The Great Brain Robbery and the Seattle Pee Patch

Photo courtesy of Darwin Bell via Flickr

The neighborhood dogs use my daughter's vegetable garden as a communal toilet. You can't blame them really. The garden is right next to the sidewalk and they are just dogs. I suppose you could blame the dog owners holding the leash. But, are my dog-walking neighbors really that obtuse or are they victims of the parasite on the end of that leash? ; )

See this article called Ten Fascinating Cases of Mind Control for a fascinating compilation of videos documenting how parasites send their genes into the future (procreate) by controlling the minds of other creatures.

Richard Dawkins describes this behavior as an extended phenotype--the parasite can manipulate its host's behavior to help the parasite reproduce.

One video in that link describes how a parasite alters the behavior of rats to actually seek out the company of cats, which tends to get them eaten, thus sending the parasite into the gut of the cat to complete its life-cycle.

An estimated 60 million Americans are infected by this same parasite, which may explain a few things.


My neighbor's cat--with summer hair cut

For more thoughts on this subject read:

Domesticated Dogs--Mutualists or Parasites?

A Lapdog To Go With Your Laptop

This garden has been a lesson in human nature for my kid. I warned her that people would let their dogs crap on her vegetables. She didn't believe me. All summer we watched from our living room window as one neighbor after the other stood there to let their dogs crap in her vegetable garden. Just today I watched another neighbor let both of her dogs take a dump right in the middle of the freshly tilled soil.

A sign asking them to stop would make some of them feel guilty, which would make some of them angry. Most would probably let their dog crap on the garden anyway, possibly after looking around to make sure nobody is watching.

We decided that the best option is to build a picket fence around the garden and to plant far enough from it to avoid over spray.

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Introducing the Seattle bike box

Photo courtesy of itdp via Flickr

According to this article over on the Seattle Post Globe, work crews were busy last night installing the first of two planned bike boxes in Seattle. I drive past those intersections about twice a week while delivering my daughter to school, although I don't usually get up that way on my electric bike. I will get to see it first hand from my car tomorrow.

From the Seattle Department of Transportation:

New bike facility increases visibility and awareness; makes road safer for cyclists and drivers

SEATTLE - To create a safer roadway system and help encourage more bicycling citywide, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is today installing the city's first bike box at E Pine Street eastbound at 12th Avenue. This fall SDOT will also emplace these new bike facilities at E Madison Street eastbound and westbound at 12th Avenue, and Seventh Avenue S northbound at S Dearborn Street.

A green box with a white bicycle symbol inside, a bike box is a nationally used intersection safety feature that prevents bicycle/car collisions by placing cyclists at the front of the vehicle queue. The boxes improve safety for all roadway users by increasing awareness and visibility of cyclists; helping cyclists make safer intersection crossings, especially when drivers are turning right and bicyclists are going straight; and encouraging cyclists to make more predictable approaches to and through an intersection.

When the traffic signal is yellow or red, motorists must stop behind the white line at the rear of the bike box and cyclists should enter the box itself. When the light turns green, motorists and cyclists may move through the intersection as usual, with cyclists going first. Motorists turning right on green should signal and watch for cyclists to the right, especially in the green bike lane of the intersection. New signage will help motorists and cyclists understand the new roadway feature. No right turns on red are allowed at these intersections.

SDOT is installing bike boxes this year as part of its Bicycle Master Plan implementation. These safety features are used in a number of other US cities to include Portland, New York City, Baltimore and Minneapolis.

No right turns on red? That may anger a few motorists.

I used my electric bike quite a bit yesterday, making trips to the Seattle Department of Planning and Development, the hardware store, grocery store, and a drug store.

As always I rode far enough away from parked cars to avoid being killed by a suddenly opened door, which irritates motorists because I'm harder to pass.

Left turns always make me nervous. I don't like taking my hand off the handle bar to signal at such a critical juncture and I also don't trust that the cars behind me will see me in all of the clutter. I usually find a way to turn left without having to play Russian Roulette, even if I have to pull over and use a cross walk.

I have also noted that some motorists don't appreciate it when a cyclist goes to the front of a line of waiting cars. They often gun their engines and blow by in a huff. Hopefully these bike boxes will let them know that it's legal for bikes to do that just as it's legal for pedestrians to stop cars at cross walks.

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Bald Eagle Take Out (Red-Tailed Hawk)

Last week a bunch of crows (called a murder for reasons unknown) were making so much noise I stepped out of my house to see what was up. Most of my neighbors did as well. We discovered a pair of red-tailed hawks in a nearby tree, one of which was eating a crow.

Today I heard another murder of crows raising hell and figured that the hawks had returned. Instead, I found two bald eagles in my neighbor's tree. I assumed they were eating a crow but when one flew out I could see that it was eating a bird much larger than a crow. I surmised that it was one of the red tailed hawks. It was probably distracted while eating a crow it caught, allowing the eagle to sneak up on it.

It is amazing how much urban wildlife Seattle has. We can't let our chickens out unsupervised or some hawk will snatch one. Although the density of wildlife is high thanks to all of the energy thrown off by human activity, garbage, pet food, lawn fertilizers, home gardens etc., the biodiversity is relatively low. Seattle is limited to animals that can adapt to an urban environment.

I just got back from a five day camping trip. I saw very few crows and the ones I did see were terrified of people. You could not even drive to withing 500 feet of one. My guess is that they are hunted as varmints in that neck of the woods where cherry orchards dominate agriculture. The fact that I saw a bald eagle stealing fish from an osprey while I was there may have something to do with their scarcity as well.

Dead as Latin

Michael Kanellos said the following in his Greentech Innovations Report last week:

"A tour of its portfolio shows it has made some pretty good bets, and also nabbed some major clunkers.

...On the other hand, it also put money into Imperium Renewables, the dead-as-Latin biofuel maker." …

Down in the comment field, the CEO of Imperium lambasted him for telling the truth and then gave us his version of reality:

"…[biodiesel is] a real tangible asset that can help drastically reduce our CO2 output of our vehicles."

According to Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen and his crack international team of researchers, Imperium's version of biodiesel is actually about 70% worse for global warming than regular diesel and that is not counting land displacement impacts! Ah screw the science. Global warming isn't real anyway, right? It's energy independence we are after:

"…we are working on real solutions for our energy needs in this country."

I have two problems with the above statement. First, according to this link, Imperium was one of several biodiesel companies slapped with a tariff for exporting their product to Europe where they could undercut other producers thanks to a loophole that allowed them to take the dollar per gallon blending subsidy even if the fuel is not used domestically. The energy independence argument bandied about by biofuel publicists takes a distant second fiddle to profit.

And second, last time I checked, they were not even using American grown crops to produce it. The canola oil came from Canada, got refined into biodiesel, and was shipped off to Europe. God bless America, energy independence here we come.

Oh, and that is not a picture of the Imperium refinery. It's a picture of Gas Works Park in Seattle, just a few blocks from my house. These are the rusting remains of yet another energy technology that pressurized coal and piped the resultant gases throughout the city for heating and lighting, which is the very same technology being proposed by the "Clean Coal" advocates--nothing new under the sun. The pipe from that processing plant still protrudes from my basement wall.

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(photo credit Sea Turtle via the Flickr Creative Commons license).