Planting Trees

If you are going to plant a flowering tree in your yard, shouldn't it be an apple, pear or peach?

They Eat Your Brain

Using a neti pot.  From Oprah.com

Among some people, it is considered healthy to rinse out your sinuses with water, using a 'neti pot'.  When performed with a sterile solution, the worst that seems to happen is an increase in infections as the protective mucus layer is removed from the sinuses.

However, several people have died recently from using water contaminated with "brain-eating amoebas" — known to scientists as Naegleria fowleri.  These single-celled nasties live in fresh water, especially down south where the water is warm.  If you swallow N. fowleri while swimming they die in your stomach acid.  If they get up your nose, they travel into your brain, multiply, eat your brain, and kill you.  Since 1962, there’s only one documented case of a US patient surviving PAM.

So ...  In 2010 and again in 2013, people died from N. fowleri infections in Minnesota.  Minnesota, for those not looking at a map, is not down south.  The organism is moving north with climate change.

Short of avoiding fresh water swims altogether, public health officials recommend plugging one’s nose during dives or periods underwater. Tightly.

You can see more horrifying information at the Weather Channel, and The Verge.

Humans As A Source of Electricity

Yes, we radiate heat.  That heat can be used to generate electricity.  A fifteen-year-old girl has invented a flashlight that runs off human heat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9CCGUMkcbjg

Contaminated Drinking Water

From Discover Magazine:

"A study out today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences helps to build the case that the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” does indeed pollute underground water reserves."

Actually, what has been found is that wells close to fracking sites have higher than normal amounts of methane in them.  Whether this is due to fracking in general or to poorly maintained fracking equipment is probably not important to the people drinking from those wells.

Cooked

From ClimateCentral.org:

By the end of this week's heat wave, we may see a record tied or broken for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

All-time records are likely to be threatened in normally hot places — including Death Valley, Calif., which holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on earth at 134°F. That mark was set on July 10, 1913, and with forecast highs between 126°F to 129°F this weekend, that record could be threatened.

Why?

My job in West Hartford was not my first as a teacher.  I already knew that I would be giving up my life for 10 months at a time, working 60 plus hours a week, every week, from late August to late June.  I knew about the papers to grade, the parents to contact, the lesson plans to create/modify/replace, the lab papers to read over "vacations".

So why did I sign up to do it again?

Because this country is increasingly following the credo of "ignorance and fear", and I wanted to do what I could to push back the darkness.

That's why I did it.  To create a subversive army of thinkers and send them off into the world.

To light a candle.

Permeable Roads

The New York State Department of Conservation plans to move forward with a $3 million project to reconstruct a section of Beach Road on State lands and the Lake George Beach parking with porous asphalt and other storm water management features to protect water quality.

Porous asphalt is proposed to be used on most of the road. Regular asphalt will be used on turns and other highly stressed areas. Other storm water management features in the proposal include drainage collection piping and a dry swale for collection and treatment of any excess storm water runoff.

Radioactive Climate Change

Image: Flickr/Matt Shalvatis

From Scientific American:   "For almost three decades the forests around the [Chernobyl] nuclear power plant have been absorbing contamination left from the 1986 reactor explosion. Now climate change and lack of management present a troubling predicament: If these forests burn, strontium 90, cesium 137, plutonium 238 and other radioactive elements would be released ...  Combined with changes in climate, the 600 acres of dry pines are a prescription for wildfire. "

Wood Lily!

While climbing up Mt Higby, I found this spectacular wild lily.

--Information for students, parents and teachers at http://www.jschwartz.com
Blog: http://blog.Schwartz.com

"Experience: how we keep from making mistakes. Mistakes: how we get experience."

Baby Crows

Sitting on my front porch, watching 4 baby crows begging their parents for food.   Noisy babies.  Go get your own food. 

--Information for students, parents and teachers at http://www.jschwartz.com
Blog: http://blog.Schwartz.com

"Experience: how we keep from making mistakes. Mistakes: how we get experience."

What Drives Conspiracy Theorists?

A very good explanation of why these idiotic stories never die is here:

http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/what-keeps-conspiracy-theories-alive-130621.htm

Summer Morning

This morning I strolled along Upson Road in Burlington. The weather was perfect: cool, dry breezes fragrant with wild roses. The smell of growing plants everywhere.

Christmas Fern Spores	Bearded Penstamon
Mama Merganser	Baby Mergansers

Have You Been Saved?

HPV infection rates have dropped by a staggering 50 percent in U.S. teen girls since the introduction of the HPV vaccine. This is despite the low uptake rate; only about a third of teens 13 to 17 have received the full course of three shots.  

The low vaccination rate in the United States means that 50,000 girls alive today will eventually develop fatal cervical cancer.  For every year the rate lags, another 4,400 girls will develop cervical cancer in their lifetimes.

Have the teenage girls in your life had the shots?

Paying for Climate Change

From the NY Times:   WASHINGTON — President Obama is preparing regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.  The move would be the most consequential climate policy step he could take and one likely to provoke legal challenges from Republicans and some industries.

Electric power plants are the largest single source of global warming pollution in the country, responsible for nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.  Since the Republicans in Congress have killed other attempts to prevent climate change,  the decision on existing power plants — which a 2007 Supreme Court decision gave to the executive branch — has been among the most closely watched of Mr. Obama’s second term.

Of course, Obama's opponents are using that age-old argument against protecting the environment, that it will be too expensive and will cost jobs.

So lets see.   According to the insurance companies that have to pay for climate-related disasters....

Superstorm Sandy:   $65 billion

Drought in midwest:    $35 billion

Fires in Colorado:      $8.5 million to fight so far, cost of destroyed homes over $200 million

Estimated cost to flood-proof New York City:  $27 billion

Then there are the increased floods every where and ...   So, do we prevent it or pay too much afterwards?

Horses

Everyone knows this, except for the politicians who want to evaluate teachers based on student test scores.

June 21 - The Summer Solstice! Got Fire?

Current Global Food Production Trajectory Won't Meet 2050 Needs

June 19, 2013 — Crop yields worldwide are not increasing quickly enough to support estimated global needs in 2050.

Studies estimate that global agricultural production may need to increase 60-110 percent to meet increasing demands and provide food security. In the current study, researchers found that production of these crops would likely increase only 38-67 percent by 2050.

More here:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130619195135.htm

What Is A Human?

I learned long ago that humans are colonial animals:  we are crawling with single-celled organisms inside and out, and could not live without them.

Thanks to modern genomic science, it seems that even those "human" cells are not entirely human - 8% or more of the DNA in our cells is viral.  Evolution may have been controlled as much by viruses as the environment.

This is a fascinating book!

Forward to the Past:

Its amazing how the Republican party seems to want to shut down Science.   

"If the Republican-led House Subcommittee on Space has its way, NASA's proposed asteroid-retrieval mission will be killed, the agency's budget will be capped for the next two years at about 5 per cent less than last year's, and NASA's Earth observation efforts will be cut back."

"Considering the Republican-led House of Representatives' dim view of NASA's climate-science activities, that proposed 30 per cent budget cut should come as no surprise."

More here:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nasa_authorization_act_of_2013_kills_off_asteroid_retrieval_mission/

Goodbye, Atlantic Ocean

On All Saints' Day, November 1st, 1755, the Portuguese capital Lisbon was destroyed by a massive  earthquake. Up to 100,000 people died and eighty-five percent of Lisbon's buildings were destroyed, including famous palaces and libraries.

Lisbon destroyed by earthquake and tsunami

Contemporary reports state that the earthquake lasted between three and a half and six minutes, causing fissures 15 feet wide to open in the city center.  Survivors rushed to the open space of the docks for safety and watched as the water receded, revealing a sea floor littered with lost cargo and shipwrecks. Approximately 40 minutes after the earthquake, a tsunami engulfed the harbor and downtown area, killing thousands.  In the areas unaffected by the tsunami, fire broke out, and flames raged for five days.

Dr João Duarte, a Portuguese scientist working in Australia, now says the earthquake was caused by an 'embryonic subduction zone' that may split the Eurasian tectonic plate and cause the Atlantic ocean to close.

Newly-appearing subduction zones are, according to Dr Duarte, to be expected as part of Earth's “super-continent cycle” that sees much of earth's land come together in very large continents. That cycle takes 300 million to 500 million years, and Dr Duarte said he thinks the appearance of the new subduction zone off Portugal shows that the process continues and that the Atlantic will one day become part of a new super-continent.

More information may be seen here:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/17/boffins_find_evidence_atlantic_ocean_has_started_closing/

Fireflies!

The fireflies are back.  Just in time for Mid-Summer's Eve and the full moon.

Last night the edges of the woods in my yard were sparkling.

I remember catching fireflies in my back yard on Parsons Drive many years ago, although there were not many.  The neighborhood was new, and all of the trees and shrubs had been wiped out.   These beetles need overgrown areas where they won’t dry out. The best display I’ve seen recently was in New York’s Central Park, in an area that was fenced off for maintenance. They rivaled the skyline for brightness.

You might know that the male fireflies blink in a special pattern (different for each species) as they fly through the air. The females sit on the ground and respond. Did you know that there is one group of fireflies that mimic the females of other species? When the male lands to mate, he is eaten. Mother Nature is not a warm fuzzy.

The Museum of Science in Boston, along with other researchers around the country, can use your help in learning about fireflies. They are concerned about decreasing populations of the insects. Check out the web site for FireFly Watch and see if you can help advance science.

Accomplishment

If I have accomplished anything in my years of teaching, it is my hope that I have shown my students not what to think, but rather the need to think.