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Japan Is Nuclear Energy Free | Japan Shuts Down Last Nuclear Reactor!
CNN...
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Japan shuts down last nuclear reactor
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By Kyung Lah, CNN
updated 1:57 AM EDT, Mon May 7, 2012
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Click link or photo above to play video
Japan is nuclear energy free
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Japan closed down its last operating nuclear reactor on Saturday
Final shutdown follows a swing against nuclear energy after the Fukushima meltdowns last year
Thousands marched through Tokyo Saturday to celebrate the final closure
Government has warned that summer energy demand may prompt rolling blackouts
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Tokyo (CNN) -- As Japan began its workweek Monday morning, the trains ran exactly on time, the elevators in thousands of Tokyo high rises efficiently moved between floors, and the lights turned on across cities with nary a glitch.
What makes this Monday so remarkable is that for the first time in four decades, none of the energy on this working day is derived from a nuclear reactor.
Over the weekend, Japan's last remaining nuclear reactor shut down for regular maintenance. In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, reactors have not been allowed back on. Japan is now the first major economy to see the modern era without nuclear power.
Tomari Nuclear Power Plant's reactor 3 in Hokkaido shut down Saturday evening in a much-watched move by government, industry and environmentalists, who are waged in a public battle over the future of Japan's energy policy.
"I think it is not easy, but this challenge is worth fighting for," said Greenpeace Japan's Junichi Shimizu. "There is an increased chance of earthquakes in Japan, so that has a significant risk to the Japanese people and the Japanese economy. The only way forward is to rapidly shift the energy source from nuclear to other sources of energy."
That's not the call just from environmental activists, but from a public suspicious of nuclear energy and its regulatory bodies since a tsunami and earthquake triggered nuclear meltdowns at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March 2011.
Thousands marched through the streets of Tokyo on Saturday, celebrating the shutdown of the final reactor.
The protesters waved colorful, traditional "koinobori" carp-shaped banners for Children's Day that became a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement.
That movement grew from the grassroots level in the wake of the disaster, as the country watched tens of thousands of residents living within a 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius of the nuclear plant evacuated and the area remaining turn into a contaminated wasteland.
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, Japan relied on nuclear for approximately 30% of its energy. As reactors have come off-line, the country has increased its imports of fossil fuels.
Japan's government predicts it won't be able to keep up that pace, and the void will result in an energy crunch this summer, possibly leading to rolling blackouts.
The national government's ruling party, the Democratic Party of Japan, has been urging local communities to allow reactors to return to operation.
The DPJ's deputy policy chief, Yoshito Sengoku, bluntly said without nuclear energy the world's third largest economy would suffer. "We must think ahead to the impact on Japan's economy and people's lives, if all nuclear reactors are stopped. Japan could, in some sense, be committing mass suicide," said Sengoku.
Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of Japan's biggest business lobby, Keidanren, joined the plea in an April press conference. "We cannot possibly agree to do the kind of energy saving yet again this year, or every year from now on," he said, referring to the country's efforts to turn off air conditioners and shift operation of production lines to weekends. "The government must bring the nuclear power stations back into operation."
Economist Jesper Koll, managing director at JP Morgan, says Japan could avoid the economic fallout by defining a clear energy policy, something it has failed to do so far.
"The issue to the private sector of Japan is the government is taking its time in a very emotional, highly politicized debate. And the end result is very, very slow or no decision making at all. After all, if you don't have an energy policy, you don' really have an economic policy because everything revolves around the energy," he said.
Japan's prime minister has promised a clear energy policy sometime this year, perhaps this summer.
But Yukie Osaki, who used to live in Fukushima, says she won't accept any policy that includes nuclear energy. "Nobody believes the government anymore when it says nuclear plants are safe," she said.
"Japan is an earthquake country. It is already dangerous to have nuclear plants here. If we have another accident, we won't have anywhere to live in Japan anymore."
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.CNN... . . Japan shuts down last nuclear reactor . By Kyung Lah, CNN... more-
- EthicalVegan
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- 23 days ago
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- 2 comments
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Reflections of motherhood
The hardest most rewarding experience any woman could ever have. My personal experience saw me going into trauma in labor as my son was transverse and I was not dilating. I was not prepared for a Caesarean as I know I should have been. The trauma became life threatening but some power decided i should stay here to raise him and he is good, decent and the joy of my life. Everything I do in speaking out for this planet is because I love him. He is my miracle and I am so proud to be his mother.
This morning he gave me a rose and told me I was the best mother in the world. He told me I would always be the first person he would come to for advice and that he would always love me. A mother cannot ask for anymore than that in this life. I am truly blessed. And for all of the trauma, pain and hardship I endured in bringing him into the world, I would do it all again.
To all those women who sacrifice everyday so that the world can be a little better for their children you have my respect. I think if I had a sign to hold that would tell myself something about motherhood before I had my son it would read, It Is So Well Worth It.
Happy Mother's Day.The hardest most rewarding experience any woman could ever have. My personal... more-
- JanforGore
- added this
- 16 days ago
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- 7 comments
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A Nuclear Clash Could Starve the World By Causing Nuclear Famine
CNN...
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A nuclear clash could starve the world
By Jayantha Dhanapala and Ira Helfand, Special to CNN
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updated 7:57 AM EDT, Fri May 11, 2012
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Sunao Tsuboi, who suffered horrific burns in Hiroshima, holds a photo of himself and friends taken hours after the explosion.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Writers: India, Pakistan and North Korea missile tests bring up dangers of nuclear war
Study shows war using half of 1% of global nuke arsenals would set off world famine
U.S. and Russia have huge nuclear arsenals, they say, a lethal holdover from Cold War
It's urgent for talks about reducing arsenals, they write, with a ban on weapons the goal
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Editor's note: Jayantha Dhanapala is a former ambassador to the United States from Sri Lanka, U.N. under-secretary general for disarmament and chairman of the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference. Ira Helfand is the past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and current North American vice president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
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(CNN) -- Recent ballistic missile tests by India, Pakistan and North Korea -- which has ominously threatened to "reduce to ashes" the South Korean military "in minutes" -- are once again focusing the world's attention on the dangers of nuclear war.
This concern was dramatically underscored in a new report released at the Nobel Peace Laureates Summit in Chicago. Titled "Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk" (PDF), the study shows that even a limited nuclear war, involving less than half of 1% of the world's nuclear arsenals, would cause climate disruption that could set off a global famine.
The study, prepared by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and its U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility, used a scenario of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs exploded in a war between India and Pakistan. If there were such a war, the study estimated that 1 billion people, one-sixth of the human race, could starve over the following decade.
Along with recent events, these findings require a fundamental change in our thinking about nuclear weapons.
The study, in positing a war between India and Pakistan, shows the importance of understanding that smaller nuclear powers, not just the United States and Russia, pose a threat to the whole world.
But the greater lesson concerns the forces of the larger nuclear powers. Each U.S. Trident submarine can destroy 100 cities and produce the global famine described in the study. The United States has 14 of them, a fleet of land-based nuclear missiles, and an arsenal of nuclear weapons that can be delivered by bombers. The Russians possess the same grotesque overkill capacity.
Even the most ambitious arms reductions under discussion would leave the United States and Russia with 300 warheads each, most of them 10 to 30 times larger than a Hiroshima sized bomb. This would be a massive arsenal capable of producing the global famine scenario many, many times over.
These arsenals are an archaic, but lethal, holdover from the Cold War. Their continued existence poses an ongoing threat to all humanity.
Steps can and should be taken immediately to lessen this danger. Substantial numbers of these weapons remain on what The New York Times has described as "hair-trigger alert." They can be fired in 15 minutes or less and destroy cities a continent away 30 minutes later. This alert posture creates the needless danger of an accidental or unintended launch, and the United States and Russia have had many close calls, preparing to launch a nuclear strike at the other under the mistaken belief they were under attack.
The most recent of these near-misses that we know about took place in January 1995, well after the end of the Cold War. The United States and Russia should stand down their nuclear arsenals so that it takes longer to launch their missiles, lessening the danger of an accidental war. U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladamir Putin can take this step on their own without negotiating a formal treaty.
Beyond this, it is time to begin urgent talks aimed at reducing the U.S. and Russian arsenals as the next essential step toward multilateral negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a binding, verifiable, enforceable treaty that eliminates nuclear weapons altogether.
As former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev observed on reviewing the new "Nuclear Famine" study: "I am convinced that nuclear weapons must be abolished. Their use in a military conflict is unthinkable; using them to achieve political objectives is immoral.
"Over 25 years ago, President Ronald Reagan and I ended our summit meeting in Geneva with a joint statement that 'Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,' and this new study underscores in stunning and disturbing detail why this is the case."
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writers.
.CNN... . A nuclear clash could starve the world By Jayantha Dhanapala and Ira... more-
- EthicalVegan
- added this
- 18 days ago
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- 10 comments
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Last Call At The Oasis; The global water crisis
A new movie highlighting the importance of water to our lives and the global crisis we face with ways to address it. It is good to see movies like this being made especially regarding water. We use too much of it (particularly regarding agriculture and energy,) we take it too much for granted and our misconceptions about its availability are being challenged. We are using much more than we can replenish and that exacerbates physical scarcity and non physical scarcity in the form of pollution that makes water unsuitable and unhealthy for human use.
In this age of climate change as well (when we are now seeing the human affect on the hydrologic cycle in connection with extreme weather events such as droughts and floods becoming more frequent and severe) we see moral will colliding with the forces of greed taking advantage of our apathy. We can no longer be secure in thinking we will never be without it and thinking it is a far away obscure crisis. It is here, it is now, and it is about all of us.A new movie highlighting the importance of water to our lives and the global crisis we... more-
- JanforGore
- added this
- 24 days ago
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- 14 comments
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Ecosystem effects of biodiversity loss rival climate change, pollution
Loss of biodiversity appears to affect ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress, according to results of a new study by an international research team.
The study is the first comprehensive effort to directly compare the effects of biological diversity loss to the anticipated effects of a host of other human-caused environmental changes.
The results, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, highlight the need for stronger local, national and international efforts to protect biodiversity and the benefits it provides, according to the researchers, who are based at nine institutions in the United States, Canada and Sweden.
"This analysis establishes that reduced biodiversity affects ecosystems at levels comparable to those of global warming and air pollution," said Henry Gholz, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research directly and through the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
"Some people have assumed that biodiversity effects are relatively minor compared to other environmental stressors," said biologist David Hooper of Western Washington University, the lead author of the paper.
"Our results show that future loss of species has the potential to reduce plant production just as much as global warming and pollution."
Studies over the last two decades demonstrated that more biologically diverse ecosystems are more productive.
As a result, there has been growing concern that the very high rates of modern extinctions--due to habitat loss, overharvesting and other human-caused environmental changes--could reduce nature's ability to provide goods and services such as food, clean water and a stable climate.
Until now, it's been unclear how biodiversity losses stack up against other human-caused environmental changes that affect ecosystem health and productivity.
"Loss of biological diversity due to species extinctions is going to have major effects on our planet, and we need to prepare ourselves to deal with them," said ecologist Bradley Cardinale of the University of Michigan, one of the paper's co-authors. "These extinctions may well rank as one of the top five drivers of global change."
More at the linkLoss of biodiversity appears to affect ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution... more-
- JanforGore
- added this
- 25 days ago
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- 9 comments
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In A Relationship: Going Gay?
Two East Coast guys have a revealing discussion.-
- TonyDiGerolamo
- added this
- 28 days ago
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- 0 comments
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Are Kids Too Young to Understand Veganism?
CNN...
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April 24th, 2012
08:00 PM ET
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Are kids too young to understand veganism?
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Parents have many talks with their kids as they grow up. There's the "birds and the bees" talk and the "sharing is caring" talk, or even the "don't be a bully" talk. Now, author Ruby Roth wants parents to have the "If it's too scary to talk about while we're eating, it's too scary to eat" discussion with their children.
Roth is talking about veganism. Like vegetarians, vegans don't eat meat, but they take that philosophy a few steps further. Vegans won't consume or use any products that contain any part of an animal. For example, they don't eat eggs or dairy and won't wear leather.
Her new children's book, "Vegan is Love," is causing quite a stir, with some critics saying she's scaring children into a lifestyle choice that young kids aren't equipped to make.
The 40 page book, officially geared towards 7-year-olds, features bright illustrations by Roth herself. Some of the illustrations are graphic. One depicts mice and bunnies and dogs and cats in a lab. They have oozing sores on their bodies and appear to be in a great deal of pain and suffering. Another is of a family of polar bears huddled on a tiny ice sheet.
In the book, Roth also advocates that children not go to zoos, aquariums or the circus: a potentially difficult concept for a young child to understand.
Roth herself is stepmother to a 7-year-old vegan and knew there would be some backlash. "These are all things every vegan hears on a daily basis. Of course there are going to be questions about misinformation," she says.
Roth became a vegan after being challenged to do so, and the lifestyle stuck. "I lost weight, had more energy, and never went back." Asked what she missed the most about her non-vegan lifestyle, "Shoes!" she says. "I cannot wait for more mainstream shoe lines to get a clue."
She has written two children's books on the subject, the first one is called "That's Why We Don't Eat Animals".
On the seemingly graphic nature of some of the illustrations she says, "I don't think that there's anything in my book that a kid wouldn't see walking in a supermarket or watching TV. I didn't exaggerate anything. I wanted kids to recognize what they see in the book."
One of the book's themes is to "teach kids we don't have to fear anything that we have the power to change." Roth also wants the public to look into what she calls the truth behind the animal and agricultural industries in America. She claims, "If the American public knew about the abuse, the outrage would be directed at the industry and not this children's book."
Asked how she'd react if her daughter decided to leave veganism, Roth says "I will never try to control what she eats, in the end it's up to her. The best we can do is make sure our kids have the information [they need] to make choices. My hope was to reach people who raise kids to love deeply."
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Click on link above to view video, take survey, and see poll results.
.CNN... . April 24th, 2012 08:00 PM ET . Are kids too young to understand... more-
- EthicalVegan
- added this
- 29 days ago
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- 1 comment
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Odds of Finding Alien Life Boosted by Billions of Habitable Worlds
A new estimate of the number of habitable planets orbiting the most common type of stars in our galaxy could have huge consequences for the search for life.
According to a recent study, tens of billions of planets around red dwarfs are likely capable of containing liquid water, dramatically increasing the potential to find signs of life somewhere other than Earth.
Red dwarfs are stars that are fainter, cooler and less massive than the sun. These stars, which typically also live longer than Class G stars like the sun, are thought to make up about 80 percent of the stars in the Milky Way, astronomers have said.
A second look
Red dwarfs generally have not been considered viable candidates for hosting habitable planets. Since red dwarfs are small and dim, the habitable zone surrounding them — the region where an orbiting planet's surface water can remain liquid — is relatively close to them."The habitable zone would be very, very small. Consequently, the chances that you would actually find any planet at the right distance from the sun to be attractive to life was likely to be small, too," said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, Calif. [The Strangest Alien Planets]
But the study, based on data from the European Space Agency's HARPS spectrograph in Chile, used a sample of 102 red dwarfs to estimate that 41 percent of the dim stars might be hiding planets in their habitable zone.
"The number of habitats might increase by a factor of 8 or 10," Shostak told SPACE.com.
Difficult environments
One of the largest concerns about planets circling red dwarfs is radiation. A red dwarf's habitable zone is generally closer to it than Mercury is to our sun, so a planet there would receive a strong shock of particles when storms erupted on the red dwarf.
"They could essentially give everything on the surface that's exposed to the sky ... a heavy dose of radiation," Shostak said. "It could be fatal."
However, if the alien planet had a magnetic field, this could provide some protection. So, too, could an ocean of water. Life that evolved beneath an ocean might be shielded from the brunt of the radiation.
(That's not necessarily good news for SETI, which searches for signals from extraterrestrial life. "We're not sure intelligent life, if under water, will be building radio transmitters and we're going to hear from them," Shostak said. "But it's possible.")
Another problem with planets tightly bound to their host star is a phenomenon known as tidal locking, in which one side of the world is perpetually turned toward the sun and receiving almost all of the heat.
But this isn't considered as big of a problem now as it had been.
For one thing, research over the past few years has indicated that the presence of other planets can ease the grip of the parent star, keeping a planet from being perfectly stagnant.
Furthermore, if the planet has an atmosphere, it might also boast wind, which could move the hot atmosphere to the dark side and the cool atmosphere to the sunlit side.
"Clearly, if it's too cold on one side and too hot on the other, somewhere in the middle there's that lovely Goldilocks zone where everybody wants to build their condos," Shostak said.
Even with these challenges, the sheer influx of tens of billions of potentially habitable planets improves the chances of finding alien life.
"SETI is looking for Mr. Right or maybe Ms. Right, depending on your point of view," Shostak said. "It helps to find out that there's 10 times as many candidates as there were before."A new estimate of the number of habitable planets orbiting the most common type of... more-
- thetrimsmith
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- 1 month ago
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Powell On Social Disintegration
Chris Powell is the managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester and writes a regular column for the paper. In the course of our conversation on poverty and social disintegration, Powell made reference to a column by Mona Charen that fairly summed up his general feelings.Chris Powell is the managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester and writes a... more-
- williamlanders
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- 1 month ago
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The Challenges of Life: Extraordinary Creatures of the Deep
“Creatures of the Deep” is part of the award-winning nature documentary series “Life,” which was created by BBC television and first broadcast as part of the BBC’s Darwin Season in 2009. The series received its North American premiere on Discovery Channel Canada in November 2009 and received its U.S. premier on Discovery Channel in March 2010. The series was nominated for six Primetime Emmy Awards in July 2010, and the episode “Challenges of Life” went on to win the Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming Award.
The series takes a global view of the specialized strategies and extreme behaviors that living things have developed in order to survive. “Creatures of the Deep” focuses on marine invertebrates, which are some of the most bizarre and beautiful animals on the planet, thriving in the midst of the toughest parts of the oceans. Divers swim into a shoal of predatory Humboldt squid as they emerge from the ocean depths to hunt in packs. When cuttlefish gather to mate, their bodies flash in stroboscopic colors. Time-lapse photography reveals thousands of starfish gathering under the Arctic ice to devour a seal carcass. The greatest living structures on earth, coral reefs, are created by tiny animals in some of the world’s most inhospitable waters.
The beautiful HD “Life” nature series provides the perfect visual background for any living room activity. As many have discovered, they play even better when muted and paired with soundtracks of your own choice. Now, videographer Tobi Totschlag has undertaken the task of curating some of his favorite songs and pairing them with parts of BBC’s “Life,” including some amazing scenes from “Creatures of the Deep.”
This piece includes a number of color photographs and four music videos created from the documentary series.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/the-challenges-of-life-extraordinary-creatures-of-the-deep/“Creatures of the Deep” is part of the award-winning nature documentary... more-
- disembedded
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- 2 months ago
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Parents credit cannabis for toddler's radiation recovery
The parents of a Missoula 3-year-old say that if they had listened to the doctors their son would've died. Cash Hyde is now cancer-free for a second time and his parents say marijuana is his best medicine.
(more at link)The parents of a Missoula 3-year-old say that if they had listened to the doctors... more-
- Vierotchka
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- 2 months ago
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What Darwin Never Knew
Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures, 1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a mystery until Charles Darwin's revolutionary idea of natural selection, which he showed could help explain the gradual development of life on Earth. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? And how did we evolve?
On the 150th anniversary of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," NOVA reveals answers to the riddles that Darwin couldn't explain. Breakthroughs in a brand new science nicknamed "evo devo" are linking the enigma of origins to another of nature's great mysteries, the development of an embryo. NOVA takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic and from the Cambrian explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today. Here scientists are finally beginning to crack nature's biggest secrets at the genetic level. And, as "NOVA" shows, the results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin's insights while exposing clues to life's breathtaking diversity.Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds,... more-
- Vierotchka
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- 2 months ago
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World Water Day 2012- Water And Food Security
This Thursday, March 22, is World Water Day as designated by the UN and celebrated annually since 1993. This year's theme is Water And Food Security. This video presents a primer on this important topic and crisis. Throughout the week up to March 22, I will be posting different sources of information, facts and an entry on March 22 in dedication of water/food. March 22 is a day to bring awareness of water in corrolation to our use of it and the crisis we face. Join Water Is Life this week in bringing awareness and celebrating what gives us life 365 days a year.This Thursday, March 22, is World Water Day as designated by the UN and celebrated... more-
- JanforGore
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- 2 months ago
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- 12 comments
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DANCE
- something primal, and exalted, to it.
. . .and spring IS upon us, it IS the season for it.
JOIN IN ! add something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab9i0s4WEY0&feature=related&noredirect=1- something primal, and exalted, to it. . . .and spring IS upon us, it IS the... more-
- remanns
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- 3 months ago
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Nearly 300 (THREE HUNDRED!) Elephants Slain Since Mid-January in Massive Massacre for Ivory, Government Minister Confirms
CNN...
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Nearly 300 elephants slain in Cameroon for ivory, government minister confirms
From Tapang Ivo Tanku, for CNN
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updated 7:21 PM EST, Mon February 20, 2012
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The government in Cameroon has launched a crackdown on poachers who have been killing elephants for their tusks.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Poachers are killing the elephants for their tusks
The ivory is smuggled to markets in Asia and Europe, an animal welfare official says
Money from ivory sales buys arms for use in regional conflicts, the official says
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(CNN) -- Poachers in search of ivory in northern Cameroon have slaughtered nearly 300 elephants for their tusks since mid-January, according to the country's minister of forestry and wildlife.
Minister Ngole Philip Ngwese backed up a claim by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) that an armed gang of Sudanese poachers had killed the free-roaming elephants in the Bouba Ndjida National Park, on Cameroon's border with Chad.
Park officials say many orphaned elephant calves have been spotted, and concerns are high the babies may soon die of hunger and thirst.
One park official, Bouba Jadi, told CNN the deaths are worsening the situation for Cameroon's already threatened elephant populations. According to official estimates, there are between 1,000 and 5,000 elephants in Cameroon.
Officials on a tour Monday saw at least 100 elephant carcasses. More carcasses are expected to be found in unexplored regions of the national park. A massive crackdown on poachers has been launched, according to officials in the west Central African nation.
"It was common for armed gangs of poachers to cross from Sudan during the dry season to kill elephants for their ivory. But this latest massacre is massive and has no comparison to those of the preceding years," IFAW official Celine Sissler Bienvenu told a local newspaper, The Voice.
She added that the ivory is smuggled out of West and Central Africa for markets in Asia and Europe, and money from ivory sales funds arms purchases for use in regional conflicts, particularly ongoing unrest in Sudan and in the Central African Republic.
Cameroon shares a porous border with Chad. Armed insurgents from Sudan and the Central African Republic seeking elephants frequently travel through Chad.
Observers in Cameroon have been blaming the raids on poorly trained and ill-equipped park guards, who are pitted against professional gangs of poachers.
.CNN... . Nearly 300 elephants slain in Cameroon for ivory, government minister... more-
- EthicalVegan
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- 3 months ago
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Symphonic composition honors 50th anniversary of 'Silent Spring"
Silence has a special place in music. Rests are just as important as notes whether in complex rhythms, grand pauses or syncopation. John Cage's infamous 3'44" asks for no playing whatsoever and Franz Joseph Haydn's "Farewell Symphony" ends with the performers leaving the stage one by one, slowly muting the orchestra.
Composer Steven Stucky takes an approach similar to Haydn in his newest work, but the American composer's decrescendo was inspired by a far more troubling situation. Haydn wished to convince his princely employer to let his musicians return from his summer home to their families. Mr. Stucky wanted to capture the stark prophecy of "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson's seminal treatise on the staggering effects of chemical pollution on the environment.
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If you go
Pittsburgh Symphony
Manfred Honeck, conductor; Nikolaj Znaider, violin
Program: Stucky's "Silent Spring," Sibelius "Violin Concerto" and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique"
When: 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 2:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Heinz Hall, Downtown
Tickets: start at $20; 412-392-4900 or www.pittsburghsymphony.org
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Commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to honor the book's 50th anniversary, Mr. Stucky's work of the same name musically captures the passion and courage of the Pittsburgh native, as well as the endgame she warned will take place if the industry practice of dumping chemicals such as DDT into water sources continued. "Silent Spring's" world premiere will take place this week conducted by PSO music director Manfred Honeck before the PSO takes it to New York City's Avery Fisher Hall late this month.
For Mr. Stucky, the PSO's composer-of-the-year, the destruction of nature and life could only be represented by silence. He gradually snuffs out all sound as the work ends.
"The last section of the piece is an ecstatic outpouring of sound and noise that you could think of as natural," he says. "Those voices gradually become subdued and fall silent. There is just one guy left at the end. It is a kind of "Farewell" symphony but on a much more dark emotional content. It ends not optimistically."
Not that Mr. Stucky's work is a blow-by-blow musical description of the book.
"I was delighted to be asked to create this musical tribute," he describes in program notes. "But I was perplexed, too: How to make a connection between her science and my music? I re-read 'Silent Spring,' and I reveled again in the distinctive mixture of hard science and eloquent lyricism that defines her voice. But how to make music about that?"
Rather than try to depict the toxic spray of DDT or the fluttering of the invasive gypsy moth, he opted for the emotional response to the bleak future that Carson laid out in the book published in 1962.
"I wasn't going to try to explain 'Silent Spring,' " says Mr. Stucky, 62, who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Second Concerto for Orchestra. "Reflecting the real world is not our job. It is making a translation between something like this and something interior. That is where music happens."
Mr. Stucky was a teenager when the controversy got heated between Carson and environmentalists and the chemical industry, but he remembers the furious debates and read the book. He may not have noticed then, but re-reading it today, he was just as inspired by Carson's writing as the message.
"I make allusions to the poetic side of Carson's writing," he says. "The reason people took this so seriously is that she was a great writer." He subtitled sections of the 21-minute composition with Rachel Carson titles: "The Sea Around Us" [actually another book by Carson], "The Lost Wood," "Rivers of Death" [chapter titles in "Silent Spring"]; and "Silent Spring."
These correspond to "watery music," an emotional chaccone (repeating bass line), a "demonic" scherzo, and a "harrowing ending" in which the musicians "one by one give up," he says.
Carson's "Silent Spring" ends with a pronouncement that the world has "two roads" in front of it, one that "ends in disaster" and the other that "offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our Earth." Mr. Stucky reflects that in the ending to his work, although he is adamant that composers "cannot control other people's reactions to it or even explain our own" and that he is "not a zealot on any side" of the environmental debate. But with the dire developments in the environment that many have pegged to pollutants, the conclusion of his piece clearly takes a stand.
http://www.alleghenyfront.org/img/contrib/rachel-carson-silent-spring1esize.jpgSilence has a special place in music. Rests are just as important as notes whether in... more-
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Conservative evangelical group: pro life does not denote "quality of life"
The Cornwall Alliance calls environmentalism "one of the greatest threats to society."
A conservative religious organization with ties to the oil industry is lashing out at health-conscious evangelical leaders for supporting new federal rules on mercury. They assert that protection of the unborn from toxic pollution cannot be called pro-life because the term does not mean “quality of life.”
The Cornwall Alliance is a group of conservative evangelicals devoted to spreading disinformation about climate change through its mission of “free-market environmental stewardship.” In its Declaration on Global Warming, the organization says “we deny that carbon dioxide … is a pollutant” and that “we deny that alternative, renewable fuels can … replace fossil and nuclear fuels.”
Think Progress conducted a lengthy investigation of this pollution-pushing evangelical group in 2010.
Responding to a new video and radio ad campaign from the Evangelical Environment Network that encourages lawmakers to support new mercury standards in order to “protect the unborn,” the Cornwall Alliance issued a statement explaining its view that being pro-life does not denote “quality of life.”
The term pro-life originated historically in the struggle to end abortion on demand and continues to be used in public discourse overwhelmingly in that sense. To ignore that is at best sloppy communication and at worst intentional deception. The life in pro-life denotes not quality of life but life itself. The term denotes opposition to a procedure that intentionally results in dead babies. (Bold not our emphasis.)
This doesn’t mean we should ignore environmental risks. It does mean they should not be portrayed as pro-life. Genuinely pro-life people will usually desire to reduce other risks as well—guided by cost/benefit analysis. But to call those issues “pro-life” is to obscure the meaning of the term.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the new mercury rules will prevent 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma attacks each year. And the impact of high levels of mercury in unborn children are well documented:
For fetuses, infants, and children, the primary health effect of methylmercury is impaired neurological development. Impacts on cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills have been seen in children exposed to methylmercury in the womb.
Outbreaks of methylmercury poisonings have made it clear that adults, children, and developing fetuses are at risk from ingestion exposure to methylmercury. During these poisoning outbreaks some mothers with no symptoms of nervous system damage gave birth to infants with severe disabilities, it became clear that the developing nervous system of the fetus may be more vulnerable to methylmercury than is the adult nervous system.
A growing number of religious leaders — including the U.S. Conference of Bishops — has come out in favor of reducing mercury emissions because of their impact on the health of children.
“A new national standard to reduce mercury and toxic air pollution from power plants is an important step forward to protect the health of all people, especially unborn babies and young children, from harmful exposure to dangerous air pollutants,” said the U.S. bishops’ domestic policy chairman in response to the proposed rules on mercury emissions.
In stark contrast to mainstream religious leaders, the fringe Cornwall Alliance has called the environmental movement “one of the greatest threats to society and the church today.”
Perhaps they are referring to the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI? Dubbed the “Green Pope,” Pope Benedict has been a vocal supporter of strong environmental standards, renewable energy, and action on climate change in order to protect “the whole of creation.”
Watch the video ad campaign from the Evangelical Environment Network below:
Update
The Evangelical Environmental Network continues to defend its ads from political attacks against prominent politicians, including Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe. “We believe protecting the unborn from mercury poisoning is a consistent pro-life position. An issue that impacts the unborn – that’s where we resonate as a pro-life organization,” said Alexei Laushkin, an EEN spokesman, in an interview with The Hill Thursday.
More at the linkThe Cornwall Alliance calls environmentalism "one of the greatest threats to... more-
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My Stolen life
This site was created to inform people that there is a killer drug that makes people unwitting victim of a deadly drug.
www.lifestolen.comThis site was created to inform people that there is a killer drug that makes people... more-
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Scientists have (probably) made contact with Earth's most alien lake!
13,000 feet beneath the surface of Antarctica's vast ice sheet rests the otherworldly Lake Vostok. Home to some of the most extreme conditions on Earth, Vostok has remained isolated from the rest of the world for 20 million years, and completely inaccessible to mankind. Until now.
Yesterday, reports originating from Ria Novosti — a state-run, Russian news agency — began to circulate, indicating that the twenty-year mission to reach Vostok's ice-entombed waters had finally reached its goal. Other media outlets were quick to pick up the news as well, citing an unnamed scientific source, who claimed that, "Yesterday [February, 5], our scientists stopped drilling at the depth of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the sub-glacial lake."
Whether the team has finally drilled through to the Lake, however, remains to be seen. Is it likely? Yes. A spokesperson from the Russian Antarctic Expedition in St. Petersburg told New Scientist this morning that the drill did make contact with water last week, and that the water was automatically drawn up into the borehole, as planned.
But the team must now check the water levels in the borehole, and readings from their equipment's pressure sensors, to confirm that the water is, in fact, from Vostok — and not from a pocket of water in the layers of ice overlaying the lake. The fact that this confirmation process is ongoing probably explains why there is still no official announcement on the website of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (the government agency that heads up the country's polar science expeditions). Valery Lukin, director of the Russian Antarctic Program, told Nature this morning that the team's data could be processed by as early as tomorrow.
In any case, even if the lake has been breached, it will still be almost a year before Russia's scientists have an opportunity to address the question that everyone is so anxious to know the answer to: whether Vostok's pitch-black waters — which have been cut off from light for millions of years — harbor any weird new life forms. If they do, it would strengthen the prospect of discovering exoplanetary life in the subsurface waters of Jupiter's moon Europa, Saturn's moon Enceladus, and any other cosmic bodies that harbor water, subglacial or otherwise.
And if they don't? Well, that would be disappointing (after all, who wouldn't want to discover a new species of subglacial extremophile?), but it would also be incredibly interesting. After all, everywhere on this planet that we've found water, we've found life; to not find it in the waters of Vostok — the third largest lake by volume on Earth — would be totally unprecedented.
http://io9.com/5882868/scientists-have-probably-made-contact-with-earths-most-alien-lake13,000 feet beneath the surface of Antarctica's vast ice sheet rests the... more-
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