New birding board game has me so excited!!!!!!!

I'm on a couple of FB birding lists and I got completely inundated with news about a new board game, Wingspan.  It also got covered by the NYT so no surprise to find out it's already out of stock.  I'm signed up to get notified when they get more printed since there's no way I'm paying triple the price to buy one right now.    But isn't this just the coolest birdy thing ever?

The pic is from the publisher's website as is this description of the game. 

"You are bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors—seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. Each bird extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your habitats (actions). These habitats focus on several key aspects of growth:

Gain food tokens via custom dice in a birdfeeder dice tower
Lay eggs using egg miniatures in a variety of colors
Draw from hundreds of unique bird cards and play them
The winner is the player with the most points after 4 rounds.

If you enjoy Terraforming Mars and Gizmos, we think this game will take flight at your table."

Besides my natural excitement at something that is so forthrightly birdy, the reviews are good on the game & the mechanics so I'm really looking forward to this.  I know what I'm getting myself for an early birthday present!

Getting multiple news sources

I've always tried to read different perspectives because I don't think there's much of a chance that I know everything there is to know about any particular issue.  But with the massive increase in websites and blogs in addition to more traditional news sources, well, it's a bit overwhelming.  This graph gives me a starting place.  The author is clearly self-identified as conservative (their group blog Mitrailleuse is in the upper right quadrant) so I'd probably put some of these things in a slightly different place but I like the idea.

http://mitrailleuse.net/2015/05/29/the-alignment-of-political-media-updated/

I got this from the website given under the graph and I repeat it here so it's super easy to find.  http://mitrailleuse.net/2015/05/29/the-alignment-of-political-media-updated/

I'm sure I'll have some amusement in exploring things I don't normally read and it will certainly be informative.

Electric car or hybrid? Choices are growing!

I've been tracking electric vehicles for a while now so I'm really pleased to see the announcement from Tesla that a new Model III will hit the $35000 and be available in 2017 or sooner.  Since my husband has been mentally deliberating on what kind of EV to get to replace his current almost too old car this is good news at our house.

From Tesla announcement

But which is better right now, plug-in hybrid or electric?  Here's a good article analyzing the choices (click here) and best of all, the article has an example from a total cost over 5 years calculator, Edmunds True Cost to Own Calculator.  I'll be running the numbers on the choices altho my inclination is to stick with the hybrids until charging stations are more common.  This calculator makes it easier to see the benefits of going electric because the maintenance costs can really shift the total cost to own over the 5 years so I'll have to play with it a bit.  I have to admit I love the idea of having a car that doesn't run on gas and saves me money.   My idea of a win/win scenario.

New bird found in Peru!

Wow!  A new bird species has been discovered in Peru.  Usually, the species count goes the other way so this is cool news as far as I'm concerned.  Here's a link from Cornell giving the deets.  And the picture they have of it.  A pretty bird, too, how nice...

Oh, yes, the bird's name:  the Sira Barbet.  

Radioactive rabbit poop - too funny not to share

I suppose it's not really funny, but the mental image I get from reading this story - the people with detectors going around searching for the radioactive rabbit poop... Well, alright, I have a twisted sense of humor. Read the full story here.

I'll return to my more serious posts next time with pictures of my perfect studio that will have to be dismantled when we move.

Tidal power in Snohomish - coming soon!

Today's email brought a link to this article about tidal power research in Snohomish County, just to the north of Seattle. Our federal dollars were important in funding the research, and will lead to power coming from the tides in 2012, if all goes as planned. I'll be interested in seeing how this goes. I think each area will have a better form of alternative energy depending on the local conditions. Hot and sunny, go solar. Lots of wind or tide, use that. I also think decentralized and multisource is a better way to go than a single giant electric grid, but that's a different post for another day. *smile*

350.org performance art

I'm on the mailing list for 350.org, and in fact, James was planning for us to do something, but the flu intervened. However, I urge anyone who likes pictures of everyday people acting from their heart to check it out. Whether you view it as necessary political activism or performance art, it's an amazing collection of pictures. Go to 350.org and be amazed! (Note for those who've missed a story about it - 350.org organized a day of doing things, art, actions that could be photographed to get the number 350 into public awareness, as it's the number climate scientists say we need to cap carbon at. )

I particularly like the one about the kayakers in the Williamette River, but then that's local as far as I'm concerned, and I canoe so I know how hard it is to hold them in place on a river. To see this photo, and the story about it, go here.

microcredit comes to NYC

In my email this morning was this news from dailygood.org. I pass it along because I think going small (and relocalizing) is the best way out of the current economic problems for most of us.

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see. /--Muhammad Yunus/

*Good News of the Day:*
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, known as the "banker to the poor" for making small loans in impoverished countries, is now doing business in the center of capitalism -- New York City. In the past year the first U.S. branch of his Grameen Bank has lent $1.5 million, ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, to nearly 600 women with small business plans in the city's borough of Queens. People around the country are struggling to repay mortgages and credit card debts, but Grameen America says its loan repayment rate is more than 99 percent. [ full story here ]

Earth Jurisprudence: Legal rights for Gaia

I blogged about Ecuador adding legal rights for nature in their rewritten constitution. And here's a link to an article about where else the idea is catching on, including Vermont (no surprise there) and Maine, where local communities are using the idea to fight corporations (such as Nestle) who want to use their aquifers for bottled water without regard to the local communities' desires or the aquifer recharge rate.

Read the full article here.

I am particularly excited to hear about the folks at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), based in Pennsylvania. They're providing legal assistance to communities both locally and internationally. I'm intending to look at what I can do to support them. See their webpage at www.celdf.org. If the rules aren't working, and I believe they're not, then we need to change them rather than wait for disaster.

Going green, national level plan

I get a lot of email from a lot of different sites about what they're doing, and today brought news of The Real Deal, from the Post Carbon Institute. I've skimmed it this morning, and it looks like it's written at a reasonable level, both in covering why we need to act and what there is to do. I'm glad to see a coherent plan laid out, and equally glad to see they're getting name endorsements so it stands a chance of getting publicity. It's only 24 pages long which is also a big plus.

Check it out: http://www.postcarbon.org/real-new-deal.

Grist.org reports new legal rights for Nature in Ecuador

from grist.org. What's next, legal rights for trees? *grin*

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We Hold Its Value to Be Self-Evident
Ecuador approves new constitution granting inalienable rights to nature

Ecuador approved a new constitution this weekend that, among other things, grants inalienable rights to nature, the first such inclusion in a nation's constitution, according to Ecuadorian officials. "Nature ... where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions, and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community, or nationality will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before the public bodies," the document says. The specific mention of evolution isn't accidental; besides being an activity nature arguably likes to do anyway, evolution as we know it has close ties to Ecuador's territory of the Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin formed his famous theory. Ecuador's constitution grants nature the right to "integral restoration" and says that the state "will promote respect toward all the elements that form an ecosystem" and that the state "will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems, or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles."


sources: Nature, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund