Today in some good news (for some, although I imagine there are those that don't consider this good...)

"The Fish and Wildlife Service set aside 187,000 square miles (484,000 square kilometers) off Alaska as the threatened bears' habitat, which means any project that could impact the animals' way of life must undergo careful review. 'This critical habitat designation enables us to work with federal partners to ensure their actions within its boundaries do not harm polar bear populations,' said Tom Strickland, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks."

From the AFP

Today in More Reasons to Appreciate the Freedoms I Have

"In June 2009, Asia was asked to fetch water while out working in the fields. But Muslim women labourers objected, saying that as a non-Muslim, she should not touch the water bowl.
A few days later the women went to a local cleric and alleged that Asia made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed." Now she is sentenced to a hanging.


Full Story Here http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h7wwqd-U511ibnXJeBP5MB9ev6Lg?docId=CNG.34d413ddaf37cdcea164fb9b026494b1.401

Mushroom gardening

When you live on a mostly treed property in Coastal Oregon, the most logical thing to farm has to be mushrooms. Over the past few years, I have tried a variety of approaches to inoculation - plugs, chip spawn, scattering whole fruiting bodies, stacking new wood next to producing wood, transplanting trees from fruiting areas, etc.
After a few years of this, we have successfully established one thriving chantrelle patch and another nascent one. Additionally, we noticed a large patch of large (about the size of my palm) oysters fruiting in the upper portion of a living alder snag. We did a lot of watering in the summer, and I believe this is what did the trick - I have had trouble with my plugged logs drying out. Live and learn I guess.

Haiti Cholera Outbreak

This image is from the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11767795

Funniest quote ever, "He like tenses up and he's like grrr and I'm like what in the world is going on and I look across the street and there's a coyote," explains Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen describing an encounter between his dog and the coyote." From KGW

NCLC News

North Coast Land Conservancy staff just spotted the first coastal coho of the season making their way up Thompson Creek on one of NCLC’s favorite properties in Seaside. Fall is a beautiful time of year on the Oregon Coast, and this month we have some great programs to engage and inform you about this amazing landscape we all treasure- hope to see you there!

Listening to the Land: Foraging on the North Coast

With Carla Cole, Natural Resource Manager, Lewis and Clark National Historical Park
Wednesday, November 17, 7-9 pm at the Seaside Public Library

People living along Oregon's North Coast have been eating locally for thousands of years, and indigenous foods – from berries and mushrooms to seafood and elk – continue to be an important part of our region's food system. Carla Cole is a local food enthusiast with an adventurous taste for indigenous foods. Her tales of foraging for truly local food will inspire you to look at coastal native plants in a whole new, and tasty, way. She will also share stories about how native plants have traditionally been harvested and prepared by the Clatsop and Nehalem tribes that have lived on the coast for generations.

Locally harvested refreshments will be provided by North Coast Food Web.

Listening to the Land is a monthly Winter Natural History lecture series presented by North Coast Land Conservancy and The Necanicum Watershed Council. You can find our full schedule here.

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Saturday Morning Stewardship: Thompson Creek Invasive Plant Removal

Saturday, November 20, 9am-Noon, Thompson Creek in Seaside
Contact Celeste Coulter at celestec@nclctrust.org or (503) 739-2355 for information and location directions

Giving native plants a chance to grow and thrive is the theme of November's Saturday Morning Stewardship program. Come help remove invasive blackberries from around native plant habitat on one of NCLC's most special conserved properties: Thompson Creek in Seaside. As part of the morning, we'll explore a mature Sitka spruce forest and watch for giant coastal coho who come back this time of year to spawn in the upper reaches of the creek.

Remember to bring gloves, rain gear, a snack and water. Tools will be provided. We will not have access to public restrooms.

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Save the Date!
Gifts that Make a Difference 2010

Saturday December 11, 11 am -5 pm
Mc Tavish Room at the Liberty Theatre, Astoria

Give the gift of land conservation this holiday season! NCLC volunteers and staff will be at the Gifts that Make a Difference fair in Astoria on December 11 from 11am -5pm, along with volunteers from over two dozen other North Coast organizations that all work to make our North Coast Community a better place. Come say hello, and enjoy refreshments, music and lots of good cheer to get you in the holiday spirit.

You can honor friends and relatives with a gift to NCLC in their name, and receive a lovely acknowledgment card to give letting them know that their holiday gift is the continued conservation and protection of this beautiful Oregon Coast that we all love and treasure.

If you can't make it to the Gift Fair, but want to give a gift to NCLC in honor of someone this season, please contact our Development Director Teresa Retzlaff at (503) 738-9126 or teresar@nclctrust.org. You can also make a donation either by mail or online. Please indicate who the gift is in honor of, and provide an address if you want the acknowledgement card sent directly to them. We can also send the card to you if you wish to hand deliver it.

We are so thankful for all our wonderful supporters and volunteers! You are the key to helping NCLC work towards our shared vision: a healthy, connected Oregon coastal landscape where people, plants and wildlife all thrive.

Best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at North Coast Land Conservancy!

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North Coast Land Conservancy is supported in large part by donations from people like you. Please consider supporting us!

More sadness, when will we get some good news?

"Returned runaways are often shot or stabbed in honor killings because the families fear they have spent time unchaperoned with a man. Women and girls are still stoned to death. Those who burn themselves but survive are often relegated to grinding Cinderella existences while their husbands marry other, untainted women."

This is horrible and I don't recommend reading it. It is really sad. Here is the link http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/world/asia/08burn.html?ref=world

This Just In - Journalism Rife with Plagiarism!

Check out this piece in the Mercury about plagiarism, oh wait it is actually in the Consumerist... or find it in many other articles on Google, written all slightly differently but the content is basically the same.

Like millions of other bloggers I collect bits and pieces of news I find interesting, important, or relevant to share with the world, or the small bit of world that reads this blog. Digital gossip. The republishing of works is sometimes illegal and sometimes not. For instance the statesman journal states no reproduction, republication, or rewritting. While other news posts give you a track back code automatically when you copy part of the articles, encouraging bloggers to talk about their works! What a concept, word-of-mouth advertising.

As an author almost nothing I write is new. I am a private environmental research scientist and I am often (not always) reporting on methods other people devised, implemented, and/or analyzed. That is what good journalism is. The ability to synthesize and distill out the junk, engage the reader, and get the point across.

The world is in turmoil. Millions of people are starving, a great part of our human community is living in oppression, people can't feed their families, etc. Although I would like to travel the world and report on the Aung San Suu Kyi's of the world, I can't. I am a white, middle-class, American female mostly pre-occupied with paying my bills, running a company, and being a wife. But do I need to travel to Myanmar to report first person? There are scores of people already doing just that and doing a better job than I ever would because remaining objective is difficult. But by re-reporting their work I am cataloging this information with a slightly different index. Not every person watches Comedy Central or reads Slate. Readers may not get to every article that I do. Certainly not all of the email lists, private subscriptions (which for obvious reasons I do not republish in entirety), or conference/meeting minutes.

Above all else truth, justice, peace, and goodwill. Journalism should promote literacy (both language and politics) in whatever form to as many people as possible. This is the only way to a sustained peace.

Now straight-up high-jacking a piece without proper credit and then making money through adverts or commission is totes un-cool. There isn't anything wrong with re-reporting, just be honest. It doesn't really make sense to publish the internet either, that is kind of the point, we should be digitizing more print media.

Radioactive Rabbit

Original Post By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

A radioactive rabbit caught at Hanford just north of Richland had Washington State Department of Health workers looking for contaminated droppings Thursday. Contaminated animals occasionally are found at the nuclear reservation, but more often they are in the center of Hanford, far from town. The rabbit trapped at the 300 Area caught the Department of Health's attention because it was close enough to the site's boundaries to potentially come in contact with the public -- such as if it had been caught by a dog or if its droppings were deposited in an area open to the public.
Read more: here

If you have time, you should really read this piece in the Portland Mercury, http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/one-fine-day-in-the-swamp/Content?oid=3005863

The following quote is very thought provoking...

"In hedging between the political and entertainment worlds, Stewart [Jon] is able to have his cake and eat it too. He can engage on his own terms without being forced to answer for or speak out on any issues outside his wheelhouse. Those who govern are not so lucky. Politics are corrupting, or so they say. So, too, is celebrity. And here Stewart stands, with one foot in each, doing an admirable job resisting the pratfalls. But is that enough?"

Burma Election Fraud - No Surprise Really

Aung San Suu Kyi the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been in detention for 15 of the last 21 years, urged citizens not to vote, saying she "would not dream" of taking part. Her latest house arrest is set to expire Saturday. In recent days, security has tightened, with uniformed and undercover security more evident and the Internet slowing to a crawl, leading organizers to delay nonessential meetings. The opposition's performance wasn't helped by infighting. After Suu Kyi's party decided not to contest the election, leading to its forced disbandment, former members formed the National Democratic Force that fielded candidates in just 164 constituencies. That led to squabbling over, among other issues, who had rights to the bamboo hat symbol.But the two pro-military parties, the Union Solidarity and Development Party that fielded candidates for all 1,171 seats, and the National Unity Party that competed for about 900 seats, also displayed differences over economic and social issues. The national parliament will name a president, almost certain to be a former general. Theories differ on why Senior Gen. Than Shwe, reportedly in his late 70s, created two centers of power, the president and the head of the military. Some say it was an attempt to bolster his tepid legacy as a reformer. Others say it was part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to ensure no single leader could topple ..."

See the article in its entirety here

More mortgage craziness

We recently reviewed an account of Bank of America's continuing struggles and the byzantine accounting methods they use to describe the value of the company. As a business owner, I know how hard it can be characterize the true value of a company. What is confusing to me is that for banks, it seems as if there tangible assets, ie real estate and houses, and seen as a liability.

Bank of America acquired Countrywide Financial in 2008 for ~4 billion, despite the fact that they viewed it actual worth at less than zero. They made up the difference by adding a 4.4 billion line item of 'Goodwill'. I am not sure how goodwill is really valued, but that is a lot. I read this to mean that they viewed the long-term value of their purchase as higher than the to date market value.

At the time we moved into our house, we had just recently started consulting full time. As a result, we did not have the employment history required to get a mortgage. Our family graciously took on the mortgage itself, which we pay each month. The mortgage was sold back and forth between Wells Fargo, Countrywide, and another group I can't recall now - ultimately falling under the BofA umbrella I believe. It is strange to have the ownership of our home be tied to such large groups who treat individual mortgages the way they do.

Myanmar/Burma Held First Elections in 20 Years

"The former political party of Aung San Suu Kyi – the imprisoned democracy icon who won in a landslide in 1990 but was prevented from ruling and has been under off-and-on house arrest ever since – had urged a national boycott to protest the unfair rules. But some opposition candidates and informal monitors claimed that turnout, which has only symbolic importance, may have been around 60 percent, despite the boycott campaign."

Sealions Contracting Leptospirosis at Alarming Rate - Can Transmit Disease to Humans, Dogs, Rats

This is pretty important so I decided to repost the entire article, "

Rise in sea lion deaths traced to disease

By MARK FLOYD, OSU News & Communications gazettetimes.com | Posted: Saturday, November 6, 2010 2:45 am

A sharp increase in the number of sick and dead California sea lions has been reported along the Oregon Coast in recent weeks, and necropsies conducted on dozens of the animals suggest that many may have died from leptospirosis.

Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease found in a variety of animal species and can be transmitted to humans, said Jim Rice, an Oregon State University scientist who coordinates the statewide Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

"We are now getting calls for multiple sick or dead sea lions daily, which is higher than normal," said Rice, an OSU Marine Mammal Institute researcher who works at the university's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. "The overall number of sea lions also has risen, so it's difficult to compare mortality rates from year to year, but certainly we're seeing an increase in animals that test positive for leptospirosis."

Rice and his colleagues at the stranding network have sent dozens of dead animals to the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in OSU's College of Veterinary Medicine. And though not all of the animals have tested positive, many showed clear signs of leptospirosis, which raises concern about human health.

Kathy O'Reilly, who heads the bacterial section of the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, said leptospirosis can be virulent.

"There have been 50 to 100 cases per year in the United States reported to the Centers for Disease Control," O'Reilly said, "and in 31 percent of the human cases it is traced back to contact with infected rats, and in 30 percent of the cases, it is tracked to infected dogs."

Dogs can be infected with leptospirosis through contact with stricken seal lions. Rice said coastal visitors should always avoid sea lions on the beach and during outbreaks of leptospirosis should keep their dogs on a leash. The disease can be transmitted by direct contact, or even through contact with damp sand, soil or vegetation contaminated by the urine of infected animals.

Rice said that in 2009, the network had 350 reports of California sea lions stranded on Oregon beaches - either dead or severely ill and presumed to have died. And Oregon is on pace to surpass that total this year, he said.

"Typically, sea lions with leptospirosis are quite emaciated and lethargic," Rice said. "Those that don't die on the beach may get washed out to sea and die, or they may move elsewhere. It's possible that some recover, but these are very sick animals."

Persons seeing dead or sick marine mammals on Oregon beaches can call the Oregon State Police at 800-452-7888."

Find the article here.

BLM to Spend $32 Million in Stimulus on Oregon Projects

"The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will be spending $32 million from the federal economic stimulus program on projects in Oregon. The money is part of a total of $305 million going to BLM projects around the country, and $3 billion to the U.S."

Check out the full article here http://blog.oregonlive.com/terryrichard/2009/05/oregon_blm_details_stimulus_mo.html

Tansy Ragwort Officially Scourge of the 70s

From the ODA, full article at, "http://oregon.gov/ODA/news/100818tansy.shtml"

"08/18/2010 Biocontrol should keep the noxious weed in check

Farmers and ranchers in Western Oregon this summer are noticing patches of the telltale bright yellow flowers of tansy ragwort- a noxious weed once the scourge of the 1970s. But the experts at the Oregon Department of Agriculture say it's no cause for alarm as successful biological control agents should keep the plant from making an unwelcome comeback to prior levels.

The equation is simple- as the tansy ragwort population grows, so do the populations of flea beetles and cinnabar moths that feed off the weed. It's all part of a natural cycle, and ODA's Noxious Weed Control Program believes the good insects will maintain the upper hand.

In the last couple of weeks, ODA has been receiving calls from landowners or their neighbors anxious about the return of tansy ragwort, now in a very visible stage. The outbreaks are spotty and localized. Still, many Oregonians remember the bad old days when tansy was so invasive in Western Oregon that cattle and horse owners reported more than $4 million in losses each year as their animals grazed on infected pastures. Too often, the leaves of tansy grew among the grasses consumed by livestock in the spring, leading to sickness and death."

Kitzhaber Oregon Governor

I am happy, he is a very conservative governor. I prefer experience to height. Not to say that height was all Dudley had to offer, although if his governance is anything like his game than maybe it was. Congrats Kitzhaber.

Bradwood Landing Project Cancelled

From OPB News, "

The Oregon Court of Appeals has ruled against a county’s approval of a liquefied natural gas project, likely ending what dim chances it still had of construction.

The Bradwood Landing project was already on hold, because its backers had gone bankrupt.

The appeals’ court decision upholds two big objections to the project: that the terminal would be too big for the local zoning and that mitigating for salmon habitat destruction isn’t the same as “protecting” it.

Columbia Riverkeeper director, Brett VandenHeuvel, says the decision sets a clear standard for other big projects on salmon-bearing rivers.

Brett VandenHeuvel: “Protect means protect. So, when state and local law requires the protection of vital salmon habitat and the protection of access by fishing boats to salmon, it’s not ok to destroy that habitat and destroy that access say ‘well, we’re going to try to make it better someplace else’.”

VandenHeuvel says the ruling is especially relevant for the Oregon LNG project, proposed down the Columbia River in Warrenton."

I wonder if this will apply to landuses other than petroleum...

Find the original post here, http://news.opb.org/article/17585-bradwood-landing-decision-may-affect-other-lng-projects/

Telepathic Actuator (Emotive) Built in Portland Oregon!

"Mind over matter? With this game, that adage becomes reality.
With the invention of the Emotive you put on a headset – and concentrate. The maker of the Emotiv says your brain waves power a fan, which then moves a ball up and down at your whim.
And researchers say this is just the beginning of what you eventually will be able to move with your mind. The future is being created right in Old Town Portland. "

Check out the full article here http://www.katu.com/news/tech/106625274.html

Chinese Activist Detained for Subversion, Again

"Activists say a Chinese man has been detained on suspicion of subversion while handing out fliers about imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

Many Liu supporters have reported police harassment, but the new case is more severe because a trial and prison sentence are possible.

Guo Xianliang is an engineer who writes online about democratic reform but is not a well-known activist. The China-based rights group China Human Rights Defenders said Wednesday he has not been in trouble before.

The rights group and fellow activist Ye Du said Guo disappeared Thursday while handing out fliers in the southern city of Guangzhou. They say police told his wife Tuesday he was being detained.

Police in Guangzhou had no immediate comment."

Aghhh! Also regarding this topic "According to London's Daily Mail, reports are surfacing that Chinese officials pressured judges into giving lower scores to [Miss World] competitor and early favorite, Norway's Mariann Birkedal. The article suggests that tensions between China and Norway, resulting from a controversial Nobel Peace Prize choice, led to the decision. Officials were upset that the Oslo-based Nobel Prize committee honored Liu Xiabobo, a democracy campaigner jailed in China, the Daily Mail reports. Birkedal made it to the top seven, but was cut before the top five."

According to London's Daily Mail, reports are surfacing that Chinese officials pressured judges into giving lower scores to competitor and early favorite, Norway's Mariann Birkedal. The article suggests that tensions between China and Norway, resulting from a controversial Nobel Peace Prize choice, led to the decision.

Officials were upset that the Oslo-based Nobel Prize committee honored Liu Xiabobo, a democracy campaigner jailed in China, the Daily Mail reports.

Birkedal made it to the top seven, but was cut before the top five."

Double Aghhh.

Grey to Green Initiative

Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services' Grey to Green Initiative is a five year plan dedicated to achieving the following environmental targets in the city of Portland:

- 43 acres of new eco-roofs
- 83,000 new street and yard trees
- 920 new green street facilities
- 800 acres of treatment for new invasive species
- 419 acres of natural areas acquired
- 350 acres of re-vegetation
- 8 culverts removed or reconstructed to enhance fish passage

We are currently about halfway through the timeline. You can see periodic progress reports on the BES website.

Love Your River

The Oregon Environmental Council has put together a great program to get everyday citizens invested in their health of their own watersheds. Each month, Love Your River presents a different set of (very basic) challenges citizens can agree to follow that month. In doing so, you're entered into a drawing - this month, the prize is a set of bike saddlebags! If you enter six challenges a year, you're entered into the grand prize drawing: a family size tent from REI, a set of camping kitchen gear, and two inflatable camping pads.