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Maybe we should have a foreign legion. Immigrants serving in the military in return for citizenship don't necessarily lack loyalty to the United States. I think the logic is that they prove their loyalty by serving.
I'd like to correct the caller at the bottom of the 3rd hour, that it's not the Denver school system that's being dumbed down, it's Jefferson County to the west, and Douglas County a little ways to the south of Denver.
Denver is too Democratic to let this sort of thing happen. Douglas is heavily Republican, and Jefferson is fairly mixed, which is why there's more uproar in JeffCo, even though Douglas is further along in the destruction of its public education system. I think at least one of the pro-privatization board members in Douglas was replaced last year in a regularly scheduled election, whereas JeffCo is working up to a recall.
I guess we should change "The pen is mightier than the sword," to
"The camera is mightier than the gun."
Let's see. There once was a military draft and veterans of Viet Nam became peace activists. Then, to reduce protests and make U.S.'s wars more acceptable (sort of invisible), Congress concocted the All Volunteer Army and hired the likes of Blackwater. Now we learn that illegal immigrants may be allowed to serve. Pure mercenaries, no allegiance to anything resembling democratic government nor to anything decent. "Pay me, baby, I'll kill for you." And the public, with little or no emotional involement, believes itself licensed to ignore the slaughter.
When, if ever, will people understand that a return to a military draft is the one hope, maybe the only possibility, that might curb the U.S.'s never-ending wars?
Inadvertent duplication.
Not sure if it was this episode or the one before, but I was very surprised to hear Thom call "black-on-black crime" a term "always" used by white racists. The only people I've EVER heard use it are black politicians.
Not sure if it was this episode or the one before, but I was very surprised to hear Thom call "black-on-black crime" a term "always" used by white racists. The only people I've EVER heard use it are black politicians.
And, yes, we still need to think of every single way possible to save the only planet that we have!
Plastic bags are convenient and handy and can be reused for several things. And carting around sturdy, reusable bags is a pain. However, my inconvenience doesn't matter one tiny bit when it comes to the health of our planet! When I think about plastic bags suffocating our wildlife, all the fossil fuels used to make the bags in the first place, and the bags clogging our waterways and helping to create gigantic, floating masses of debri on our oceans...debri that kills ocean life...well, I just can't get all upset about my own, personal convenience. I will happily cheer the end of single-use plastic bags! I already have a back seat filled with sturdy, reusable bags that I use all the time. And it really isn't hard at all. And, even though I'm blond, it still only took me a couple of weeks to remember to carry my reusable bags back to the car when I've emptied them.
No brainer. They are horrible for the environment and completely unnecessary so why not.
I think Laura Clawson's article on the Daily Kos was linked in yesterday's TH newsletter, despite not being elaborated on during yesterday's show. I always enjoy her articles (or diaries, as they call them at DK).
Elioflight- It is best to plant the oaks since the newly sprouting ash may live for a while but will eventually succumb to the ash borers if they are there to stay.
I did a blog a few months ago, in which I showed graphs of species extinctions, human population, CO2 levels and temperature. The correspondence among these is very clear, and so disturbing that I think most people would rather just not think about it, tragically.
There's no /th/ sound in "apartheid". Just like "pothole", it's a compound: apart+heid. German has virtually the same suffix, -heit, which translates as -ness. If you go back far enough in the evolution of Indo-European languages, I think it might be a cognate of -ity, which German has borrowed directly from Latin as -ität.
THom,
Can you read Cory Morningstar's investigations? . Her website is wrongkindofgreen.org.
I am curious about your take on her work. Is it true that Warren Buffet is profitting from the tar sands pipeline via his son? I would love your take and to hear a discussion on her work. She just appeared on KBOO and caused quite a stir. Please research and talk about this on your show. Thanks so much for all you do.
A big fan from Portland.
Jen Pultz
LOL! Yes, vasectomies are good, too, when men want to cooperate, which can be a problem. I, for sure, was the one who never wanted any more occupants in my womb or to worry about the politics of birth control. We wanted to make the CHOICE about family size, which we were critcized for (from the pulpit one Sunday) while members of the Catholic church--needless to say, we are no longer church/religion affiliated and are much happier for it.
Elioflight: Vasectomies for men work very well, too. In fact, it is just a local anesthetic and a little snip snip and a couple of stitches in the doctor's office and the guy is out the door to do no more damage to the world. And I hear that the procedure is now reversible in the event they want more children later on.
I am currently reading Dan Brown's Inferno, which addresses the problem of over-population, which I feel is the engine for the mulitude of problems we are now forced to deal with. When an organism outgrows its environment, it must move or parish--humans are the cancer on planet Earth.
Why can't we come to a consensus about controlling human population? The medical technology exists--sterlization--insurance pays for it; you don't have to worry about birth control; and, of course, there are other methods of continual until menopause (but maybe an oops happens) birth control.
In agreement with my husband, I was sterlized after my son was born in my twenties. We also have a daughter. Both children have 1 child and intent to have NO more. But we are a college-educated family. Having no more children than our early stuggling family could afford has lead to a less-troubled married life, very few money problems, and a 36-year marriage, when all our other family and friends have gone the way of divorce.
I recently planted a Dawn Redwood in our forest, but we are hasseled all the time from the farmers who have tile across our property and try to bully us into NOT planting trees and are asking constantly to pull down our fencerow. Since we have been losing Ash trees to the Emerald Ash Borer (but new Ash trees sprout continually and never give up), I've been gathering White Oak acorns from a tree in the yard and throwing them in the fencerow so that mighty oaks can join the equally mighty Scrub Oaks.
I plant trees to stand in defiance of those who want their extra row of soybeans and corn for selfish profit: I'm an Underwood, afterall, what else can I do?
hello! I just want to ask that is there any relation between diabetese and Obesity?
I am a diabetic patient and after the diagonising of my diabetese, i cant control my weight... Is there any Fat Loss Diet that I can follow?
Thanks Mark.
The "war on terror" can never be won because it is not a war on any individual or collective of people but against a behavior or a method of fighting. It will always be possible to kill innocent civillians en masse for political gains so it can never be be won.
It is not only like a war on crime - which, too, can never be won - but is, in fact, a war on crime, and so, it is, appropriately, not a military concern but a security concern. As Bob Scheerer first raised, the only reason it became a military concern was because defense contractors saw 9/11 as an opportunity but there is no logical reason tanks, planes and submarines need to be built to stop guys with box cutters.
There are no "Al Quaeida training camps", for example, the Al Quaeida training camps are the flight schools of the U.S..
Kend, Thom has a free smart phone app.
Plants do not eat other plants, except in cases of parasitic molds, smuts, rusts, and fungi which may cause the decline and eventual death of a plant. Yet, everything depends on plants. Plants provide the food for birds, insects, bacteria, terrestrial and aquatic animals, while essentially manufacturing their own food.
The development of an ecosystem is wholly dependent on species ability to exploit nutrients. In a challenged or specialized ecosystem, the survivors are the most successful exploiters, and so are those species which can adapt to a specialized niche where exploiters can't survive and competitors are excluded. An example of a niche species would be Borreria terminalis, which will only grow in holes of limestone- based pine woods at a specific elevation.
Only a Climax Community is stable, and nature maintains these with cycles of fire, wind, freezes, droughts, and flooding which ultimately trigger the germination of other species of dormant seeds. Species diversity is the hallmark of a stable ecosystem but climatic events can cause shifts in species composition, not necessarily diversity.
The loss of species worldwide is attributed more than anything to habitat destruction. Niche species are the first to technically become locally extinct when land has been cleared and altered. Species diversity takes a very long, if not undetermined length of time to return where a Climax Community once existed.
Once land has been altered or disturbed, what are considered "noxious species" will colonize open ground swiftly. Noxious species are extremely successful exploiters of disturbed habitats, excluding other plant life to form monocultures. A monoculture has no species diversity.
Environmental restoration theory and technique advanced immensely since the discovery of DDT in birdshells in 1970, and many scientists have known what to do all along.
There is a big conflict in environmental restoration in that the Big Money goes to engineering plans while the ecologists are not only stuck with non-biological plans, but all the responsibility, for Walmart pay. In my career I have seen millions of dollars wasted on failed environmental restorations whose contracts were awarded to wholly unqualified start-up companies that belong to financiers and worse.
You can slice, dice, and arc it any way you like, but only ecosystem trained specialists should be entrusted with the lion's share of funds designated for management of an environmental impact and/or restoration.
Why hire an engineer to do the job of a biologist?
As for our own little corners of the world, plant more trees! Forever echoing in my ear is Ladybird Johnson's Texas drawl, "And wherever you see a place of ugly, just plant a Bush, tree, or a shrub."
They will be blaming the "Liberals" for this pretty soon, I'm sure. Scares me silly to think of where we are going.
I figured out something interesting about ecology from a mathematical curiosity from astronomy.
Picture the zodiac as a circle broken into arcs. What I wondered was: If you knew only where the midpoints of the arcs were, would you be able to calculate where the dividing points are? It turns out that there's a very simple formula, but it works only if the number of arcs is odd. With an even number of arcs, one degree of freedom is left. That is, if you numbered the dividing points in order, you could move the odd-numbered points clockwise, and the even-numbered points counter-clockwise the same amount, and the solution would still be valid.
The ecological connection is that moving those dividing points, which lengthens some of the arcs and shortens others. is like letting some species get more populous, and others less. If you keep moving those dividing points, eventually one of the arcs reaches zero and a species goes extinct. If a species gets more populous, it eats more of the next species in the circle, so that species gets less populous, eats less of the third species in line, which gets more populous, etc. With an odd number of species, there's a negative feedback loop (pun intended) that stabilizes things, but with an even number of species, there's a positive feedback loop that destabilizes the ecosystem. The longer the loop, the longer it would take to restabilize or destabilize.
Extinction of a species kills the entire loop in both cases, but a single loop is also unrealistic. There's actually a web of species interaction, and if it's rich enough, hopefully every species is in at least one short, odd-numbered loop.