tingilinde

storytelling with ben haggarty

Ben Haggarty on Open Source Radio (mp3)

I’m against copyright. I’m involved in an interpretive, re-creational art form… These stories belong to everybody, and the reason that they’ve lasted so long, really from the Stone Age to the present day (some of them), is that they contain in them the essence of human experience. That’s what we respond to: the truth, the authenticity of a situation, or the comedy… or the horror… or the pity of a situation. In a sense that is always contemporary. Pain and loss and the joy of retrieval have been going on since human beings have had relationships… It’s not sustainable to create new work all the time — to hold everything, to sell everything… In terms of the riches of art and the imagination, it’s all been done before. What is new is that people haven’t met it before. So when you encounter something for the first time, there’s your newness. There’s nothing wrong with recycling.

what an amazing voice!

Almost three years ago I heard Inga Swearingen on A Prairie Home Companion.

my gosh what a remarkable voice!

I'm not a jazz fan, but her Learning to Fly was just wonderful. And now I finally have been able to listen to Reverie. Her voice held my attention and the music is fine. If I like it so much, jazz fanatics will probably go wild. Down by the Riverside works particularly well for me as does the title track.

But one of the biggest recommendations comes from our one of our ferrets. Telemna is fascinated by her voice and riveted by her scat singing.

So we need more Inga!

If you can hear, you probably need to get this one. strong recommendation!

global warming's silver lining

private islands

(thanks Sara)

palm oil

People are usually shocked when I mention that Indonesia is the third worst offender when it comes into Greenhouse gases (China is first, the US second, Brazil fourth). The issue is deforestration, which is happening at a terrific rate.

NPR's Bryant Park Project talks to Rolf Skar of Greenpeace. He has his biases, but I would consider this a reasonably accurate representation. Increased palm oil production can be a very very bad thing.

best photo of the decade

the mind wobbles

Phoenix under parachute from the HIRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - from 310 km.

JPL rules

(thanks for the tip Jeff)

yummm methane

It may be that most of the life on Earth is in the Earth and uses methane - from this weeks Quirks and Quarks - prokaryotic life (mp3)

beyond cupholders

This ought to be just the thing to sell all of those Ford SUVs - an in car refrigerator

Nothing like enjoying nice cool drinks as you watch the digits on the gas pump spin. On the other hand it is big enough that you can probably live in it when gas payments get larger than your mortgage.

(tip of the hat to John)

what rather than where

Dietary shifts may be more effective than eating local produce

The paper (behind a paywall)

Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States

Christopher L. Weber* and H. Scott Matthews

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Received for review November 28, 2007

Revised manuscript received March 4, 2008

Accepted March 14, 2008

Abstract:

Despite significant recent public concern and media attention to the environmental impacts of food, few studies in the United States have systematically compared the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with food production against long-distance distribution, aka “food-miles.” We find that although food is transported long distances in general (1640 km delivery and 6760 km life-cycle supply chain on average) the GHG emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household’s 8.1 t CO₂e/yr footprint for food consumption. Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.” Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.

how much of you is you and the six tribes of the inner elbow

Nicholas Wade on humans as superorganisms

snip

Since humans depend on their microbiome for various essential services, including digestion, a person should really be considered a superorganism, microbiologists assert, consisting of his or her own cells and those of all the commensal bacteria. The bacterial cells also outnumber human cells by 10 to 1, meaning that if cells could vote, people would be a minority in their own body.

Dr. Segre reckons that there are at least 20 different niches for bacteria, and maybe many more, on the human skin, each with a characteristic set of favored commensals. The types of bacteria she found in the inner elbow are quite different from those that another researcher identified a few inches away, on the inner forearm. But each of the five people Dr. Segre sampled harbored much the same set of bacteria, suggesting that this set is specialized for the precise conditions of nutrients and moisture that prevail in the human elbow.

Microbiologists believe that humans and their commensal bacteria are continually adapting to one another genetically. The precision of this mutual accommodation is indicated by the presence of particular species of bacteria in different niches on the human body, as Dr. Segre has found with denizens of the elbow.

which cf bulb to buy

they aren't the same - a Popular Mechanics test