Seven-plus minutes of good reason to get your tail to Glacier National Park as soon as you can.
Produced and shot by Joshua Thompson, this is part of an award-winning film made to promote the park and get money for the research that the park hosts.
Grizzly Bears, Bighorn Sheep, spectacular sunsets and more…..
Part 3 of the recently shot Glacier DVD. This 20 min. film recently was nominated for best new nature documentary in the music category as well received an award for photography from the Wildlife Film Festival held in May of 2008. All funds for this project are being donated to the Glacier National Park Fund. For more info: http://www.glaciernationalparkfund.org/cart.php?page=glacier_national_park_fu…
I’ve been there only once. A wise American would get there before turning 35, and return several times.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
It seems like just a few months ago that Kathryn the Trophy Wife™ and I honeymooned in Yellowstone National Park, for a glorious January week. On more than one occasion we had Old Faithful all to ourselves — it seemed like such an indulgence.
Seems just a few months ago, but that was before the 1988 fires, before our 1989 vacation there, before our 2004 ceremony casting the ashes of brother Jerry and his wife Barbara to the Yellowstone winds.
Will Yellowstone be there for our children, and for our grandchildren, as it has been for my lifetime? The Nature Conservancy produced a 16-minute film showing much of the glory of winter of the place, and talking about the problems.
For the deer, elk and pronghorn in and around Yellowstone National Park, surviving the winter means finding adequate food and areas with low snow accumulation. But this critical winter range is increasingly threatened by energy and residential development. At stake is the very future of the Greater Yellowstone region’s iconic wildlife. This film highlights the voices of those working together to save these magnificent herds: ranchers, conservationists, scientists and others. http://www.nature.org/yellowstone
Growing up in the Mountain West, I learned to appreciate the stark beauty of the cold northern desert — but seldom is that beauty captured on film so well as it is here. Phlogiston Media, LLC, made a remarkable, beautiful film, about a remarkable, beautiful land threatened by gritty, banal and mundane development.
This movie has been viewed only 542 times when I posted it. Spread the word, will you?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I get e-mail — this time from Moms Rising, wondering whether Campbell’s soup should have Bisphenol-A in it:
Ed,
“Eww Eww Toxic”
That’s our new jingle for Campbell’s soup. No more “M’m M’m Good,” we now think “Eww Eww Toxic” is more appropriate.
Why the “Eww” jingle?
Because, according to experts, Campbell’s Soup Company still uses toxic Bisphenol A (BPA) in their canned goods, despite the fact that it’s proven harmful.[1] In April, MomsRising joined the Breast Cancer Fund and over 20,000 parents to ask three major canned food manufacturers, Campbell’s, Del Monte, and General Mills, what they are doing about Bisphenol A (BPA) in their canned goods. Two companies replied, offering rough timelines for replacing BPA, or sharing details about which products are BPA-free.
We have yet to see the Campbell’s Soup Company respond to those 20,000 people. We’re not going to let the company that markets directly to kids with products like Dora the Explorer “Kidshape Soups” get away with ignoring parents. [2] Especially when parents have questions about a toxic chemical linked to breast cancer, infertility, early onset puberty, ADHD, and obesity. [3]
Sign on now to our open letter to Campbell’s demanding a response to one key question: What are you doing to phase out BPA in your cans and what safe alternative are you replacing it with?
With two billion pounds of BPA produced annually in the U.S., it’s no wonder that over 90% of Americans have detectable levels of BPA in their bodies.[4]
Removing BPA from all canned foods is a great first step in reducing our nation’s BPA exposure. Canned goods are used in many ways. And, even if you have the time and resources to get canned goods out of your kitchen, it’s super hard to keep them away from your family. BPA exposure from canned goods shows up on your plate at the local pizza joint, at a five star restaurant, in your children’s school, or at the local food bank.
Let’s work together to make sure that Campbell’s is serving up some “M’m M’m Good” answers to consumers and taking real action on BPA!
Let Campbell’s know you want a response on how they’re going to phase out BPA today:
*And please forward this email along to your friends and family!
Together we can build a safer and healthier nation for all of our children.
— Sarah, Claire, Kristin, and the whole MomsRising Team.
P.S Thank you to our partners on this important issue: Breast Cancer Fund! Learn more about their exciting new study & their work here: www.breastcancerfund.org/foodpackagingstudy
P.P.S. Tell us why you want toxins out of your family’s life. The personal experiences and thoughts of real moms and dads across this country make a big impact on legislators and can help change the way our country handles toxins. Share your experience today.
Information from the American Chemistry Council — count this as the industry response, trying to preserve use of BPA; this is a paid placement site, meaning companies pay good money to make this come up at the top of your browsing on the information
National Toxicology Program assessment of dangers of BPA – “The NTP reached the following conclusions on the possible effects of current exposures to bisphenol A on human development and reproduction. Note that the possible levels of concern, from lowest to highest, are negligible concern, minimal concern, some concern, concern, and serious concern.”
Most plastic containers with BPA, but not all, feature a recycling symbol, #3 or #7.
If I am concerned, what can I do to prevent exposure to BPA?
Some animal studies suggest that infants and children may be the most vulnerable to the effects of BPA. Parents and caregivers, can make the personal choice to reduce exposures of their infants and children to BPA:
Don’t microwave polycarbonate plastic food containers. Polycarbonate is strong and durable, but over time it may break down from over use at high temperatures.
Polycarbonate containers that contain BPA usually have a #7 on the bottom
Reduce your use of canned foods.
When possible, opt for glass, porcelain or stainless steel containers, particularly for hot food or liquids.
Use baby bottles that are BPA free.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Sometimes in unexpected places you stumble across a factoid that makes sense out of a lot of other factoids, turning them into enlightening, and perhaps useful, information.
Among the allegations, that Monsanto aggressively protects its patents on seeds and other products sold to farmers, and that the company may not be above a bit of skullduggery to push farmers and, in this case, milk processors, to use Monsanto products. Watch for Steven Milloy’s name to pop up in the last paragraph. The site quotes a Vanity Fair article on Monsanto from 2008.
Even if Monsanto’s efforts to secure across-the-board labeling changes should fall short, there’s nothing to stop state agriculture departments from restricting labeling on a dairy-by-dairy basis. Beyond that, Monsanto also has allies whose foot soldiers will almost certainly keep up the pressure on dairies that don’t use Monsanto’s artificial hormone. Jeff Kleinpeter knows about them, too.
He got a call one day from the man who prints the labels for his milk cartons, asking if he had seen the attack on Kleinpeter Dairy that had been posted on the Internet. Kleinpeter went online to a site called StopLabelingLies, which claims to “help consumers by publicizing examples of false and misleading food and other product labels.” There, sure enough, Kleinpeter and other dairies that didn’t use Monsanto’s product were being accused of making misleading claims to sell their milk.
There was no address or phone number on the Web site, only a list of groups that apparently contribute to the site and whose issues range from disparaging organic farming to downplaying the impact of global warming. “They were criticizing people like me for doing what we had a right to do, had gone through a government agency to do,” says Kleinpeter. “We never could get to the bottom of that Web site to get that corrected.”
As it turns out, the Web site counts among its contributors Steven Milloy, the “junk science” commentator for FoxNews.com and operator of junkscience.com, which claims to debunk “faulty scientific data and analysis.” It may come as no surprise that earlier in his career, Milloy, who calls himself the “junkman,” was a registered lobbyist for Monsanto.
If accurate, it’s a sort of “origins” story — I don’t think it explains Milloy’s current advocacy of DDT and almost all other things anti-environmentally-wise. Nor does it explain Milloy’s penchant for making things up whole cloth. Does Fox News disclose this anywhere?
It does suggest his dirty tricks chops against environmentalists and scientists get exercised more than I had imagined.
The story is an interesting and odd footnote in the debunking of the unholy War on Science that claims Rachel Carson was wrong, and DDT is harmless and right.
* These posts are for examples only, and should not be interpreted to mean that the blogs sampled are composed entirely of denials, or that the blog authors and editors are themselves pure denialists — certainly they will deny that. We will gladly post links to posts at those blogs that promote benefits of harnassing wind energy, if anyone can find them.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Our memorial to George Washington neared completion in the 1880s. For an obelisk more than 550 feet tall to honor the Father of Our Country, planners decided to top it with a “capstone” made of the what was, then the most precious metal known on Earth. The top is a pyramid, and the top of the pyramid is a one-pound block of this precious metal.
What was the most precious metal known to humans in 1880? Gold? Platinum? Tungsten, perhaps, not yet chosen to be filaments in the yet-to-be-perfected Edison “A” lightbulb?
Washington’s Monument is topped with aluminum.
Yeah, aluminum.
“But,” you begin to sputter in protest, “aluminum is almost ubiquitous in soils, and it’s cheap — we use it in soda cans because it’s cheaper than steel or glass, for FSM’s sake!”
Today, yes. In 1880, no. Aluminum requires massive amounts of energy to refine the stuff from ore. Aluminum is common in soils and rocks, but it couldn’t be refined out easily for use.
That problem’s solution was electricity, generated from coal or especially falling water. For a while, our nation’s biggest aluminum refining plants resided in the state of Washington, not because they were close to aluminum ore deposits, but because there was a lot of cheap electricity available from the Grand Coulee and other dams on the mighty Columbia River. It was cheaper to transport the ore long distances for refining than to transport the electricity.
This history reveals a lot about science, history, energy use, resource conservation and economics — areas in which most climate denialists appear to me to lack knowledge and productive experience.
Peter Sinclair more often explains why climate denialists get things wrong. In this video, the first of what could be a significant series, Sinclair explains how we got to where we are today in energy use and conservation — or energy overuse and lack of conservation, if the Tea Party and Rand Paul get their way. (Notice the ingots of aluminum shown in the historic film footage.)
This is history which has been largely covered up, partly because so much critical stuff happened in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, a time the internet doesn’t cover well.
5,842
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Too many in the U.S. bury their heads in the sands about the issues, but researchers in Spain and Mozambique wondered whether indoor residual spraying (IRS) with DDT, to fight malaria-carrying mosquitoes, might produce harms to children in those homes. They studied the issue in homes sprayed with DDT in Mozambique.
It turns out that young mothers ingest DDT and pass a significant amount of it to their children when the children breast feed.
Maria N. Manacaa, b, c, Joan O. Grimaltb, , , Jordi Sunyerd, e, Inacio Mandomandoa, f, Raquel Gonzaleza, c, e, Jahit Sacarlala, Carlota Dobañoa, c, e, Pedro L. Alonsoa, c, e and Clara Menendeza, c, e
a Centro de Investigação em Saúde da Manhiça (CISM), Maputo, Mozambique
b Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDÆA-CSIC), Jordi Girona 18, 08034 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
c Barcelona Centre for International Health Research (CRESIB), Hospital Clínic, Universitat de Barcelona, Rosselló 132, 4a, 08036 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
d Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL), Doctor Aiguader 88, 08003 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
e Ciber Epidemiología y Salud Pública, Spain
f Instituto Nacional de Saúde, Ministerio de Saúde, Maputo, Mozambique
Received 6 November 2010;
revised 19 March 2011;
accepted 1 June 2011.
Available online 20 July 2011.
Abstract
Breast milk concentrations of 4,4′-DDT and its related compounds were studied in samples collected in 2002 and 2006 from two populations of mothers in Manhiça, Mozambique. The 2006 samples were obtained several months after implementation of indoor residual spraying (IRS) with DDT for malaria vector control in dwellings and those from 2002 were taken as reference prior to DDT use. A significant increase in 4,4′-DDT and its main metabolite, 4,4′-DDE, was observed between the 2002 (median values 2.4 and 0.9 ng/ml, respectively) and the 2006 samples (7.3 and 2.6 ng/ml, respectively, p < 0.001 and 0.019, respectively). This observation identifies higher body burden intakes of these compounds in pregnant women already in these initial stages of the IRS program. The increase in both 4,4′-DDT and 4,4′-DDE suggest a rapid transformation of DDT into DDE after incorporation of the insecticide residues. The median baseline concentrations in breast milk in 2002 were low, and the median concentrations in 2006 (280 ng/g lipid) were still lower than in other world populations. However, the observed increases were not uniform and in some individuals high values (5100 ng/g lipid) were determined. Significant differences were found between the concentrations of DDT and related compounds in breast milk according to parity, with higher concentrations in primiparae than multiparae women. These differences overcome the age effect in DDT accumulation between the two groups and evidence that women transfer a significant proportion of their body burden of DDT and its metabolites to their infants.
Highlights
► DDT increases in pregnant women at the start of indoor spraying with this compound. ► Rapid transformation of DDT into DDE occurs in women after intake of this insecticide. ► The DDT increases in breast milk of women due to indoor spraying are not uniform. ► Breast milk DDT content in primiparae women is higher than in multiparae women. ► Women transfer a high proportion of their DDT and DDE body burden to their infants.
“Primiparae” women are those with one child, their first; “multiparae” women are those who have delivered more than one child.
Without having read the study, I suggest there are a few key points this research makes:
Claims that DDT has been “banned” from Africa and is not in use, are patently false.
Spraying poisons in homes cannot be considered to have no consequences; poisons in in very small concentrations get into the bodies of the people who live in those homes.
We should not cavalierly dismiss fears of harms to humans from DDT, because it appears that use of even tiny amounts of the stuff exposes our youngest and most vulnerable children.
Beating malaria has no easy, simple formula.
Women, even poor women in malaria-endemic areas, should not have to worry about passing poisonous DDT or its breakdown products to their children, through breastfeeding. The national Academy of Sciences was right in 1970: DDT use should be stopped, and work should be hurried to find alternatives to DDT.
To aid researchers looking for news from Africa on malaria and DDT, I’ll reproduce the entire news story from Uganda’s New Vision here. Stories from this outlet frequently trouble me, in the unquestioning way writers take quotes from people where a more probing reporter might be more skeptical. I am not sure of the status of New Vision among Uganda’s media, but it’s one of the few available to us here on a regular basis.
So, here’s the story, on DDT usage to fight malaria. A couple of points we need to remember: First, it’s clear that DDT is not banned in Uganda, and that DDT usage goes on, despite the crocodile tears of Richard Tren, Roger Bate, and the Africa Fighting Malaria, Astroturf™ group; second, this story relates difficulties in using DDT, including cost. It’s not that the stuff itself is expensive. DDT doesn’t work on all mosquitoes anymore, and it’s dangerous to much other wildlife. Malaria fighters must do serious work in advance to be sure the populations of mosquitoes targeted will be reduced by DDT — that is, that the bugs are not immune to DDT — and care must be taken to control the applications, to be sure it’s applied in great enough concentrations, and only indoors, where it won’t contaminate the wild.
INDOOR residual spraying as a strategy to control malaria in Uganda is too costly and has affected the programme countrywide.
According to Dr. Seraphine Adibaku, the head of the Malaria Control Programme, this is why other malaria control strategies such as use of insecticide-treated nets and Artemisinin-based combination therapy are considered to be ahead of indoor residual spraying.
The Government is implementing the indoor residual spraying using pyrethrum-based and carbon-based insecticides in 10 malaria-endemic districts in the northern and eastern regions.
They include Amolatar, Apac, Kitgum, Kumi and Bukedea.
“About three million people in the 10 districts have been covered. We have reached over 90% of the population,” Adibaku said.
She added that under the Presidential Malaria Initiative, the budget for indoor residual spraying is sh4.5b per district each year.
Adibaku said it would be much cheaper if the ministry distributed insecticide-treated mosquito nets.
She, however, said indoor spraying has an advantage of delivering immediate impact compared to treated nets.
Adibaku disclosed that the health ministry is re-evaluating the effectiveness of using DDT for malaria control.
Dr. Joaquim Saweka, the World Health Organisation (WHO) resident representative in Uganda, said indoor residual spraying is highly effective and has been successful in Zanzibar and Rwanda.
He, however, added that it is capital intensive and needs a lot of money for each application done twice a year.
Saweka cited his previous posting in Ghana during which a town of 300,000 inhabitants required $3m for spraying each year.
He said with the high cost of spraying and low financial resources available, Uganda needs to prioritise usage of insecticide-treated mosquito nets.
Saweka added that Uganda is on the right path to eradicating malaria with efforts in prevention, diagnosis and treatment as well as universal coverage of insecticide-treated nets.
Health minister Dr. Richard Nduhura yesterday kicked off a nationwide programme to distribute 11,000 bicycles to health volunteers who will diagnose and treat malaria in homes. The programme is supported by the Global Fund.
It is part of the Government’s home-based management of malaria, which is part of a larger national strategy to deliver treatment to children within 24 hours after diagnosis.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Then call your congressman, and him/her to act, now.
_____________
Note on Tom Toles from the Department of Earth Sciences, G-107 Environmental Geology, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI): “A political cartoon from the Washington Post on climate change. Tom Toles, a political cartoonist, often pens cartoons on environmental issues. His cartoons are often reprinted in other newspapers (Washington Post/Universal Press Syndicate).”
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
The U.S. House of Representatives scheduled a vote today to force light bulb manufacturers to keep manufacturing bulbs the market has rejected — Marxist socialism at its apex! — in order to overturn energy conservation standards signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007.
Lately it seems that the House Republican leadership is against everything that isn’t pre-approved by Big Oil or the Tea Party. Perhaps the most outlandish example of this Groucho Marx approach to public policy is today’s vote on the BULB Act, H.R. 2417. It would repeal the energy efficiency standards for light bulbs established in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, or EISA, P.L. 110-140. It would also prevent California from setting its own light bulb efficiency standards. The original author of the provision is House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI), who is now supporting the repeal of his own idea after conservatives attacked it along with other clean energy programs.
EISA, with Rep. Upton’s efficiency measure, passed the House in 2007 by a bipartisan vote of 319-100, with support from 49.7 percent of Republicans who voted and 98 percent of Democratic votes. President George W. Bush signed it into law.
Mark Twain observed that it takes just one man of conscience to stand up to a mob and frustrate stupid mob action. Fred Upton is not that man of conscience, alas.
If a global warming debate about certainty and cause only deepens doubt and defensiveness, what kind of debate would create support for action? We saw Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to shift from the tired debate over cause and prevention to a new discussion about preparedness, thus reframing global warming from certainty to uncertainty and from limits on human activity to greater activity. Regardless of the cause, global warming is here and we need to prepare for it in the same way we prepare for any other imaginable natural disaster, not knowing exactly when or where it will strike. Global Warming Preparedness was created to test the possibility that action on global warming could be taken, not in spite of uncertainty, but because of it. (Breakthrough Institute, Plan for Global Warming Preparedness)
Rand Paul revealed why he’s full of . . . that certain fecality, shall we say. He did that in a hearing about light bulbs, and appliances. Energy conservation gives Rand Paul formication (look it up).
Burning money: Republicans prefer more heat than light, less energy conservation, and the libertarian, self-help yourself to others' money philosophy popularized in recent movies.
But what about efforts to undo the energy conservation bill that practically forces long-lived, low-energy light bulbs on us? The Tea Party doesn’t like that idea, either. Michael Patrick Leahy, writing at the blog for Rupert Murdoch’s Broadside Books, explains why he thinks the Tea Party should oppose Fred Upton’s bill to repeal the energy standards Rand Paul castigated.
Basically, none of these guys knows beans about energy, nor much about the technology or science of electricity and lighting — they just like to whine.
Leahy wrote:
Section 3 [of the “Better Use of Light Bulbs Act,” HR 2417] states that “No Federal, State, or local requirement or standard regarding energy efficient lighting shall be effective to the extent that the requirement or standard can be satisfied only by installing or using lamps containing mercury.” This reads to me that Congress is attacking the mercury laden CFL bulbs. The point of the individual economic choice guaranteed in the Constitution, however, is that Congress ought not to favor CFLs over incandescents, just as it ought not to favor incandescents over CFLs. I’m no fan of CFL bulbs personally, but look for CFL manufacturers like GE to make this argument against the bill at every opportunity.
Section 4 of the Act is designed to repeal the light bulb efficiency standards in effect in the State of California since January 1 of this year. The standards are essentially the federal standards that will go into effect January 1, 2012, but moved up a year. While I personally question the legal status of these very specific rules promulgated by the California Energy Commission based on a vague and non-specific 2007 California statute, it seems to me that there are serious Constitutional questions surrounding a Federal law prohibiting a State to establish its own product efficiency standards. While a good argument can be made that the Commerce Clause grants Congress the right to repeal California state regulations, a reasonable argument could be made by opponents of the bill that Congress can’t do this because the state of California is merely establishing local standards, which is its right.
Given these concerns about Sections 3 and 4, what purpose does it serve to include them in the bill? Both raise potential objections to the passage of the bill on the floor of the House if it comes to a vote this week.
Now, granted this is the House of Representatives, and not the Senate where Sen. Paul keeps a chair warmed, occasionally. Still, is it too much to ask the Tea Party to support the bills it asks for? Leahy said:
A full and open discussion of these issues in public hearings held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would have been the right way to begin a legislative process that would have identified and addressed these potential objections. That’s the course that a Committee Chairman seriously committed to repealing the light bulb ban would have taken. Instead, Chairman Upton has followed this secretive, behind closed doors, last minute rushed vote approach.
There was a hearing in the Senate — good enough for most people — and of course, there were hearings on the issue in the House. The Tea Party was unconscious at the time. The bill they’re trying to repeal was a model of moderation as touted by the president when it passed, President George W. Bush — and it’s still a good idea to conserve energy and set standards that require energy conservation (the law does not ban incandescent bulbs).
Also, while they’re complaining about the mercury in Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs), remember, Dear Reader, they oppose letting our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) protect you from mercury in your drinking water or the air that you breathe. Pollution is only worrisome to them if they can use worry as a tool to whine about people making life work without pollution. A rational person would point out that the mercury released by coal-fired power plants to produce the energy required by repeal of the conservation law would more than equal the mercury from all the CFLs, even were all that mercury to be released as pollution (which it isn’t, if properly disposed of):
8 hours: The amount of time a person must be exposed to the mercury in a CFL bulb to acquire the same mercury level as eating a six-ounce can of tuna, according to Climate Progress’s Stephen Lacey.
Is it too much to ask for reason, circumspection, and a touch of wisdom from these guys? You’re supposed to drink the tea, Tea Party, not smoke it.
Because it’s not like more efficient light bulbs would be helpful at all:
The American Council on an Energy Efficient Economy says that the standards would eliminate the need to develop 30 new power plants – or about the electrical demand of Pennsylvania and Tennessee combined.
Only Republicans can make the current crop of Democrats look good…
Mike provides more points that make the Upton bill look simultaneously silly and craven: The current law does not ban incandescent bulbs at all, for example, one manufacturer has introduced two new incandescent bulbs in the past year. Tea Party Republicans: No fact left unignored, no sensible solution left undistorted and unattacked.
Lions Park in Duncanville, Texas, to be more precise. The dragon fly appears to me to be Neurothemis tullia, a Pied Paddy Skimmer, though I believe that is considered an Asian species. [But see note at the end of the post.]
Closely related? An exotic introduced to Texas? Here we had cotton fields, not rice paddies. The wings look like those of a Pied Paddy Skimmer, but most of the photos I’ve found show a black body, and this one is definitely gray. Hmmmm.
Dragon fly, Pied Paddy Skimmer, Neurothemis tullia - photo by Ed Darrell; copyright 2011, use permitted with attribution
Dragon flies look mean. As a very young child I was terrified of them, growing up on the banks of the Snake River in Idaho. My mother, a farm-raised girl, took me out for a walk among the diving, softly-humming aerobats, and explained they had no stingers, they ate other insects, and they seemed to like humans, if we’d watch them. As we watched, she held out her hand and a dragon fly landed, as if to say, “Hello! Listen to your mother. She knows us.”
Dragon fly takes a higher vantage point. Is this species exotic in Texas?
Up Payson Canyon, in Utah, at Scout Lake I passed many early morning hours, and many noon siestas, in the reeds watching the dragon flies. When we were in our canoes or rowboats they’d fly at us like rockets, appearing to think they were torpedo planes, then fly up, or right or left, at the last possible second, to avoid colliding with our craft. Through July they’d fly tandem, mating. This intrigued Scouts, and delighted them beyond measure when the nature merit badge counselor explained they were having sex. Red ones, blue ones, yellow, brown and black ones. Big ones, little ones.
Shortly after we moved to Texas, we discovered that a swarm of dragon flies probably meant a local colony of fire ants was casting off females, to mate and start a new mound of exotic, stinging terror. The dragon flies would catch and eat the queens-to-be. I had to use a broom to shoo off a neighbor with a can of insecticide, trying to kill the dragon flies in their work to keep us safe and happy. “But they look so mean,” she explained.
Judge no book by its cover (except Jaws); judge no insect by its eye apparel, or human eye appeal.
The fictional but very popular memes that environmentalists hate humans, humanity and capitalism wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t blind their believers to larger truths and sensible policies on environmental protection.
One may argue the history of the environmental movement, how most of the originators were great capitalists and humanitarians — think Carnegie, Laurance Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and all the early medical doctors who warned of the dangers of pollution-caused diseases — but it falls on deaf ears on the other sides.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 