Gheorghasbord: Environmental Edition

An unprecedented heat wave in western Europe is responsible for the deaths of thousands and stresses power grids to the point of breaking. Wildfires in the western U.S. and Alaska have scorched more than four million acres and threaten Sequoias, the world’s largest and tallest trees. Torrential rains caused devastating floods near St. Louis and in parts of Kentucky. The world grows hotter and drier in some places, while coastal locales gradually submerge. In short, much environmental news these days falls somewhere between discouraging and deadly. 

However, there are hopeful signs. 

Harnessing Sludge Clackamas County in northwest Oregon invested in technology and machinery that turns sewage into green energy, as part of the county’s plan to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. Renewable power is produced from methane, a natural by-product of human waste decomposing in an oxygen-free environment and whose emissions accelerate global warming. The county’s sewage treatment plant turns waste into clean water, fertilizer for non-food crops, and renewable energy. Water is filtered and goes through a disinfection process before being pumped back into the Clackamas River. Minimal solid waste is removed and transported to a nearby landfill. The remaining bio-mass goes into anaerobic “digesters,” which act like a human stomach. As they break down matter, they produce methane. The methane rises to the top of the digesters and is transferred to a lean-burn, co-generation engine that converts it into heat and electricity. The process produces heat for five of the treatment plant’s buildings and 4,300 megawatts of electricity, which amounts to approximately half of the plant’s energy usage. 

Officials estimate that they’ll save more than $400,000 per year by producing their own power. County water treatment officials and advocates believe that as the population grows and therefore produces more waste, that harnessing methane will generate more power, save money and serve as a hedge against natural or man-made disasters or failures that threaten power grids. 

Renewable Bet Canberra, the capital of Australia, and its surrounding area have managed to trim energy costs, while the rest of the country suffers from hikes due to the increasing price of coal and gas, and maintenance and outages of aging coal-fired power plants. It did so by betting on renewable energy when the nation’s conservative government doubled down on fossil fuels and by dismissing criticism that its lean toward green was unwise and too expensive. 

Canberra and its region in southeastern Australia are governed by the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Back in 2012, the group set an ambitious goal of converting to 90 percent renewable energy sources within a decade and had begun to partner with various solar, wind and renewable outfits. They did so in less than 10 years. However, when a conservative government took power nationally in 2013, it promised to scrap the country’s carbon tax and pivot away from green energy sources and back toward an emphasis on fossil fuels. 

A gent named Simon Corbell, who was the ACT’s energy and climate change minister from 2011-2016, told a reporter in a story for the website Reasons to be Cheerful that because the region had been devastated by wildfires, drought and water shortages the previous decade, that residents and government officials remained receptive to alternate energy sources. Though the market for renewables dried up nationally with minimal federal backing, the ACT provided one of the few opportunities for green energy companies. 

Corbell, now the CEO of a clean energy investor group, said that the ACT began holding “reverse auctions” for renewable power companies, with the lowest bids receiving the stability of decades-long contracts. Because the bids were made public, companies knew the target number for various projects. As technology and efficiency of renewable energy sources improved, subsequent auctions routinely attracted lower bids and broke price records for cheapest energy in the country. While the remainder of the state is expected to see electricity bills climb between 8.5 and 19.7 percent, ACT residents will see a decline of at least 1.25 percent. 

Other Australian states have begun to emulate the ACT’s reverse auction strategy. After nine years of conservative rule, a new, center-left government that’s more green energy and renewable-friendly took power in May. It set a goal of 82 percent renewable energy nationally by 2030. Ambitious for sure, but don’t bet against them. 

Removing Plastic The Dutch-based nonprofit, The Ocean Cleanup, recently announced that it had collected more than 100,000 kilograms (223,000 pounds) of plastic waste from an area in the Pacific Ocean known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). The amount is barely a dent in the GPGP, which some estimates peg as holding 100 million kilograms of waste, but it’s a start. 

The OC made 45 extraction trips in recent months, covering an area the size of Rhode Island. The group developed a system in which nets strung between vessels take advantage of ocean currents and vortices where waste collects, gathers it and hauls it out of the water. The company is testing its third generation of ocean waste collection technology, which it hopes will be 10 times more productive than the present model. It also developed a system that collects plastic waste from rivers. 

Company research claims that the 1,000 most polluted rivers in the world deposit 80 percent of plasticwaste that ends up in oceans. The river waste collection system is presently deployed in the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. 

The OC was founded by 28-year-old Dutch inventor and entrepreneur Boyan Slat, who makes most of us mortals look like slugs and feebs. He dreamed up what became his passive waste collection system when he was 17 and gave a TED talk about it at 18. He studied aerospace engineering at the Netherlands’ oldest technical university, but dropped out at 19 and founded the OC. He has raised millions of dollars, and the OC is partners with corporations such as Maersk, Coca Cola, Kia and the Dutch government. He is the youngest recipient of the United Nations’ Champion of the Earth award. In 2017, Reader’s Digest named him European of the Year, and a Dutch mag named him Dutchman of the Year. One year later, he was awarded the da Vinci International Art Award, and Euronews named him European Entrepreneur of the Year. 

Our species may well be doomed, but I’m moderately encouraged knowing that the likes of Boyan Slat and Simon Corbell walk among us.

You Think You've Seen It All?

 One of the frequently included memes from Gheorghe: The Blog...

...wasn't enough! So more memes arrived.  Of course.

Neither was this! More! More!

Sadly, it was never enough. And so, like when cocaine wasn't good enough for insane partiers in the 70's and 80's, and that begat freebasing and crack, here is another terrible idea.

The great minds in Hollywood have deemed this silliness (and a silly story about a bear who found cocaine and ingested it in 1985) worthy of fleshing out a backstory and are creating a feature film. 

Cocaine Bear: The Movie.

No. I am not kidding. 

Is this a huge prank? Maybe! But maybe not!

Here's the graphic on their IMDb page. Looks like I just made this at my desk? I didn't.

The film is directed by Elizabeth Banks (The Hunger Games, The Lego Movies, etc.), and features a cavalcade of stars, including Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

And Ray Liotta! Presumably as Cocaine Bear.

This was his last film, and there will undoubtedly be many tasteless jokes about how he'd rather be gone than bear witness (very much intended) to this dreck.

But who knows? This could be the next Snakes on a Plane!

What could go wrong with a plot summary like this?

It tells the story of a drug runner whose plane crashes with a load of cocaine that's found by a black bear, who eats it.

It's gold, Jerry! Gold!

Cocaine Bear: The Movie has a tentative release date of February 24, 2023 in the United States. Buckle up.

It Recurred!

See if you can guess why I posted this one!

Disease of the Month

I will never not love this picture

OBX Dave opened the door for us when he wrote of his cardiac maladies. Or maybe it was Whit describing the bout with MRSA that made him locally famous. Locally more famous, I suppose. And I can't forget Shlara beating breast cancer. Fucking cancer. 

The fact of the matter is that none of us are getting any younger, and the bodies that we've counted on for decades are showing us in myriad amusing and not-so-funny ways that they're likely not engineered to last forever. So we're starting this series to push back on the inevitable, to demystify the multiple ways our meat prisons are likely to fail us. 

Twenty years ago, give or take, I was playing softball on a cold October evening. As I stood at second base, I noticed my left hand growing slowly numb. I was wearing a batting glove under my fielder's glove, so I didn't have time to investigate. But after the inning ended, I removed my equipment to find all four fingers drained of color, bone white and absent of any feeling. 

That was a bit off-putting.

Not my hands, but they could be

I went on the Ghooghles when I got home that evening and did a bit of self-diagnosis. Turns out I likely had - and still have - something called Reynaud's Syndrome. It's fairly common. So common, in fact, that it was the subject of an article in today's Washington Post, which claims that 5-10% of all Americans suffer from it.

For the significant majority of the Reynaud's-afflicted, the malady is far more annoying than dangerous. Primary Reynaud's is unconnected with any other disease, and presents as discoloration and numbness of the digits in cold conditions. Secondary Reynaud's, though, accompanies a range of autoimmune diseases, and can lead to some nasty complications, including amputation. So I'm thankful that mine is the "good" kind.

"Cold" in the paragraph above really isn't a precise enough descriptor. In my case, and that of many others, it's a relative thing. Certainly, when the temps dive, my piggies are very likely to go numb. Outdoor sporting events in the winter and its shoulder seasons can be miserable - there aren't enough gloves to keep my hands warm and feeling while coaching an 8:30 am soccer game in November. But it's going to be 99 degrees here today, and when I come back into the air conditioning this afternoon from mowing the lawn, my fingers are gonna turn white for a few minutes. 

Weep not for me, though. Reynaud's, while weird, doesn't augur any danger to my person. If I wanted to lessen its impact, doctors tell me I should drink less coffee. I need the caffeine more than I need to feel things with my fingers. Good thing I'm not a watchmaker, I suppose.

Ghod does have a sense of humor, at least where it comes to our bodies.

Everything Comes Full Circle

On Thursday, July 21, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.8373, which is titled "To protect a person's ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider's ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception."

The text of the bill isn't available yet, but the Times reports that the bill will "ensure access to contraception nationwide, moving over almost unanimous Republican opposition to protect a right that is regarded as newly under threat after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade."  The Times also says that "The measure passed 228 to 195, with eight Republicans joining Democrats in support."  Predictably, those eight are Liz Cheney, Nancy Mace, Fred Upton, Anthony Gonzalez, John Katko, Brian Fitzpatrick, Maria Salazar, and Adam Kinzinger.

So 195 of the 213 House Republicans don't think there should be a federal right to contraception, which means it should be "up to the states to decide."  That's nuts.

I'm willing to bet we've all used contraception at least once in our lives because we either did not want to become pregnant or to impregnate someone else.  Contraception prevents unwanted pregnancies which in turn prevents abortions.  Why would anti-abortion Republicans oppose it?  Perhaps they don't just oppose abortions.  Perhaps they oppose recreational sex, or sex between unmarried people.  Which I find ironic, given their leader's ... shall we say ... reliability with the ladies.

What other source of law would oppose recreational sex, or sex between unmarried people?  Oh, how about Islamic law!  Wikipedia says that under Islamic law there are "two categories of legal, sexual relationships: between husband and wife, and between a man and his concubine.  All other sexual relationships are considered zināʾ (fornication), including adultery and homosexuality, according to Islamic law and exegesis of the Qur'an."

I remember a time when conservatives detested Islamic law.  Hannity, Judge Jeanine, and Tucker must be apoplectic!  How did all these RINOs infiltrate the House Republican caucus?!  Fast forward to 4:45 so the pretty blonde lady can "help you understand how you feel" on this issue.

Impeach them all I say!

New Feature Destined Never to Recur

My wife hipped me to this band over the weekend. Fairly straightforward modern alt-rock sound. Singer's got pretty good pipes that sound...familiar. 

Without employing the Ghoogles, see if you can guess that singer's lineage. Submit your answers in the comments. And if you know already, shut your piehole.

The People They Want More of This

If you live long enough, you get to see some cool shit. And you get to see small evolutions. Say, for instance, from a fringe hip-hop album that you and a few buddies used to jam out to in college when the world couldn't care less . . . to a cultural icon regarded as "seminal," "foundational," and even "watershed."

Rock snob glossary entries are fun. But this is more than a label; this is a landmark.

You guessed it, I'm talking about the three bad brothers you know so well (Ad Rock, MCA and Mike D, not rob, Dave, and me). The Beastie Boys have been further cemented into the streets of their beloved hometown, if not history.

According to Time Out: 

“On July 14, the New York City Council approved the co-naming of the intersection of Ludlow and Rivington streets as Beastie Boys Square.”

Why there? Fans of the trio will surely know. Cue Track 14 on Dave's CD that he brought back from summer break before sophomore year...

“The best in men's clothing. Call Paul's Boutique and ask for Janice, and the number is (718) 498-1043. That's Paul's Boutique, and they're in Brooklyn.”

Except they're not. This bogus business, the basis for the name of this album, was just a lark. Whose legendary album-cover street shot has inspired multitudes to track it down and hang, if just for a moment, where it happened. 

I know, I know, but everybody's got their Graceland. And this spot is it for fans of the latter-day Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

And it's cool. Check this out on Google Maps.

So if you happen to be in Manhattan's Lower East Side, say visiting Katz's Delicatessen, or the club formerly known as CBGB, or maybe you're headed to Little Italy, or maybe, just maybe you were looking for 59 Chrystie Street, the name of a track off Paul's Boutique... and holy crap check this out...

Damn, this town loves the unstoppable three, the B-E-A-S-T-I-E.

Anyway, if you're down that way, say maybe you got drunk at Doc Holliday's and got way lost downtown after that, come on by the corner of Ludlow and Rivington. You won't see a Paul's Boutique sign, but you will see a cool mural:

And who knows? You might see an old-school hip-hop trio on the corner, grooving and riffing on a piece of cardboard like Jay and Silent Bob, but to "Johnny Ryall," and "Eggman," and "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun," among others. 

No, not the Beasties, not after MCA left us way too early. I'm talking Random Idiots in our rap personae: Honky Dory, D. Pave, and DJ Robbie Robb. Get some.

Juvenilia for the Day

 This tickled the old funny bone. 

Heads up everyone, it's Ninja Turtle weather https://t.co/NwYphhKxrb

— Jesse Case (@jessecase) July 17, 2022

Truth Hits Everybody

History is littered with examples of individuals who found the truth, a truth that was way too dangerous to the established order. The truthseekers suffered for their knowledge, sometimes ostracized or mocked as crazy, other times tortured and killed. Many of their identities are lost to the fog of history, even as the reality of their veracity passed into common knowledge.

The existence of such a person was revealed just two weeks ago, and in predictable fashion, the powers that be quickly sought to erase their truth, and notably, their very identity. I saw it coming. But I admit to being surprised by the source.

CERN fucking got Snopes.

As you know, the "scientists" in Geneva restarted the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in early July after three years of inactivity. A sharp-minded Twitter user was quick to alert us, saying:

Be ready for July 5th everyone. That’s all I’m saying. Protect your energy. Be alert. Don’t do things that lower your vibration, your energy, or your focus. CERN will be opening a portal on July 5th. They began getting it ready when the planets aligned on June 24th.

I know who that Twitter user is, because I've got sources. But Snopes damn sure doesn't want you to know her identity. [Fuck, I've said too much.] In an online debunking, the formerly-reliable hoaxbusters not only erased the user's name, but went so far as to disclaim CERN's nefarious intentions. The title of the damn piece is dismissive to the point of suspicion: "No, CERN Didn’t Open a Portal to Another Dimension in July 2022".

Sometimes it's lonely when you fight authority. As the sage John Mellencamp once said, after all, authority always wins. Snopes chose to go along to get along. It's a sad day, friends.

A Journey in Pictures

I've waxed lyrical about my trip down Maine's St. Croix River in this space previously, so I'll spare you the deep meaning and purple prose. Just the facts after this, my third trip down the 40-ish mile paddle from Vanceboro to Princeton, ME with the U.S. on one side and New Brunswick, Canada on the other (with a 75+ mile paddle up the Allagash River Waterway thrown in for fun).

We put our canoes in the water in Vanceboro and paddled about five hours to our first campsite at Little Falls. Couple of cool views here, one of the falls, and one of the view from my tent the first morning on the river.

Rolled another five hours or so down to Loon Bay on day two. The river was running on the low side in places, so the eagles and fish heard a good number of creaks and groans - both from our bodies and from the undersides of our canoes scraping the riverbed.

Dealt with some headwinds on day three as we paddled through a wider section of the river, but made it to Turtle Point on the Canadian side without much incident. We did meet one of the locals after we pulled into camp, which was cool.

Just a short four miles across a lake took us to our takeout spot on the final day. Little bit of breeze made it a modest challenge, but the paddle took just over an hour. Caught this sunset at my uncle's brother's compound in Grand Lake Stream - not a bad coda to a serene and timely break from the world.

Just five us on this trip down the river. From left to right, Jason (he's a middle school principal in Massachusetts and my cousin Steve's cousin from a different side of the extended family), Sean (who works on the facilities team at a prep school in Massachusetts and is also a cousin of Steve and Jason's), me (who you know all too well), my cousin Steve (who teaches at a prep school in Connecticut - that's a theme in our family), and my sister's husband Scott (who works for CSX Transportation in Jacksonville). An excellent blend of dudes who enjoy dishing out a good ribbing and can take one in return and who don't shirk the necessary work that accompanies a few days in the wild. I consider myself blessed to have these opportunities.

Coaching and Praying

The Supreme Court’s most recent term created beaucoup controversy, as the conservative majority eroded or sledgehammered abortion rights, gun regulations, Federal climate change oversight, and a state’s decision not to provide public money to religious schools. 

Large and far-reaching as those decisions are, one case in particular struck me, because I have some familiarity with the circumstances. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, a high school football coach who prayed at midfield and led players and coaches in prayer following games didn’t have his contract renewed and sued that he was being discriminated against. In a 6-3 ruling the Supreme Court said that the school district violated Joseph Kennedy’s rights under the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment. 

I’ll leave it to the legal minds that occupy this here digital tree fort to debate the details and merit of the ruling, but I suspect that Kennedy’s case is less about free expression of faith and more about power and control. The local school board didn’t attempt to silence Kennedy or to prevent him from praying. Officials were concerned that they would be viewed as complicit in violating the separation of church and state by permitting Kennedy to continue his prayer sessions publicly and visibly at a public school event. The board offered to provide him with a private space to pray, off the field, and asked if he might delay his prayer sessions until after spectators departed. He declined and continued his post-game, midfield sessions until the school board dismissed him. 

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing the majority opinion, said that Kennedy “offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied,” and that he made “short, private, personal prayer.” He dismissed any notion that Kennedy’s prayer sessions might be implicitly coercive. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in dissent, cheekily included a photo of a Kennedy prayer session in which he stood amid dozens of kneeling players and wrote that it was common knowledge that Kennedy invited others to join. 

This is where power and control come in. Kennedy coached teenaged boys. He had some sway over their playing time, their status on the team, their health and well-being, possibly their futures. If he invites players to prayer sessions, how many of them, or their parents, would say, “Nah, Coach, I’ma pass, and ya know, I’m not really comfortable with the whole thing.” Not many, I’d guess. 

Coaches have enormous influence over the athletes they work with. In my previous life as a sportswriter, I witnessed it pretty much daily. The best coaches understand the role they play and are judicious about how much of their lives and beliefs to introduce to young people, knowing that kids often want to please or that it may differ from what they experience at home. 

Is there a place for faith in sports or schools? Of course. But it’s humble and it’s personal. If it ends up in a Washington D.C., courtroom, something’s amiss.

New from Stones Throw

I get email updates from Stones Throw.  Wednesday's email had two noteworthy revelations.

First, Stimulator Jones has a new album coming out on Friday!  Where's rootsy when we need him?

Sudan Archives has a new music video from her new album.  I'm not qualified to opine on the lyrics or the images in the video but the song hits hard, sort of a cross between "Paper Planes" and one of those Dave Matthews songs with the fiddle.

zman Bouillabaise Redux

A few post ideas bubbled up in my meager brain but I never got around to writing them and/or I didn't know what to write so I'm doing another round of zman bouillabaise, which is like b-boy bouillabaisse but not as good.

1. Jacques Tits died.

Here's the introductory paragraph for Jacques Tits's Wikipedia entry: "Jacques Tits (French: [tits]) (12 August 1930 – 5 December 2021) was a Belgian-born French mathematician who worked on group theory and incidence geometry.  He introduced Tits buildings, the Tits alternative, the Tits group, and the Tits metric."

What more needs to be said?

2. The Large Hadron Collider lives.

CERN shut down the LHC in 2018 but it's up and running again.  I don't understand a goddam thing in that link and this is rob's corner anyway.  Just keep an eye out for Armageddon.  

3. The Supreme Court missed the forest for the trees in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol.

In his opinion holding that "New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense," Justice Alito said:

Does the dissent think that laws like New York’s prevent or deter such atrocities? Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home?  And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator.

He's correct.  There is probably no way to prevent criminally insane or evil people from committing mass shootings other than confiscating all guns.  But there is some value in trying to limit the amount of shootings that occur, mass or individual.  By that I mean, I don't want to live in a society where everyone around me could be armed at all times.  I don't want to worry that if I bump into someone at a bar they will shoot me because they are drunk and angry that I spilled their beer; or that if I get into a car accident the other person will put a gun in my face in a fit of road rage; or that I will be shot accidentally because some random doesn't know how to carry a gun properly.

Making it harder for people to carry guns outside the house limits the likelihood that this will happen.  The punishment for carrying without a permit is harsh in NY--just ask Plaxico Burress.  He went to jail for 22 months after accidentally shooting himself in the leg in a nightclub while carrying a pistol without a permit.  By contrast, Michael Vick went to jail for about 18 months for his dogfighting ring, while Donte Stallworth went to jail for 30 days killing a man while driving drunk.

We can argue about the proportionality of these punishments compared to the respective crimes, but we can all agree that we are glad we weren't standing next to Plaxico when he accidentally fired his gun that night, and his punishment hopefully deterred a lot of other people from carrying a gun.  Yes, he was carrying illegally, while this decision is about the limitations a state may place on how to obtain a permit to carry legally.  But I think his story counsels against carrying in general and in favor of serious limitations on who, what, where, why, when and how carrying should be allowed.

That's why New York's "proper cause" requirement for a concealed carry permit made sense and should have been upheld.

4. Any debate whether Trump acted up in the limo or threw a Big Mac misses the forest for the trees.

I don't care if Trump grabbed for the steering wheel or his security guard's neck.  I don't care if he threw a plateful of McDonald's finest meats and cheeses and ketchup at the wall.  He riled up an armed mob and told them to go to the Capitol to "fight like hell."  They took him literally and he wanted them to.  Five people died as a direct result, and at least two killed themselves afterwards.  What more needs to be said?

5. WFMU continues to deliver.

I should do another zShazams post but if I do I won't be able to include "Modern Diseases" by Fifth Column because I can't find it on Spotify.  It isn't on YouTube either so I can't even make a Notify contribution!  You can listen to it on the WMFU playlist site.  Here's a Fifth Column song that you can find on YouTube:

Apparently they were "a Canadian all-female post-punk band from Toronto, formed in the early 1980s."  You too can find nifty stuff on WFMU.org and it's free to stream.

Looking For Literate Guests (in all the wrong places)

I've got my new podcast up and running. It's called We Defy Augury (I stole that line from Hamlet) and the premise is simple: thoughts inspired by literature. 

In a world dominated by screens, social media, and endless digital entertainment, reading is perhaps one of the last ways to maintain some sliver of autonomy over your consciousness. I've read a lot of books, but where do the thoughts go? I can't remember a tenth of what I read. Or what I thought about what I read. So the podcast is an attempt to capture some of this cognition. And I'm looking for guests. I think I could do it over Zoom-- but you'd need some kind of USB microphone to capture the sound clearly. The format is foolproof-- you read a couple passages from a book you like and talk about what the passages made you think about. 

I'm going to continue to pump out solo episodes, but I'd really like to have some guests: so start reading something good. And I'd appreciate any likes, follows, etcetera to get this thing up and running. It's definitely up on Apple Music and Spotify, not sure if it's on Google Podcast yet (it should be). 

Thanks!