Severe storm pounds Aroostook County

 

Dark clouds mark the line of a cold front pushing through northern Maine Saturday that prompted severe thunderstorm warnings over most of northern Maine.

 

Posted 23 July 2011, by Julia Bayly (Special to the BDN), Bangor Daily News, bangordaiynews.com

 

CARIBOU, Maine — A cold front tracking southeast through Central Aroostook County Friday evening brought heavy rains, lightning and damaging winds, causing power outages and some property damage.

As of Saturday morning the hardest hit areas appear to be Caribou and Ashland, where municipal crews were busy cleaning up fallen trees, downed power lines and snapped utility poles.

“It was a very severe thunderstorm,” Paul Fitzsimmons, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou, said Saturday morning. “Caribou was hit with strong straight-line winds; it was not a tornado.”

Fitzsimmons said weather investigators were expected in Ashland to determine exactly what kind of storm hit the area, as it was under a tornado watch Friday evening.

“We had a warm, unstable air mass and that just set the stage for the storms,” he said. “There was that real potential for them to be severe.”

Wind gusts of up to 75 miles per hour were recorded at the airport in Caribou, Fitzsimmons said, where close to an inch of rain fell in under an hour.

The storm passed through around 8 p.m.

The chance remains for another round of severe storms Saturday afternoon as a cold front from Quebec will pass over northern Maine.

“Once that front pushes through we are looking at cooler and drier air for Sunday,” Fitzsimmons said.

Chainsaws and other debris removal equipment could be heard all over central Aroostook County Saturday as residents cleaned up from damaging thunderstorms that passed over the area Friday night. Winds in excess of 75 miles per hour were recorded at the Caribou airport. Municipal and utility crews worked through the night and day to repair downed power lines, clear roads and restore electricity. On Saturday Caribou Garrick Milton helped his neighbor remove a fallen tree from his yard. "I've seen bad storms before," Milton said. "But I've never seen anything like last night.

 

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/23/news/aroostook/severe-storm-pounds-aroostook-county/

Starhawk to appear on KZYX’s ‘Women’s Voices’ Aug. 8 show

 

 

Posted 23 July 2011, by Editor, Lake County News, lakeconews.com

 

NORTH COAST, Calif. – Janie Rezner’s guest on “Women’s Voices” on KZYX on Aug. 8 will be Starhawk, articulate pioneer in the revival of earth-based spirituality and Goddess religion.

 

The show can be heard live at www.kzyx.org at 7 p.m. There will be time for call-ins.

 

Starhawk is well-known as a global justice activist and organizer, whose work and writings have inspired many to action.

 

She is the author or coauthor of 12 books, including “The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess,” long considered the essential text for the Neo-Pagan movement, and the now-classic ecotopian novel “The Fifth Sacred Thing.”

 

Her new exciting and very timely project is to create a stunning movie set in San Francisco, from that novel; see more about the project at www.kickstarter.com/projects/fifthsacredthing/the-fifth-sacred-thing.

 

She writes, “Climate change, environmental destruction, social unrest and inequality all clamor for massive change: in our economy, our technology, our politics, our systems for producing what we need, growing our food, educating our young, caring for our sick and elderly – just a few things! The good news is that we actually have the know-how and the resources to make those changes, if we so choose. The obstacles are in us: our values, our choices, our ways of perceiving. Unless we change the consciousness that maintains this mess, how can we get out of it?”

 

“Stories shape our perceptions of the world. They frame reality for us, telling us what is possible and showing us how a hera/o might act. Shit happens – but the stories we tell ourselves determine what pieces of it we deal with and how. Facts exist, but stories give them meaning and value.

 

“The Fifth Sacred Thing, published in 1993, is a story that has already influenced hundreds of thousand of people. But my determination to make it into a movie that can reach far more people comes from my belief that what Lily says is true. A story can shift consciousness. A story can become a magical working, a spell.”

 

http://lakeconews.com/content/view/20690/926/

 

Fractal Dysfunction

Posted 19 July 2011, by Tao Jonesing, Tao Jonesing, taojonesing.blogspot.com

I’ve recently taken to describing the two most important factions of “the Elites” (note: I did not say “major” factions) as “rationalists” and “realists.”  I did not coin these two terms, but I’ve come to use them in a peculiar way.  In particular, I view “realists,” as exemplified by modern realists in the tradition of Carl Schmitt (Hitler’s lawyer) and F.A. Hayek (neoliberalism’s primary architect) as power addicts, and I view “rationalists,” as exemplified by pretty much every other intellectual as enablers of the power-addicted realists (“he beats me because he loves me”).  Applying the Pareto Principle, I’d argue that 10% of “the Elites” are realists, and almost all of the rest are rationalists.

Interestingly, if you look at the broader adult population, “the Elites” are probably only 10%, leaving almost everybody else– who I’ve come to think of as the SSDD (Same Shit, Different Day) crowd.  By the way, I celebrate the SSDD crowd precisely because they are just normal folk trying to get along and enjoy life.  I’d love to be half as happy as the SSDD folks I know, who include the majority of my family.

If my ballpark estimates are correct, that means that no more than 1% of our population dictates how all of us live, which is consistent with economic data.  And I’m sure that we can drill down further and discover that the core power-a-holics that drive society represent only between 0.0001-0.1% of the entire population.

Does that make any sense?  Should the societal equivalent of a desparate heroin addict dictate society’s mores and actions?  I don’t think so.  The fact that people like me are instictively compelled to fill any perceived power vacuum does not mean that people like me should dictate how everybody else lives.  I am not superior to the SSDD crowd.  Indeed, I’m so far away from the mean that I should be classified as deviant, but people like me are elevated to leadership roles every day.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of people like me view “leadership” as an opportunity to prey upon the rest of society as opposed to an obligation to serve.

http://taojonesing.blogspot.com/2011/07/fractal-dysfunction.html

Nature’s Geometry

 

 

Posted 23 July 2011, by Jessica Pellien, Princeton University Press, press.princeton.edu

 

 

The geometry we learned in high school is ideal for describing “man-made” forms such as buildings, roads, fences, etc. But lines, circles, and triangles don’t seem to do justice to trees, clouds, or mountains. What about the forms of nature? Is there a geometry for them? The late mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010) pioneered just such a geometry; he called fractal geometry after the Latin word fractus, which means broken or irregular.

A fractal is a shape composed of smaller copies of itself (think “fractured”). For example, a cauliflower is composed of florets—little flowers—which look just like little cauliflowers. We can use this idea to draw many natural forms using precise, step-by-step methods called algorithms. In the figure below we start with a simple, three-stick tree in (a) and then repeatedly turn each branch tip into a smaller, three-stick tree. The last step (f) is a computer rendering of the fractal the shapes are converging to.

Step-by-step drawing of a fractal tree.

The close-up below illustrates one of the reasons Annalisa Crannell and I chose the striking photograph Winter Road along the Trees by Wil Van Dorp for the cover of Viewpoints: Mathematical Perspective and Fractal Geometry in Art. The fractal beauty of the trees was impossible to resist!

Detail of the cover of Viewpoints.

Nowadays computers use fractal algorithms to generate photographically real landscapes in many feature films that require special effects. However, mathematicians and computer scientists may not have been the first to follow this road. As Benoit Mandelbrot pointed out, Asian artists have employed fractal-like portrayals of natural forms for centuries. As you can see below, Japanese woodblock artists of the nineteenth century used abbreviations for natural forms that are surprisingly similar to fractals investigated by mathematicians and scientists more than a century later!

A “quadric Koch island” fractal as described by Mandelbrot.

Boats in a Tempest in the Trough of the Waves off the Coast of Choshi (detail), from the series A Thousand Pictures of the Sea, by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fractal generated by an iterated function system.

Shono: Driving Rain (detail), from the series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido, by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fractal model of two-fluid displacement in a porous medium.

Short History of Great Japan (detail), by Ikkasai Yoshitoshi (1839-1892).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Marc Frantz holds a BFA in painting from the Herron School of Art and an MS in mathematics from Purdue University. He teaches mathematics at Indiana University, Bloomington where he is a research associate.

Annalisa Crannell is professor of mathematics at Franklin & Marshall College. She is the coauthor of Writing Projects for Mathematics Courses.

 

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This is the final installment in a series of blog postings from the authors of Viewpoints: Mathematical Perspective and Fractal Geometry in Art.

 

http://press.princeton.edu/blog/2011/07/23/natures-geometry/

 

 

 

Polluters Saddle Up In Washington, D.C.

 

Congress gives industry free ride on back of environmental protections

 

Posted 22 July 2011, by Marty Hayden, EarthJustice, earthjustice.org

 

Perhaps inspired by the triple-digit heat afflicting Washington D.C., the House of Representatives is putting legislative flames to our important environmental and public health protections.

This week, the House will consider a spending bill for the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service and other federal agencies. The bill is stuffed with open attacks by House Republicans on protections for our air, water, wildlife and iconic places.

Laden with nearly 40 so-called anti-environmental “riders”— policy provisions added to a measure having little or nothing to do with the appropriating funds—the bill hasn’t even reached the House floor yet. One provision will lift a moratorium on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon–one of the world’s seven natural wonders, and the only one in the U.S.
Another rider prevents the Fish and Wildlife Service from spending any money to implement important functions of the Endangered Species Act. The federal government would not be able to list new species as endangered or threatened, designate habitat critical to a species’ survival, or upgrade the status of any species from threatened to endangered. Immediately threatened by this action are the 260 candidates species that the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

What are protected by these riders are polluters.

Rep. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, attached a rider that would delay the EPA’s efforts to clean up lead, mercury, fine particles and other pollution from coal-fired power plants and prevent cross-state pollution. This single rider would mean that up to 51,000 people annually would die prematurely as a result of this air pollution, and our nation would lose approximately $420 billion annually in health care savings and missed days at work and school. There are six riders attacking clean air protections.

Another rider prevents the EPA from protecting our drinking water from the second largest industrial waste stream in the nation–toxic coal ash riddled with mercury, arsenic, chromium and lead. Enough coal ash is produced each year to fill a freight train stretching between the north and south poles.

Never before has there been such a blatant and aggressive attack on key environmental protections. This Congress, blinded by the misleading messages of big polluters, has carried the load for industries that simply don’t want to clean up their pollution.

There are 10 riders that attack clean water protections, including one that stops the administration from restoring the protections of the clean water act to tens of thousands of miles of streams and millions of acres of wetlands. Another stops the EPA from protecting Florida’s waters from outbreaks of toxic green slime caused by sewage, fertilizer and manure.

Earthjustice advocates will be working around the clock to push back on this unprecedented assault on our environment and public health.

 

http://earthjustice.org/blog/2011-july/polluters-saddle-up-in-washington-d-c

An Ill Wind Blows

An Ill Wind Blows

The Moapa River Indian Reservation, in the right foreground. The Reid Gardner Power Station can be seen on the left side of the photo, partially obscured by a cloud of coal ash. (Photo by Moapa Band of Paiutes)

Posted 23 July 2011, by Staff, EarthJustice, earthjustice.org

Related Text: · Coal ash ‘storms’ plague Indian community

The Moapa River Indian Reservation, tribal home of a band of Paiute Indians, sits about 30 miles north of Las Vegas—and about 300 yards from the coal ash landfills of the Reid Gardner Power Station. If the conditions are just wrong, coal ash picks up from Reid Gardner and moves across the desert like a sandstorm. The film An Ill Wind tells the Paiute Indians’ story. View the individual parts (at the original site), or watch the complete film

Help Protect Communities From Coal Ash Contamination
We need protection against coal ash, yet power companies and the coal industry have been flexing their lobby muscle in Washington, pressuring the EPA and the White House to take a relaxed approach to regulating coal ash.

Industry wants to keep the status quo of weak state standards that do little to protect communities and our health. Our household garbage is better regulated than coal ash! Sign a petition to support the EPA’s decision to classify coal ash as hazardous waste and encourage the agency to make a swift decision that sets federally enforceable safeguards for coal ash disposal.

Acknowledgements Many thanks to the Moapa Band of Paiutes for allowing us to tell this story and to Vinny Spotleson of the Sierra Club and Dan Galpern of the Western Environmental Law Center for helping with the project.

Behind the Scenes  “The deep, dark irony of the Paiutes’ situation is that none of their power comes from the Reid Gardner coal plant. So they get all of the problems and none of the benefits.”Multimedia Producer Chris Jordan writes about the making of this film in “An Ill Wind Blows in Moapa”.

Coal Ash

Coal ash is the hazardous waste that remains after coal is burned. Dumped into unlined ponds or mines, the toxins readily leach into drinking water supplies.

Key Resources:

• Campaign Home: Coal Ash Contaminates Our Lives
• unEARTHED: Recent news about coal ash
• Feature: River Runs Black: The Devastating Coal Ash Spill on the Emory River
• Graphic: Safe drinking water standards
• Interactive Map: State Fact Sheets on Coal Ash
• Interactive Graphic: The Story of Coal
• Video: Tennessee interview
• Video: Water contamination (Humor)
• Report: EPA’s Blind Spot: Hexavalent Chromium in Coal Ash (Feb. 2011)
• Report: The Toxic Threat (Sept. 2010)
• Return to Earthjustice Campaign Center

Ed Note: Please visit the original site for a full set of resources, information, photographs and links.

http://earthjustice.org/illwind