I've commented about how our little corner of VT is changing due to the new weather, brought to us by a century or so of digging up and burning stuff that probably should have stayed buried.
Weather 2.0 is the mandatory upgrade to the buggy public weather beta. Like most betas, Weather 2.0 doesn't sound bad 'til you try it. Some features even sound kind of attractive - yay, warmer winters! But when you open the box, and start to use it, you discover things aren't so great - like the annoying pop-up Paper-clip Dude that insisted on trying to "help" you use Windows, back in the 90s.
:: Bugs
The first obvious sign of bugs in Weather 2.0: the bugs - like ones that aren't supposed to do so well in winter in Vermont. Weather 2.0 replaces "not supposed to" with "do."
New name for trees: swiss cheese with bark. Mill it into "lumber," discover it's useless.
Left: an infested spruce.
Dripping sap flows from the insect holes. Other trees have different kinds of holes.
For those in New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, repeat these words: "Turn Around, Don't Drown."
Make them automatic. As more roads flood and wash out from the additional 1 - 2" of rain expected to fall today, your life is in danger. A family in NH lost their 7 year old daughter when their car was caught in a flash flood yesterday.
A flash flood is DIFFERENT from ordinary flooding. Rain falling upstream makes its way downstream all at once, causing sudden and dramatic rises in the water level. This is not a slow rise over the course of hours, but a rise of feet in the course of seconds or minutes.
Source: Burlington Free Press
If you see water flowing across the road from a river, brook, or stream, it could be deadly. Turn Around, Don't Drown.
There is also a mud slide warning.
For those who don't live in these states, join me after the fold for a discussion of what I now call "Weather 2.0," some of its implications, and something I want to try to do about it.
Questions asked by: Orange Clouds 115 and Natasha.
Homework for all participants [and all you readers out there]: There are some myths about food in media, your job is to reframe the message when you see a food myth.
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Mark Winne - author of "Closing the Food Gap"
Jane Goodall's comment on the book: "It's heartening to find a book that blends passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor."
Q: With rising food prices, fed program food dollars not going as far any more. What needs to be done, and how can we move that discussion forward?
A: Lower income people paying much more for food. Food cost is already 20% of income for lower income familes vs much less for rest of us.
They're already lining up at food banks and food stamp offices in record numbers. They'll take an additional hit from these rising costs. We HAVE to act immediately in terms of responding to human need.
We haven't always informed our compassion with analysis and long term thinking.
Liveblogging Energize America presentation (note: all is paraphrased, please pardon typos, I can't type that fast!)
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Adam Siegel
My name is A Siegel, and I'm a carboholic...
[intros Jerome]
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Jerome a Paris: [Several charts of oil prices over the last few years] Mentioned that it was up to $130 3 weeks ago. It's down to 130, the problem is over, bubble is popped.
It has moved from non-noticeable to noticeable, and is now heading to painful. As you can see prices have gone up, but in actual terms, it's not EXPENSIVE yet. If you're just grumbling about it, it's not high enough yet.
Markets do not know where the price is going. They were saying for a long time, that no matter what, the price is going to be at 20. ... and now the assumption is that the price is wherever it is right now. So they're staying close to the pack and not going anywhere.
I'll be entirely out of the loop for the week. My husband's car died on Friday, so he needs a ride tomorrow.
Tuesday is medical fun day, getting my evil shoulder from hell injected - which of course will take longer than for most people, because I seem to have a knack for weird anatomy.
The rest of the week is going to involve becoming nomadic - because the septic intake and outflow pipes at the house we're renting have frozen, so water can no longer leave the house or the septic tank.
But wait! There's more! The best part is below the fold...
We've all seen cartoon scenes similar to the following:
A character takes an object of frustration, smashes it on the ground, and jumps all over it.
That's what a recent Presidential Executive Order does to the separation of powers.
I don't know if this has been covered in any depth, but I haven't seen any major dissection of it, so I thought I'd post.
On January 29, 2008, President Bush issued an innocuously-named Executive order. He seems to be a man of few talents, but he has raised the naming of bills with innocuous sounding names to high art. Like a master magician's sleight-of-hand, this administration's sleight-of-word is phenomenal.
Follow me below the fold to learn how he turned a reduction in spending into the end of Government oversight with nothing more than his magician's pen...
I'm sitting in Filene Auditorium at Dartmouth, waiting for the festivities to begin. The Impeach Bush & Cheney banner has been hung, and the room is rumbling with the sound of excited people.
For those who do not know about The Yes Men, get thee to their web site, ASAP. They have consistently turned the corporate world on its ear with their "hijinks," exposing hypocrisy and greed in ways that are simultaneously hilarious and sobering.
For the rest of you, the Yes Men have done it again. Posing as representatives of Exxon-Mobil and the National Petroleum Council, they today presented to 300 oil industry representatives in Calgary, Alberta, a new product - Vivoleum: an oil made from... well, go below the fold for the full story.
It's been another insane few weeks of trying to nail down the details and schedule, but we're there!
We've got John Edwards and Howard Dean's brother Jim tomorrow AM. Howard Dean closes the festivities on Sunday (his speech is free and open to the public. There are panels on impeachment, a grassroots Katrina recovery effort, Peak Oil, election integrity, and more than can be listed here. [Schedule]
Kossacks Jeffrey Feldman, Odum, GreyHawk, Luapt, David Lindorff, Frederick Clarkson and more will be there. Odum will live-blog.
Today is it for Whole Weekend tickets! Single-day tickets will be available over the weekend.
If you're feeling down or over-stressed, come laugh at the adventures of mataliandy after the jump...
Saturday, the Vermont Democratic State Committee held it's regular meeting. Luckily it was one of those beautiful warm spring mornings, because someone had called the venue, pretending to be from the Democratic Party, and canceled the meeting. We spent some time enjoying the gentle sunshine, drinking coffee and eating donuts, while the new Executive Director, Jill Krowinski, did a commendable job working with building management to get the doors opened. Who could imagine the dirty tricksters would care about our little gathering in Vermont!
On the agenda were a legislative update by the VT Senate President Pro Tempore, Peter Shumlin, who basically fricaseed our Republican Governor's lack of management skills, discussed property taxes, school funding, global climate change (see a good chunk of it on Green Mountain Daily - this diary is a shortened version of that), and Impeachment:
If one can have impeachment hearings for an indiscretion, then one should be able to have impeachment hearings for a war that killed many Vermonters, Americans, Iraqis, and others.
Highlights from the discussion and the resolution after the jump:
This Saturday morning, Vermont State Senator (President Pro Tem) Peter Shumlin will address the Democratic State Committee - where he will discuss one of the most important issues facing our country - the Constitutional crisis posed by an out of control President.
Senator Peter Shumlin may discuss other topics as well - such as the property taxes that affect us all, but he also plans to ask the committee to urge the legislature to begin the solemn process of repairing the US Constitution. For this, he will ask the committee to urge the legislature to transmit an impeachment resolution to the US house.
Senator Shumlin has opened a dialog with House Leader Gaye Symington, urging her to let the bill (which seems to be under lock-down) in the House Judiciary Committee to come to the floor.
Long ago and far away, there was a time when network television poked fun at power. It was a time when light hearted satire skewered cold-hearted politics. It was a time when Saturday Night Live was still funny, and SCTV made Canadians laugh 'til they cried.
Sadly, those times are gone. Network TV has ruled out funny in favor of stupid, or harmful, or propagandistic. But in the dark recesses of a network known mostly for it's special blend of "stupid" and "propaganda," there comes an occasional spark. Fox, the progenitor of what some call Faux News, has brought us this little satirical gem:
This diary compares the Energize America Fair Grid Connection Act (formerly Net Metering Act) to pending legislation: HR 729, the Home Energy Generation Act.
We need your input to make this comparison crisp enough to count as "Ready for Prime Time" where Prime Time is Wednesday.
Note: "electrical entrepreneurs" are defined as: homeowners, small businesses and non-profits that have an account with the utility, and generate some or all of their own electricity from renewable sources.
As you read through the points below, ask yourself: Does this make sense? If there's anything that makes you re-read or think it over for more than about 1/2 second, then it's probably not clear enough.
Your input can make a big difference in the adoption of renewable energy in the United States, so get to it!
[update: added EA to title. Fixed major typo... or two ... make that three.]
It looks like the voters of 29 Vermont towns. The people who stood around collecting signatures to get resolutions on the "warning" or "warrant" for Town Meeting (the warning is the list of items on which the voters will vote in a given town)when we gather on town meeting day.
[Update] New count: up from 29 towns to 35 towns!
This is huge, because as of Saturday, there were only 25 towns with resolutions in the Warrant. That means that in at least 10 towns, people stood up at the end of the day to ask for this resolution to be discussed. More on the flip...
Two days ago, the VT Legislature passed troop withdrawal resolutions. Some view state-level resolutions as meaningless - they're non-binding on anyone for anything. However, they send a "sense of the state" to the national delegation. The national delegation doesn't have to follow up in any way, but they often do. Why? Because the state legislature only sends a message if there's overwhelming public support.
Today, Senator Leahy had the spoke on the Senate floor. Here is a choice quote:
As one who for years has fought for veterans benefits, for fair treatment for the National Guard, for armor for our troops who were sent into battle unprepared, and for replacing the depleted stocks of essential equipment that our troops need and depend on, the absurd accusation that it is unpatriotic to disagree with a policy that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and created a terrorist haven in a country that before posed no threat to the United States, has worn thin.
...
It reminds me of my days as a prosecutor. When a defendant was caught red-handed, the predictable response was to attack the accuser. ...
[Adapted (nearly verbatim) from an announcement email sent by Joseph Gainza]
The Vermont Senate and House passed resolutions calling for "the orderly withdrawal of American Military forces from Iraq to commence immediately." The first legislature in the nation to pass such a resolution, the Senate vote was 25-4 and the House vote 95-49.
It includes an amendment strengthening the statement of support for the troops.
{[update: added bold and fixed a typo]
[2nd update: fixed title in response to a comment]
Then I screamed at my daughter to get out of the house...
... and leapt toward the fire extinguisher. The tiny bits of flaming foam insulation that had landed on me had gone out without any damage, but the fireball had also ignited the foam along the crack I had just filled, and the masking tape around it.
Thus our experiment in low-carbon living has taken a short hiatus.
We live a very strange life. As an example, on the first multi-day car-less bike trip my husband and I took, we had to buy a lawn mower. It's a long story...
So people who know us in real life, would not be surprised to hear me say that we've moved in with Dad for a short time because our refrigerator became a blow-torch. They'd just wait for the story, and try very hard (well, maybe not) to not double over laughing.
Back in the year 2004, there was an election - a Presidential election. Leading up to that fateful day there was a primary. In that Primary was a candidate named Howard Dean, a Doctor who had been Governor of the tiny state of Vermont.
Sure there were other candidates, some of them quite good, but Dean had a message that resonated with many of us who were looking to change the Republican tide that had swept over the country 4 years earlier: You Have the Power.
From those 4 words, a movement was born - a movement that accidentally united average folks with computer geeks, creating the phenomenon we all now call the "netroots." The netroots isn't just bloggers, it's people committed to democracy using tools that provide tremendous power for networking and information sharing. Tools that were truly in their infancy until some tech-savvy folks decided to attach them to the Dean campaign, morphing those words - You Have the Power - from slogan into reality.
The first obvious sign of bugs in Weather 2.0: the bugs - like ones that aren't supposed to do so well in winter in Vermont. Weather 2.0 replaces "not supposed to" with "do."
