McClintock/Tea Party town hall tonight; what will you ask?

Who/what/where/when: (from NCTPP)

Wednesday night, April 27. ...Tea Party Co-founder Mark Meckler and Congressman Tom McClintock....will be discussing budgets, deficits, and taxes, and plan to take questions from the audience.
...The Horsemen’s Club, 10600 Bubbling Wells Road (off Brunswick), Grass Valley. Event starts at 6:30...

What to ask McClintock?

I understand he voted No on this:

Congress accepts the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.

Is it true that he voted against it? If so, which part(s) does he not accept?

Can he see a shift in coloration from left to right in this image?

Here's a letter (link) from a science-aligned Republican to his science-doubting congressman; feel free to adapt it.

One person (not me) suggests asking: "where were you really born?"

Also, this from Krugman (myth vs. fact on spending under Obama) might provide some ideas.

The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science - Mooney, in MoJo

How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link; in the latest issue of Mother Jones.
"...motivated reasoning... our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts..." etc.

Very much worth reading.

On April 28, Tim DeChristopher Climate Trial Presentation, NSJ

Ran across this while perusing The Union's calendar (which I don't find easy to use; how do you de-clog calendars to filter out the usual repetitive stuff?)

Tim DeChristopher Climate Trial Presentation

When	Thursday, April 28, 2011, 7 – 8:30pm
Where	North Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center
Event type	Youth/Leadership
Event description	The trial of Tim DeChristopher: a multi-media presentation by the Finding the Good traveling semester students. In March 2011, the students and faculty of Finding the Good traveled to Salt Lake City for the trial of activist Tim DeChristopher, who derailed a BLM oil and gas lease auction at the end of the Bush administration. This presentation tells their story and is a fundraiser for the film, "Bidder 70." 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, April 28, at the N. Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center on the San Juan Ridge. For information, call (530) 265-5490.

Is there a good western Nevada County events calendar somewhere, that I don't know about?

(The Union's calendar is full of exercise classes and ongoing art displays and doesn't allow the kind of filtering I'd like (and AFAIK doesn't have permalinks to events); KNCO's seems decent but underutilized (and yo, folks, Reno is not in western Nevada County); KVMR has its own & some of its radio folks' events only; they point us to Nevada County Gold's calendar (quality events, but sparse) and to Yubanet (underutilized, and again, with many nonlocal events))

And a fine demonstration was had by (nearly) all...

Tax Day Make Them Pay, outside the Bank of America in Nevada City, 4pm today, with Dixieland musical accompaniment:





The usual melange of messages and causes, eliciting complaint from one participant who was there for the demonstration's "cut corporate welfare" purpose only.

20-20 hindsight - should have gotten comments from BofA staff and customers, & a photo of the contrarian on opposite corner whose protest sign read "I like ice cream".

Home&Garden show; A.P.P.L.E. clarifies focus

Note: see comments for discussion of the "A.P.P.L.E. clarifies focus" section of this post; there is dissent.

This weekend is the Home&Garden show at the fairgrounds, which are flat-out gorgeous. Don't miss the stock dog demo*.
Show costs $5 to park, but after that, admission is free.


APPLE had a booth, and a prominent tagline that I hadn't noticed before:

Living Well in a Changing World

This slogan does better match what APPLE does, & what's on offer at the APPLE Center up on Commercial St.; where I've had some conflict recently (the poster I assembled was non grata, particularly Tim DeChristopher's "Climate change is a war against the young") over the deliberate avoidance of the topic of climate change, except for the diversionary (link) "you can address climate change by personal carbon-footprint action" variety; but the "living well/changing world" tagline clarifies why climate education - about the science, about the stakes, about the moral imperative to fight it, about what actions are effective - lies beyond APPLE's bailiwick.

Their board president was in the booth, & confirmed-though-not-in-so-many-words that this [living well in a changing world] is indeed their focus.

(Which is their prerogative; it's just that many in this community are under the impression that APPLE advocates for climate change education & solutions as well.)

Photos of Earth Day at Sierra College, GV - global climate disruption?

April 13, 2011: Mother Nature was irked.

Somebody close the freezer door please!
Extreme Arctic warming requires new color on temperature map
(Hello, hot pink.)

Simple test to assess critical thinking skills

You can use this test to calibrate anyone; not just your representatives in government.

Calibration:

1. Ask how they would (or did) vote, on this:

"Congress accepts the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare." (link)
(Added Apr 15: Names of US Congressmembers who deny climate change, so their grandchildren can find them)

2. Ask if they see any pattern, to the colors in this image:
(are the colors randomly distributed, or do they change, from one side to the other?)

Education:

Refer them to David Brin (then Skeptical Science).

And finally, assess, based on how they've responded to this information.

What organization's name is on the W-2 form of CABPRO executive director Martin Light?

I'll bet you a dollar it's not CABPRO.
(nor California Association of Business, Property and Resource Owners)
(Update: it seems I would have lost the dollar, according to a former executive director.)


that is all...

Sat a.m. update: yesterday I asked this question of a former CABPRO director, who answered that he had no idea. Hmmm...
(A for-the-future etiquette resolution: next time, before asking a Q & thereby taking up 10 seconds of someone's time, when they're sitting around waiting, I shall request permission to take up the time & ask the Q. Apologies and mild groveling, for not having thought to do so.)

Radiation graphs from Sacto monitor (no worries, at least not here in CA)

Just ran across the Sacramento monitor's page from the EPA's RadNet Air Monitoring Data website; they say "To date, levels recorded at this monitor have been thousands of times below any conservative level of concern." (Mar. 22 press release here)

It's a bit curious, that before the Japan quake, the [beta gross count rate] readings were higher; perhaps spuriously & it wasn't fixed until the quake brought the monitor to attention. The "gamma gross count rate" graph below it shows no such pattern.

Mixed-up weather lament

Snow. Snow. More snow.

Never thought that in spring I'd be wishing we were back in January... (or early Feb.)

For KVMR folk, on science communication - excellent piece by Chris Mooney

Excerpts from Good Communication is Good Scientific Practice:

Koch Industries sock puppetry on Wikipedia and blog comments

Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For Unethical ‘Sock Puppets’, from ThinkProgress earlier this month; somehow I'd missed it.

(Note: the original user was open about his/her Koch ties, but apparently later created/recruited sockpuppets or meatpuppets, which is verboten - as is editing pages where you have a conflict of interest, which s/he also did.)

New Media Strategies was the PR firm they used here, but it's one of many: "the billionaire Koch brothers maintain contracts with over a dozen public relation firms and lobbying firms."

Cal. Dept of Public Health radiation FAQ - the URL

JeffP reprinted the FAQ, but you can find the CDPH original (which presumably they'll update) here:
http://cdph.ca.gov/Pages/RadiationFAQS2011.aspx

(There's a prominent link to it under "CDPH News" on the California Department of Public Health home page. )

Tuesday update: See also the Jeff Masters post Radiation from Japan not likely to harm North America, on Weather Underground.

How to donate to the Japan relief effort

Mar. 30 update: Robert Brady of Pure Land Mountain recommends Socks for Japan.

Mar. 19 update: Felix Salmon says Don’t donate money to Japan, and explains why. Give the groups your $$, but leave them free to put it where it'll do most good.

How to donate to the Japan relief effort from the Guardian.

Got friends/family in Alaska, Arizona or Florida?

We need their help to identify the Senator that placed a secret hold on whistleblower protection.

It's easy - and they don't have to tell their senator to do anything*, only to ask some simple questions.

* I'm still allergic to telling mine what to do.