Category Archives: Earth

Articles about all kinds of earthly things

The alleys turn to dust

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By Jeffrey the Barak.

When a city or a state runs out of money, it takes longer for potholes to be fixed in the roadway. It takes even longer for sidewalks to be repaired, despite their upheaval due to short-sighted tree planting decades ago.

But far behind on the priorities, are the service alleys. Behind the houses and the apartment buildings of Los Angeles, service alleys are slowly but surely turning back into the dust that lay there before humans arrived here.

There is no money to repair them, so every time a car drives over the remaining pieces of asphalt, the once smooth blacktop becomes smaller and smaller fragments, rubbing together to form finer and finer gravel, and finally dust. On a windy day, the average alley can shed a hundred pounds in weight, and that dust goes somewhere else.

There is enough gravel, that was formerly asphalt, in the storm drains to pave a small town. Assuming the city and state budgets never recover, we can also assume that our service alleys will one day become country dirt roads, dotted in mud puddles of various depths on a rainy day, and making their way slowly but surely into the Pacific ocean, as if this great flood plain never had a Los Angeles built on top of it.

What is in that dust?

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By Jeffrey the Barak

As usual, I spent a few minutes today playing with my trusty vacuum cleaner and also a Swiffer duster. And as usual, the vacuum and the duster each had plenty of dust to pick up.

Sometimes I cannot see dust without putting on my eyeglasses, but that’s another problem altogether.

So what is this dust? What was it before it became dust? And how come the room smells so fresh when it has been dusted, but the dust itself seems odorless? Dust raises questions such as these, and cars in the desert raise dust, such as this.

A glance around my home reveals a big clue as to why my dust looks as it does. I may have hardwood floors, but there is a long pile rug in the living room, and that sheds as soon as you look at it. Then there is hair. I shed, and so does my wife. We shed. So much of our dust is from the wool of the rug, which finds its way to the furthest reaches of the other floor of the house, and some of it is our hair.

But not all of it. We are traditionally told that dust mainly comprises of human skin, which we shed constantly as a barely visible fine powder. But I don’t believe it. While I do not dispute the fact that our skin contributes to house dust, more than half of the components of house dust find their way in from outside. Yes outside where every solid object in sight is constantly turning to powder. It may take centuries for some objects to turn to powder, but you can see it happening. Paint does it, brake pads do it, asphalt does it and concrete does it. And the dry soil of the Los Angeles basin does it, a lot. This outside dust is in every breath we take, and it enters the home just as our air does, through the windows, doors, air vents, and even through the solid walls and floors and ceilings.

It joins our skin dust in the bedsheets, on the baseboards and along the edges of the floor. Every day there is a little more to suck up into the vacuum cleaner, or a lot if I am wearing my glasses.

And every three months I open my air filter and there on the media is a  big layer of compressed dust.

It would not be so bad if dust was dead, but it is teaming with life. There are mites in the dust, and the mites defecate. And there are bacteria feeding on the waste from the mites. And bacteria, tiny as they may be, are what produces the smell in a dusty room. So if you can smell it, there are millions of the poo-eating monsters. A room that smells dusty, especially a bedroom, is full of bacteria.

So keep on vacuuming, never choose wall-to-wall carpet if you can have a hard floor, change your bedsheets a lot, and be aware of just what it is you are looking at when you see dust, with or without your glasses on.

One time everywhere in the world

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Have you ever seen a time zone map? Its a rectangular projection of our globe, like most maps, where small distances at the poles are stretched for thousands of miles and large distances at the equator look tiny by comparison. But my preference for globes is not the focus of this article.

The time zone map has twenty-eight vertical lines showing the time from “Universal Time minus fourteen” to “Universal Time plus twelve”. And somewhere in between is the International Date Line.

Universal Time is the same as the old Greenwich Mean Time in the Winter, but Greenwich (the United Kingdom) jumps ahead by an hour in the Summer for “Daylight Savings Time”, as do many other, but not all time zones. Other time zones that jump forward and fall back with the seasons do not always do it on the same week of the year, and many areas closer to the tropics do not change their clocks at all.

Add to this the odd thirty minute time zones and forty-five minute time zones that are observed in some countries, and the H zone, or UT-8, which the whole of China follows despite the vast distance from West to East, and some places in the Pacific that have UT minus fourteen so they can match their date with other related islands, and we have a world with a giant mess of silly time zones.

We civilized humans are an adaptable bunch of animals. Each year most of us adapt twice, when we move the clocks forward in Spring and back in the Autumn. And we twirl our watch crowns whenever we take a long flight across lines of longitude. Nothing bad happens when we change our clocks and watches.

So why don’t we consider one major change, once and for all and stay with it? Why don’t we do what airline pilots already do? Why don’t we adopt Universal Time for every place on the planet, and stop changing it with the season, or the longitude?

Yes it may be strange at first to wake up at 15:00 instead of 7 AM in Los Angeles, or go to bed at 04:00 instead of at 11PM in Boston. And it may be strange at first to have one daylight work day spanning two calendar dates. But there are many advantages for the time and date to be the same everywhere on earth.

It would really help The Republic of Kiribati, which currently has to bend the imaginary International Date Line like giant snake in order to have the entire nation of islands on the same date. and it would really help large wide countries such as China, Russia, Canada, Australia and the United States.

It would make daylight and actual days as perceived from where we are in the world more important than the numbers on a clock. We would be farmers, harvesting the light of the day. We would still rise somewhere near dawn and retire sometime after sunset, and we would still sleep in the dark, but the clocks around the world would all be the same.

The British would still be the lucky ones to have the sun at its zenith at noon on the clock, as they are today in the winter months only, but the rest of us would quickly get used to living by the sun and having an international standard for time in the new modern globalized society that we do business in.

What do you think? Please leave comments with your agreement with, or opposition to this proposal.

Lahaina Noon in Hawai’i

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Lahaina noon no shadow

(c) KITV.com

By Jeffrey the Barak

The State of Hawai’i is the only place in the United States in which you can lose your shadow, outside, in the middle of the day. when there are no clouds. In Hawai’i this is known as Lahaina Noon and it happens twice a year, but on different dates, depending where you are within the State.

At the equator, which is far South of Hawai’i, the Sun is also overhead twice a year, at the spring and autumn equinoxes, which are usually around March 21st and September the 21st. The twice yearly equinox gives every place on Earth a day as long as the night, but since the twilight before dawn and after dusk is a kind of daylight, the days seem longer than the nights, even at the equinox, and the further you are from the equator, the longer the period of twilight.

On each Tropic, right on the imaginary line on the globe or map at 23.5 degrees North or South, the sun is overhead once a year. For the Northern Tropic of Cancer it’s on or near June 21st and for the Southern Tropic of Capricorn it’s on or near January 21st. These dates are Midsummer’s day in the corresponding hemisphere.

For any place in the tropics, that is between 23.5 degrees North and South, you can lose your shadow on two certain dates each year. North or South of the tropical zone, the sun is never overhead.

Lahaina Noon is named for the old Hawaiian capital Lahaina, on the Island of Maui. Because Hawai’i is spread over a large area, the dates for Lahaina noon vary greatly from the last piece of dry black lava rock at South Point on the Big Island to a small rock off the Northern tip of the island of Kauai near the Kilauea Lighthouse.

In Honolulu, O’ahu,  Lahaina Noon is on May 26th or 27th and June 15th or 16th as the sun approaches and recedes from it’s rendezvous with the Tropic of Cancer on June 21st. The dates may vary each year because while our solar system is fairly consistent, our calendars are flawed by their strange political history.

In Hilo, Hawai’i, it’s usually May 18th and July 24th, because its further South.

In it’s namesake town of Lahaina, Maui, the dates are usually May 24th and July 18th.

 

Author Jeffrey the Barak thinks too much about stuff like this when he could be doing something useful.

 

How the Gnarl Jump will change the world

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By Jeffrey the Barak
April 1st 2011

Now that we have discovered the Gnarl Jump, and matter can be made to jump from spot to spot indefinitely, it can be used to turn wheels with pistons, or it can be used to endlessly power huge turbines.

The implications of using the Gnarl Jump to power turbines is huge. It can power the world, either through the traditional power grids, or via small generators on location.

Turbines are used to generate almost all electricity in the world, and they are driven by steam, water, fluid or air.

All of the following power generating systems employ turbines:

  • Nuclear fission
  • Coal burning
  • Gas burning
  • Oil burning
  • Solar parabolic collectors
  • Geothermal direct steam
  • Geothermal heat transfer
  • Hydro electric via dams or tidal blades
  • Windmills
  • Solar updraft towers.

In each case the turbines generate electricity with spinning magnets and the power goes down the transmission lines.

Now we can take each and every one of these systems offline and replace the turbine’s driving force with a Gnarl Jump device.

Obviously there is no associated global warming as no fossil fuel is burned. A little oil is needed to lubricate the turbine, but that is all. Nuclear fission does not emit greenhouse gasses but the obvious potential danger of the fuel is really too much of a risk. Even if there are no accidents, the fuel remains dangerous for thousands of years, and the chances of that being abused and used to kill are near 100% over such a long time scale and taking human history into consideration.

If each home and or business had it’s own Gnarl Jump turbine, we could eventually dismantle the grid and clean up the skyline.

And of course one little device in each bus, truck, car and motorcycle will make petrol and diesel fuels of the past. Electric vehicles will run forever around the clock without stopping for a recharge.

All former discussions about green power, global warming and nuclear dangers are now moot. All we have to do is figure out how to put the forests back.

For more information on Gnarl Jump, see GJaprilfools.org

Mauna Kea in Hawaii – Driving to the Summit of this Grand Volcano

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By Steven Anderson

The summit of Mauna Kea is called Puu Wekiu and it is at an elevation of 13,796 feet. This is the highest point of land in the Pacific Basin. An interesting fact about Mauna Kea is that if measured from the bottom of the ocean floor, it reaches nearly 30,000 feet which would make it the tallest peak on earth.

Visitors flock to Mauna Kea for a variety of reasons. There are 11 domes and 13 telescopes at the peak of Mauna Kea which attracts professional and amateur astronomers alike. Others come for the amazing viewpoints, unique bird watching and rugged hiking. Others come to Mauna Kea just to say they did so.

The drive up Mauna Kea takes about an hour. At the start, the driver will see typical Hawaiian tropical vegetation. As you pass sea level, the landscape changes to grass pastures and then into raggedy looking forests of koa and ohia trees. These thin out at 6,000 feet and the landscape becomes dominated by barren lava flows. The sub alpine regions found after the 6,500 foot level still support a few koa and ohia trees and even the rare mamane tree. All vegetation beyond 8,500 feet becomes very scarce.

The mountain is home to some excellent bird watching. The rare, yellow-crowned palila bird can be seen here. The endangered Hawaiian honey-creeper can be seen here as well. This bird only feeds on the seed pods from the scarce mamane tree. Less rare, but still interesting birds such as the uau (Hawaiian petrels), nene (Hawaiian geese), io (Hawaiian hawks) can also be seen on Mauna Kea.

The first step to reaching Mauna Kea is to drive Saddle Road (Route 200). This road is listed as off-limits by many of the car rental agencies. Thrifty will allow its rental cars on saddle road but advises against this practice. The roads are narrow with little or no shoulders and there are no emergency phones on this route should you encounter a problem.

You take the turn off from Saddle Road to Hale Pohaku and the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy Visitor Information Station. This leg lasts 7 miles and takes the traveler to 9,300 feet. This section can be driven by a normal car but it does feature very steep and windy roads. If you are driving a Thrifty rental car, the Visitor Center is as far as you are allowed to go. Harper’s Car and Truck Rental does rent vehicles for the exact purpose of getting from the Visitor Center to the observatory.

Please remember to bring warm clothing on this journey. Even in the summer temperatures can reach the low 40s. Also make sure to fill up the gas tank before you go. The steep grade and thin air pushes the car into very poor gas mileage and there is nowhere to fill up at the top.

(2006 – February) Steven Anderson is the Reservations Director for Hawaiian Discount Car Rentals, specialists in Maui car rentals. He has personally driven to the top of Mauna Kea and rates it as one of the most panoramic views in his travels to Hawaii. Please visit http://www.hawaiidrive-o.com.

No one knows how to stop it

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Photo credit: NASA

Anyone who lives in Valdez knows what is still under every rock on the beach. As of now, Louisiana will be the same. And no-one is able to prevent it. The only thing proven to remove crude from seawater, human or animal hair inside nylon stockings, was not deployed sufficiently to prevent landfall, and now it’s too late. What a sad day.

My plastic waste killed your great grandson

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Yesterday at lunchtime, I had a salad. After the salad was transferred from the mixing bowl to the plate I looked at what lay before me, and it was a lot of plastic. In fact it half filled my kitchen trash can.

The salad itself was a precut, pre-washed salad. But I washed it anyway, in the basket from the salad spinner, I washed it and span it three times until the water was not brown. Next to these packaged salads, on the same shelf are similar salads with added plastic cutlery, dressing in plastic pouches and croutons in plastic pouches. These are for convenient lunches, but these generally go straight from the market to the table, and don’t get washed three times. Mud for lunch.

The package was rigid, clear PET plastic, with a sealing ring of plastic around the top edge and with a third piece of plastic in the form of a full color label. I used salad dressing, from a plastic bottle. I added chopped up sliced pre-cooked turkey, from another hard PET plastic container, and finally some non-cheese slices, individually wrapped in plastic sheets, and wrapped as a stack in more plastic. It took a few scoops with both hands to get all this plastic into the trash can. Today the trashcan will be emptied as I pull the plastic drawstrings on the plastic bin-liner and take the trash down to the dumpster under my apartment building. And from there on, it’s out of sight and out of my life. Or is it? Will it be buried, burned, deconstructed or dissolved? Where will the packaging from my lunch be next week, next year, after I’m long dead?

So I begin to wonder, what food can I eat that will not make such a lingering mess? Can I get food, distributed within a short distance from my home in urban Los Angeles, and keep it fresh long enough to have it for lunch a day or two later? Can I do this without using any plastic? I Googled Earth-friendly diet and eco-friendly diet and it seems I’m late to the party. People are already doing it with farmers markets and cloth shopping bags and bicycles. A little less plastic is being made and disposed of. But with a growing population is this movement keeping pace with us?

I see mountains of electronic and plastic waste in the suburbs of cites in China. The ocean contains tons of slowly degrading plastic, being ingested by fish and mammals. And every day there is more and more. Can I really make a difference by doing one small thing, forgoing plastic containers, or being very careful to wash them out with chemical detergent and get them into the recycling bin? Can I be sure that it is really being recycled by the trash company even though my neighbors put the incorrect objects and substances into the recycling bin every day? Someone will have to sort it very carefully to separate my washed out salad box from a cardboard carton containing the last uneaten slice of pizza, and  a broken electric space heater. I’m not convinced it’s really being done.

So I can start gradually with a little bit of locally grown produce. I can buy less processed meat because the cattle ranches are ruining the planet, I can cut out some processed and refined foods because they cause a larger environmental impact with their manufacturing operation, and I can make sure I don’t eat the wrong kind of fish, the kind that is from declining or endangered species. Does this help the world when two hundred people an hour go through a drive-through lane to get a burger and a Coke? And what would happen if everyone did it? Would we even be able to produce the food for today’s huge population?

Yes I know this is an article of questions with no answers, but I’m not. the professor. I’m just a silly old jazz drummer who noticed a heap of plastic towering beside a lunch plate.

Oceans of Placka

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By Jeffrey the Barak

We all know that over long periods of time, land continents move, collide and separate, and oceans take on different shapes. Due to the rotation of the Earth, the positions and sizes and shapes of the continents have a significant effect on ocean currents.

In today’s world, the positions of the continents contribute to today’s ocean currents. There are five major rotational ocean currents on the globe today, known as gyres.

There have always been gyres, but only in today’s human dominated world, have the gyres also become garbage patches. Vast areas accumulating man-made marine flotsam.

The pollution in these areas consists mainly of floating chemical sludge, suspended plastic and other debris. Much of it can be seen from ocean-crossing boats, but for what we can see there is many times more of it that we cannot see. Some floats at the surface, and most floats below the surface at various depths.

There could be more than a hundred million tons of garbage in the North Pacific gyre alone. It does not all fall off ships. In fact, most cities in the world are situated on river systems, so a morsel of plastic thrown in the street in the Western USA or West of the Andes, or in Japan or Eastern Russia, can be carried by rain and streams and rivers and eventually take it’s place in the gyre in about five years.

Larger pieces are eaten by birds and fish and mammals. We find them in the stomachs of the dead. But as the plastic breaks down into smaller pieces, it works it’s way down the food chain. Even plankton, at the very base of the food chain, can ingest objects from the garbage patch.

So that plastic fork that we threw away in 1987 can show up as a trace amount of plastic inside a sausage on the end of today’s plastic fork.

If the plastic disintegrates entirely, it still exists in the form of toxic chemicals like PCBs and polystyrene. The seawater is no longer just water with dissolved minerals, it’s a suspension of man-made objects.

As we find more and more fish and birds with plastic in their stomachs, we also find that non-native species have invaded far and wide after being carried around the world attached to tiny plastic cruise liners.

Eventually we will need to find a way to take the pollution back out of the ocean and bury it deep on land, or we’ll all be poisoned and starving. But all that will take much longer than it took to add this stuff to the water in the first place, and it may even remain impossible forever.

A Humane Goldfish Bowl

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By Jeffrey the Barak

You can spend five-thousand dollars setting up and stocking a huge tropical reef aquarium, and the bastards won’t even look at you. But put a one dollar goldfish in a five dollar bowl, and that little fish will await your return twenty times a day, eager to play follow the finger and he or she will gaze at you and love you like a puppy dog.
Ethics.
If you ever play the game, or perform the exercise of, Word Association, then the the most common response to “Goldfish”, is “Bowl”.
The typical picture of a goldfish, in photographs, cartoons and on film, is a picture of a goldfish in a bowl. But if you let people know that you have a goldfish in a bowl, they will consider you cruel, and they will tell you that a goldfish needs to live in a long tank with an elaborate filter system, and then move to a pond when it matures.
There is probably one pond around per million goldfish. Most live, and die, in aquariums or in bowls.
So the question arises, how can a goldfish be humanely kept in a bowl? Is it automatically cruel, reprehensible and impossible, or is the noble rescue of a commercially bred goldfish from the pet store, and the keeping of such an animal in a bowl justifiable.
It’s all about the water.
Actually, it is humane to keep a goldfish in a bowl, as long as the water is good, and as long as the fish can be relocated to a pond or large habitat when it becomes mature, as in too big the live in the bowl. It is not automatically cruel to keep one in a bowl.
But a goldfish aquarium has features that are missing from a simple empty glass bowl full of water. There are many elements that remove or convert toxic chemicals from the water, and also elements that support living bacteria that help keep the water healthy for your fish.
These elements include gravel, biological media, cotton filters, carbon filters, air stones, bubble wands and more. Each has a duty as part of a system to remove harmful wastes from the water and to keep it clean, oxygenated and nourishing to the skin and gills of the fish. Even if you have a nice large aquarium with elaborate filters, gravel and air systems, it is quite easy to mismanage the systems and end up with cloudy, uncomfortable water that will make the fish sick or even cause them to die.
So then, if an aquarium system costing hundreds of dollars can be that bad, how could a bowl be better? The answer is simple, the bottom line is the state of the water. The fish only depends on the quality of the water and it does not matter if this perfect water is introduced as-is or if it relies on a system to make it so. In fact it is less cruel for a goldfish to be in a bowl of perfect water than it is to be in a less-than-perfect larger aquarium.
The way to have water in a fish bowl that is as good as or even better than the water in an aquarium system is to have a second vessel. Water can be obtained by buying bottled water, which is often called mountain spring water, or it can come from a tap water filter, as long as it is not the reverse-osmosis kind. It cannot be distilled water, de-ionized water, or water containing municipal chlorine or other chemicals designed to protect human consumers from food poisoning.
But this is easy. If you have drinking water at home for the human occupants, it can usually sit in a bucket for a day and become safe for a goldfish to live in. But to be extra sure, you can add a drop or two of aquarium water conditioner and a granule or two of aquarium salt before it sits, so that by the time your fish is living in it the next day, it will be nourishing and comfortable.
So one simple way to have a goldfish living in perfect water is to have two bowls. Each day the fish can be moved to the other bowl, while the first bowl can be emptied, wiped clean and refilled with water that will be ready for the fish to live in the next day. As long as your home never gets freezing cold inside and you do not feed the fish more than it can eat in a minute, or more than two to six times a week, the fish should remain in healthy condition and be quite content with it’s environment.
Better yet, to have a similar system that does not involve removing the animal with a net, and potentially causing stress from the move, you could empty most of the water, leaving the goldfish in the remaining water, and then introduce the clean water from the second vessel. Using this method, you can even have a small, lightweight rectangular tank, such as an affordable plastic “Lee’s Kritter Keeper” and a cheap plastic bucket as the second vessel. If you have a water filter on your kitchen faucet (not reverse-osmosis) then you can refill the bucket from that and use it the next day. For this system you don’t even need a net. Just one bowl/lightweight tank, and a second bucket.
As long as the goldfish has not reached a size where the bowl is too small for it to swim freely in one direction for a couple of seconds, and you are able to offer it some visual stimulation from outside the bowl a few times a day, then you will have a happy healthy fish in clean water at all times. Just be ready to bid farewell to your beloved friend when it’s time for it to move to a big pond for the rest of it’s, hopefully long, life. If there is no sign of such a pond within a hundred miles of your house, then most aquarium stores will be willing to take in a donated healthy-looking large goldfish in exchange for another one-dollar feeder to rescue from a certain date with death. Hopefully they’ll sell it to someone with a big pond or aquarium.
So we have to remember a few things to justify a goldfish bowl. Goldfish are not natural. They were bred by man to become attractive golden fish and were originally hardy river carp, scavengers that could survive in ponds, streams and rivers, eating anything and everything, and since they don’t have a stomach, but rather just a long intestine, they would excrete the waste quickly and make the water dirty. An expensive and complicated aquarium system intended to condition the water may fail to do so for many reasons, and it is very easy, or even highly likely, to have a goldfish in such an aquarium, suffering distress from a less than optimal water quality. A bowl can contain clean, healthy, comfortable water if you have the two bowl system, or a bowl and bucket system. The water in this bowl can be, at all times, better than the water in most people’s aquaria. And lastly, even if your goldfish dies after a few months, as they may do through no fault of the owner, it can be a few months of a good life that it would not have had as food for an aquarium carnivore.
Aside from the well-being of the fish, the advantages of a goldfish bowl over an aquarium are many. They don’t cost much, they don’t weigh as much as your sister riding a bike, they don’t require electricity or reinforced furniture, and you can move them from room to room in order to spend more time interacting with your pet.
While it is always nice to see healthy goldfish in a clean, healthy large aquarium, it is also not so good to see them suffering in a cloudy, dirty tank and exhibiting spots, sores and nervous behavior.  Your happy healthy bowl fish will be better off than most goldfish alive today.
What does the fish need in it’s bowl?
Goldfish are bred from carp, which are scavengers. This is why goldfish can be seen constantly sucking pieces of gravel into their mouths and spitting it out. You may assume they are playing or trying to keep busy or wishing they had something to eat, or extracting some nutrients from the bacteria on the gravel, but they just can’t help this natural behavior. In an aquarium system the gravel can be a medium for the growth and support of healthy bacteria, but it is also a hiding place for fish waste that breaks down and introduces harmful elements into the water. So if you can stand the inevitable sight of a few strands of fish poop in your bowl, don’t bother with the gravel, because let’s remember, it’s all about the water quality, not the objects.
And speaking of objects, goldfish are more intelligent than most people assume and they love to follow your finger and look at you and play with you, but they have no need for decorations or toys. In fact such objects can cause injury because part of the natural behavior of a fish is to be occasionally startled and move several inches at a remarkably high speed. Better if there is no castle or treasure chest to collide with.
The minimalism of a clear empty bowl and a healthy fish in clean water is ideal. If you want to landscape the habitat, then set up a large aquarium system.
So if you would like a little golden friend to interact with while you sit at your desk all day, don’t be put off by people telling you a goldfish bowl is a cruel habitat. Remember it’s all about the water, and if the water is always good and there is enough of it to permit a little swimming, your fish will be content.

bowlsYou can spend five-thousand dollars setting up and stocking a huge tropical reef aquarium, and the bastards won’t even look at you. But put a one dollar goldfish in a five dollar bowl, and that little fish will await your return twenty times a day, eager to play follow the finger and he or she will gaze at you and love you like a puppy dog.

Ethics.

If you ever play the game, or perform the exercise of, Word Association, then the the most common response to “Goldfish”, is “Bowl”.

The typical picture of a goldfish, in photographs, cartoons and on film, is a picture of a goldfish in a bowl. But if you let people know that you have a goldfish in a bowl, they will consider you cruel, and they will tell you that a goldfish needs to live in a long tank with an elaborate filter system, and then move to a pond when it matures.

The majority of goldfishes live out their lives without ever becoming mature pond dwellers. Most live, and die, in aquariums or in bowls.

So the question arises, how can a goldfish be humanely kept in a bowl? Is it automatically cruel, reprehensible and impossible, or is the noble rescue of a commercially bred goldfish from the pet store, and the keeping of such an animal in a bowl justifiable.

It’s all about the water.

Actually, it is humane to keep a goldfish in a bowl, as long as the water is good, and as long as the fish can be relocated to a pond or large habitat when it becomes mature, as in too big the live in the bowl. It is not automatically cruel to keep one in a bowl.

But a goldfish aquarium has features that are missing from a simple empty glass bowl full of water. There are many elements that remove or convert toxic chemicals from the water, and also elements that support living bacteria that help keep the water healthy for your fish.

These elements include gravel, biological media, cotton filters, carbon filters, air stones, bubble wands and more. Each has a duty as part of a system to remove harmful wastes from the water and to keep it clean, oxygenated and nourishing to the skin and gills of the fish. Even if you have a nice large aquarium with elaborate filters, gravel and air systems, it is quite easy to mismanage the systems and end up with cloudy, uncomfortable water that will make the fish sick or even cause them to die.

So then, if an aquarium system costing hundreds of dollars can be that bad, how could a bowl be better? The answer is simple, the bottom line is the state of the water. The fish only depends on the quality of the water and it does not matter if this perfect water is introduced as-is or if it relies on a system to make it so. In fact it is less cruel for a goldfish to be in a bowl of perfect water than it is to be in a less-than-perfect larger aquarium.

The way to have water in a fish bowl that is as good as or even better than the water in an aquarium system is to have a second vessel. Water can be obtained by buying bottled water, which is often called mountain spring water, or it can come from a tap water filter, as long as it is not the reverse-osmosis kind. It cannot be distilled water, de-ionized water, or water containing municipal chlorine or other chemicals designed to protect human consumers from food poisoning.

But this is easy. If you have drinking water at home for the human occupants, it can usually sit in a bucket for a day and become safe for a goldfish to live in. But to be extra sure, you can add a drop or two of aquarium water conditioner and a granule or two of aquarium salt before it sits, so that by the time your fish is living in it the next day, it will be nourishing and comfortable.

So one simple way to have a goldfish living in perfect water is to have two bowls. Each day the fish can be moved to the other bowl, while the first bowl can be emptied, wiped clean and refilled with water that will be ready for the fish to live in the next day. As long as your home never gets freezing cold inside and you do not feed the fish more than it can eat in a minute, or more than two to six times a week, the fish should remain in healthy condition and be quite content with it’s environment.

Better yet, to have a similar system that does not involve removing the animal with a net, and potentially causing stress from the move, you could empty most of the water, leaving the goldfish in the remaining water, and then introduce the clean water from the second vessel. Using this method, you can even have a small, lightweight rectangular tank, such as an affordable plastic “Lee’s Kritter Keeper” and a cheap plastic bucket as the second vessel. If you have a water filter on your kitchen faucet (not reverse-osmosis) then you can refill the bucket from that and use it the next day. For this system you don’t even need a net. Just one bowl/lightweight tank, and a second bucket.

As long as the goldfish has not reached a size where the bowl is too small for it to swim freely in one direction for a couple of seconds, and you are able to offer it some visual stimulation from outside the bowl a few times a day, then you will have a happy healthy fish in clean water at all times. Just be ready to bid farewell to your beloved friend when it’s time for it to move to a big pond for the rest of it’s, hopefully long, life. If there is no sign of such a pond within a hundred miles of your house, then most aquarium stores will be willing to take in a donated healthy-looking large goldfish in exchange for another one-dollar feeder to rescue from a certain date with death. Hopefully they’ll sell it to someone with a big pond or aquarium.

So we have to remember a few things to justify a goldfish bowl. Goldfish are not natural. They were bred by man to become attractive golden fish and were originally hardy river carp, scavengers that could survive in ponds, streams and rivers, eating anything and everything, and since they don’t have a stomach, but rather just a long intestine, they would excrete the waste quickly and make the water dirty. An expensive and complicated aquarium system intended to condition the water may fail to do so for many reasons, and it is very easy, or even highly likely, to have a goldfish in such an aquarium, suffering distress from a less than optimal water quality. A bowl can contain clean, healthy, comfortable water if you have the two bowl system, or a bowl and bucket system. The water in this bowl can be, at all times, better than the water in most people’s aquaria. And lastly, even if your goldfish dies after a few months, as they may do through no fault of the owner, it can be a few months of a good life that it would not have had as food for an aquarium carnivore.

Aside from the well-being of the fish, the advantages of a goldfish bowl over an aquarium are many. They don’t cost much, they don’t weigh as much as your sister riding a bike, they don’t require electricity or reinforced furniture, and you can move them from room to room in order to spend more time interacting with your pet.

While it is always nice to see healthy goldfish in a clean, healthy large aquarium, it is also not so good to see them suffering in a cloudy, dirty tank and exhibiting spots, sores and nervous behavior.  Your happy healthy bowl fish will be better off than most goldfish alive today.

What does the fish need in it’s bowl?

Goldfish are bred from carp, which are scavengers. This is why goldfish can be seen constantly sucking pieces of gravel into their mouths and spitting it out. You may assume they are playing or trying to keep busy or wishing they had something to eat, or extracting some nutrients from the bacteria on the gravel, but they just can’t help this natural behavior. In an aquarium system the gravel can be a medium for the growth and support of healthy bacteria, but it is also a hiding place for fish waste that breaks down and introduces harmful elements into the water. So if you can stand the inevitable sight of a few strands of fish poop in your bowl, don’t bother with the gravel, because let’s remember, it’s all about the water quality, not the objects.

And speaking of objects, goldfish are more intelligent than most people assume and they love to follow your finger and look at you and play with you, but they have no need for decorations or toys. In fact such objects can cause injury because part of the natural behavior of a fish is to be occasionally startled and move several inches at a remarkably high speed. Better if there is no castle or treasure chest to collide with.

The minimalism of a clear empty bowl and a healthy fish in clean water is ideal. If you want to landscape the habitat, then set up a large aquarium system.

So if you would like a little golden friend to interact with while you sit at your desk all day, don’t be put off by people telling you a goldfish bowl is a cruel habitat. Remember it’s all about the water, and if the water is always good and there is enough of it to permit a little swimming, your fish will be content.

End of the Uh-Oh’s

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I wonder if we will call this coming year twenty-ten or the more cumbersome two thousand and ten. I think we should have called 2001 twenty-o-one, just like they did in nineteen-o-one and eighteen-o-one. Personally I will from this day make that change, and no longer refer to twenty-o-four, as two-thousand and four.
And what do we call the decade? Is it to be the double-oh’s, the twenty-hundreds, or the uh-oh’s. Well not the twenty-hundreds as that would mean the century, just as the nineteen hundreds refers to a whole century.
It will be The Media that set the course, as they did in 2000 when they started saying two-thousand and one, when they should really have said twenty-o-one. And why did this happen? Probably because no-one ever said twenty hundred. There is no such number as twenty hundred, so we all said two-thousand, which is good. The mistake was a year later when we missed the opportunity to spend the future saying twenty-o-one, twenty-o-two etc.

By Jeffrey the Barak,

(written towards the end of 2009.)

2010I wonder if we will call this coming year twenty-ten or the more cumbersome two thousand and ten. I think we should have called 2001 twenty-o-one, just like they did in nineteen-o-one and eighteen-o-one. Personally I will from this day make that change, and no longer refer to twenty-o-four, as two-thousand and four.

And what do we call the decade? Is it to be the double-oh’s, the twenty-hundreds, or the uh-oh’s. Well not the twenty-hundreds as that would mean the century, just as the nineteen hundreds refers to a whole century.

It will be The Media that set the course, as they did in 2000 when they started saying two-thousand and one, when they should really have said twenty-o-one. And why did this happen? Probably because no-one ever said twenty hundred. There is no such number as twenty hundred, so we all said two-thousand, which is good. The mistake was a year later when we missed the opportunity to spend the future saying twenty-o-one, twenty-o-two etc.

By next month, we will know.

Global warming is 51% cow farts

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credit: unknown

credit: unknown

It’s not  your local coal power station, or your soot-spewing school bus. It’s not even the production of your mountain of plastic waste. No, global warming has been pushed over the edge of the point of no return by cow farts.

Follow this link to Simply Sustainable’s excellent report on this realization. Time to invent a synthetic soy filet mignon!

The path to our news

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By Jeffrey the Barak

newsAs more and more newspapers disappear from the marketplace, more of us turn to the Internet to read our news.

But although there are many sources to choose between, only a few actually gather the news, and these news organizations have to give it away and foot the bill.

No longer can they rely on the business of printing, selling and distributing paper that sells for a quarter or a dollar, and no longer can they sell page after page of print ads to cover the rent, salaries and countless other expenses of news gathering.

To illustrate this, let me use one of my own daily routines. I have in my Google home page, a ‘gadget” or columnar panel that highlights Current News. This is tier one.

If I click on the header it takes me to current.com. This is tier two. Once here, I can select a news article or click on “more news” and then select an article. Let’s assume I do the latter and pick an article that is not in the top three. This is tier three.

In “more news”, I select an interesting headline, click on it and arrive at tier four, an excerpt of the article, that includes a link to the original article which in this case resides on bbc.co.uk

So I click through to here and arrive at the page on BBC, tier five, and see a television interview video and read the article, which was gathered in the UK by BBC staffers. None of my money went to the BBC, and I was five tiers away from the article.

Along the way, I saw advertisements. There were none on Google, which is one of the many reasons why it is better than the mouse-over pop-up ridden and animated Yahoo!, There were none on Current, except for links to Current features, but then on the “more news” page I saw a small ad for Mini (the car). At the article level of current I saw one ad for AT&T, and then at the final BBC tier, there were no ads, except for BBC features links.

So assuming I did not shop for AT&T service or BMW minis, I got my story for nothing.

This is great for me, and I am not complaining, especially since my eyesight is not really up to reading a traditional newspaper anymore. But somewhere, someone has paid a lot of money to bring me the story, and eventually, we may end up with a news shortage, because no-one is paying the bill.

Los Angeles, what are we standing on?

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Geologists would say that the Los Angeles Basin is like a huge bowl of sand

The geologic center for the Los Angeles Basin is the place where the Los Angeles River and the river known as Rio Hondo merge in South Gate. At this central point, sand, silt, clay and other river sediments are the deepest. Actually in excess of 30,000 feet of sediment separate the surface here from the bedrock below. This is the height of the highest mountains in the Himalayas!

Surrounding this enormous bowl of sand are mountains, namely the San Gabriel Mountains, the Santa Monica Mountains, the Santa Ana Mountains and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Just like today’s Santa Catalina Island, the P.V. peninsula was once an island offshore.

Geology can only be studied on vast time scales. Today’s Los Angeles Basin was once underwater. Fifteen million years ago a shallow sea covered today’s L.A. The mountains surrounding it, which are still here, were slowly spiraling around the sea as the Pacific tectonic plate ground it’s way Northward past the North American plate.

As the mountains slowly circled the sea, the Earth’s crust below twisted, stretched and cracked enough to allow molten lava to reach the surface. This newer crust began collapsing as it stretched thin, and eventually it formed a deep bowl of rock, above which sediments from not only the local rivers of the time, but also the sea itself, began to gradually give us our giant bowl of sand.

Small microorganisms also poured in and as they lived, died and settled in vast numbers, they slowly began to change under pressure to become today’s oil and gas deposits.

About 5 million years ago, the stretching of the crust stopped. As the bowl shrank, it continued to be filled with sediment and at the same same time, seismic activity started raising the level of the ground. The former ocean floor became the future backyards of the San Fernando Valley and Beverly Hills etc. As the sea floor became dry land, rivers such as today’s Los Angeles, Rio Honda, Ballona Creek, and countless others which are no longer visible from the city’s surface, meandered and flooded and cut and diverted and merged and separated over and over again.

It is this sediment that we call our ground today. There are fossils of sea creatures in the soil of our backyards. There are winding boulevards built over old rivers and streams, and when the earthquakes come, the sandy bowl always throws us surprises, with one block shaking itself to pieces right beside another block that barely moves.

It is this giant wobbly sandpit that contains our skyscraper foundations, our subways, and our utilities infrastructure. It is upon this sediment that we build our million dollar wood framed houses. In geologic time, it is but a moment since the first human set foot in the basin, and it will be just another moment before all traces of our stay here will have been buried or washed away.

And eventually, the continental plate upon which we rest, will be subducted and recycled in the magma. And as if that wasn’t enough, the Sun will one day swell to take back the Earth, then long after that, will die itself and our atoms will potentially spark a new life somewhere else in the unimaginably long distant future.

Jeffrey the Barak has lived in L.A. for more than twenty years. It has hardly moved during this time.

The hazards of imagining countries

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Nomadic tribes move independently of each other and occasionally come together to interact through trade, war, sport, cultural exchange, intermarriage, murder etc.

In the dense jungles of South America and Africa and Asia, the boundaries formed by geographical features such as ridges and valleys are all it takes to keep two nomadic cultures apart in language and traditions, until they either form non-nomadic civilizations or continue to roam independently of their neighbors. Then there is fate. One tribe may come into contact with, and survive contact with, outsiders and end up with new lifestyles and technology such as outboard motors and clothing, whereas their immediate neighbors may escape detection for decades afterwards.

Tribes evolve into societies and eventually countries. We have seen it in today’s Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and surrounding areas and due to the fact that so many people have been exposed to the Old Testament of the Bible, and therefore have some awareness of nations and ethnic groups of the last two or three thousand years, it is easy to see how more modern politics and assumed differences can evolve into borders drawn on the map.

If just one or two things had happened differently in history, the map of the Middle-East might be totally different, because in all that famous history, recorded in the world’s best selling loosely-historical book, there were only a few hundred or a couple of thousand people involved in most of those old conflicts.

If you have a chance to find a map of the region that is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, a map made in the early or mid 19th century, you will see numerous regions defined by the make-up of the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes and their leaders of those days.

Today in the United Nations, you will never see little signs naming Tribes of the Turkmens, Buhara, Pamir, Darwaz, Roshan, Shignan, Badakhshan, Kunduz, Khulm. Chitral, Maimana, Herat, Kafiristan, Dir, Kohistan, Svat, Buner, Shinaki, Punjab and more.

But these were names of regions, if not countries, on the maps of the day. Most are now either part of Pakistan or Afghanistan. The people of these regions are not necessarily Afghanis or Pakistanis, but the modern map tells them that’s what they are.

There are seven main ethnic groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and many more obscure groups, some extremely small and hardly known to this day.

And a failure to understand who these people are, who they were, where they came from and where they live now, means that occupying armies really do not have any clear idea who they are defending or who they are trying to kill.

Add the complication of different religions, most of which are opposing or slightly differing views from within the Islamic umbrella, and the complications deepen.

Shift West a few miles and look at Iraq. Like Pakistan, it is a modern country created not very long ago by outsiders. (The British, if you want to name names). Until the start of the current war, it held it’s violence and hate simmering below the surface, united by the common fear of their evil national dictator. But how many of those who voted to approve the invasion of Iraq had even a glimmer of understanding about the basic differences between the various peoples in the region? How many even knew anything about Sunni’s Shi’ites and Kurds, as they stood on the floor of the House and painted a picture of Iraqis cheering for parading American liberators marching triumphantly into Baghdad a few weeks after the Air Force blew it to bits for the good of the people.

Perhaps it is too late to swap the Iraq on the map for numerous ethnic regions, and too late to swap the Pakistan and Afghanistan of today into the little countries and regions that existed before. But on the other hand, perhaps these people can never be unified into countries. The very model of a country may not be applicable to people such as these. They remain tribal and separate, in culture and language.

Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all examples of relatively new countries, each with their own set of problems. Without ever understanding much about the people within, outside military forces jump in to help, and end up killing or displacing thousands and thousands of people either directly or indirectly

Surely a little research would be advisable?

Before you celebrate new year….

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Just a reminder that even though we all love our hours, minutes, seconds, months, weeks and centuries, none of them are real.

One year is real, but it does not necessarily start on January 1st. It’s just one whole orbit around the sun.

One day is real, but it does not necessarily start at midnight.
It’s just one revolution of the planet.

Everything else is imagined, no matter how much time we spend measuring with our watches and calendars.

So celebrate new year, but remember you could just as well do it on any other date, most appropriately on March 21st or September 21st at an equinox.

The Methane Army is coming to get you.

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By Major Pong

People of Earth,

We are The Methane Army. We are billions of molecules of stinky atmosphere warming gas and we are putting on our boots and getting ready to come through the door and whip your ass.

Actually we’ve been doing this from time to time over millions of years, since well before you messy humans evolved. Oops, sorry to use the E word you religious numbskulls. Where was I? Oh yes,.. the Methane Cycle. No it’s it’s not my new mountain bike.

You see we are trapped by cool temperatures in the soil beneath your wetlands, lakes and oceans. but as you pump more and more carbon dioxide into the air with your silly cars made by General Motors who are so stupid they cannot even line up a steering wheel with a driver’s seat, we see our opportunity to come out and play.

As far as warming the planet is concerned, we are twenty four times times as effective as carbon dioxide. And it’s not the cows and sheep that you keep prisoner that will push us out the door, and push you over the edge, we are already here in the billions, waiting to bubble up and cook you ’til you dry up and disappear.

Yes the atmosphere will kill a few of us, but there are enough of us to tip the balance, so unless you find a way to cool down Earth, and fast, we will be out and you will be gone.

Before your industrial age, we were 7 parts per billion in the atmosphere, and now we are 1700 parts per billion, and rising. And we are much better than carbon dioxide at keeping in that people-cooking solar radiation and heating up the planet. Sure there is “OH”, not a magazine by Oprah, but a hydroxyl free radical that can destroy us in the atmosphere, but you know what, we are going to win.

So enjoy it while you can humans. We’ve seen your kind come and go before, and before you know it, your crust will be recycled and all traces of you will be melted clean in the mantle.

Major Pong is very tiny, so he enlisted the help of Jeffrey the Barak to write this fine article for the-vu.

Burning Salt Water For Fuel, Is It Possible?

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By Jeremy Baldwin

Before you go to work today remember to fill the fuel tank with water and add a bit of salt. Check the charge on the battery and you’re ready to go.Stop at the flower shop on the corner, you know, where the gas station used to be, and pick up a bouquet for the office.

Sound too good to be true…well, it could be just around the corner.

A new technology that burns salt water as fuel discovered by John Kanzius could revolutionize the transportation and electrical generating industry. Burning oil, gas and coal could become the technology of the past. John Kanzius discovered that if he took the radio frequency transmitter being used as a non invasive treatment for cancer and focused it at a test tube of salt water… the salt water would burst into flame and burn with a fire so hot it melted the test tube. Of course, he was trying to desalinate sea water, not burn it up and melt the tube, but that is serendipity, mother of all great discoveries…

No, this is not a joke…it is true…tried and tested by independent researchers all over the world…it is true.

Salt water… bursts into flame…3000 degree flame…. melts test tube…

Go ahead, read it again and let it sink in…It took me several times to get my brain wrapped around the idea. How,you say,how is this possible? Like all great discoveries it seems so simple once you know the answer…Why didn’t I think of that?…as you smack yourself on the forehead with the palm of your hand.

Ok.. this is how it works…ahhh…why it works… whatever… On a molecular level salt water is formed of atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, sodium and chlorine. The radio waves of a certain frequency disrupt the bonds between those molecules liberating the hydrogen as free gas which burns hotly in the presence of the oxygen…over 3000 degrees…that is a lot of heat… Oh yes, ahem…no carbon footprint… Isn’t that clever?

US Department of Energy and Department of Defense officials were scheduled to meet with scientists on September 10, 2007 to discuss the discovery and the possibility of research funding. Rustum Roy, Ph.D., a founding member of Penn State University’s Materials Research Institute, and expert in water structure leads the team.

Is it possible we can replace oil with salt water? This may have been something that you never knew about and never expected but it may be here soon.

Go figure…

This article from Jeremy Baldwin was syndicated through newezinearticles.com

The Green Shave

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By Jeffrey the Barak

How would you like to spread Napalm on your face while releasing questionable propellants into the ozone layer, and then put a stack of eternal plastic into a landfill?

Doesn’t sound like something you’d want to do does it? And yet if you use aerosol shaving gel, it contains the very same naptha and palm oil as Napalm, that cruel and unusual weapon used in the flame throwers of wars past. This is palm oil that comes from plantations that are gobbling up the habitats of endangered orangutans.

And this convenient chemical cocktail is being helped out of the pressurized, plastic lined can by a propellant gas, which in many countries still contains ozone-eating CFC compounds.

The 2, 3, 4 or 5.5 tiny blades on your razor cartridge are surrounded by, and packed and wrapped in, ounces and ounces of disposable plastic also.

Surely this is not necessary? Of course it’s not!

Just ask your father or perhaps your grandfather. A good shaving brush and some shaving soap can give you a better lather than anything in an aerosol can, for a fraction of the price, and with zero waste. And used properly, a double-edged safety razor, made entirely of steel will give you a close enough shave without irritation or cuts, and that razor blade contains no plastic. It’s all steel. While most come in a plastic box complete with a disposal slot in the back, you can easily find them individually wrapped in paper and then packed into a paper box of 100. Zero plastic.

So if you think you are going green but still use Edge gel and a Fusion razor, think again Mister. It’s time to get into responsible shaving, while saving the planet, and also saving my friends the orangutans, (who never shave).

Jeffrey the Barak shaves….often and repeatedly.

The least continental place

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Nake Island, Kiribati, is the closest point of land I could find after moving the Google Earth globe around to a spot that showed the least land. The only significant continental land visible at the edges of this hemisphere is in either North America or Eastern Australia, and New Zealand and Mexico are the only two very large countries which are entirely within this hemisphere.

But this spot may not be the most oceanic. I may have missed the mark. Does anyone know the coordinates of the place in the Pacific ocean that is dead center of the most watery hemispherical view of Earth?

If so, please comment on this article. I’d be most curious to know where the least continental place really is.

Earthquake Weather

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By Donna Schwartz Mills
© 2001

February 9th was sunny and hot in the Southland. These were the same conditions we experienced 30 years ago when a 6.5 earthquake struck at Sylmar; the kind of unseasonable temperatures some native Californians describe as ‘earthquake weather.’

February went on to become one of the wettest, coldest months in recent memory, resulting in rainfall stats that were higher than Seattle’s… which was hit that month by a quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale. (I wonder what the weather was like there that morning?)

As damaging as that temblor was, the citizens of Seattle were lucky in that the epicenter was 30 miles below the ground surface, more than twice the depth of the ’94 Northridge quake. They were also very well prepared.

Most of us living on the West Coast have benefited from building codes that help minimize the damage caused by a moderate to strong quake. However, these standards vary between communities and are non-existent in many regions that are also at risk. While earthquakes are most common where the earth’s tectonic plates meet — like along the San Andreas Fault — they can and do occur all over the world. In fact, some of the strongest quakes in the contiguous United States history were in *Missouri* (New Madrid, MO suffered a 7.7 earthquake in 1811 followed by a 7.9 in 1812, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The fact that these occurred nearly 200 years ago does not mean that the area is no longer active; a century is like a nanosecond in geologic time, which looks at events of the course of millions of years.)

According to the National Earthquake Information Center, earthquakes have been felt in just about every region of the United States. While most are minor with little or no damage, every so often one will hit with enough force to topple building walls and chimneys — and that’s when the people inside are most at risk.

My daughter’s pediatrician asked all the usual questions at her last check-up. How is she eating? What is she drawing? Have you taught her what to do in an earthquake?

‘Mommy, what’s an earthquake?’ my daughter asks.

‘That’s when the earth decides to shake a little,’ I tell her, trying to sound calm as I remember that morning seven years ago, when the violence of the shaking moved our queen-sized bed four feet from the wall… with my husband and me still in it. We’ve been extremely lucky in California – many of our significant quakes have occurred so early in the morning that most people are still safe in bed, away from freeways and bridges and falling debris and windows. ‘If you ever feel one while you’re in bed, just put your pillow over your head and stay there,’ I tell her. ‘Stay in bed until Mommy comes to get you.’

As a lifelong Angeleno, I’ve learned a lot from Northridge and Landers and Whittier and Sylmar. We live in a single-story home with nothing heavy hanging on our walls; no cute ceiling ledges with breakable plates or knick-knacks, nothing that could fall on someone’s head if the house starts to shake. It may lack the charm of the Pottery Barn catalog, but at least it’s safe.

Megan’s bed is in the corner of her room, as far away as possible from her window and the closet with the sliding mirrored doors. I remember tales from ’94 of sliding doors that shook off their runners and crashed into rooms. I make a mental note to see what it would take to replace those mirrors with something less shattering. Unfortunately, our 1960′s era house is a veritable hall of mirrors. It makes it seem roomier, but I’m not too sure it’s a good idea here in earthquake country. I shudder at the chances in our own bedroom, which also has the mirrored sliding closet doors and too many windows. I keep a flashlight and a pair of shoes in my nightstand; that way I will be able to get around when the electricity goes out and the floor is covered with shattered glass.

Of course, we should do more. I don’t remember the last time I changed the batteries in that flashlight. The bookcases in the living room are not bolted to the wall (one of them covers one of those mirrors). We should call our Sparkletts man for extra bottles of water to keep on hand (after Northridge, some people were without potable water or power for weeks. I’m told that several of our neighbors carted buckets of water from our pool to flush their toilets).

I show Megan how to duck and cover if the house starts shaking when she’s *not* safe in bed. We go from room to room and pick out spots where she can protect herself from anything falling from the ceiling.

We’re lucky to have bought our home a couple of years after the Northridge quake. We know it’s bolted to the foundation and that our water heater is secure. But we should be doing more.

The American Red Cross suggests that every household keep an emergency preparedness kit both in the home and in each car. This would include:

* First aid kits and essential medications
* Canned food and can openers (with care given to replace food that has expired)
* Bottled Water (at least three gallons per person)
* Protective clothing, rainwear, and bedding or sleeping bags
* Battery-powered radio, flashlight, and extra batteries
* Written instructions for how to turn off gas, electricity, and water if authorities advise you to do so.

Purchase a big plastic garbage can to store your home supplies and stash it in a safe place. Because the banking systems could be down when the power goes out, I’ve also heard suggestions that you keep about $100 in cash somewhere safe within your kit – money may be hard to come by when the ATM machines don’t work. Read the rest of the Red Cross guidelines here.

If your children are in school, there is a good chance that you could be separated should an earthquake strike your community. Anyabaganya sells emergency kits for children, small and light enough to stash in a backpack.

Because local phone service could be out, you should select an out-of-town or out-of-state relative or friend to be a contact person for each member of the family to call.

There are some other resources to help prepare your children for the possibility of an earthquake:

‘Disaster Dog’ – This is a free coloring book for children (in PDF format), from the good folks at the American Red Cross.

‘Wee Ones’ Issue #3 – This children’s online magazine features a very good article about earthquakes and even attempts to show the kids what a quake would be like by shaking your screen:

Learn2 Prepare for an Earthquake: This ’2torial’ from online learning center Learn2.com was revised in March following the Seattle quake. It’s simple and to the point.

February 9, 1971 – Sylmar woke us up at 6:00 a.m. My bed in the room I shared with my sister was right next to the wall, which I cowered against until the shaking stopped. In the meantime, my sister was holding onto our great-grandmother’s antique lamp, which rested on the nightstand between us. It still has a place of honor on my nightstand and I’m grateful to Linda for saving it.

There was no school that day, so we spent the morning talking with our neighbors and watching TV. Again, we were lucky — we had been set to move the following day and almost everything we owned had been safely packed into boxes. Some of our neighbors were not so fortunate, and suffered extensive damage to their homes and furnishings. That afternoon, a crack was discovered in a dam in the hills above our neighborhood; we were told to evacuate the area until the water could be pumped safely out of the reservoir and repairs could be made.

It was a week before we returned home and back to school. The weather had been in the 80-degree range that February and for many of us kids, it had been an extra vacation, with tales of adventure in emergency shelters (or like us, with relatives who lived outside the evacuation zone). Sylmar was my first earthquake and once the shaking had stopped, I thought it had been fun. Even the aftershocks — which lasted for over a year — added some excitement to our days. That’s youth for you; like most young people, I had no sense of mortality.

I grew up in ’94. Those of my friends who were also around for Sylmar agreed that this quake was a whole different animal, with the most violent shaking we had ever experienced. Driving around the L.A. area and seeing the extent of the damage was heartbreaking; no neighborhood was spared.

Both the Northridge and Sylmar quakes registered 6.7 on the Richter scale; the long-awaited ‘Big One’ could be 10 times stronger (or more). I am truly terrified, but not about to show it to my daughter.

Earthquakes happen and we cannot predict or control them. But by being prepared, we can at least affect our chances and our children’s chances of getting out safely… in any kind of weather.

Donna Schwartz Mills is married to a geologist, who goes on a rant whenever anyone mentions ‘earthquake weather.’ Donna is the Webmaster Mommy of SocalMoms.com, a new resource for moms in Southern California. She is also the work-at-home expert behind the ParentPreneur Club … and recently edited ‘Baby Tips for New Parents,’ a free eBook.

Organic Lawn Grub Control

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By Arzeena Hamir

Beetle grubs can turn a fine looking lawn into a patchwork quilt of yellow spots. But before you reach for the insecticide bottle, there are a number of organic alternatives that will help you cope with the grubs without poisoning yourself or your family.

What are these grubs?

The grubs that you see in the lawn are the larvae of Japanese beetles, June beetles, and chafers. These grubs are C-shaped, off-white in color with a dark head. They eat the roots of grass, causing the grass to die and form brown patches. Lawns that are heavily damaged by grubs will have a yellowish tinge and will feel spongy when walked on. The sod itself can be easily lifted, a sure sign that the brown patches were not caused by dog urine.

Life cycle

Adult beetles emerge, mate, and lay eggs from late June until early August. The eggs hatch in about two weeks and the tiny grubs grow quickly. The yellowing patches of sod usually appear in late August and September, when the grubs are vigorously feeding and the turf is otherwise water-stressed. In October or November, when soil temperatures begin to cool, the grubs stop feeding and move deeper into the soil, where they spend the winter. They return to the root zone and resume feeding early the following spring.

What to do

Just a couple grubs per square foot are not a problem to an otherwise healthy lawn. Ten or more per square foot are necessary to justify treatment. Predatory nematodes are available for use in Canada and the US as a biological control for white grub. The use of these nematodes requires that the soil be kept very moist and it is very important that the application instructions for this product be followed closely, as nematodes are living organisms.

Treat the entire lawn. Do not attempt to control lawn pests by spot applications. Water the lawn thoroughly after application to wash in the nematodes.

When to treat the lawn?

The younger the grubs are, the easier they are to control. The best time to apply grub control measures is from mid-July to August and September when the grubs are small and near the soil surface. Although treatments can be made after this time, grubs will be more difficult to kill (because of their larger size). The second best time is March to April when the grubs are once again near the soil surface but a little larger.

Encourage natural enemies

Certain species of wasps parasitize white grubs. They are sometimes seen hovering over the turf in late summer in search of green June beetle grubs on which to lay their eggs. They are not aggressive and normally will not sting people. The wasp larva feeds externally upon the grub, eventually killing its victim before spinning a fuzzy, brown, jelly bean-size cocoon in the soil. Predators such as ground beetles and ants also take their toll on eggs and young white grubs.

Managing your lawn to minimize damage

Lawns that are heavily managed and watered regularly may actually attract beetles. They prefer grassy areas where the soil is constantly moist such as lawns, pastures, and meadows in close-cropped grass. Frequent irrigation in June and July may attract egg-laying female beetles to the turf, especially if surrounding areas are dry.

In contrast, adequate soil moisture in August and September (when grubs are actively feeding) can help hide root injury. If grub damage starts to appear in late August or September, watering will promote tolerance and recovery. Deep, periodic soaking of the turf is more beneficial than frequent, light watering.

Resources:

Terra Viva Organics

http://www.tvorganics.com

Based in Vancouver, BC, this company supplies predatory nematodes across N. America through its website.

University of Florida Factsheet – Microbial Insecticides
A great overview of the advantages and disadvantages of using nematodes, Bt, and other biological insecticides.

Ohio State FactSheet
Good description of grubs, ignore the chemical advice

Arzeena Hamir is an agronomist and garden writer based in Vancouver, BC. When she’s not planting peas or harvesting zucchini, she runs Terra Viva Organics at www.tvorganics.com