Patagonia Worn Wear

They've been doing nice things with encouraging people to buy less new stuff. I'm not sure how that works with them sending out catalogs once a month but whatever.... Here's a link to a nice little movie about some people and their old used Patagonia clothing.

Dam Road Closed

On the day my dad goes under the buzz saw & triple bypass surgery, an interesting mini-history of the beginning of the dam removal movement in America. The title of the post is from a sign, I think in Nebraska, at a campground we stayed at a time or two while driving cross-country.

Plastic, via the Surfrider Foundation

Peter McBride Colorado River Gallery

From Outside Online. Nice text and some really neat images. He gets into the water politics a little bit, enough to wet your whistle, so to speak. Pic below is why there's a problem, the river doesn't make it to the Sea of Cortez any more...

Science Integrity / NPR

let's face it, Obama has been a disappointment. Obviously he's better than McCain, but I think Hillary would have been a better president. Anyway, here's a little number about how the Obama administration isn't using science very effectively.

Unintentional Modern Art

This is a quicklook from a Gulf of Mexico AVIRIS flight from this summer. Love the face in profile, and the circle they flew (potbelly), and the foot.
This one kinda looks like a pelican wearing a top hat while flying

New Orleans / Bob Edwards Weekend

In the early summer Bob had a series of interviews with New Orleans-based musicians. Super interesting. Then he interviewed people from all walks of life who live there -- the 'No Place Like Home' series of interviews. The food scene in NOLA has interested me for a while, Harry Shearer's show is often NOLA related, and now with our lab being involved with remote sensing of the oil spill and the aftermath I'm a little more connected. Here's an annotated list of the shows:

1 Preview of the Jazz Fest interviews, full Dr. John Interview
2 Ben Jaffe / Preservation Hall
3 Stanton Moore, Trombone Shorty
4 Anders Osborne, Theresa Andersson
5 Allen Toussaint
6 Irma Thomas
7 Roger Lewis
8 Jimmy Carter (Blind Boys of Alabama), 2 church deacons on life in NOLA after Katrina
9 A gulf deep-sea diver, Keely Smith, NOLA shave ice (awesome interview)
10 Jon Cleary, Preview of the No Place Like Home interviews
11 mostly about the levees
12 seafood, shrimper, duckhunter
13 oiled birds
14 wetlands (this one is particularly good)
15 how the city is doing
16 St. Bernard Parish (the 2nd story, starting ~17:45, darn good)
17 post-Katrina stuff: entrepreneurs, farmer1, farmer2 {his questions for the farmers were kind of weird, the 2nd guy answered them better}

Best Outdoor Documentaries / Outside Online

Interesting post. I've seen alot of them, the 2 Werner Herzog movies, the one about Fitzroy that you can buy from Patagonia, Riding Giants, Food Inc., Inconvenient Truth, Earth (the mini-series version), Endless Summer, Koyaanisqatsi. Good list.

Meat as a treat, rather than a routine

Mark Bittman reviews "the Coming Famine" today and in discussing it he provides links to an article he wrote about alot of aspects of growing and eating meat, and a TED talk he did. Lots of good info.

p.s. just realized I've linked to that TED talk before. C'est la vie.

Gloomiest Gloom Ever?

Semi-good article in the Independent about our summer of fog. Park did a nice job of using stats to show this hasn't been normal; the NWS person was useless. I went to the farmer's market yesterday and tomatoes were ok, certainly not great. The season is about a month behind. Though I wonder if Roots is doing better, being in the Santa Ynez Valley and all. Must ask the Lerner. Dar-tritus chimes in that he's had solar panels for 6 years, and for the first time the meter isn't spinning backwards this summer. Most importantly, S Bee has spent a ton of time on SCI this summer cause of all of the fog, good for her research, less fun relationship-wise.
It's been sunnier in SB the last few days, for example this image from this afternoon, but you can also see the fog pointing towards Santa Cruz Island (3rd Channel Island, counting from the west). I believe it's pointing right towards S Bee's study sites....

Florian Schulz / Patagonia / Arctic

Great photos of the arctic on the Patagonia Cleanest Line blog.

BP Responds to a Coffee Spill

Andrew sent me this link. It's solid gold.

the Environmental Cost of Growing Pot

I thought this story on Sunday was wonderful. It has annoyed me for a while how weed is considered natural and whatnot, considering all of the side costs of growing it. Hydroponics especially seem ridiculous, using water + a boatload of chemicals to mimic soil seems pretty lame.

Tesla/NUMMI/NPR

Interesting story last week about a partnership between Tesla (who make 'boutique' electric sportscars) and Toyota to use the Toyota/Chevy NUMMI plant to make Tesla cars. Great idea cause it's going to bring the price down so more people can go electric. Win win.

Gulf Oil Spill

The Surfrider Foundation has an informative blog about the spill in the Gulf.

from CNN

Kentucky Fried Movie / Alternative Energy

Watched Kentucky Fried Movie again recently, it has a funny/prescient bit about alternative energy that floored me. It was made in the late 70s, and one of their suggested ideas essentially came true! -- a bit about collecting oil that drips off of fast food and using that as oil; an alternative take on biodiesel. Even their untried-as-yet ideas don't seem thaaaaaat far fetched today: collecting the oil that clogs pores on teenagers faces, collecting oil stuck in combs, and collecting anthropogenic methane emissions from eating fast food (that's a euphemism...) Methane is a huge green house gas, a couple of people in the lab study it in that regard, methane from feed lots is a specific concern. It certainly seems that harvesting it and burning it would be better than letting it go up into the atmosphere unimpeded.

Lake Foul / NPR

Eliot Porter, Dungeon Canyon

The (^%O*^%(*& who damned Glen Canyon died recently, NPR had a brief remembrance of him tonight. Cadillac Desert is the classic book about the damning of the Colorado in order to have golf courses in the desert. Great book. Really there are a ton of interesting books about Glen Canyon: 'The place no one knew' by Eliot Porter, 'Glen Canyon: Images of a lost world' by Tad Nichols, 'All my rivers are gone' by Katie Lee, are 3 great ones. The Glen Canyon Institute has a great website about pre/post damning, and they show that with the current drought in the west some of what was covered is now visitable again.

Tad Nichols, Goddess of Glen Canyon