Global warming and the West

A little over 2 years ago, I had a post with this comment:

I’m sure the Bush administration will call for more study, saying that global warming is really still not established. In the meantime, I wonder what will happen to southern California, for example, if the Colorado River’s flow significantly diminishes? And, of course, all over the US (and the world) aquifers containing fossil water–water laid down aeons ago–are being drained and not replenished.

Technoptimists may envisage water gushing forth from yet-to-be-invented desalination technology, just as they see (somewhere) a replacement for oil springing up as global oil production declines and demand increases. I’m not so sanguine.

posted by LeisureGuy at 8/13/2005 01:33:00 PM  

Well, we’re now going to see—and pretty soon, too. From the article at the link:

The steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry [than the rise in ocean levels]. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

Did you see Robocop?

Life imitates movies:

In another sign the robot revolution is coming, a robot cannon used by the South African military malfunctioned and tragically killed nine and wounded fourteen after firing uncontrollably.

Mechanised self-targeting machine guns with artificial intelligence systems to distinguish between targets (e.g. humans) and non-targets (e.g. trees) are becomingly increasingly common.

Last year Samsung announced that it had developed a machine gun toting robot sentry that can identify and shoot a target up to two miles away.

The system uses twin optical and infrared sensors to identify targets from 2.5 miles in daylight and around half that distance at night. It has a microphone and speakers so that passwords can be exchanged with human troops.

If the password is not accepted the robot can either sound an alarm or fire at the target using rubber bullets or a swivel-mounted K-3 machine gun.

South Korea’s northern border is the most heavily militarised zone in the world, and the southern government has poured millions of dollars into automated military technology.

… The Intelligent Surveillance and Guard Robot was jointly developed with a South Korean university, and is designed to replace some of the troops guarding the border with North Korea.

North Korea?!? When World War Three is over, someone is going to get a Darwin Award for that decision.

Where’s Asimov when you need him?

Hard times at Oral Roberts University

Astonishing. Read the report of the internal investigation. They pull no punches.

Changes in the border

I really think that the nonimmigrant visa policy has been poorly planned and poorly implemented. Our Executive branch is truly incompetent. Apparently partisan hacks are not necessarily good administrators. Who knew? But it certainly changes the way the US is perceived, I bet. The story:

The Halle Orchestra, one of Great Britain’s oldest symphony orchestras, has not toured the United States in more than a decade, so spirits were high when the group secured dates at Lincoln Center and in Upstate New York for performances last winter.

But when the orchestra learned that to get their entry visas, all 85 musicians — every last cellist, oboist and piccolo player — would have to travel from their Manchester headquarters to the U.S. Embassy in London for personal interviews, electronic fingerprinting and facial-recognition scans, it scrapped the trip. Budgeting for airfare and travel costs to New York was one thing, but simply getting everyone to the embassy at the same time, along with hotel bills and fees for the visas themselves, would have cost an additional $80,000, said marketing director Andy Ryans.

“It was very simply money that we didn’t have,” Ryans explained. “We were desperate to go to the States, but our hands were absolutely tied.”

Theirs aren’t the only ones. To perform in this country, foreign artists of all stripes — punk rockers, ballet dancers, folk musicians, acrobats — are funneled through a one-size-fits-all “nonimmigrant” visa process whose costs and complications have become prohibitive, according to booking agents, managers and presenters, such as the Kennedy Center, who program and market the performers. Visiting businesspeople face similar security hurdles put in place since Sept. 11, 2001. But artists’ visa petitions also require substantial documentation to satisfy the “sustained international recognition” requirement for the type of visa (called a “P-1”) issued to many performing artists.

Collard squares

I made these today for lunch, and they’re excellent. I’ve adapted the original recipe as shown in square brackets:

Collard Squares
Serves 3-4

[1/2 lb (or 1/4 lb, your choice) bacon strips, cut into squares]
1 large bunch collard greens [or kale or Swiss chard or… ]
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
Salt
1 tablespoons butter plus extra for the baking dish
1 small onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 pound shiitakes, stems removed, caps finely diced [I used dried slice shiitakes, reconstituted and chopped—I let them soak in boiling water while the collards cooked, then drained them and chopped them]
1/2 teaspoon tamari or soy sauce
4 large eggs
[1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg]
2 ounces Comté or Gruyère cheese, grated
1/4 cup fine dry bread crumbs

0. Put the bacon pieces into a large sauté pan and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until bacon pieces are browned and crisp. Remove bacon pieces to paper towel and discard the fat that’s in the pan.

1. Remove the tough stems from the greens and Wash the leaves well in several changes of cold water. [Shake dry, then chop, including the stems, into fairly small pieces.] Place them in a large pot [the sauté pan] and add the hot pepper flakes and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add water to cover by several inches and bring to a boil, [scraping the bottom of the pan with a spatula to get the browned into the mix]. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, uncovered, until the greens are very tender, about 1 hour. Drain well and cool slightly, then squeeze dry. and finely chop. [I just poured them into a sieve and drained dry. Since they were hot, they ended up quite dry.]

2. While the collards are cooking, melt the butter in a small or medium sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, sprinkle lightly with one-fourth teaspoon salt and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Add the shiitakes and the tamari and sauté until they are tender, about 5-7 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool slightly.

3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-9-inch baking dish. [I actually used an 8″x8″ Pyrex baking dish.]

4. Combine the collards and shiitakes in a bowl. Add the eggs, cheese, [nutmeg, bacon pieces,] and bread crumbs and mix well. Spread into the prepared pan. Bake 20 minutes. Cut into squares to serve hot or at room temperature.

It turned out so well, I’m making it again: once more with collards, and then with red chard.

The Beltway media “mind”

Glenn Greenwald:

The job of Howard Kurtz as the “media critic” for The Washington Post and CNN is to shed light on how our media functions. Kurtz actually did a superb job of this in his column yesterday, although it was completely unintentional.

Kurtz responded to a post by Digby, in which Digby explained the perfect coordination between the right-wing gossip-mongers who feed the gossip-hungry press an endless supply of petty, vapid personal smears that dominate our political discourse — all in lieu of any meaningful coverage of anything that actually matters. As Digby wrote, quoted by Kurtz:

And after watching them for the past two decades very closely, I think it’s obvious that what interests the media more than anything is access and gossip and vicious little smears piled one atop the other. And why not? They are easy to report, require no mind numbing shuffling of financial reports or struggling through arcane policy papers. In fact, the press has made a virtue of the simple-mindedness by calling what used to be known as gossip, “character issues”, which are used to stand in for judgment about policy. The press, therefore, will go to great lengths to protect the people who give them what they crave, most of whom happen to be Republicans since character smears are their very special talent. There was a reason why Rove and Libby used “the wife sent him on a boondoggle” line. Stories about Edwards and his hair and Hillary and her cold, calculating cleavage are the coin of the realm.

Kurtz simply can’t have this. One of the Central Religious Principles of Beltway journalists is “equivalence” — always to insist that everything is the same between the two sides regardless of whether it actually is. To fulfull this craving for “balance,” this is how Kurtz “refuted” Digby’s point:

Sometimes you have to laugh

Krugman, from his blog:

Well, I’ve gotten a dismissive review in the NYT. It’s sort of a tradition. After all, The Great Unraveling received an equally dismissive review from Peter Beinart, in which he portrayed my conclusion that the Bush administration deliberately misled us into war as a crazy conspiracy theory, and contained this immortal pronouncement:

But most Americans do not consider the Bush administration corrupt, and Paul Krugman cannot convincingly prove it is.

I think David Kennedy’s review will hold up about as well as Peter Beinart’s. I presented facts on voting behavior, which point to the centrality of race — he ignores them. I presented polling evidence about the timing and role of the perception that Democrats are weak on national security; he just waves it away.

Oh, and when Kennedy says, to illustrate my alleged factual problems, that

Kansas, whatever its other crimes and misdemeanors, is not customarily regarded as the birthplace of Prohibition

you have to ask who’s got the factual problems. I don’t know what “customarily regarded” means, but Carrie Nation wielded her ax in Kansas – and Kansas was the first state to ban alcohol in its constitution.

Air desks

For those who use their laptop while sitting in the easy chair: Air Desks. Cool, eh?

Globally recognized avatars: cute idea

Gravatars are globally recognized avatars. You associate your avatar with your email address and sites that use gravatars pick it up automatically. Limit now is 80×80 pixels, but soon will be raised to 128×128. Nifty notion.

Cleaning your oven

I didn’t know this:

Kitchen cleaning help: To remove grease from inside your oven when doing kitchen cleaning, put a small pan of ammonia in the oven in the evening, and then close the oven door. In the morning, remove the pan of ammonia. The grease inside the oven will wipe off very easily.

Just Wednesday I asked the cleaning ladies to clean the oven. I now see I could have made it much easier for them.

Free reminder services

The best ones for me are those that send me an email. Then the question is how best to tell the reminder service when and what email to send:

MemotoMe: go to their Web site and set up the emails—including repeating emails of course (e.g., the 25th of each month to get your expense report in). You can also send the email to a mail list—the team, the family, etc.

Jott.com: call them on the phone and dictate the email—especially useful for cellphone users. Emails can go to you and/or to mailing lists, as above. Jott will also send text messages to cellphones.

IwantSandy.com: email Sandy and she’ll send you email reminders and update your Contact list, Calendar, and so on.

I’m using IwantSandy now and I like it a lot. You can send the email directly to Sandy, or you can copy Sandy on an email sent to someone else. Pretty cool.

Fishing cats

Fishing cats are very cool:

They even make good pets.

John Pizzarelli, guitarist & vocalist

I really like John Pizzarelli, son of the jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli. I first came across him by buying his album “New Standards” at a used CD sale, and it’s still one of my favorite albums of his—others may be better, but this was the first, and I listened to it a lot. I later had the chance to meet him in Baltimore, where he appeared with his trio: his brother Martin Pizzarelli on double-bass and Larry Fuller on piano.

I highly recommend that you give a listen to some of his CDs, particularly those with the trio. Here’s a little sample:

And another, “After You’ve Gone”:

The stars were aligned

A super shave today. At first, the usual: MR GLO, and then I picked a brush I’ve not used for a long time—I would guess it’s a Rooney, more or less Size 2-ish. I got it on, I believe, eBay at a very good price from Tones Barber Shop. The handle carries black letters that spell: “Super Badger/Sterilized/Made  in England.” But: that’s the ipso. The facto is that it did a fantastic job of building a great lather from the Institut Karité shaving soap. This was better than yesterday’s lather from the Pré de Provence, in my opinion.

The brush felt exceptionally nice on my face, so I took my time, building up the lather and adding more water once.

Then I picked up the Edwin Jagger lined Chatsworth with its Treet Black Beauty on Day 3, and man! what a shave. The Treet on day 3 was better than the Balaka on day 1—though I certainly will do another shave with the Balaka. But with the Treet, no additional blade buffing required, just a smooth and easy finish.

Booster’s Polar Ice aftershave—very nice, my first use of it—and I was ready to face the weekend.