April 2011 – Nullius in Verba

Weekend Postcard – Lake County, Clear Lake

Spring is in full swing in Lake County.

Weekend Postcard: Table Rock Overlook

Everything looked springlike on this latest outing to the Table Rock overlook in the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park. Clouds brooded darkly and indian paintbrush and shooting stars sparkled gloriously in the early crepuscular twilight. We took a homebrewed Citra India Pale Ale and drank in the quietude of the moment.

Happy Earth Day

Do these toxins make me look fat? Earth Day turns 41.

On June 22, 1969, a portion of the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio. The late1960s were turbulent times; 1969 alone witnessed Woodstock, the Tate-LaBianca murders, and the Mi Lai massacre. The fire on the Cuyahoga River was emblematic of human-caused environmental troubles. This event and others lit a fire under the Congress andContinue reading “Do these toxins make me look fat? Earth Day turns 41.”

Weekend Postcard: San Francisco Bay from the Berkeley Hills

The San Francisco Bay from the Grizzly Peak Road in the Berkeley Hills on a clear day takes one’s breath away–even in black and white. The black and white print allowed for more resolution and contrast than the color image did. One of these days I will have to stop at Tilden Park and rideContinue reading “Weekend Postcard: San Francisco Bay from the Berkeley Hills”

Earth Day then and now

April 22, 2011 marks the 41 anniversary of Earth Day. At the first Earth Day observance, we drew from two of the books that became the canon of environmental fundamentalism: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich. In 1972, the Club of Rome would add the Limits to GrowthContinue reading “Earth Day then and now”

The number of extreme poor has dropped (and that trend will continue)

This should be front-page news. Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz of the Brookings Institution calculate (if my math is correct) that the number of people in extreme poverty ($1.25/day or less) dropped 30% (from 1.3 billion to 0.9 billion) in the past six years. How many poor people are there in the world and howContinue reading “The number of extreme poor has dropped (and that trend will continue)”

Comment on NRDC’s help in “Cleaning Up BP’s Mess in the Gulf of Mexico”

Do you follow the Natural Resource Defense Council’s “Switchboard” feed on Twitter? A recent one caught my eye: David Pettit’s Blog “Cleaning Up BP’s Mess in the Gulf of Mexico” How will BP be forced to clean up the mess it caused in the Gulf of Mexico? There is a process created for oil spillsContinue reading “Comment on NRDC’s help in “Cleaning Up BP’s Mess in the Gulf of Mexico””

Weekend Postcard – Lake county, Clear Lake

This is the view of eastern end of Clear Lake looking east and north on April 1, 2011; a beautiful spring day. This was my view as I spent the day brewing a batch of Citrazilla India Pale Ale on my back porch. I will have a write-up of that mini-fiasco (complete with recipe) onContinue reading “Weekend Postcard – Lake county, Clear Lake”