What I do
I’m always looking for better ways of explaining what I do to people who don’t have technical backgrounds. The video below provides a nice overview of remote sensing as a field and notes some environmental applications that researchers are addressing as well as the challenges they face as satellite-based Earth-observing sensors age past their design lifetime. (I don’t work environmental problems but set that aside for the time being. The methods available and approaches to information gathering that I use are essentially the same.)
Thought for the Day: 27 December 2014
Conservatives like to portray government as a welfare machine doling out benefits to the poor, some of whom are too lazy to work. In reality, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, only about 12 percent of federal spending goes to individuals and families, most of whom are in dire need. An increasing portion goes to corporate welfare….
The size of government isn’t the problem. That’s a canard used to hide the far larger problem. The larger problem is that much of government is no longer working for the vast majority it’s intended to serve. It’s working instead for a small minority at the top. If government were responding to the public’s interest instead of the moneyed interests, it would be smaller and more efficient. But unless or until we can reverse the vicious cycle of big money getting political favors that makes big money even bigger, we can’t get the government we want and deserve.
Dave Epstein and NEWFS, How to Select Trees and Shrubs at a Nursery
As part of his “Growing Wisdom” series Dave Epstein did a few episodes at New England Wild Flower Society’s Garden in the Woods. Here’s the third of three:
Merry Christmas!
(Music by The Drifters. 1954.)
Dave Epstein and NEWFS, Native Pollinator Plants for Container Gardens
As part of his “Growing Wisdom” series Dave Epstein did a few episodes at New England Wild Flower Society’s Garden in the Woods. Here’s the second of three:
Three cheers for butterfly milkweed and mountain mint!
PS Garden in the Woods has a nice garden shop. You can probably obtain all three species mentioned in season. If you can’t, and you’re willing to do mail order, then I recommend Tripple Brook Farm. I’ve gotten a fair number of plants in our garden from them. Their prices are very reasonable and everything we’ve gotten from them has been very healthy. (You can stop in as well as do mail order. Once upon a time pre-kids my wife and I rented a van and drove out to pick up a 12′ sassafras tree. One of the owners was kind enough to give us brief tour of the grounds. They’ve got a nice set up.)
Thought for the Day: 22 December 2014
Time to end the discussions of The New Republic as cultural phenomenon. They were okay for a week or so after Foer and Wieseltier got sacked but enough already. Quit the hand wringing. Save your mental energy for debating the pieces which get published in it. Better yet, save your mental energy for reading journals with superior content, e.g., Harper’s, The New Yorker, The American Prospect.
PS Ta-Nehisi Coates’, The New Republic: An Appreciation, should have been the end-all for TNR think pieces.
Susan Cooper, The Shortest Day
The Shortest Day
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!
– Susan Cooper
Dave Epstein and NEWFS, Edible Native Plants for the Shade
As part of his “Growing Wisdom” series Dave Epstein did a few episodes at New England Wild Flower Society’s Garden in the Woods. Here’s the first of three:
Rare Exports
(Watch “Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions” if you dare.)