Super Tuesday 2008

Voting Guides for 2008/02/05:

• SF Bicycle Coalition votes YES on Prop A
• Speak Out California
• San Francisco Bay Guardian
• League of Young Voters PAC

Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

Livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation. If Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20% it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to an ultra-efficient Prius.

[...]

A sea change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.

It’s meat.

The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.

Read more...

The Real McDonalds

Tell it like it is at http://ronaldmchummer.com/

Hair and mushrooms create a recipe for cleaning up oily beaches

A group of guerrilla volunteers is cleaning oil from San Francisco's beaches using an unorthodox, albeit totally organic, method: human hair and mushrooms.

Using mats made of hair, they are absorbing the droplets of oil that have washed ashore since a cargo ship rammed the base of a Bay Bridge tower last week, spilling 58,000 gallons of fuel.

Hair, which naturally absorbs oil from air and water, acts as a perfect sponge, said Lisa Gautier of San Francisco, who provided 1,000 hair mats. They are about the size of a doormat, tightly woven with dark hair, and feel somewhat like an S.O.S pad.

While the mats may not be the obvious choice among hazardous waste experts, they hit San Francisco's green chord: More than 700 volunteers have tried them in recent days. Organizers hope their success will inspire more ecological responses to toxic waste removal.
Read more ...

US Emits 8.2 Tons of CO2 per person

A study of the world's power stations has shown the extent to which developed countries produce more carbon dioxide per head than emerging economies.

Australians were found to be the world's worst polluters per capita, producing five times as much CO2 from generating power as China.

The US came second with eight tonnes of the greenhouse gas per head - 16 times more than that produced by India.

The US also produced the most CO2 in total, followed by China.

The Carbon Monitoring for Action (Carma) website is the first global inventory of emissions and looks at 50,000 power stations.

Its data was compiled by the Center for Global Development, a US think-tank.

Read more...

Voting 2006

For once, I'm not going to rant about Fanatican malfeasanse. :-) Several friends have asked me about the voting guides I used for tomorrow's vote, so here they are:

1. Speak Out California - http://speakoutca.org/now/2006general.php - Jenny sent me this one and it's a quick overview of all the major issues. However, it's lacking details at the city and county level.
2. San Francisco Bicycle Coalition - http://www.sfbike.org/?vote - there are three recommendations that affected me as a daily bicycle commuter. So I went with them there.
3. San Francisco Bay Guardian - http://tinyurl.com/steoh - very comprehensive endorsement pages. They include a non-legalese explanation of each candidate and proposition. The downside is that you have to read through a lot of things. We voted via Absentee ballots so we took our time wading through all of it.

This is the first time we voted absentee (though we didn't leave town) and I'm now a big fan. I have the ballots in front of me and can take my time reading through all the cruft. It's leisurely and I feel that I'm voting responsibly and in a well-informed manner. Moreover, I don't have to change my schedule on voting day to go to a polling place. Just note two things:

1. Your absentee ballot has to arrive by 8:00 PM on voting day. If you haven't mailed it ahead of time, you can hand deliver it to your polling place.
2. If you're hand delivering for someone else (e.g., spouse, parents, children), they have to sign an extra spot in the back of the envelope that authorizes someone else to deliver for them.

Lastly, PLEASE VOTE. Not only is it your civic responsibility - e.g., driving sober, paying taxes, etc - it's your personal responsibility to yours, your children's, and your community's future.

Caesar and Bush

A blog commenter compares Julius Caesar and George W. Bush in a comment to this main blog entry: Blame for Iraq Extends Far Beyond the GOP (good read, by the way). In short, the commenter writes:

Julius Caesar was an ambitious, vainglorious, would-be tyrant. George W Bush is a modest and self-deprecating one.

Hee hee.

Gonorrhea Lectim

This came through the mail recently...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior.

The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced "gonna re-elect him." Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past four years. Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include: anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards evangelical theocracy, categorical all-or-nothing behavior. Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease originated only a few years ago from a single bush found in Texas.