Junk journey highlights plastic soup of Pacific

One of these days we’ll have to do something about the sea of plastic polluting the ocean.

Sailing 4,000 miles on the Pacific Ocean made Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal sick. It wasn’t waves that turned their stomachs, but the amount of plastic garbage they encountered on a voyage with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation earlier this year.

The activists wanted more people to share their disgust about plastic litter that swirls, relatively unexplored, in continent-size patches of ocean.

To that end, they have built a motor-less craft from 15,000 recycled beverage bottles, fishing nets, and the cockpit of a Cessna, and are sailing it more than 2,000 miles from southern California to Hawaii. They left Long Beach, Calif., on Sunday.

[From Junk journey highlights ‘plastic soup’ of Pacific Ocean | Green Tech – CNET News.com]

We are all affected by global pollution, whether we realize it or not.

 

On the last Pacific voyage that ended in February, Eriksen and Paschal helped marine researcher Charles Moore assess the extent of pollution in the waters leading up to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic debris some estimate to be as large as the United States.

In early tests, a sample showed 48 parts of plastic to each part of plankton.

“They haven’t finished processing the samples, but there was an exponential increase in the plastic,” said Anna Cummins, who was also aboard and serves as Algalita’s education adviser. “What looked on the surface like clean water, when you pulled it up, it looked like plastic soup. It was disgusting.”

Algalita researchers said the floating, soupy landfill isn’t well understood because satellites can’t spot the translucent particles. And although efforts by scientists to explore plastic in five gyres around the world have been lacking, interest is expanding as the public learns more.

“No one really knows what’s out in the other gyres,” Cummins said. “In the north Pacific alone there’s Capt. Moore with his research boat. We are a small organization with five or six paid staff members.”

Eighty percent of the plastic comes not from ships but from land, where tossed consumer goods eventually travel from beaches and rivers into the ocean, according to Algalita.

Plastic concentrates poisons such as PCBs at levels a million times higher than found in the water, according to Japanese researchers.

I had only heard of one gyre, five is even worse. Maybe we should test putting Daniel Burd’s decomposition microorganism in one of the gyres.

J Bloglandia, volume 1, issue 1 is now on sale at Lulu and Amazon

Rookery
[The Rookery – 35mm, Illford film, Nikon 8008, scanned in Photoshop 3.5, or maybe 4.0]

Received my copy of this collection of essays, put together by Friend of B12 (FOB, as it were), Ginger Mayerson. Haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but it looks good. Damn good. The front and back cover are photos of mine, so if you are creating a library of my published works, go ahead and order a copy (the Lulu Press version is larger, and is only $7, or you can order a slightly smaller version at Amazon for $9).

The Journal of Bloglandia, volume 1, issue 1, is a collection of the following blog essays: On Essays by Paul M. Rodriguez, Liberal Fascism: An Interesting Moral Question by Steve Gimbel, Paint Splatters & Pixie Dust by Dan Kelly, Ten Dates of Christmas? Ten Lords A Leaping: The Gallant Mariner by Deborah Teasdale, Vanity by Susan O’Doherty, The Pillory of Hillary by Becki Jayne Harrelson, Reparation… by TJ Bryan, Richer Than The Sum Of My Skirt by Birdie C. Jaworski, The Music’s Between Us by Kathy Moseley, How to Scare People With Statistics by Tom Good, Red Lipstick by Eva Lake, Barbarella: A Woman of her Time? by Patti Martinson, An Invert’s Manifesto by Chad Denton, Roadtripping by Molly Kiely. Enjoy!

[From The Wapshott Press » J Bloglandia, volume 1, issue 1 is now on sale at Lulu and Amazon]

The Journal of Bloglandia is soliciting essays for a second volume, with more details here

Lou Reed is still a New Yorker


“The Bells” (Lou Reed)

Marrying Laurie Anderson did not dull Lou Reed’s abrasiveness, as Andrew M. Goldstein of New York Magazine discovers:

New York Mag: Sirius’s impending merger with XM is anticipated to boost earnings. Do you own any stock in the company?
Lou Reed: What are you, a fucking asshole? I’m here telling you the truth about music and you want to know if I have stock in the fucking radio? You fucking piece of shit. What did I do to deserve that?

NYM: Moving on. You’ve got a film out, you’ve got your radio show, you’ve got a new book of photography coming up — is there a new album in the works?
LR No. Nothing I feel like talking about. Good-bye.

[From Lou Reed Wants to Talk About His New Radio Show, Does Not Want to Talk About Money — Vulture — Entertainment & Culture Blog — New York Magazine]

Video Mino

I want one of these, even if it doesn’t perform well in low-light situations.


“Flip Video Mino Series Camcorder, 60 Minutes (White)” (Pure Digital Technologies, Inc.)

Introducing the Flip Video Mino
From the makers of the popular Flip Video Ultra comes the Mino, which puts the power of video in your pocket. The super-portable, super-simple Mino makes it easy to capture and share high-quality video anywhere and everywhere. And thanks to its flip-out USB arm and intuitive, built-in software, Mino lets you view, edit and upload your videos to popular video-sharing sites instantly. In addition to its sleek compact design–complete with touch-sensitive, backlit buttons–Mino boasts a rechargeable battery that powers up automatically while plugged into your computer or electrical outlet.

Flip Mino Highlights

All That Flip Video Goodness, Only Smaller
At 40% smaller than its already pocket-sized brother the Flip Ultra, the Flip Mino barely makes a dent in even the tightest of jeans. But small in size doesn’t mean short on function;

Flip Mino Highlights

Mino’s got all the Flip features–simple user-interface, one touch-recording, built-in USB, intuitive editing software, easy sharing functionality–that folks have come to know and love.

Sleek, Portable Design
The Flip Mino is the perfect combination of form and function. Its minimalist, retro front is the perfect complement to its high-tech modern back, with a large no-glare screen, touch-sensitive panel, and glowing backlit control buttons. All focused around Flip’s signature red record button that lets you go from pocket to recording in seconds.

With a camcorder this small and sleek, there’s no limit to where you can take it and what you’ll end up shooting. From a short film to enter in your favorite festival to footage of a hot new band, the Mino makes it easy because it’s always with you and always ready to go.

Mind-Boggling Quality
Despite its diminutive size, the Flip Mino produces video that rivals that of camcorders costing much, much more. With 2 GB of flash memory, the Mino can record up to 60 minutes of VGA (Video Graphics Array)-quality video that looks sharp when played back on your laptop or television (TV cable included). The high-quality microphone captures crisp, detailed audio, whether you’re paddling down the Amazon, or rockin’ out at your favorite club.

Revolutionary Built-in Software
Flip Video’s revolutionary software is built into the camcorder, so there’s no need for clunky 3rd party software or cables. Just plug the Mino into any PC or Mac via the flip-out USB arm and you’ll be viewing, organizing, editing and sharing your videos effortlessly.


Plus, Mino will let you upload videos directly to your AOL Video, MySpace and YouTube accounts in no time. If you just want to share your videos privately, one click of the “send via-email” button will send your clips on their way. Mino is ideal for video blogging and social networking.

Coveted Bob Dylan Endorsement of Barack Obama

Exit, Zimmerman

Whew. Glad that’s on record – there’s bound to be a McCain supporter or two who will change their vote now that His Bobness has spoken.

Bob Dylan – who could justifiably claim to be the architect of Barack Obama’s ‘change’ catchphrase – has backed the Illinois senator to do for modern America what the generation before did in the 1960s.

In an exclusive interview with The Times, published today, Dylan gives a ringing endorsement to Mr Obama, the first ever black presidential candidate, claiming he is “redefining the nature of politics from the ground up”.

Dylan, 67, made the comments when being interviewed in Denmark, where he stopped over in a hotel during a tour of Scandinavia.

Asked about his views on American politics, he said: “Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval. Poverty is demoralising. You can’t expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor.

“But we’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up…Barack Obama.

“He’s redefining what a politician is, so we’ll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I’m hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.”

He added: “You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future.”

[From Bob Dylan says Barack Obama is ‘changin’ America – Times Online ]

In all seriousness, if McCain wins, I might move to Denmark. Luckily, I don’t think he stands a chance, unless something weird happens.

The Bob Dylan exhibit sounds interesting. I wish I could take a week or so off and go to England.

The haphazard process leading to the London show began nearly 20 years ago when he was approached by an editor at the American publishing company Random House. “They’d seen some of my sketches somewhere and asked if I’d like to do a whole book. Why not, you know? There was no predetermined brief. ‘Just deal with the material to hand, whatever that is. And do it however you want. You can be fussy, you can be slam-bang, it doesn’t matter.’ Then they gave me a drawing book, I took it away with me and turned it back in again, full three years later.”

Published in 1994 under the abbreviated title Drawn Blank, the resultant images had been executed both on the hoof while he was touring and in a more structured way in studios, using models (“Just anyone who’d be open to doing it”) and lights. What was going on in his life during that three-year period to inform or provide a back story to the work? “Just the usual,” Dylan shrugs, fixed in the hunkered-forward, hands-clasped position he will maintain for most of our time together. “I try to live as simply as is possible and was just drawing whatever I felt like drawing, whenever I felt like doing it. The idea was always to do it without affectation or self-reference, to provide some kind of panoramic view of the world as I was seeing it.”

Built up of work that is often contemplative, sometimes exuberant but consistently technically accomplished and engaging, that view is of train halts, diners and dockyards, barflies, dandies and uniformed drivers glimpsed in New Orleans or New York, Stockholm or South Dakota. And of women. We’re left in no doubt that Dylan likes women. “They weren’t actually there at the same time,” he notes quickly, pointing, when his page-turning reveals the painting Two Sisters, its subjects lounging, one clothed, the other naked but for her bra. “They posed separately and I put them together afterwards.”

[snip]

The method used to turn them into the paintings about to go on exhibition in London involved making digital scans of the original drawings and enlarging and then transferring them on to heavy paper ready for reworking. Dylan then experimented with treating individual images with a variety of colours. “And doing so subverted the light. Every picture spoke a different language to me as the various colours were applied.”

Corporate Welfare – The Sugar Edition

Moto Watermelon Cucumber

The US Farm subsidy program has some real consequences to consumers, especially consumers of sweets. Free trade is in reality a myth.

The sugar program may be the most harshly criticized of a number of farm subsidies which are included in the mammoth legislation. The Bush administration had previously called for reform to the decades-old plan, along with other subsidies, at a time when consumers are facing record food and commodity prices.

“There is an overwhelming consensus among economists that it is good for producers, but bad for consumers,” said Russell Roberts, an economics professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Rather than the Bush administration’s called-for reform of the sugar program, the newest version includes increases in non-recourse loan rates, a shift in market allotment policy to guarantee that 85 percent of U.S. sugar demand comes from domestic sugar and restrictions on the disposal of excess sugar supply by the United States Department of Agriculture.

The changes raise the price of a program, which according to its charter is supposed to cost nothing to taxpayers, to an estimated $333 million per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The biggest complaint from the Sweetener Users Association in the latest farm bill is the guarantee of 85 percent of domestic sugar demand to U.S. producers, according to a source at the USDA. The guarantee places a cap on sugar imports with the exception of Mexico, an exemption it gained under NAFTA.

[Click to read more of: Sugar’s money, influence continue to plague domestic candy companies]

The high price of sugar encourages confectioners to relocate their plants outside of the US.

Since 2002, when the previous farm bill went into effect, the price of candy, on average, has increased 17 percent, according to the Consumer Price Index generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“They’re skyrocketing,” said Todd Moore, chief operating officer for Chicago Chocolate Co., of prices. While Moore’s company doesn’t produce its own chocolate – it purchases chocolate from Chicago-based Blommer Chocolate Co. to make its products – the increase in commodity costs still affects it.

“The price of chocolate has gone up probably 30 to 40 percent, and I’m sure some of that probably has to do with the price of sugar,” Moore said. As Moore spoke, he was in process of writing a letter to his customers informing them of the company’s first price increase in three years.

The current price of domestic sugar hovers around 21 cents per pound, while the world price is near 10 cents per pound.

Some manufacturers have moved to Canada or Mexico to combat what they say are the high sugar prices they are forced to pay. In the past two years, Northfield, Ill.-based Kraft Foods Inc. moved what were its Life Savers candy operations to Canada. …

Another Chicago company, Ferrera Pan Candy Co. also expanded its candy making operations in Mexico and Canada, while reducing its domestic production.

“You can’t import sugar, but you import candy bars more freely,” Roberts said.

Sugar subsidies also factor in on ethanol manufacturing – corn is cheap, sugar isn’t, so more corn gets grown at the expense of nearly everything else.

Photographers Are Not a threat

Architectural Photography Forbidden
[Architectural Photography Forbidden – at Riverside Plaza aka The Daily News Building, built 1929]

One of these days, I’m organizing a Flickr meetup to take photos of the ‘forbidden ‘ buildings. Photographers are not terrorists.

Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We’ve been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it’s nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren’t being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn’t known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography.

Given that real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don’t seem to photograph anything, why is it such pervasive conventional wisdom that terrorists photograph their targets? Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer?

[From Bruce Schneier: Are photographers really a threat? | Technology | The Guardian]

For instance, check out these Flickr groups –

flickr.com/groups/photography-is-legal/

flickr.com/groups/forbiddenchicago/

flickr.com/groups/photography_is_not_a_crime/

(see also here, here, here , here, for more news stories about this topic, if you have time to read). Irks me to no end.

Photography is not legal at Boeing either
[Photography is not legal at Boeing either – the guy on the left probably a Blackwater employee]

Pilates

Several people have suggested I take up Pilates. I just hate ‘being instructed‘ by anyone. Growing up in the Canadian woods is hard to brush off. Anyway, this book is supposed to be an excellent overview of the discipline, complete with good illustrations.


“Pilates: Body in Motion” (Alycea Ungaro)

The most authoritative, step-by-step guide to Pilates available on the market. Popular for decades with dancers, athletes, and celebrities, the Pilates Method is the perfect equipment-free workout for a stronger, leaner, fitter body. With great emphasis on precision and awareness, not only is Pilates great for the body, but for the mind as well. Using step-by-step mat-work exercises and a wide range of programs, from beginner to advanced, Pilate’s Mind and Body is the only practical guide that shows you all of the proper steps to follow and how to avoid common mistakes in your conditioning.

About the Author

Alycea Ungaro is a certified Pilates teacher and licensed physical therapist who discovered Pilates at the age of 14, when a foot injury derailed her classical dance career. In 1995 she opened Tribeca Bodyworks, New York City’s largest studio devoted to the Pilates Method.

I plan on checking the book out, but wonder if a stunt-man tumbling class wouldn’t be more beneficial.

Snow Leopard

On Site Support

Interesting, if true. Leopard hasn’t been out that long. We still have 3 PowerPC computers on line (plus a Yikes G4 PowerPC in use, pending a transfer of the Now Contact and Up-to-Date server and main database, if the vaporware, Nighthawk ever gets released.) Performance gains on the Intel Macs would be welcomed however.

The next version of Mac OS X is code-named “Snow Leopard,” and will indeed be Intel-only, we have learned. This info is hot on the heels of TUAW’s original scoop about Mac OS X 10.6 being readied for shipment as soon as Macworld 2009 and being Intel-only.

People familiar with the situation have confirmed to us that TUAW’s details are true—Snow Leopard is currently on track to come out during next January’s Macworld, and it will not contain major OS changes. Instead, the release is heavily focused on performance and nailing down speed and stability. With Apple’s current (and future) focus on smaller, thinner, and more mobile devices, this move makes perfect sense. Things like the MacBook Air, iPhone, iPod touch, and other mysterious devices that have yet to be announced need better performance for better battery life, and that’s definitely something Apple wants to excel at in the years to come.

[From:
Mac OS X 10.6 code named Snow Leopard, may be pure Cocoa
]

Something to look out for

What alternative sites were explored?

The Chicago Children’s Museum claim they looked into 37 alternative sites, even though the firm doing the searching wasn’t hired until April. Something fishy: corporations like Jones Lang LaSalle don’t usually work pro bono.

Opponents of Mayor Richard Daley’s plan to build a $100 million Chicago Children’s Museum in Grant Park demanded Tuesday that the museum release three years of records to prove it seriously considered more than three dozen alternative sites.

Last week, the Children’s Museum released a list of 20 existing buildings and 17 new construction sites it says it considered for the museum’s new home in a three-year search before zeroing in on Daley’s controversial favorite.

Residents of high-rises surrounding the Daley Bicentennial Plaza site and their alderman, Brendan Reilly (42nd), responded by questioning the veracity of the list.

On Tuesday, with a city council committee vote just two days away, they turned up the heat and demanded that the museum release the records of its board meetings and meetings with the real estate consulting firm that released the list of alternative sites.

The museum’s zoning application shows that the firm, Jones Lang LaSalle, did not begin its work for the Children’s Museum until April, so it could not possibly have conducted the search for alternatives, critics say.

Opponents of the Grant Park move also said museum officials spent the past year insisting that the “only location seriously considered” was Grant Park.

“Somebody’s not telling the truth here,” said Peggy Figiel, co-founder of Save Grant Park.

[From Museum foes demand proof of alternative sites :: The SouthtownStar ]

Tons of back story on this if you are interested.

links for 2008-06-05