Unconventional Sources

I love the casual focus on marine biology, which many landlovers follow passionately, over at aquamarines. I’m particularly interested in the article there on a mysterious black swimming thing, filmed in the waters near shore at a sandy beach:

On the YouTube page for the video, one knowledgeable commenter informs the videographer that it’s a “Pacific skirt-fish”. Of course, there’s no mention of the “Pacific skirt-fish” anywhere else, including the Encyclopedia of Life, which nonetheless does have an entry for the Pacific white skate.

The creature in the video looks like a nudibranch to me.

Americans’ annoyance at the proliferation of pubescent personal water craft has grown since the onset of the recession and the returned rise of energy prices. As the rest of America seeks to establish responsible energy conservation, saps on seadoos burn gasoline like it’s 1975, just to go riding around and around in circles. Jerks on jet skis pollute the air and water with their inefficient engines going just a mile or two per gallon. Egocentric, they drain the economy of its real strength, pouring dollars into preschool fantasies of listening to loud motors make a vroom vroom sound.

Public anger at the dangerous and dirty jet skis has been growing for years. More recently, there’s been a movement to ban jet skis, recognizing the unsustainability of the mostly useless mini boats.

The following video makes a personal point of criticism against the predominantly out of shape people who ride jet skis instead of exercising their own muscles:

Grassroots International, based in Boston, Massachusetts, is involved in people’s struggles around the world. The group’s philosophy considers fair access to water, food and land as human rights, and focuses on supporting bottom-up political struggle as a means of securing those rights.

More than 86 percent of the organization’s donations go directly to the causes they support in places as far away as Eritrea and as close to home as the farms of the USA.

Industry public relations are one thing. They are backed up by enough money to make any idea – even the ludicrous idea of clean coal – look reasonable. Sure, clean coal power plants haven’t actually been invented yet, but that won’t stop coal companies from asking for government money for clean coal.

What does coal really look like? It looks like this:

This image comes to us from United Mountain Defense. That’s an Appalachian activist organization that is rallying in defiance of the mountaintop removal coal mining, which takes mountains covered in clean streams and forests, and destroys them in search of coal, leaving nothing but piles of barren, toxic rubble.

Here’s another picture of clean coal:

What? Watch the garden? But it’s the middle of winter!

No, no. Don’t watch the garden. Watch The Garden – a film about a community garden in Southern California that’s threatened by double-dealing local government.

See Black Valley Films for more information.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation has sued to remove Christian rituals and theological tests for public office from the 2009 Inauguration of Barack Obama to the position of President of the United States. This lawsuit has many Christian groups infuriated.

Why? Do these Christian groups really believe that their religion will fall apart unless it gains official sanction from the government? Is their God a government dependent?

It’s nonsense for right wing religious groups to claim that a ritual invocation of Christian spirits by a Creationist preacher like Rick Warren and the phrase “so help me God” are an important part of the presidential inauguration process. The truth is that for most of American history, there was no invocation prayer and no use of the phrase “so help me God” in the Inauguration.

Abraham Lincoln didn’t need it. George Washington didn’t need it. So, why are these right wing Christians so upset about a lawsuit that would merely return the Inauguration to its historical roots and constitutional foundation?

It seems to me that they’re really afraid of is the Constitution and American history. They’re trying to change America, not celebrate it.