Nature News from Jake Sigg
Borders are clever constructs. They define, they divide, they
differentiate. They can be opened or closed. Communities can straddle
a border. Borders work equally well as buffers. A border is there to
defend. Or not. Guardian Weekly
1. Planning & Conservation League seeking three interns
2. SF Natural History talk on maintaining biological communities in
GGNRA and Presidio
3. Saving Nature in a Humanized World - conference, events, tours
4. USGS flyover video showing the topography of San Francisco Bay's bottom
5. GG Audubon January Speaker
6. A century after Muir's death, will the cities of California serve
as the graveyard of his legacy or a place of rebirth?
7. Trillions of gallons of water are lost to leakage and bursts from
pipeline utilities worldwide each year
8. Newly appointed SF Supervisor closely tied to waterfront developers
9. Comet Lovejoy can be seen, even from San Francisco, with binoculars
10. Feedback: Is the human brain capable of thinking about nothing?
11. First airplane journey by a sitting president, 1943
12. Notes & Queries: What updates are needed for the Ten Commandments?
1. Planning & Conservation League/PCL Foundation Seeking Interns
Internships
PCL/PCLF internships are a great way to become familiar with
environmental policy in California and network with environmental
non-profit organizations, government representatives, and other
stakeholders. Possible work assignments include policy research,
report writing, event planning, and outreach to community groups.
Interns work on a core project and often provide support to PCL/PCLF
staff on other assignments. Interns have opportunities to do work in
the Capitol, such as attending hearings and meetings on assigned
bills. This is a friendly, flexible, and fast-paced office, and our
interns provide key support to our environmental mission.
Qualifications
We are looking for law students or graduate students in related fields
for these positions; however, outstanding undergraduate interns will
also be considered. All candidates should possess excellent research
and communication skills, and be well suited to work in a fast-paced
environment. These are unpaid internships, but PCL/PCLF will assist in
attempting to secure funding for the position.
PCL/PCLF currently has three internship positions open. For more
information or to apply CLICK HERE!
Or e-mail Meredith Mitchell at MMitchell@pcl.org
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2.
San Francisco Natural History Series
JANUARY TALK
Ice Plants, Mattress Wireweed & Other Onslaughts
Guest Speaker: Lew Stringer
7:30pm, Thursday, Jan 15th, 2015
FREE at the Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, San Francisco, CA
Have you seen how much of our coastal parkland is now covered in
succulent ground cover, hardy New Zealand vines, and just too many
highly invasive species? Come hear Lew give us the low down on ground
cover invasive plants. He's been working with the Presidio Trust, and
before that the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, to develop
strategies to manage the various species that would take everything
over if they managed themselves.
+++++++++++++++++
UPCOMING TALKS
Feb 19th - John Wick: Marin Experiments in climate and carbon sequestration
Mar 19th - Joel Pomerantz: The Most Extreme Storms Yet
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3.
BRIDGING THE NATURE-CULTURE DIVIDE III
Saving Nature in a Humanized World
Conference, Events and Tours
San Francisco's Presidio is the location and focus of a daylong
conference that examines how stewardship decisions balance natural,
cultural and scenic values at one of the nation's premiere national
parks. Leading thinkers and experts from the US and Canada will
provoke discussion, push boundaries and inspire solutions.
January 22
Prosecco and a Private Visit to Alcatraz Island and the new Ai Weiwei
installation
3:30 to 7:15pm - via ferry ride from Alcatraz Landing at Pier 33 in
San Francisco
January 23
Bridging the Nature-Culture Divide III: Saving Nature in a Humanized
World Conference
9am to 4:30pm - Presidio Officers' Club
Post-Conference Reception
6 to 8pm - California Historical Society in downtown San Francisco
January 24
Forums on Foot and Explore the Presidio Tours
9am to 4pm - Exclusive and carefully curated tours of the Presidio's Main Post,
new parklands, and other sites.
An article on Park Economics from Jan Blum:
You have probably seen this but just in case you haven't, a
relevant City Parks blog is attached.
It was interesting to see that national parks were included
and mentioned, along with parks run by SF Rec & Park, in this report
covering economic contributions to the local economy. I was even
happier to see a report earlier in the year covering the economic
benefit that the national parks, alone, bring into Bay Area coffers.
In my opinion, regular press releases/stories, and reminders
to the local populace of the enormous contributions the national parks
bring to the community would be beneficial in creating improved
awareness of the populace, government, business, and financial
communities of just how important national parks are in so many ways,
including economic, as well as quality of life aspects. Many people
and entities are simply not aware, or sometimes conveniently overlook
the fact, that the national parks are NOT part of City property or
City management, that the purpose of the national parks is vastly
different in many ways from SF Rec & Park, and why the national parks
deserve and need our collective widespread support.
I know you work hard to achieve this in a variety of ways
from working with city agencies, through and with SPUR, via your
excellent programming and much more. Nonetheless, it remains my hope
you will also find ways to "brag" about our great, local, national
park treasures more often in public media. We read so few "good"
stories in the media anymore, it would be a wonderful addition to
have some of the many positive stories you can tell to read as
antidote.
http://cityparksblog.org/2014/12/16/economic-value-of-san-francisco-parks-approaches-1-billion-annually/#more-4821
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4. Jean Oullette:
Embedded in today's 'Lectronic Latitude, at
http://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/lectronicday.lasso?date=2015-01-12#.VLQp62ctAW4,
is a great USGS flyover video showing the topography of San Francisco
Bay's bottom. Very cool! The full-screen setting is good for maximum
effect, and to render the names of rocks, banks and such more
readable.
What I sent was a link to a USGS flyover video, embedded in today's
"Latitude 38 'Lectronic Latitude," the thrice-weekly blog of our local
sailing publication, at
http://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/lectronicday.lasso?date=2015-01-12#.VLQp
62ctAW4. The video shows the contours of San Francisco Bay's
seafloor.
I found it an intriguing visual. I've been sailing on the Bay for
over 40 years, and by necessity have become attuned to its tides and
currents, and the hydrological and landform forces affecting them.
It's illuminating to see a graphic depiction of all that topographical
stuff going on below the surface, such as the abysses off Angel Island
and at the Gate. That big dredge spoils mound south of Alcatraz used
to be a big hole.
Yes, the Bay and Delta configurations are visible in model form at
the Corps of Engineers' Bay Model in Sausalito, but this is quite a
dramatic
depiction.
The subsurface topography influences what's going on in the water
column above. At the current line, where a flood current meets a
weakening ebb, I've seen huge baitfish concentrations between Point
Stuart, at the northwest corner of Angel Island, and Yellow Bluff,
south of Sausalito. Chowing down on this mega-feed were hundreds of
cormorants, innumerable gulls, and hundreds of sea mammals, including
harbor seals, sea lions and harbor porpoises.
The rippled silt banks, especially noticeable east of the Tiburon
Peninsula, are concentrations of river-borne sediments from the San
Joaquin
and Sacramento watersheds. (As an aside, research published in San
Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, Issue 1, Vol. 8 [2010]
reports that
as of 1990, 43% of the surface sediment on the Bay floor was hydraulic
mining debris, even though California hydraulic mining ceased in
1884.)
These shoals are in areas where points of land slow water flow,
permitting sediment to drop out of the water column and collect. At
the inland margins of these bights, marshes and meadows form. The
very straight channels between Carquinez Strait and the central Bay
are maintained for shipping traffic by dredging.
The video that I mentioned is available at
http://gallery.usgs.gov/videos/536#.VLWF4L4TBUS.
Every picture tells a story.
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5. Join Golden Gate Audubon for its January Speaker Series....
The last decade has seen a remarkably rapid expansion of Osprey
nesting into San Francisco Bay tidelands. From a single nest reported
in 1990 in Vallejo, numbers have risen to 27 nesting pairs in summer
2014. What's behind this increase? What conservation challenges do
nesting Ospreys face here, and how can we help them?
Guest speakers Tony Brake and Harvey Wilson have been monitoring
nesting Ospreys along San Franccisco Bay since 2012. Both volunteers
with Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, they are among the co-authors of
a paper on Bay Area Ospreys that was published this fall in the
journal Western Birds.
Thursday January 15
7 p.m. refreshments, 7:30 pm program
Northbrae Community Church
941 The Alameda (between Marin and Solano)
Berkeley
Free for GGAS members, $5 for non-members.
For more information, call us at (510) 843-2222.
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6. Introduce urban Californians to what John Muir sought to protect
The pioneering environmentalist John Muir was no fan of cities. In
1868, he hightailed it out of San Francisco as fast as he could for
the Sierra Nevada. He later referred to Los Angeles as "that handsome
conceited little town" and similarly skedaddled away pronto to the San
Gabriel Mountains.
Yet it was in Los Angeles, on Christmas Eve 100 years ago, that Muir
took leave of this world. A century after Muir's death, will the
cities of California serve as the graveyard of his legacy or a place
of rebirth?
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Introduce-urban-Californians-to-what-John-Muir-6004911.php
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7.
Trillions of gallons of water wasted every year...
One man's water technology watershed moment
Marketplace Monday, January 12, 2015 - 17:32
* Story
Trillions of gallons of water are lost to leakage and bursts from
pipeline utilities worldwide each year.
Amanda Little wrote a feature about the conservation efforts of one
man, Amir Peleg, for Bloomberg Businessweek. Peleg is an entrepreneur
who started TaKaDu, a water network management company that tracks
leaks in pipes using data collected by sensors.
Little points out that the U.S. probably won't be implementing
anything like this for a while. "Utilities have very little incentive
to implant these smart sensors in their networks and sort of absorb
the costs of that," she says.
TaKaDu primarily works with desert countries, or countries that have
been in drought conditions for decades. In those places, their pricing
structures penalize water use. This differs from water use in the
United States, which Peleg refers to as "all-you-can-eat water."
Little describes a difference in attitude towards water: "There has
been this consciousness in Israel and actually much of the world, that
water is a life or death issue. It is the wellspring of their economy,
and for that matter, their national security. Wars have been fought
around water for thousands of years. In the US, we're really only just
beginning to develop this sort of consciousness around water."
"This is a story about technology and a technological shift but it's
really a story about a changing of consciousness," she says.
Quick facts about water:
* 8.6 trillion gallons of water worldwide are lost to leaks each year
* For every $1 spent on reducing water leaks, $5 worth of water can be saved
* 30-35 percent of water pumped through the pipelines of utilities
worldwide is lost to leaks and bursts
You can read Amanda Little's piece, Israel's Water Ninja, in its
entirety online.
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8. From No Wall on the Waterfront
WATERFRONT ALERT:
NEWLY APPOINTED DISTRICT 3 SUPERVISOR JULIE CHRISTENSEN CLOSELY TIED
TO BACKERS OF 8 WASHINGTON LUXURY CONDOS
Last week, after two months of delay, Mayor Ed Lee bowed to the
demands of developers and filled the vacant District 3 seat on the San
Francisco Board of Supervisors by appointing corporate consultant
Julie Christensen. As Supervisor, David Chiu had worked with the No
Wall on the Waterfront coalition to stop 8 Washington, but his
replacement Christensen tried to hide her position, telling the San
Francisco Examiner she "would not say whether she had supported the 8
Washington development."
However, research reveals that Christensen is deeply tied and closely
allied with the forces behind 8 Washington:
* Christensen serves on the advisory board of the San Francisco
Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR): SPUR is a big
business group that strongly backed the 8 Washington luxury condos and
SPUR opposed giving voters a voice in whether waterfront height limits
should be protected or raised to build a wall of luxury condos.
* Christensen's political mentor and closest ally is Anne Halsted,
the Chair of the SPUR Board of Directors. Halsted has been one of the
most vocal backers of 8 Washington for years. In 2013, Halsted found
herself in hot water for misusing her government title as a member of
the Bay Conservation and Development Commission in a campaign ad
promoting 8 Washington developer Simon Snellgrove's deceptive ballot
measure.
* Christensen is also very closely tied to RENEW SF, a
pro-development and pro-8 Washington group founded by Halsted's
husband Wells Whitney. RENEW SF is chaired by Claudine Cheng, a
developer lobbyist who strongly backed 8 Washington.
With this news, it's time to begin preparing for a big battle ahead to
once again protect San Francisco's unique and spectacular waterfront
from those who want to turn it into a wall of luxury high-rises and
massive developments to serve their own agendas. Working hard and
standing together, we can and we will protect the waterfront that
belongs to everyone. Stay tuned.
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9. Comet Lovejoy, from Bob Hall:
I got away from the street lights and was able to see Comet Lovejoy
last night (1/13). It doesn't look like a star or planet. But it
stands out because it looks like a circular green blur. The attached
map showing its daily location was pretty accurate for me.
http://io9.com/how-to-spot-comet-lovejoy-with-the-naked-eye-1678711998
JS: Don't look for it tonight, with its murky skies. Try next fairly
clear night. Bob says you do need binoculars.
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10. Feedback
On Jan 11, 2015, at 10:36 AM, Dave Goggin wrote:
Hi Jake,
Is the human brain capable of thinking about nothing?
Yes, certainly.
Being into meditation, I've experienced a number of times having no
thoughts, only consciousness and awareness of body sensations.
This tends to happen in the meditative states known as the jhanas. In
the style I practice (see http://leighb.com/jhanas.htm) I notice that
starting in the 2nd jhana, my thoughts often stop altogether for some
time, interspersed with proto-thoughts that don't fully form into
thoughts before just fading away.
Dave: I submitted this response to the Guardian Weekly about three
weeks ago, but it hasn't printed it:
It is (I'm told), but it is evidently very difficult, which is why so
few people are able to stop the mental chatter that prevents us from
seeing things as they really are. The Buddha supposedly did it, and a
handful of others since.
Jake Sigg
San Francisco
On Jan 11, 2015, at 8:25 PM, Dave Goggin wrote:
Nah, working the jhana states (at least the easy versions) just takes
time & patience, like any other learned ability. I'm looking forward
to Leigh Brasington's book coming this year - that should make this
style of meditation a lot more accessible for people.
Of course that's a whole 'nother thing from the enlightenment levels,
which are indeed much rarer achievements.
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11. First airplane journey by a sitting president
On this date in 1943, Franklin Roosevelt completed the first airplane
journey by a sitting president. He needed to get to the Casablanca
Conference in Morocco to discuss strategy with British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill. German U-boats were making sea travel too perilous,
so his advisors agreed - somewhat reluctantly - that air travel was
the best option. Roosevelt left Florida in a Boeing 314 Flying Boat.
Nicknamed the Dixie Clipper, the 314 was a commercial, rather than a
military, seaplane, and it was fitted out comfortably with beds and a
lounge area.
They departed from Florida, and the journey took four days, due to
frequent refueling stops. They flew from Trinidad to Brazil, then
across the Atlantic to Gambia, and then on to Morocco. Roosevelt, 60
years old and somewhat frail, suffered some from the high altitude,
and had to be given oxygen, but he was in good spirits. He celebrated
his 61st birthday on the return journey, enjoying a birthday luncheon
over Haiti.
Writer's Almanac
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12. Notes & Queries, Guardian Weekly
What updates are needed for the Ten Commandments?
Sorry, but we're stuck with the decimal system.
Harvey Mitchell, Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
* Moses after coming down from the mountain: "Brothers and Sisters:
the good news is I've negotiated the number down to 10. The bad news -
adultery is still in."
Most of the 10 need to be revisited. For adultery how about "Do not
indulge in self-gratification to the detriment of others"?
CJS Jones, Birmingham, UK
* Nothing is written in stone.
Gregory Rosenstock, Bray, Ireland
* Your typical modern response to any of them would be: "Says who?"
Tijne Schols, The Hague, The Netherlands
* #Hashtags.
Jeremy Shusterman, Sydney, Australia
* Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's husband (either of you).
E Slack, L'Isle Jourdain, France
* Thou shalt tread gingerly gender-wise.
Nicholas Albrecht, Paris, France
* Thou shalt honour people's human rights.
David Isaacs, Sydney, Australia
* Thou shalt not forget the mistakes of the past.
Richard Orlando, Westmount, Quebec, Canada
* 1) Thou shalt not waste.
2) Thou shalt not believe a politician.
Philip Stigger, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
* Number 11: Thou shalt not sext.
Ann M Altman, Hamden, Connecticut, US
* Thou shall not add to or deduct from these commandments.
Dick Hedges, Nairobi, Kenya
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