| Drinking the green kool-aid? |
[Apr. 3rd, 2008|08:58 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  nervous | ] |
Hi,
I've been off reading No Impact Man's blog for the past 9 months or so. I've been reading books and articles on climate change to try to understand the science and to be able to tell when a skeptic is blowing smoke up my ass and when a skeptic may have a fair point. Of the things I've read, I think that this article by James Hansen from Scientific American seems reasonably accessible and reputable.
I've been trying to incorporate a regime of lifestyle changes to lower my carbon footprint - taking the bus, biking, buying carbon offsets for the rest. The problem of global warming is so much larger than me and my individual actions, though. I feel that any lifestyles change that I make will be completely overwhelmed by China's plans to build 150 new 1000 Megawatt coal plants (or their generating equivalent) by 2020.
I worry that maybe James Hansen (head of NASA's Goddard Institute) is right - again. He did see this coming back in the 80's, after all. Plus, he has more precise climate models than I do (not to mention wayy cooler satellite-based sensors). I worry that he's right again because he's saying that maybe we only have 20 years (maybe less) before we start making irreversible changes to the climate system.
I feel like I should be doing something more. I've written my Senators and have talked to Congressman Doyle about this. By the way, when I talked to Doyle about global warming, he seemed more worried than I am. In particular, when the subject of the American West and the increased probability of droughts was brought up, there was a bit of fear in his eyes. He mentioned that we saw it coming with New Orleans but we failed to take to take action to improve the levees there - no one wanted to spend the money.... I feel like I should be doing more. But, I am not quite sure what that should be just yet. I figured I would just think out loud here a bit... Maybe I will try to post more often to give some context while I'm trying to figure out how to make a difference. And, if you've got any ideas, feel free to share..
If you feel inclined to do a little something now, I recommend joining the Sierra Club and Penn Future. The Sierra Club is pushing Congress to pass legislation to cut CO2 emissions to 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. Also, Penn Future has been working in Pennsylvannia to get renewable energy legislation passed. Also, on the agenda is a moratorium on new coal plants until we can get carbon capture and storage worked out. Also, if you haven't heard, Al Gore has started a new initiative to educate Americans on global warming.
-Dana |
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| Jeb gets warm welcome.. |
[Oct. 8th, 2006|11:24 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Low Red Moon - Belly | ] |
In case you missed this, Jeb Bush had a warm welcome on his visit to da 'Burgh. No, I wasn't there, but that certainly would have been an interesting experience... |
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| Musica? |
[Jul. 14th, 2006|10:50 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | awake | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Franz Ferdinand - Matinee | ] |
Would anyone out there be interested in playing some music with me? I've been practicing the guitar of late. Nothing spectacular, but at least Mr. Tut doesn't run away.. Perhaps, just some jamming on the porch to pass the warm summer nights? Maybe you have some words and a tune in your head? |
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| I've had bad dreams... So bad, I threw my pillow away... |
[Sep. 27th, 2005|09:21 pm] |
I had a dream the other night... I dreamt I was at work. We had a new employee who worked on the other side of the cubicle wall. This new person was very difficult to get along with. If you brought him a question that he deemed beneath him, he would chew you out. Yell, really yell at you. I'm talking Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet kind of Rage. I guess some of the co-workers started complaining about this behavior. He went into my boss's office and came back out. He was placid. No yelling came from the other side of the cube wall. Nothing. Not a peep. Then, one day, there were rumors floating around the office that our CEO left. Others in upper management started to leave one by one... There was that feeling that no one knew who was really running things anymore. A dark cloud of organizational anarchy started to hang in the air. People still went to the cube across the wall with questions still trying to get things done despite the vacuum of purpose. Every now and then, I would overhear a question being asked which wasn't very well thought out. I started to notice that people who asked the not so thought out questions wouldn't come back out of the row of cubes again. But, there was no yelling. Nothing but silence. Then, curiosity got the better of me. I peeked my head around the corner to see where everyone had gone.. There was a pile of dead bodies at the end of the cube row. I saw an unwitting questioner with a bullet hole through his head. |
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| What should have been? |
[Sep. 10th, 2005|01:31 pm] |
I was at the car dealership today in West Mifflin - the place where I grew up and went to school. I was leafing through the complimentary copy of the newpaper when I came across the headline West Mifflin fugitive cornered Downtown. When I biked home on Wednesday evening, I noticed a stream of police cars blowing through traffic lights on Grant Street. I wondered if the two events were related. As I read the article, I realized the cornered fugitive incident happened on Thursday. But, something else caught my eye. The fugitive was Charles Payne, 33, of West Mifflin, and he was wanted for murder. This anonymous fugitive had gone to middle school with me. He was in my history class and in my spanish class. This anonymous fugitive is lodged in my memory as an 11 year old boy.
Charlie Payne wasn't a good kid. He had problems. That much was clear even back then. My first clear memory of Charlie was the day he got into trouble in our 6th grade history class. It must have been a month or so into the school year. Our history teacher was Mr. Hammer. Mr. Hammer was old. He probably should have retired from teaching middle school 10 years or so before this incident. I would've. He had trouble hearing. His hair was shock white. He shuffled slowly to get around. He lost track of his train of thought. His back was stooped. On this particular day, Mr. Hammer was giving his history lesson, and Charlie had to use the bathroom - quite badly. Mr. Hammer wanted Charlie to wait to use the bathroom. Charlie didn't see why he should do so. Charlie made fun of Mr. Hammer. The other kids started to laugh. Mr. Hammer realized he was losing control, and so the situation started to escalate into more yelling. Charlie started to get up and run around the classroom. The kids continued to laugh at the antics of Charlie running around with Mr. Hammer shuffling after him. Mr. Hammer threatened to have Charlie put in the juvenille detention facility. Mr. Hammer also made some comments about how Charlie would never grow up to amount to anything. Charlie walked out of the classroom.
The next day in history, neither Charlie nor Mr. Hammer were present. Charlie had been suspended. Mr. Hammer had had a stroke and would never be back.
Charlie was usually not very interested in school. He seemed to be missing more often than he was there. He was often disruptive when he was there. But, he seemed to behave the best when we had a black teacher. One day, a couple of weeks into the class, he showed up in Ms. Taylor's spanish class. Ms. Taylor was one of my favorite middle school teachers. She was a very strong, opinionated woman who wouldn't tolerate any shit in her classroom. But, she also cared very much about teaching and trying to make us less culturally deprived ruffians. In her class, Charlie actually tried. He would say the phrases along with the rest of the class. He didn't act up. If Charlie gave Ms. Taylor any lip, she would put the smackdown on him with a few well placed jibes. Then, he would settle down, deflated and muttering.
yeah. so, Charlie was a troubled kid. but, i guess the thing that makes me sad is the sense of wondering whether or not he his life had to take this particular path. i guess i just wonder what should have been done differently. |
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| To scam or not to scam? |
[Jul. 28th, 2005|09:23 pm] |
Tonight, a woman came to my door and gave me her pitch. She said that she was an R.N. at Children's Hospital. She was raising money as part of a walkathon for SIDS. The doctor that she worked with was working on a cure for SIDS. He has a patent for a sleep apnea drug. I asked her a few questions. She was able to produce the names of different medicines, and she even spelled one for me (phenylthiazines) which she said that her hospital was trying to get Bayer to pull from one of its children's fever reducers.. Also, she claimed that she came to my house last year, and I had donated money. This part I distinctly do not remember. Her name was Dawn. I tried to clarify, perhaps it was one of my neighbor's houses that she had visited and was confused. I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt on the past sponsorship because maybe either I had forgotten or she was confused. So, then she asked me which level of money I wanted to give. Gold ($36), Silver ($24), or Bronze ($12). I said, ok, I'll do the Bronze (since that seemed like a lower risk option). Let me go get my check book. At this, she hesitated and insisted she needed a cash donation because previous donors had written bad checks which bounced. I said, ok. give me the address, and I'll look into some other way of sending in my donation. She hesitated again. She told me she needed the cash tonight so that she would have it by the time the walkathon was over. So, I decided I had better just avoid the whole situation, and I gracefully declined to donate anything.
Anyway. This smelled distinctly like a scam to me. The part about only accepting cash seemed odd to me. Up until the end, her execution was pretty good, though. Of course, maybe I'm just too gullible, and other people wouldn't have even answered the door. |
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| Respecting the Pope... |
[Apr. 5th, 2005|10:16 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Egmont Overture | ] |
In his passing, I have come to respect Pope John Paul II. John Paul was a Pole in occupied Poland who had Jewish friends. Friends who went to the gas chamber. He did what he could do. Forged documents. Hid friends from the Nazis. He saw the Nazis burn the Jewish ghetto. After the war. After the communists took over Poland, he sewed of resistance seeds in Poland. As Pope, he visited communist Poland. He encouraged his people. His fellow Poles to resist. People rallied around him as a symbol of their national identity, and then through solidarity, his people overthrew the repressive communists.
With all the death and destruction that he witnessed firsthand at the beginning of the 20th century. I understand why he so fervently opposes abortion. He sees it as a holocaust of innocent children. He projects the sounds of their silent screams and thinks of his friends who he couldn't save from the Nazis.
However, I am still deeply confounded by John Paul's assertion that using contraception is fundamentally an evil act which is part of the "Culture of Death". I don't understand how I am disrespecting life by not choosing to put my body in the position of cranking out babies one after the next. I'm not killing anything by using contraception. I don't understand how a man using a condom to protect himself and his partner from AIDS is not part of the "Culture of Death". How does using a condom to prevent the spread of a dreadful disease offend God?
While I disagree with John Paul about the contraception (and women's place in society), I repect his striving against the biggest moral problems of this century. He used his position as the head of the Catholic church to change the church's teaching on anti-semitism. He taught that anti-semitism is a sin. He has tried to lead us away from the worst aspects of hatred and inhumanity within us. |
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| Meet the Candidates Tonight... |
[Feb. 7th, 2005|03:39 pm] |
MoveOnPgh February Meetup-Candidate Forum
See the happenings website forMORE INFO.
EVENT TYPE: Politics
This month's meetup will serve as an opportunity to hear at least two judicial candidates (Kathryn Hens-Greco & Jon Pushinsky) and one mayoral hopeful (Bill Peduto) speak.
WHEN: Mon Feb 7: 7PM
WHERE: St. Andrew's Lutheran Church
NEIGHBORHOOD: Shadyside
IT'LL COST YOU: $free
AGES: all ages
FEATURING:
Bill Peduto
Kathryn Hens-Greco
Jon Pushinsky
PRODUCED BY:
+MoveOnPgh
http://www.thisishappening.com/OrgPage.php?curOrg=22254&show=profile
My Own Editorial Note: Kathryn Hens-Greco is an inspiring candidate. She's a very intelligent candidate who is running for judge for all the right reasons. She started out as a social worker, but she saw that she could make a bigger difference as a lawyer. Now, she feels she can help people even more as a judge. This is a great opportunity to hear the all of the candidates without the filter of the media. |
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| Balmy January |
[Jan. 13th, 2005|10:27 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Tires on wet roads. | ] |
I washed my car in the rain tonight. Headlights caught the spray of the water blowing back into my face. Those who walked past seemed to understand. No stares. It's just the way things are done around here. |
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| All Politics is Local |
[Jan. 5th, 2005|10:49 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sleepy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Clash - London Calling | ] |
Tonight, Anukul and I attended the DFA meetup on the South Side. Possible mayoral candidates Bill Peduto and Mike Lamb addressed our group. Currently, Bob O'Connor seems to be the candidate who has the backing of the party machine.
What does it mean to have the backing of the machine? Well, from what I can tell this means that the candidate gets the endorsement of all the ward bosses which brings with it money and a mass mailing from party headquarters which says that candidate X is the guy you should vote for in the primary. From what I understand, O'Connor represents the old boys network of the party. I've never met O'Connor. I really don't know much about him, but the folks I talked to at the Meetup didn't have anything positive to say about him.
So, Bill Peduto and Mike Lamb were there to try to grow some grass roots support. Bill Peduto is currently a member of city council. Mike Lamb is the Allegheny County Prothonotary.
Bill Peduto spoke first. Bill was very animated as he spoke. "The fiscal state of the city has put it into a box. However, we get to decide what color to paint that box." He understands that we need to balance our city budget, but the mayor needs to have a vision to do more with less. Bill is strongly in favor of community involvement in planning and development. City planners should look to communities first and then figure out how to serve the community - not the other way around. He is a true believer in new urbanism. He is a supporter of a multi-modal transit. He took initiative in studying the idea of providing free wireless access in the city. He seems genuinely interested in policy and in improving the city. He has worked with Ground Zero to help Flux events happen. He is against Mon-Fayette expressway. He thinks we have too many roads. We can't fix them all. Bill also advocates using GIS technology for planning how many and where fire departments should be located. Bill Peduto also thinks that city should not dissolve into the county government, but resources should be consolidated where it makes sense to do so.
Mike Lamb was more rooted in county politics. He had modernized the prothonotary's office. He took it out of the age of paper and ballpoint pens and into the electronic age. He cut the size of the office through attrition and transferring employees to other offices. Mike Lamb's message was rooted in efficiency and consolidation of redundant jobs. He would like to see more police departments in the county merge or contract their policing from the county or other municipalities. He thinks the city needs a leader who is willing to walk away from their turf. He wants row office reform. 25,000 houses in the city are abandoned. Act 47 gives city the leeway to re-sell these vacant properties. As part of balancing the budget, the city had to cut the amount of money it spends on demolition crews. When Lamb was asked about how to fix the city's finances, he talked about getting efficiency gains at the county level. This is all well and good, but he's running for mayor.
Overall, I found that Bill Peduto was a more charismatic and visionary candidate than Mike Lamb. Mike Lamb seemed to have answers based more on consolidation at the county level. He didn't talk as much about his vision for what the city would be like. I think I'm going to enlist with Peduto's campaign - assuming he decides to run... |
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| Snapshot of life... |
[Dec. 19th, 2004|01:03 am] |
Good day today. Watched the niece and nephew. The nephew didn't take advantage too much of the aunt who is sometimes a jungle gym. The niece and the nephew got along reasonably well. Except for a couple of moments. Moments when attention was in short supply. Moments when he got a little too rough and she started the "stop that" cry. Entertainment consisted of dress-up, crafts, The Grinch who Stole Christmas, Horton hears a Who who, hot chocolate fountains in the microwave (oops)...
Then, Liz, Anu and I went to see Sideways. Pretty damn funny. Afterward a late night Rite Aid excursion for some Christmas shopping. |
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| House rules... |
[Nov. 23rd, 2004|05:38 pm] |
Ever wonder how the Republicans got so good at moving legislation through the House so quickly? With no dissent? How did they manage to get the Patriot Act through congress without representatives reading the bill? How did they manage to get the Medicare bill through with its castration of the U.S. government's bargaining power against drug companies? This Boston Globe article describes the shift in power away from multiple House committees. Now, the Republican party's leadership has dominance over legislation. In a way, it seems to be the Democrats' fault - they changed some critical rules.
Now, more than ever, I'm convinced that we need to work hard to turn things around in 2006. However, we should make sure that the Democrats' fix the Rules Committee for the day when they fall out of power again... |
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| C is for Cyclobenzaprine |
[Nov. 9th, 2004|08:15 pm] |
Saturday. Such a lovely day. Clear blue sky. Crisp, but warm. A couple fall leaves still clinging to trees. I decided late in the day that I should ride my bike to Whole Foods to resupply. I was riding down Center. Due west. The sun was in my eyes. I had my helmet blocking the sun from my eyes. I could mainly just see the road in front of me. THUD! The next thing I knew I was headed over my handle bars. I looked to my right and saw a person rolling down the sidewalk. Jesus! I hope I didn't hurt that person. Then, I got up. Got myself and my bike off the road as quickly as I could. I was covered in coffee. The person on the sidewalk was getting up too. He was scraped up. His fingers were a bit bloody. "Oh my god! Are you ok?" He said, "yeah, just a little scraped up". I asked, "Are you sure you didn't hurt your head?". He said, "I'm fine. I must not have been looking where I was going." A woman across the street yelled over to us, "do you want me to call an ambulance?". I looked at the guy I'd just hit and asked him if he was sure he was ok. He said, "yeah", and smiled. I yelled back to the woman across the street, "No, we're fine. Just a bit shaken up." He went fishing through his bag looking for a bandana to wrap his fingers in. He continued to tell me that he was from Erie and was on his way to Shadyside to interview for a job. Something about him made me wonder if he wasn't a drifter or down on his luck. I didn't have the nerve to press him for details. I offered him my phone to call someone. He declined. We both concluded that neither of us had seen the other coming. His name was Bill. |
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| A place called hope... |
[Nov. 3rd, 2004|09:48 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | hopeful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | tut's purring | ] |
Ward 14 District 14
One of 9,498 districts in Pennsylvania. I was assigned to be a poll watcher for the Democrats. I had gone through the training. They told us, "This will be one of the most watched elections. More people in each polling station. The judge of elections will want to find any excuse to get you to leave. Your job is to just be the eyes and the ears of the campaign. Don't give the judge of elections any lip." I was intimidated.
I drove to the elementary school at the corner of S. Dallas and Edgerton. When I walked into the door, I ran into an old friend from high school who was voting with her two young sons. She's now a stay at home mom. Stil nervous to get to my job, we exchanged phone numbers and promised to call eachother. I walked over to the table at the far end of the cafeteria and politely introduced myself to the gray-haired women at the table. They looked up, smiled, and told me I could sit at the table next to them. I spent the next two hours talking with Rose, the constable, and going through the list of people who had already voted. Rose would periodically notice people on my list who had moved or died. She'd been working at the same poll for the past 20 years. During a lull in the afternoon voting, Sylvia, the judge of elections, came over and started showing me the ropes of the election process - absentee ballots, the lists of voters, how results are tabulated, the swearing in of the election inspectors, what a minority inspector was... As it turns out, a judge of elections doesn't actually need to have a legal background. Sylvia was a retired English teacher. She'd been working at the same poll for 30 years. She encouraged me to run for the job of judge of elections. I suspect she might like to retire from election monitoring someday.
Sylvia was wonderfully helpful. She made sure the man with the amputated leg got to his car. She gave me some of her yummy apple cake. She was patient with voters who showed up who weren't on the list of voters registered for the district. She'd call the hotlines which were terminally busy. She even drafted me into giving rides to two women who needed to get I.D.
Take heart. There are good people involved in the election process - especially the women of Ward 14 District 14, but more good people need to get involved. |
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| A word to republicans... |
[Nov. 3rd, 2004|11:47 am] |
Dear Republicans,
Well, looks like you've won it. You've won the popular vote. Electoral tug of wars no longer matter. You now have responsibility. You need to look your party in the eye and see if you like what you see. Bush does not listen to the rest of us. He doesn't need to. He's got a majority in the House and Senate. There are some things that have gone wrong that you need to fix. You need to fix our nation's intelligence aparatus. Getting the pre-war intelligence in Iraq wrong was really bad. Please acknowledge that. In a world where terrorists are trying to strike the U.S., getting intelligence right is a matter of national security. The Brits have at least taken the time to examine MI-6 and it's bogus claim that Saddam would have chemical weapons ready within 45 minutes of an attack. It's funny. It turns out they had a super-secret source who was just telling them what they wanted to hear so that he could get paid. Please take a look at the CIA and Pentagon intelligence agencies. See what can be done to make their reporting more accurate. Maybe there should be auditing for correctness/completeness of intelligence on countries which are deemed to be high priority threats to our national security. Maybe listen to what the 9/11 commission has to say. I would also appreciate it if you would brush the dust off of that part of your party which was in favor of fiscal discipline. I really miss that part. Also, please do something about the Wahhabists. Allowing them to continue to propogate a malignant philosophy is a huge mistake.
Thanks,
Dana |
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| Go vote or something... |
[Nov. 1st, 2004|11:33 pm] |
If you're reading this, then you probably are probably already on top of things enough to realize that Nov. 2 is the day we all vote. Bring I.D. with you to the polls. Especially if you live in a swing state. If you live somewhere else, they might not check.. but, this race is pretty close in many states, so bring it with you just in case. Also, keep an eye out for any voter intimidation. You probably won't see any (other than Cheney remarking that we'll all die if we elect Kerry), but if you do and you live in PA, call 1-866-VOTEPA-9.. There's a rumor on the Internets that the Republicans have rented all the Crown Victoria's in the state of PA.. Don't give the judge of elections any lip. He or she can kick your ass out of the poll. If there's a line, be patient. Get your vote counted.
As for me, I'm nervous, and tired, and hopeful and don't care. all wrapped into one continuous roller coaster. I hope all goes well.
Don't get too upset if your guy looses. (that goes for me too.) I think our system is resilient. If the pendulum swings too far one way, the other side will claw and fight and march in the streets until it swings back the other way.... On the way out of my training session tonight, I met a woman who was struggling just to walk. She'd run out of oxygen. She was out of breath and sweating. I stopped. Another woman, Lisa, also stopped. We helped the woman to her car. Lisa carried the woman's empty oxygen tank. As she got in her car, the woman muttered, "The things I'll do for Kerry. I'll have to remember to bring three tanks with me tommorrow."
g'night. |
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