The dawn of Rodan

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Look at this monster. This is what greeted me when I raised the honeycomb-type window shade in my bedchamber this morning.

I see hawks in the yard fairly often owing to all the hawk feeding stations (i.e., songbird feeders) I have deployed throughout Moronica International State Park, the confines within which I live. But when I raised the shade, this juggernaut startled me all the way from the back of the property, at least 50 ft away from the window. My best guess is that his body alone, excluding his head and tail, was the size of a football.

Naturally, the battery was dead in the Nikon D-80 I've hung by the windows for such occasions. But Rodan seemed to be taking his time, so I was able to load a fresh cell, open the special non-screened shooting gallery window in the so-called breakfast nook adjoining the master suite, and began firing off snapshots. The zoom lens, extending only to a maximum of 200 mm, is barely adequate for capturing detail at such a distance.

After spazzing out just to make sure I captured something, I slowed down to start watching in order to select shots. The raptor's head was pretty mobile while eviscerating his breakfast, so timing matters. (I've never used a motor drive to capture "the decisive moment" through an accident of statistical probability since I consider it to be lazy.) While watching more closely I noticed some interesting detail accompanying nature's majestic pageant of evisceration. Pictured is an example.

After capturing about a dozen shots I put the camera away. And then, a minute later it occurred to me that I was stupid for not trying to sneak up on him for a closer view. So I got out the D-80 once more and sneaked out the quiet way---out the front door and around the west side. I couldn't get any closer, but I was able to shoot from a different angle. Obligingly, Rodan pivoted clockwise to show me a couple of profiles. Here is the best:

After this shot, I moved closer and Rodan effortlessly hopped over a 5 ft. fence with a partial squirrel carcass in its talon. Neither a Cooper's hawk nor the sharp-shinned hawk is large or strong enough to own a squirrel like this; I've watched and photographed one (either/or) be thwarted by your typical, everyday d-bag squirrel for several minutes. I have never seen this species before at close range, and my quick effort to identify it using my phone app turned up nothing. I think this is the same bird I pointed out to Beer-D recently, looking every bit the monster soaring lazily at 200 or 300 feet aloft. Apart from his size, I can't find any hawk species native to this area that has a clear, white breast. Also distinct from the local populations is the eye color---almost a light green-gold---and the rufous-brown shading behind the eye and around the beak. (However, the color around the beak might also be a swab of squirrel blood.) Judging from the tail so nicely displayed in this photo, he's (she's?) obviously not a red-tail. But then, there are differences in species based on gender, age, and even subspecies variants.

It will be a day or two before I can identify this beast. Maybe there's a bird watcher reading who knows what it is. If you click on either photo, it should display itself much larger.

Cavalcade of marsupials

*

It turns out I was correct about the massing of the terror prowling the night kitchen here in my private domain, The United State Of Moronica. Not a mouse. And happily, not a rat. Fifty50 reader Carlos Magnus was kind enough to lend me a small steel live trap, which I deployed Monday night somewhat arbitrarily in front of the basement door against the breakfast nook wall. I loaded the bait tray with a nice Japanese rice cracker thinly coated with peanut butter on each side (for good adhesion to the tray).

At about 0330, around the corner from the head of my bed, I heard something fairly large but sluggish rattling around in the cage. Since I hadn't set the catches on the trap correctly, my prey almost worked himself out before I got him out the front door. Not a raccoon, either: a possum that was almost too large for the cage! Since this drill interrupted a sleep cycle I could barely navigate or perceive what was happening, but felt satisfied with my high-level trapping achievement and quickly drifted off as soon as I hit the mattress.

On a whim, "just in case," I reset the trap again the next night. And I'll be a suck-egg mule if I didn't hear the goddam cage rattling around at the crack of 0230! Luckily, this coincided with the conclusion of a sleep cycle, apparently, and I had the presence of mind to grab the Nikon D80 and take a mugshot of this guy.

Not the same prisoner I took the previous night. Significantly smaller. For reference, the baseboard behind him is about 3 inches high. I was pleased that the creature remained calm and also well behaved, elimination-wise. Having set the trap latches correctly this night, I carried the trap onto the porch and gave him early parole. Of course, on the third night, when I caught another motherfucking possum (same trap, same place, at about 0130 this time), it occurred to me that the specimen pictured above might have found his way back into the crib from the staging area of my porch. He seemed a bit smaller than Two of 4, though (that's right---four!), so it may have been another sibling. Anyway, with great cunning I released the latest addition to my collection all of 15 feet away from the porch, and he made a beeline across the street to hopefully break into a neighbor's house.

Last night, I deployed two live traps (one in the basement) and came up with No. 4 at about 0230; possibly even a bit smaller than No 3. This time I let my captive chill in the cage on the porch for the duration and took him into work with me. While tempted to release him in the foyer of Rudy's apartment building or inside of Walmart on Prospect, I found an unkempt field for the release. Understandably, Four of 4 was showing some teeth to reflect his poor attitude after a noisy, bumpy ride in in the back compartment of the station wagon, but still behaved well enough.

So tonight, in a few minutes I'll swallow a handful of pills and wash 'em down with 8 oz of gin in preparation for bedtime. But again with double-barrel traps baited with a succulent midnight snack for the herd of marsupials in the basement.

The power elites are sissies

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This Balloon Juice page has been hanging open in a Firefox tab on my machine for the past week. I wanted to link to it here for two reasons.

First, the author points out a corporate media meme that should be troubling all of us these days: the idea that us everyday slobs have no business criticizing individuals and corporations who turned the global financial system into a pyramid scheme or whose possibly criminal negligence is responsible for runaway pollution of the Gulf of Mexico, and by extension that the President of the United States --- our First Among Equals --- is an unseemly "bully" for threatening to hold them accountable for their acts. That meme, of course, does not extend to a president's nakedly unconstitutional breaking of international treaties, the instigation of illegal wars, the elimination of habeas corpus on demand, or the bulk wiretapping of electronic communications by innocent civilians --- it only applies to picking on corporations and the man-children who direct them.

Second, the post hints at just how unaccustomed to criticism and populist anger these elites have become after 30 years of The Good Life. There are PR campaigns, executed not only though advertising but by marquee-name news commentators, that scold citizens for "vilifying" financiers and oilmen for the destruction they have sown. Why would the captains of industry bother with such nonsense? Because we make them nervous. They do not like their parasitic livelihoods and lifestyles to be criticized, because they're important people and therefore entitled to anything they wish: unearned income, untaxed riches, unwarranted power, and immunity from accountability. They are nervous because many, many people are beginning to understand that they are parasites out of control. And that they are terrified sissies. There's not a man among them; candy-ass jabronis. Revel in their fear.

Nonlinear times

The Portland Cement Association defines progressive collapse as "a situation where local failure of a primary structural component(s) leads to the collapse of adjoining members, which in turn leads to additional collapse." This dread phenomenon in structural engineering was the immediate cause of mass casualties in the 1995 right-wing terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.*

Progressive collapse also can occur under stresses that are otherwise nominal, but produce catastrophic failure when members or materials have been under-designed or have been subject to accelerated degradation that cannot support a design peak load. [Editor's note: at this point I welcome and invite the intervention of our local mystery technical phenom, who may go by the moniker of Professor Mahatma Kane Jeeves, to correct my imprecisions or to augment my explanations if necessary, or both.] As a general matter, progressive collapse considered a nonlinear event.

Since I first began to grasp the potential magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon oilwell disaster I've felt that this event --- which would probably be containable in an alternate universe in which U.S. democracy can marshal resources to serve the public good about as effectively as it did in the 1930s and '40s --- could start a cascade of environmental, economic, and political failures that industrial age institutions just won't be able to cope with. Our institutions are already run through with stress cracks and fatigue. The human institutions, public and private, have been rotting from the head for 30 or 40 years, and now they're necrotic right through to leech-filled guts. The parasites are killing their hosts. They think it's funny, and that the chaos they create means they're smart. They don't believe the concept of extinction applies to them.

I don't like my own melodramatics any more than I like anyone else's. But just consider how a few major stresses could play out directly, and consider the feedback loops that could get started. We have one of the largest environmental catastrophes of the industrial era, but it's not only making pretty birds oily and dead but also destroying the ecological services that provide income for tens of thousands of families along the "south coast." Meanwhile, rich people will not stand for restoring personal and corporate marginal income tax rates to a level that can sustain emergency government response to natural disasters, industrial disasters, or disastrous levels of U.S. unemployment. Bigots and know-nothings blame their usual suspects. Cracker politicians and infotainment media deliberately inflame them. At this point in U.S. history it is no longer unacceptable to puke hate speech over the public airwaves or in "mainstream" political gatherings:

mass unemployment + inflamed bigotry + paranoia = mob action       Eq (1)

What if the Gulf disaster, perhaps with help from a few hurricanes, makes large portions of the coast, including New Orleans, literally uninhabitable both owing to environmental impacts and the fully played-out impacts of a collapsed regional economy. Is it possible that tens of thousands of people --- or hundreds of thousands --- might be displaced? If so, maybe it's a good thing that we have a nice surplus of (decaying) housing stock; they all can move to California, Vegas, and Florida (at least until the tarballs and dead seabirds reach the latter). And don't forget that if nothing else, the BP blowout will most certainly inflate energy prices. And also don't forget about the conversion of the U.S. banking system into a multi-level marketing plan, like Amway and Ponzi schemes.

Meanwhile, I don't understand, in any technical sense, the financial pathology afflicting the Eurozone or what China is doing to the world economy, but many reality-based people who are savvy to those kinds of things are scared about what they could do to us. North Korea and Israel have both done a great service to the cause of international instability over the past 2 weeks. Significantly, the one hot zone stresses the U.S. and China in a big way, and the other stresses the U.S. and its oil protectorates (and oil antagonists).

And no, Chauncey, the "free market" will not prevent a progressive collapse, or stop it once it begins. We don't have a user's manual or a helpdesk for this sort of thing. I've been writing about various aspects of this looming situation for several years as if each aspect is at least somewhat independent of the others. That's because I came to this point in history believing that a robust constitutional democracy and a consensus about the role of government provided all of the stability necessary to break big problems into smaller ones, and then solve them. But the black spew has got me worrying that there will be a much larger price to pay for the Reagan Revolution than crumbling infrastructure and a 3-decade white collar crime spree. It's an event that deeply stresses the economy, the environment, civic peace, and possibly geopolitics.

__________________

* Although the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, also has been attributed --- supposedly conclusively --- to this phenomenon, I feel certain that future historians and forensic engineers (probably members of whatever superior civilization buries our own decadent one) will document something very much to the contrary.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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I mowed the back yard tonight for the first time in several weeks. I'd purposely allowed the grass to go to seed, which I find helps to crowd out weeds somewhat effectively.

While plowing over a patch of no particular distinction, my peripheral vision rapidly picked up a teeming movement. Turning for a direct look, I was horrified to see what appeared to be an endless stream of scrawny infant mammals trying to erupt from the turf. These creatures---"bunnies," I presume---appeared as an apparition both revolting and pitiable at once. I immediately killed the mower and went to inspect for casualties. While pleased to find none, the sight of these animals trying to boil out of the earth, without much success, struck me with queasiness. What had I done? Stripped away their shelter, brutally but unintentionally like some reckless minor god who drinks too much.

I ran back into the house to grab my Sony F717 in order to bear witness to this cunicularic cataclysm I had caused. Yep, there they were, still roiling in dumbfounded terror (I presume), not knowing whether to run toward the light or away from it. Due to its weak sensor and lens focal length, the Sony was not the ideal camera to use in this low-light situation, and I didn't feel I had time to optimize the exposure, camera support, etc. The pictures aren't great, but this one best captures the nature and range of motion of these hapless creatures. Click through it for a larger view.

Now, if you are an animal lover and believe that it is appropriate to petition the ALL-ONE with prayer, then please feel free to use this Friday Evening Prayer Meeting to invoke protection for these infant rabbits. Myself, I will try to bear witness to the circle of life because I fear there is a high probability that any of the various neighborhood predators (excluding Rudy, who prefers starchy food) will attempt to devour these succulent, downy creatures before the sun rises over the alley. It was ever thus.

Fun fact: did you know rabbits are "hindgut digesters"?

Freedom Muffins?

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In the comments thread of my most recent edition of Wise sayings, our friend from across the Atlantic, Mr. Barry Coidan, posted a preemptive and seeming defensive comment about Americans (me in particular?) blaming Brits for the super-awesome oil volcano in the Gulf of Mexico. In my case that actually wasn't so, and I in fact agree pretty much 100% with Mr. Coidan's comment because let's face it: BP is not a Merrie Olde Company run by and for a jolly bunch of droll, quick-witted Limeys, but a global multinational energy corporation that is no more or less profit-crazed, ruthless, and unethical than any of the other five "supermajors" such as, say, ExxonMobil, Chevron, or ConocoPhillips. (U!  S!  A!    U!  S!  A!)

There's probably no news in this here Mobile Press-Register report (Mobile, Alabama, that is) about the spill that you don't already know if you're even halfway following the saga. But take a look at the comments thread, such as this one from the appropriately named "yellohamr":

The British are no better at fixing oil leaks than fighting the Germans. American will half to bail tham out of both.

Yes, perhaps the hapless Brits will half to depend on American Halliburton, everybody's favorite American oilfield services corporation, with headquarters in good old American Houston, Texas, America, to bail tham out! You remember: good old American Halliburton whose Chairman and CEO works and lives in Dubai, UAE, "to Focus [the] Company’s Eastern Hemisphere Growth." I wonder if the United States has an extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates.

Meanwhile, it seems like Barry C. was justified in his prophetic defense. Americans can be expected to trade in their Freedom Fries for Freedom Muffins. Starting in the Deep South, predictably.

Plan C (From Outer Space)

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I guess we all can rest a bit easier tonight. According to Reuters, BP has a cunning new plan to plug their deepwater runaway gusher in the Gulf of Mexico:

"They are actually going to take a bunch of debris -- some shredded up tires, golf balls and things like that -- and under very high pressure shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up to stop the leak," U.S. Coast Board Admiral Thad Allen told CBS News.

That's right, Ladies and Germs. Golf balls. And shredded tires, too. Sounds like a plan.

According to the Reuters report, BP also is drilling a relief well in order to stop the leak by relieving oil pressure at the well head, "but that could take three months." No, I don't feel like multiplying 90 days times 210,000 gallons per, either....

Ecological 9/11? [updated]

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The headline of this post employs a gimmick that I generally despise, namely the glib sensationalization of pretty much everything for the purpose of a catchy "hed." But in fact this thought is seriously occurring to me. BP is officially clueless about what to do now that the giant cofferdam* has failed to contain the gusher. Even if it had worked, I'm guessing the leak has already exceeded the size of the Exxon Valdez, and probably by a lot. Reporting I've heard about the rate of leaking have been ambiguous (i.e., conflicting or vague numbers about the leak rate), but the Alaska disaster involved about 11 million barrels gallons if I remember correctly. But, as I say, the most feasible idea for capping this thing has failed.

Now consider the reason why the cofferdam solution failed, as reported in the linked story from ThinkProgress above: frozen methane. BP had accounted for running into methane ice and had addressed it through engineering. But they found it forming either in much greater quantities or at a much faster rate than projected. Worldwide there's a lot of this stuff lurking way deep in oceans --- giant deposits of methane gas frozen into enormous slushy masses called clathrates. My senior science advisor has told me in the past that methane clathrates are pretty much benign, ecologically, unless they warm up enough to re-enter their gaseous phase and bubble up through the briny deep into our air supply. Methane, as it happens, is a much more efficient greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, meaning ton for ton it traps much more heat than CO2. And guess what can help those clathrates evaporate --- global warming! Ding! I do not know how much methane is venting from the wellhead or how long it will remain frozen in the gulf, but it's not a stretch to say that this spill may have a potentially serious impact on the atmosphere as well as the sea.

Also consider what might happen if the spreading slick were to find its way into the Gulf Stream. I don't know how likely it is that the gulf currents will take this sludge around Flordia and up the East Coast, but it certainly seems like something to be concerned about.

NIMBYism may sometimes, or often, be a hypocritical kneejerk reaction that people have against land or resource uses they would fully support as long as it's not in their back yard. But there are plenty of things that everyone has a right to expect will not happen in their back yard. What happens when a pernicious development happens in the back yard of, say, 5 or 10 or 50 million people? Here's what: Republican Governor Schwarzenegger flipflops without sweating a single bullet. And every law of politics says he was completely correct even though, uncharacteristically, it was also the right thing to do.

Finally, consider just how big this back yard really is when you take into account (1) ruined livelihoods, (2) fatal damage to coastal ecosystems and biodiversity, (3) ruined oceanfront real estate, and (4) destruction of aquaculture and seafood resources. Oh yeah: don't forget skyrocketing energy prices as the good folks at Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips and Chevron and Saudi Aramco (and, yes, BP) go for the jugular of the oil-consuming public to extract the greatest possible return on investment in this holocaust.

The real impact of September 11 for most of us (i.e., those of us who weren't killed, maimed, traumatized, or crazed with grief for someone who those things did happen to at one of the Ground Zeros) was that popular sentiment was manipulated by very bad people into support for two illegal, disastrous wars and one unitary surveillance state. And that act of terrorism --- as spectacular, amoral, and gut-churning as it was --- had no concrete impact on the vast majority of Americans (until our teenagers started killing and being killed overseas, and our civil liberties at home began slumping like a mudslide). I wonder what socio-political witches' brew might start fermenting if the dirt-cheap shrimp disappear from Red Lobster and the sunrise reflects from an oily sheen off Cape Cod.

Update: part of the ambiguity about leakage rates I noted above probably relates to the fact that the media sometimes refer to barrels, sometimes to gallons, and other times to tons. The Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons, not 11 million barrels --- my apologies. The unit conversion for 1 barrel is 42 gallons, meaning that if the leakage rate figure stated here (8th paragraph) is correct, that means roughly a quarter-million gallons ooze in each day. There are two unknowns: one is how long this will go on; the other is whether BP is lowballing the leakage rate for purposes of public appearances. So is the really a possible "Ecological 9/11"? We have to hope not, but the answer is directly related to how many "back yards" are trashed and how many bank accounts are strained as a result.
_____________________
* I get to use this word because I've actually written about cofferdams in the past... so there!

An explanation for Gurlitzer

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She of the heading above expressed confusion about this post in the comments thread. Too much shorthand in my work there, or I should say not enough longhand.

What's The Matter With Kansas is a book by Thomas Frank that examines why social conservatives reliably have voted against their own best interests (i.e., for Republicans) for the past 40 or 50 years. Wikipedia says Franks:

finds extraordinary irony in working-class Kansans' overwhelming support for Republican politicians, despite his belief that the economic policies of the Republican party are wreaking havoc on their communities and livelihoods for the benefit of the extremely wealthy.

So do I. So I tried linking to a report about Florida Gulf Coast fishermen who were applying for jobs to help BP contain the spill, but got snookered in return for their modest honorarium of $5,000 by agreeing in the fine print to waive all future rights to attempt recovering compensation for any damage or illness that might result from their efforts. In fact, some fishermen are so desperate for cash that they signed the contract with knowledge of the reamjob. That article included slice-of-life interviews with some of the affected people.

Enter stereotyping. I usually avoid this tactic, but let's face it: the "working class" in the Gulf states looks pretty much like an ultraconservative, government-hating Republican voting bloc. Anyway, instead of trying to find the article I originally intended to link I've found another one that's more to the point: a commentary by Dana Milbank of the Post that I cribbed from Cab Drollery with a bank shot through Eschaton. Here it is, and I think it's self-explanatory: people who live in Republican states usually have the luxury of hating government and taxation for legitimate public purposes because their cynical, scumbag leaders make it so easy for them. And for some reason these selfsame states receive federal dollars well in excess of what their tax bases contribute. But when there's a crisis, by Jesus Joseph & Mary, it's the government's duty to step in and make it all go away.

I know that reality is not as simple as all that, but it kinda just makes me want to say, "Fuck you, neighbors. The federal response will address only the national-level issues related to this disaster, such as future coastal safeguards for the entire nation and a comprehensive energy policy that rapidly dis-incentivizes the use of petroleum for fuel of any kind. If you all who benefit from fisheries --- or jobs therein --- and resorts, hifalutin beachfront properties, and quaint rum shacks want some help from the federal government, then first you need to ask yourselves your favorite question: 'Who's gonna pay for it?' Answer: you will pay through a surcharge on your personal and corporate income taxes, set to take effect as soon as you want it to. Before then, not a cent... socialist swine."

Caveat: the above is somewhat slopplily thought out and authored, but I'm just too damn worn out to revise this evening.

What's the matter with Kansas? [updated]

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Gulf of Mexico tutorial here.

Drill, Baby, Drill!

Update: I pasted the wrong link into the first graf, which naturally confused everyone who clicked through. I have replaced that link to a later post explaining myself. Sorry peeps.

Worst ever?

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Atrios muses that BP may end up being credited with the worst-ever human-caused disaster. Well, I won't necessarily argue about that because it remains to be seen. But take a look at these pictures from The Boston Globe online (as seen on Eschaton, op cit.). Photos 13 and 14 do a good job of conveying the general sense of what's going on in the water and the puny human response to same.

Even ignoring Hiroshima and Nagasaki as outliers, there are some other pretty heavy contenders for the Worst-Ever Human-Caused Environmental Cataclysm Award. Chernobyl, the flower of Ukraine, would certainly be a finalist. But I think it might be hard (for the moment) to top the utter destruction of the fourth largest lake in the world in Uzbekistan, formerly known as the Aral Sea. But still... maybe we can.

U!  S!  A!    U!  S!  A!    U!  S!  A!

Editor's note: attentive readers may notice that in yesterday's post on this topic I besmirched Russia only half-accurately as the villain behind certain apocalyptic environmental cockups. Neither aforementioned holocaust actually took place on Russian soil (conveniently for Russians), but were instead "a USSR joint." So take my inexcusable journalistic lapse with a grain of morphine.

Let's make the water turn black

*

Our finer citizens, many of whom believe that homos cause hurricanes, may need to consider how cute it is to chant "Drill Baby Drill." It's not cute: it's monstrous.

The drip drip drip of analysis (which BP surely knew two weeks ago) indicates that this disaster is on deck to be America's largest water pollution catastrophe, as projected in this NOLA Times-Picayune graph. I think Russia is still way ahead with China a natural favorite in the coming two decades, if that makes you feel any better. And anyway, don't worry: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is "losing patience," so we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So imagine the eastern Gulf of Mexico, with toxic fisheries and black, gooey beaches writhing with dying birds. Then consider the hypoxic dead zone in the northwestern gulf, made possible by petrochemical companies, agribusiness, and luxuriant suburban lawns. Heckuva job, trickle-downers. I wonder if our finer citizens will ever understand that hurricanes are not caused by homos, but by Republicans. (Volcanos, too.)

"To some it might seem creepy what they do."



(Composition by Frank Zappa for a Cousteau Society documentary, via YouTube, performed by Ensemble Modern.)