they know they’ll suffer from it, and a majority of countries wanted a more inclusive and more binding agreement than Kyoto 1997. So far, not good enough, but better than nothing.

The summit itself was five days of meetings with all the usual wrangling of “You first” “No, you first” and negotiations going far into the night.

Okay, so you have the picture. The whole world, pretty much, has been working on this thing, and as the meeting goes on, the delegates are getting less and less sleep.

Enter the US. Obama decided that he’d come and give a speech at the close, but would eschew dealing with the sweaty, red-eyed delegates before that. High-handed, but par for the course.

And then what actually happened raised US arrogance to a whole new degree. He parachuted in on the last day. There was no agreement to his liking. So he acted as if the UN didn’t exist, and as if 183 countries hadn’t been talking since forever. He had his own private meeting with China, pulled in Brazil, India, and South Africa to make it a bit more multilateral, and announced that an agreement had been reached and the UN could now sign off on it.

The Obama White House mounted a surgical strike of astounding effectiveness (and astounding cynicism) that saw the president announcing a deal live on [US] TV before anyone – even most of the governments involved in the talks – knew a deal had been done.

Then he hopped on his plane and flew home so the snow wouldn’t mess up his schedule.

The “agreement” did not commit to anything binding and expressed a hope (now where have I heard that word before?) for minimal greenhouse gas reductions. The reductions are so minor that even if those targets were met, the data indicate that they would not keep average temperature from rising less than 2C, would not prevent drastic warming, droughts, migration, famine, disease, and, generally, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

It does, however, allow China, the US, India, and so on, to keep polluting while making polite noises to places like Bangladesh and Florida when they drown.

The “agreement” has too little in it to stimulate green industries, so we won’t be getting that benefit either. It has a promise of $100 billion from a consortium of nations over ten years to help developing countries cope with climate change, but similar promises in the past haven’t led to much in the way of actual cash.

And the “agreement” was such a slap in the face to everyone who’d been negotiating that even reporters for the BBC, who’d rather die than lose their professional detachment, say things like:

The concept that global environmental issues can and should be tackled on a co-operative international basis has taken a massive, massive blow.

The UN climate convention is the flagship agreement, and its outcomes are supposed to be negotiated. This deal was presented to the greater body of countries on a take-it-or-leave-it basis by small group of powerful players.

It is now debatable whether the UN climate convention has a meaningful future, or whether powerful countries will just decide by themselves, or in a small group, by how much they are prepared to cut emissions.

That makes optional the established schemes for helping the poorest countries towards a clean energy and climate-protected future.

The implications for other global treaties that are not meeting their goals, such as the UN biodiversity convention, can only be guessed at.

The Europeans, like all good progressives thrown under the Obama bus, swallowed hard and went along with this thing. Half a loaf is supposed to be better than none. But at what point is that no longer true? How about when it’s down to a couple of dirty crumbs?

The delegates generally were mad enough that they came to no decision. They “took note” of the US agreement and went home. It’ll be a cold day in a globally warmed world before they slog for years so the US can step on them again.

Obama, meanwhile, is back and working the same magic on what’s left of health insurance reform. And the progressives here are also staring at a couple of dirty crumbs, swallowing hard, and preparing to go along with it.

What else can they do? They couldn’t possibly walk out on him. They just have to do what he says. Get over it.

Obama, COP15, climate change, global warming, Copenhagen, UN

It’s about damn time this started being said. (h/t Suburban Guerrilla):

Coakley, in her boldest gamble of the campaign, said that fighting for women’s access to abortions was more important than passing the overall bill, despite its aim of providing coverage for 36 million people, establishing a public insurance option, and prohibiting insurers from discriminating against patients with preexisting conditions. [Ed. note: Coverage to some 2 million, varying assistance to the other 34 million. Guaranteed issue, yes, but the pricing of policies for people with pre-existing conditions is basically up to the insurers.]

“To pretend that now the House has passed this bill is real progress – it’s at the expense of women’s access to reproductive rights”

Women’s rights are human rights. Sexism kills.

You think you got problems? Hah.

Japanese Fishing Trawler Sunk By Giant Jellyfish
The trawler, the Diasan Shinsho-maru, capsized off Chiba`as its three-man crew was trying to haul in a net containing dozens of huge Nomura’s jellyfish. …

The crew of the fishing boat was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler, according to the Mainichi newspaper. The local Coast Guard office reported that the weather was clear and the sea was calm at the time of the accident.

One of the largest jellyfish in the world, the species can grow up to 2 meters in diameter. The last time Japan was invaded on a similar scale, in the summer of 2005, the jellyfish damaged nets, rendered fish inedible with their toxic stings and even caused injuries to fishermen.

As you go through your day, remember, it could be worse.

This concludes our cheering message.

Carry on.

giant, jellyfish, Nomura’s, Nemopilema nomurai

Few things are more worth celebrating than bilbies, and the second Sunday in September is their day. It’s now nearly 7 AM on Sunday in Australia, so what are you waiting for?

The omniscient Wikipedia notes:

They are nocturnal omnivores that do not need to drink water, as they get all the moisture they need from their food, which includes [... let's just say "everything"]. Most food is found by digging or scratching in the soil, and using their very long tongues.

Unlike bandicoots, they are excellent burrowers and build extensive tunnel systems with their strong forelimbs and well-developed claws. A bilby typically makes a number of burrows within its home range, up to about a dozen, and moves between them, using them for shelter both from predators and the heat of the day. The female bilby’s pouch faces backwards, which prevents her pouch from getting filled with dirt while she is digging.

What more could you want?

bilby

Fifty years of occupation. Colonizing a neighbor instead of another continent doesn’t make it all right. Having an empire now instead of two hundred years ago doesn’t make it all right.

Fifty years of non-violent resistance. The powers-that-be insist that’s the right thing to do. Then they ignore the hell out of anyone who actually does it because quiet people aren’t a problem. Don’t ask why there’s so much death and destruction in the world. Ask why there isn’t more.

Nothing against David Bain, who looks like someone with a sense of humor, but this sort of thing is the reason I never formally studied philosophy. It’s my natural habitat — meandering on about things nobody else worries about — but there is just too much goddamn silliness involved.

Take these four “brain teasers” on the BBC on World Philosophy Day. They either have blindingly obvious answers or they’re purely theoretical and not worth the waste of neurons.

BBC Magazine: Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt
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