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Tonight's editor: boatsie
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When I was 15, my best friend brought my birthday present along to school. It was something I had discussed with her for well over a year. She had finally decided to create one. A butterfly revival machine. No doubt, overly traumatized by the reading and rereading the fascinating publication of John Fowles' The Collector, I was obsessed with butterfly rights as well as with parallel universes, quantum space time, and the Lazarus effect. Her 'machine', an aluminum-foil-wrapped cardboard box, enclosed a homemade particle accelerator (well, actually a dust-streaked and discarded tv vaccum tube, a magnet, two small concave mirrors, and a pinwheel which was activated by the whoosh of the leaves of the box rapidly slamming down). Ten cloth butterflies floated on gossamer-like ribbons outside the box, awaiting re-birthing. We placed them inside, one by one, and closed the top rapidly to set the pinwheel spinnning. Sixty seconds later, we opened the box. Et voilà. Le papillon est vivant.
Trust me. You had to be there.
The Little Prince and his Rose By Delire Lucide
For you who also love the little prince, and for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we never saw has eaten a rose... Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no?
Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes... And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance! This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared. Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognise it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.
Dealing with Climate Change
The ‘unbridled’ and ‘invincible’ water is receding after playing havoc with the lives of nearly 30 million people of the land of the pure. The ‘untamable’ has rendered people helpless.
The loss of valuable human assets, livestock and agriculture along with infrastructure has reminded us the helplessness of early days’ Pakistan. But it has left behind some formidable questions. To say the least; has this averted for good? Would it give us ample time to make these people reach the same socio-economic level which took 63 years to be there?
According to reports regarding climate change in the world, it was already expected. The climate change models suggested different kind of changes that varied from region to region.
The floods in Pakistan and the heat shock in Russia are bearing that out blatantly. Both the phenomena have caused great socio-economic destruction in the countries.
If Pakistan has been affected by the flood, Russia has also been hit very hard by the blow of heat shock. Both the countries have borne losses of billions of dollars and are witnessing the greater socio-economic unrest and chaotic conditions in the country.
The climate change models are predicting more devastation in the years to come.
The ‘unbridled’ and ‘invincible’ water is receding after playing havoc with the lives of nearly 30 million people of the land of the pure. The ‘untamable’ has rendered people helpless.
(snip)
.... "the need for energy is haunting any progress to tame the menace of climate change."
Back in 60s. My 16 year old sidekick and I -- later to be recognized in the decadent and grungy Grant Ave bars of San Francisco’s North Beach by the titilizing noms de plumes of Pretty Face and Pussy Foot -- traversed the back alleys and bookstores of Greenwich Village, tooting with the hash smokers in Washington Square Park and spinning whimsical and daring fairy tales to fiercely passionate and deep New School druggies. The same uniform each weekend. Faded baggy jeans, rumpled tank tops covered with over-sized grey striped vests. Long and heavy Indian earrings and toe rings. Love beads you never went home with. Torn and shapeless faded black fedoras. Sandal-less feet. Hair down to our toes. Our rumpled and beaded matching purple velvet sacs repositories for our adroitly earmarked copies of Le Petite Prince (Oui, nous avons parlé du français), ¼ pound bags of orange jelly beans from Woolworth’s dusty & cracked candy bins, and handfuls of magic Easter grass, which we would doll out along with quotes from The Magic Prince... I bought along my already-well used copy of the Wilhlem I Ching and my Yarrow Sticks. Just in case. And she? Le Tarot de Marseille. Naturellement.
All that was missing were our magic wands.
The Fox from "The Little Prince": The encounter between the Little Prince and the Fox always moves me to tears. Photo By p2son Peterson Toscano
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."
And the roses were very much embarassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..." link.
Colbert Follows Fox News' Example On Climate Change: 'It Is Dark Outside' So 'We Can Only Assume The Sun Has Been Destroyed' (VIDEO)
After Fox News happily concluded that recent snowstorms debunk global warming theories, Stephen Colbert followed the network's example: 'It is dark outside,' he said, so 'we can only assume the sun has been destroyed.'
He continued: "It's only a matter of time before the mole people emerge from the center of the earth to enslave us in 'Forevernight.' Thanks a lot Al Gore."Watch:
A young child nearby sustainable community garden project in Arusha, Tanzania. Summer 2010 by Lizzy Phelan Leighty
Africa May Survive Climate Change Better Than Expected
Just how much can Africans be expected to alter their behavior in the face of climate-change? Afro-pessimists, such as Revkin, see scant capacity and little reasons for optimism. Yet the facts on the ground show otherwise. Africans are undergoing the largest and most radical shift in their patterns in hundreds of years. The least urbanized region on the planet, Africa is urbanizing more rapidly than anywhere else. The world’s fastest-growing cities: nearly all in Africa. The greatest numbers of people moving from farm to city: Africa comes high on a list that of course must include India and China. In the urbanization of Africa lies the greatest potential for adaptation to climate change. The story of African cities — their sudden, violent expansion in recent decades; their great potential to leverage such transformative technologies as cell phones; the economies of scale and the denser richer markets that come from clustering people who historically have been the most widely dispersed in the world — will shape the unfolding climate-change drama in Africa in ways that remain both impenetrable to environmental scientists and activists alike.
The sheer rapid pace of urbanization in Africa means that climate change could well have less negative effects on Africans than most well-meaning observers presume. By directing their energies at assisting both public and private actors in African cities, the international community could begin to introduce concrete adaptations that better the lives of a growing proportion of ordinary Africans. That most assistance remains directed at nation-states in Africa is understandable but unfortunate. Outsiders must begin to work more energetically and directly with Africa’s burgeoning cities, where the best defenses against the worst effects of climate change can be identified and reinforced, where possible.
-- G. Pascal Zachary blogs at Africa Works here.
We were so young then. My older brother had not shipped out to Vietnam. We know nothing of SDS. Thought Lady Bird Johnson's campaign to beautify America was hogwash. America was just fine! Had no real sense of the Civil Rights movement. Or Martin Luther King. Bobby was still alive.
The world was our playground. And we were so deeply in love with our youth and the seemingly endless outpouring onto the West Village streets of gentle, intricately carved, beautifully breakable young people -- and music and astrology and poetry... And the future, which, in and of itself stretched long and deep and malleable before us, so overripe with promise. So utterly ... ours.
Little Prince ATC 1 By average_jane_crafter
"I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: 'I am busy with matters of consequence!' And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man--he is a mushroom!"
"A what?"
"A mushroom!"
The little prince was now white with rage.
"The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years. For millions of years the sheep have been eating them just the same. And is it not a matter of consequence to try to understand why the flowers go to so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them? Is the warfare between the sheep and the flowers not important? Is this not of more consequence than a fat red-faced gentleman's sums? And if I know--I, myself--one flower which is unique in the world, which grows nowhere but on my planet, but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning, without even noticing what he is doing--Oh! You think that is not important!"
His face turned from white to red as he continued:
"If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself, 'Somewhere, my flower is there . . .' But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened . . . And you think that is not important!"
The Global Warming Talk
And then I overheard a conversation on the playground. One child said, "I know why it’s hot. Do you?"
Another said, "It’s because the Earth is sick." They all nodded. I said nothing.
IT’S TIME TO SIT DOWN with my kids and have the Global Warming Talk. I carried off the Sex Talk—and its many sequels—with grace and good biology.
Surely, I can rise to this new occasion.
On the surface, procreation and climate change seem opposite narratives. Sex knits molecules of air, food, and water into living organisms. Climate change unravels all that. The ending of the sex story is the birth of a family. The climate change story ends with what biologist E. O. Wilson calls the Eremozoic Era—the Era of Loneliness.
But then I realized that the two stories share a common epistemological challenge. Both are counter intuitive. In the former case, you have to accept that your ordinary existence began with an extraordinary, unthinkable act (namely, your parents having intercourse). In the latter case, you have to accept that the collective acts of ordinary objects—cars, planes, dishwashers, iPods—are ushering in things extraordinary and unthinkable (dissolving coral reefs, daffodils in January). So, I reasoned, perhaps the same pedagogical lessons apply: during the Big Talk, keep it simple, leave the door open for further conversation, offer reading material as follow-up.
Game Preserve outside Arusha, Tanzania. Summer 2010 by Lizzy Phelan Leighty
What Happened? Am I the only one? Do any of you remember how the world smelled back then? How the scent of lavendar and lilac and damask roses drifted through open classroom windows? The lush smell of autumn leaves burning curbside, of pine cones and bird droppings and forgotten tubs of tadpole water? The very texture of life was different.
Nature Alert! Arusha, Tanzania, Summer 2010. Photo by Lizzy Phelan Leighty
Ocean Acidification Makes Oceans Smell Funny
As rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide create more acidic oceans, their waters may start to smell funny and that change could prove possibly fatal to fish.
New research has found that the larvae of two kinds of coral reef fish -- clownfish and damselfish -- lose the ability to distinguish the smell of predators from non-predators and fail to avoid the smell of predatory fish when raised in waters at acid levels predicted for the end of this century.
Butterflies as indicators of climate change
Because of their quick response to climatic factors butterflies make admirable indicators of climate change, especially as the Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS), has accurate data sets going back to the 1970s and many hundreds of recorders submitting data every year (5).
There was an average temperature increase across Europe of 0.8[degrees]C during the twentieth century and 63% of butterfly species moved their range northward (6). Over the past 20 years the average temperature in the Midlands region of the UK has increased by 1.5[degrees]C (7). Eleven species or 25% of those at their northern limit in the south of England are extending northwards. For example, data from the Butterfly Conservation National Garden Butterfly Survey shows that the percentage of gardens visited by Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni), Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria), Comma (Polgania c-album), Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus) and Ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus) has increased in counties from Derbyshire north to the Scottish border over the period 1995-2006 Science Progress, Summer 2008.
Imaginal Cells, Metamorphosis & The Butterfly Revival Machine
El amanecer de las mariposas By Animated George
"A caterpillar eats up to three hundred times its own weight in a day, devastating many plants in the process, and continues eating until it’s so bloated that it hangs itself up and goes to sleep. In its sleep its skin hardens into a chrysalis and then, within the chrysalis, within the body of the caterpillar, while it sleeps, a new and very different kind of creature, the butterfly, starts to form. Now this was confusing for a long time to biologists asking how this could happen, that a new genome could come into play to form a different creature? They knew that metamorphosis occurs in a number of different insects, but it was not known until very recently that nature did a lot of mixing and matching of very different genomes in early evolutionary times. The butterfly genome is held by imaginal discs of primitive cells, like stem cells, in the folds of the caterpillar’s skin all its life, never developing until the crisis of overeating and fatigue allowed these dormant cells to develop.
"Metamorphosis makes a good metaphor for us to think about in considering the great changes globalisation is bringing about. Our bloated old system is rapidly becoming defunct while the 'blueprint' of a new and very different society that has long been held by many humans who dreamt of a better world, is now emerging like a butterfly, as a solution to the crisis of overconsumption - a way of living lightly on Earth; a way of seeing life not in the metaphors and models of mechanism but in those of living organisms." Elisabet Sahtouris
And so life remains as always a mixed bag. I have no doubt that the volumes I have written in my memory, my personal version of À la recherche du temps perdu, form the quintessential stuff of my reality. Is any of it true? Real? Does it matter? In the final analysis, can one revive a dead butterfly?
I choose to believe that my dearest friend and I were onto something forty years ago.
We were imaginal cells. We are imaginal cells. I think of that. And I smile.
In tonight's issue of Editor's Choice, I highlight the work of DWG earlier today "Chicken Little Updated for the Age of Peak Oil and Climate Change", a delightfully cautionary diary: "The Chicken Little fable* was created as a cautionary tale against panic and mass hysteria in uncertain times. But there are times when the sky is failing and Chicken Little needs to be careful of taking advice from smooth talking strangers wearing Wall Street tweed. On to our story."
Help Pakistan
Greg (Three Cups of Tea, Stones Into Schools) Mortenson's non-profit (CAI) recommends supporting a local (Pakistani) group to which donations will likely have a large, immediate, and lasting impact-
Human Development Foundation
http://www.hdf.com
(800) 705 1310
From their page about the flooding:
HDF is committed to work towards relief and reconstruction efforts in flood affected HDF program areas including Mardan and Tandoo Muhammad Khan. HDF already has the existing infrastructure and a team of trained employees and volunteers in place. Currently there is need for basic necessities like tents, blankets, cooking sets, utility containers, soap and bedding as well as, basic healthcare.
More details and videos at their site and their YouTube channel.
• • • • • •
Other groups that deserve support as well.
Doctors without Borders (MSF):
DONATE
The Red Cross:
DONATE
OXFAM:
OXFAM's Pakistan page:
With an estimated 6 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, I am concerned that so far the international community hasn’t responded with the speed or on the scale warranted by a disaster of this magnitude.
DONATE
• • • • • •
From the US State dept.
How You Can Help:
Text "SWAT" to 50555; $10 goes to fund for flood victims
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The eKos project is an effort to distribute environmental content on Daily Kos to a broader audience. When a diary has the 'eKos' tag, its information is collected in a database, which is then published in eKos Earthships and the eKos Library. We also Tweet all eKos diaries using the @eKos350 account, and distribute an RSS widget for use in Daily Kos diaries and comments. Diaries listed on eKos do not necessarily represent the views of the eKos Rangers or any other participating diarist. Participation in eKos is strictly voluntary, please let us know if you do not want the eKos tag!
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eKos diaries from 09/22/2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
EcoAdvocates: A Declaration of Interdependence | citisven | 20:00:07 | EcoAdvocates, resilience, community, climate change, interdependence |
Chicken Little Updated for the Age of Peak Oil and Climate Change | DWG | 19:58:29 | Charles Maxwell, energy policy, dirty energy, oil, climate change |
Wednesday Woozle Equinox: The End of the Dog Days (and Summer) | JanF | 19:01:44 | Pooties, Woozles, Equinox, Furbutts, Featherbutts |
Water Quality & Agribusiness | murphy | 14:15:20 | water quality, usgs briefing, agribusiness, eKos |
The Earth Is A Public Figure | Reverend Billy | 13:58:22 | earth, environment, ecology, climate change, reverend billy |
University of Minnesota Cancels Agriculture Documentary (update*3) | bobtmn | 09:52:22 | Recommended, agriculture, science, farming, eKos |
As per Meteor Blades: What I'm doing | Guadalupe59 | 09:24:45 | environment, green, solar energy, education, GOTV |
NtP TV: Funding a Blue Revolution | NourishingthePlanet | 08:37:20 | ekos, Nourishing the Planet, Innovation of the Week, NtP TV, funding |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 120 | Gulf Watchers | 06:00:37 | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
eKos diaries from 09/21/2010 |
Diary | Author | Time (Eastern) | Tags |
Toxic Ballet | Michael Brune | 17:55:20 | ekos, tar sands, Alberta |
[MI-2] Sierra Club Likes Him 'Cuz He's So Darn Green | Muskegon Critic | 17:12:13 | Fred Johnson, Michigan 2nd congressional district, MI-02, eKos |
Widening Gulf between Oil and Security | Jan Barry | 17:00:39 | National security, oil, BP oil spill, Iraq war veterans, eKos |
What Global Warming Looks Like. | jamesboyce | 16:30:24 | global warming, climate change, ekos |
Reward Courage on Climate | mightymouse | 14:26:54 | VA-5, MD-1, CO-4, PA-11, NY-19 |
VIDEO: Sarah Palin as Talk Show Host Highlights GOP Senate Candidates Climate Denial | TonyMassaro | 13:48:41 | GOP candidates, Republican Senate candidates, Sarah Palin, climate deniers, global warming |
Anti-Science SyndromE Sufferers threaten lives | A Siegel | 13:19:49 | ekos, science, learning, climate change, global warming |
Koch's Greed Could Kill CA Climate Change Law | Steven D | 09:02:28 | AB 32, Koch Industries, eKos, Climate Change, Tea Party |
BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 119 | Gulf Watchers | 06:00:00 | Recommended, Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |