schmevil

Valentines Day doesn't interest me, so I'm going to share some stuff that did interest me, from my morning news scan.

Actually, I just thought of one Valentine-y thing that does interest me - anyone seen editorials about how you can do your part to support capitalism this V-Day? "IN THIS ECONOMY GO BIG OR GO HOME--BUY GIANT STUFFED ANIMALS AND SUPPORT AMERICA CHINA GLOBAL CAPITAL!" Come on, somebody's got to be talking about the importance of spending our hard-earned, fist-full o' dollars on red and pink crap.

"WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CARD INDUSTRY?"

Links?



Computer generated illustration of the situation out there (via European Space Agency). Go here for a larger version of the image. And here for a table of space junk, as of 2000, and space junk facts.



Possum with bandaged paws at the Healsville Santurary in Australia. (via a short piece from NPR)

Penguins Showing Strain Under Climate Change

Argentina's Magellanic penguins are moving north, laying their eggs later than they used to, and struggling -- often unsuccessfully -- to feed their chicks, all as a result of climate change.

These findings suggest the need for a major shift in the way we think about protecting penguins, as well as other marine creatures, said conservation biologist Dee Boersma, of the University of Washington in Seattle. She presented the results of more than 25 years of research today in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Penguins are incredible sentinels for our environment, particularly the ocean environment," Boersma said. "They're already telling us there are severe changes going on."

Fourteen of the world's 19 penguin species are threatened or endangered, with a few species in deep trouble. A major reason for their decline, Boersma said, is an increasingly variable climate, with more frequent El Nino and La Nina events that can drastically change water temperatures and nutrient levels from year to year. Climate models predict more of this type of variability to come.

February 14, 2009
Emily Sohn, Discovery News

Google Power Meter

Google believes consumers have a right to detailed information about their home energy use. After all, real-time energy information helps people make smarter choices so they can save energy and money. Studies show that people save 5-15% of their energy costs when they have access to information about their energy consumption.

(via Earth2Tech)

Emo, Ontario. Emo is known for its stockcar races - not very emo. Man, the citizens of this town, all 1300 of them, must be pissed.

In the news...

Sleep-deprived? You might sound drunk

Lack of sleep alters the brain to such a degree that it can be heard in the way a person speaks, according to a new study that found sleep-deprived people sound almost drunk.

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
July 14, 2008

I am this article. I've been a hardcore insomniac for over ten years now, and the change in my demeanor when I've actually slept? More than dramatic. Astonishing. I've been loving the push to have sleep-deprived driving classified as equal in naughtiness to drunk-driving, because that means I get to claim over ten years of intoxication. Retcon for my stupidity!

I don't really have much to say about this next story, except that I read it with interest.

Island Dreams

The history of popular music is, among other things, a history of magical buildings. There is Sam Phillips’s Sun Studios in Memphis, Tenn., where Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins cut early records. There is the Beatles’ Abbey Road, as well as Motown’s Studio A and dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark studio. Blackwell had long wanted just such a studio, where a distinctive sound could emerge based on the perfect combination of session players, engineers, equipment and atmosphere, all guided by a label boss’s omniscient hand.

Richard Poplek
CBC News
July 9, 2008

If you couldn't tell, I love pop culture history.

The Outquisition

We were talking about the slow-motion collapse here in America, the looming climate crisis,the futility of survivalism; and we began to play with the thought, what kinds of heroes would actually do some good for the communities that get hit hard?

Because if the ruins of the unsustainable are the new frontier, and if, as is already happening, the various economic and environmental transitions we face will leave many people unmoored from their familiar assumptions at the very least and, at the worst, cut loose from their jobs or driven from their homes, a huge number of people are going to need help forging new ways of life.

Alex Steffen
World Changing
July 12, 2008

Read for the article and for the comments.

Now, I can has coffee?