Why we need proportional representation: Women in state houses still stalled in most of America

Winner-take-all races (single member districts) reliably reduce women's share of the seats in legislative bodies.  Electing from multi-member districts increases women's electoral success.

• State Legislatures: 
  (click to enlarge)
  
  
  It's been 100 years since women were guaranteed the right to vote nationwide, but women remain badly unrepresented in government. As the above map by Daniel Donner demonstrates, women are only approaching parity with men in a few state legislatures. In a new post, Donner looks at the relationship between female representation in each state legislature and party affiliation, and finds some real surprises.

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Hawaii corals joining in on the warming hoax, probably pro-choice liberals to boot

In yet another sign about how fiendishly devious are the forces trying to convince the world that climate change is real, somehow they've managed to get corals all over the world to commit mass suicide, probably just to scare Real Americans into not polluting so much and to giving more money to liberal scientists.

Just because corals are just about the entire base of the oceanic food system, without which the oceans are just about wet deserts, so what!  We've got more cars than people, and those babies run on gas, baby, so move out of the way, we're driving for Freedom!

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Hawaii to experience worst-ever coral bleaching due to high ocean temperatures
// The Guardian

Corals are recovering from last year's bleaching but warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures this year will likely lead to a more deadly year for coral reef

Warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures around Hawaii this year will likely lead to the worst coral bleaching the islands have ever seen, scientists said.

Many corals are only just recovering from last year's bleaching, which occurs when warm waters prompt coral to expel the algae they rely on for food, said Ruth Gates, the director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. The phenomenon is called bleaching because coral lose their color when they push out algae.

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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Excellent idea, long overdue: Trap, Neuter, Release programs for feral cats

This is a good start. 

But we also need an ordinance that all domestic housepets in Salem must be neutered unless the owner has a special license, available through veterinary offices, with penalties (including sterilization) if the fertile housepet is found off the owner's property. (And pet stores can only sell unsterilized pets to license holders.)

Salem created a whole hairball of a regulatory scheme for chickens, while ignoring the much more serious problem of fertile dogs and cats and the suffering caused by litter after litter that they produce.

It's past time to make Salem a city where we don't have thousands of unwanted housepets starving or serving as coyote food and killed by cars.

https://whs4pets.org/salem-city-council-tnr-endorsement-considered-on-sept-14/

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Lesson of a Fiery Summer: The GOP and the Chamber of Commerce are clear and present dangers to you and to your family's future

Ralph Waldo Emerson said "We learn geology the day after the earthquake" . . .

Our problem is that climate chaos isn't a one-off earthquake, a five-minute event followed by a long cleanup and chance to rebuild.

Climate chaos is like one earthquake after another, each one progressively more serious, and each one hitting already weakened and vulnerable nations, after our resources are depleted from the effects of the prior ones.

The best way to understand the US Chamber of Commerce and its sock puppets in Congress and in the 50 state houses is to go back and watch "Dr. Strangelove" and see them their insanity in full flower on the screen in the form of General Buck Turgidson, brushing off concerns about the impending holocaust about to be unleashed on the world:

President Merkin Muffley: I will not go down in history as the greatest mass-murderer since Adolf Hitler.

General "Buck" Turgidson: Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American People than with your image in the history books.

That's the Chamber of Commerce and the whole climate denialist industry in a nutshell -- to hell with a livable world that can sustain civilization so long as we in the US can tell ourselves that we "won" . . . before the whole thing collapsed around us.  The Chamber's strategy on climate is to figure that no matter how bad things will get, it will be much worse for everyone else than for the US, so our relative power will be preserved or even increased. "Winning!" as Charlie Sheen would put it.

Eerily, in writing Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick even anticipated the most dangerous delusion of all, the belief among the elites that their wealth will protect them from the catastrophe and that they and their select few friends will be able to hide out in places of safety while us proles are wiped out. This failure to comprehend the nature of the calamity we have unleashed is their most dangerous mistake, because it fools their instinct for self-preservation and lures them into ignoring the mounting alarms, no matter how loudly they scream warnings.

The lesson of the fiery summer of 2015 is that, in November 2016, we either defeat the Chamber's candidates all across America or they will destroy us and our hopes for a future filled with something other than one catastrophic tipping point after another.

Politicians especially at-risk: functional illiteracy and the rise of "unpropaganda" [feedly]

Why Johnny can't understand climate: functional illiteracy and the rise of "unpropaganda"
http://read.feedly.com/html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.resilience.org%2Fstories%2F2015-09-01%2Fwhy-johnny-can-t-understand-climate-functional-illiteracy-and-the-rise-of-unpropaganda&theme=white&size=medium
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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Happens once or twice a year

George Will writes a column that isn't horrible and that reflects some basic human decency

Redeeming the remainder of a life: George Will
http://read.feedly.com/html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oregonlive.com%2Fopinion%2Findex.ssf%2F2015%2F09%2Fredeeming_the_remainder_of_a_l.html&theme=white&size=medium
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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Size Matters (Atomic size, that is)

Another example of what a great school Wisconsin is, and why that idiot Scott Walker -- who was too stupid to even graduate from Marquette --

should be flayed and rolled in salt for eternity in return for his ceaseless attacks on UW.

The Taliban destroying priceless statuary are his idols ... 

http://www.veronicaberns.com/atomicsizematters/

Atomic Size Matters

Buy the comic now!

What's this book about?

Atomic Size Matters is a comic book that explains one way scientists are trying to understand the complexity sometimes found in crystalline compounds. Crystals are solid materials with very neatly organized atoms that form a repeating pattern. Though we know a lot more about crystalline compounds than ever before, we still don't have a great way to predict when a compound should form a simple pattern or a more complicated one. Figuring this out could lead to new materials that we design very precisely to optimize their properties. But we are still at stage one, forming a theory about the advantages of complex arrangements over simple ones.

The comic book takes the reader through these motivations, to the introduction of our theory of Chemical Pressure, all the way to a fascinating case study of a material called a quasicrystal. All this is presented in six short sections:

• Why we care about solid structures

• Our idea of chemical pressure, and our understanding of the way atoms interact

• How we use computers to bring our model into three dimensions

• Introducing a CaCu5 as a model system to understand chemical pressure

• Extending our model to a nobel prize winning material: quasicrystals

• Where this research is going in the future

The book itself is printed on high quality paper, with perfect binding in the style of a trade paperback comic book.

How'd this all begin?

This comic started about one year before I would defend my PhD dissertation in chemistry. I began to think about how much I had put into my graduate school career, and how everything would culminate in a dissertation. But I was disappointed when I realized my non-scientist family and friends would never read it.

I often struggled to explain my work to them, because I knew they were all capable of understanding the ideas, but they just aren't well-versed in the jargon. Over the next eight months, I wrote and drew a comic book version of part of my graduate research. I included the comic itself as the final chapter in my official thesis. 

A short introductory preview:

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

What Salem needs too: Proportional Representation instead of Winner-Take-All Voting | Sightline Daily

http://daily.sightline.org/2015/09/08/proportional-representation-is-better-than-winner-take-all-voting/

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Give yourself a good birthday present: Give blood

If you find yourself having another birthday and enjoying it in good health, there's a way you can really celebrate the good fortune that brought you that happy circumstance: donate blood.  Here at LOVESalem HQ, I've lost count of how many birthdays and holidays I've celebrated that way -- approaching 20 gallons donated by now (yep, it's been a lot of birthdays!), but I was pleased to have the health to be able to give a double red cell donation today.

When you give blood on a special day, you are likely making that a really special day for someone else -- the day where you got to save a life by giving something that is invaluable and that no amount of money can replace.

Why I don't give Nominally Public Radio any money

NPR has become what public radio was intended to be the alternative to.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/03/1417908/-Today-NPR-made-Sanders-an-unperson-at-least-for-NPR-listeners?detail=email

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."