Daily Archives: May 13, 2017

What Are Billbugs And How Do I Get Rid Of Them? | MeMetics

Posted: May 13, 2017 at 5:50 am

Many insects get up to no good only at one stage of their lives, but billbugs make a lifetime career ofruining your lawn. The grown-ups chew holes in the grass blades, and their offspring eat the whole plant roots, blades and all. Small distinct circles of brown or yellowish grass are a good clue that billbugs areat work. Youll know that for sure if the discolored turf pulls up in a mat, and the roots are covered witha light brown powder that looks like sawdust.

The culprits are easy to recognize. The larvae are white, legless grubs with bright burnt-orange heads.The big guys are brown or black weevils, to inch long. Youll sometimes see them strolling alongsidewalks and driveways in early spring. Like all weevils, they have distinctive snout, or bill, that givesthem their name. First, heres the good news: Billbugs usually produce only one generation of offspring per year. The adults come up out of the soil in the spring to mate and eat your grass. The females lay their eggs in thesoil. When they hatch in midsummer, the larvae burrow a little deeper into the ground and go to townon your grass roots. They chomp merrily away through the fall, then sleep through the winter in the soil.

Come early spring, they wake up- still in grub form- and feed even more heavily before pupating andstarting the cycle again.

Turf grass is the main item on the billbugs menu, but on occasion theyll wander into the veggie patchfor a corn feast. If that happens at your place, launch an attack force of beneficial nematodes.

While adult billbugs can make a mess of your lawn, grubs can destroy it. So close the restaurant early byinvesting in some beneficial nematodes. Theyll boot the juvenile delinquents out the door, fast! Its atemporary remedy, though; for long term control, youll need a bigger bag of tricks.

Billbugs tend to zero in on lawns planted in poorly drained soil. If thats why they targeted your turf, youve got several options for chasing them away. Choosing the best one depends on how big the problem is and how much time and money you want to spend on the solution. Your taste in outdoor surroundings will also play a factor. Here are your choices:

Improve the drainage in trouble spots. This could be as simple as adding organic matter to the soil, or as complicated and expensive- as calling a landscaping contractor for a full overhaul.

Replace the grass with perennial plants that take a damp soil.

Forget growing anything in the problem area, and build a patio or deck instead.

If you live where you can grow fescue or perennial ryegrass, youve got some powerful help. Some varieties of both of these grasses are chock-full of microscopic fungi, called endophytes, that actually kill billbugs and a slew of other lawn pests. There endophytic grasses also have first-class disease resistance, drought tolerance, and all-around staying power.

Once youve banished the billbugs, do the following to keep your lawn a big unwelcome mat:

Blast thatch and do everything you can to keep it at bay. It draws billbugs like peanuts attract squirrels.

Keep the soil enriched with organic matter, especially compost.

Aerate your lawn so that water can penetrate deeply and spray it once a month with my special Aeration Tonic. What is that you ask and how do you use it?

Use 1 cup of dishwashing liquid and 1 cup of beer. Combine them in a 20 gallon hose-end sprayer, and fill the balance of the sprayer jar with warm water. Then once a month during the growing season, spray your lawn with the tonic to the point of run-off.

If it doesnt work, organize your lawn so that it attracts songbirds. They eat bad bugs by the barrelful.

Phil Brooks is an expert in pest control home remedies. He currently runs his own company and offers free consultations for Midland Pest Control.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Immortality: From Alchemy to Avatars – Boing Boing

Posted: at 5:50 am

Featuring simple, bold, and colorful illustrations, A Beginner's Guide to Immortality examines humanity's never-ending quest to discover the secret to eternal life. The book is categorized into five options on extending one's life: Elixirs, Meeting Immortals, Visiting Magical Places, Patience, and The Future.

Starting with a look at historical figures such as Gilgamesh's search for youth-restoring seaweed and Qin She Huang's hunt for a fruit which grants eternal life, the book touches on the unsuccessful search for mythical life-extending tools like alchemical elixirs, the philosopher's stone, and the flesh of the ningyo fish. The folkloric Moon rabbit is shown is vibrant yellow, stirring its cauldron of the Elixir Of Life.

The journey continues to mythical places where some form of a fountain of youth supposedly exists in Bimini, St. Brendan's Island, and Tir Na Nog. A dynamic full-page illustration of a maiden soaking in a mountain stream in bold aquamarine evokes an idyllic atmosphere. Real-life places such as those in Earth's Blue Zones occurring in Sardinia, Okinawa, and Loma Linda, California, where inhabitants regularly live to upwards of 90 years, are also investigated.

Venturing into the realms of biology and other sciences, long lived animals such as naked mole rats, planarian worms, and a jellyfish known as turritopsis dohrnii are described. A gene that centenarians may possess known as FoxO is examined. Healthy routines like eating well, regular exercise, and flossing are suggested. A humorous full-page illustration of famous literary immortals is shown, featuring amazons, wizards, Pinocchio, and Dracula.

Ending the book with options that might exist in the future, cryogenics, mummification, cloning, and inserting one's consciousness into a digital avatar are all represented. The theory of biomechanical immortality is vividly illustrated in emerald green with an enormous robot having its puny human brain installed as pleased scientists look on. Finally, the belief in an afterlife in world religions is presented.

A Beginner's Guide to Immortality is a lively, quick read, exploring concepts in history, science, literature, and geography, and presented in an easily digested manner. Charmingly illustrated in a blocky, comic book style, with chunky images of futuristic robots with glowing brains, medieval alchemists mixing strange chemicals, and Ponce De Leon wielding a metal detector, it's an informative, humorous book.

SD

A Beginner's Guide to Immortality: From Alchemy to Avatars by Maria Birmingham, Josh Holinaty (Illustrator) Owlkids 2015, 48 pages, 7.4 x 0.6 x 9.7 inches, Hardcover $11 Buy on Amazon

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Ending Aging: Scientists Say Telomeres May Be the Key to Unlocking Near-Immortality – Futurism

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In Brief On YouTube, MinuteEarth explains how telomeres play an important role in aging not just in humans, but in several critters that can exist in a seemingly perpetual middle age. Telomere Trouble

If humans cant yet achieve immortality, the next best thing would be finding a way to slow down or even reverse the process of aging. While theres an entire industry devoted to so-called anti-aging, the biological truth is that our fate is written in our DNA. Specifically, the end bits which are called telomeres.

These caps dont hold thecodes for proteins like genes do, so when the telomere gets a bit shorter each time the DNA replicates, no important information is lost. In humans, those telomeres will eventually get too short and codingDNA will start to be lost in the replication process, throwing a major hitch into cell regeneration. If our cells are no longer replicating at the rate they once did, the impact is felt throughout our body in short, we start getting older and slowing down.

In one of their YouTube videos, MinuteEarth explains the role telomeres play in aging across multiple species and why some animals, such as the naked mole rat, dont seem to age at all. Despite their wrinkly appearance, naked mole rats produce a special enzyme that rebuilds the telomeres that keeps them young. Or, at the very least somewhat indefinitely middle-aged.

They arent truly putting a stop to aging, however: the naked mole rat may be able to live longer at a younger age, and they may have the unique ability to evade cancer, but they arent immortal. In fact, the longer the critters live, the higher their chance of being gobbled up by a predator.

If humans could extend their lives in a similar capacity to the naked mole rat, we may not have to worry about being eaten by something bigger than us but unlike our perpetually middle-aged, hairless, wrinkly pals, we can and do fall prey to cancer.

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Should complementary and alternative medicine charities lose their charitable status? – The Guardian (blog)

Posted: at 5:49 am

Although there are exceptions, such as hypnotherapy for irritable bowel syndrome, in the majority of cases alternative therapies are unproven, disproven or worst of all actively harmful. Photograph: Alamy

Right now, the Charity Commission is in the middle of a public consultation, asking whether or not organisations that offer complementary and alternative therapies should continue to have charitable status. This review presents an unprecedented opportunity for the public to turn the tide, and to make it clear to the Charity Commission that it is not enough to make a medical claim, but that such claims have to be backed up by reliable evidence.

There are currently more than 167,000 charities registered with the Charity Commission, each of which must meet one of 13 pre-defined charitable purposes, as well as operating for the public benefit. One such purpose is the advancement of health or the saving of lives. It is this purpose that most complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) charities currently registered with the Charity Commission claim to have as an objective, arguing that the promotion of CAM treatments is a benefit to the public.

However, last year scientists and medical professionals, working alongside the Good Thinking Society (ourselves a registered charity - #1147404), wrote to the Charity Commission in a letter also published in The Times (paywall). The letter urged the Commission to reconsider whether organisations offering or promoting alternative therapies should qualify under this purpose, given the lack of evidence of efficacy for the overwhelming majority of alternative therapies. In September last year, the Commission agreed to the review, and plan to announce their conclusions by 1 July 2017. As part of that review, the Commission is currently inviting interested professional bodies and members of the public to share their thoughts.

Although there are exceptions, such as hypnotherapy for irritable bowel syndrome, in the majority of cases alternative therapies are unproven, disproven or worst of all actively harmful. This means that some alternative medicine charities not only fail the public benefit test, but may result in harm, especially if patients delay seeking effective, conventional medicine.

Take, for instance, Cancer Active (registered charity #1102413), who describe themselves as the UKs number 1 Complementary Cancer Charity and whose charitable purpose is to provide information from all published scientific sources around the world so that people wanting to beat cancer can make more informed choices. The charity has written in praise of the highly dangerous and caustic black salve, a topical ointment which burns the skin, leaving many users with severe scarring.

Another example of advice that does not meet the standards of mainstream science was republished by Cancer Active in 2012, in a lengthy article from the magazine What doctors dont tell you entitled Much more than placebo: Homeopathy reverses cancer, which claimed:

Several homeopathic remedies are as effective as powerful chemotherapy, according to clinical trials, and thousands of cancer cases are being reversed by homeopathy alone.

It is not hard to imagine that someone suffering from cancer could follow this advice, with potentially disastrous consequences. Although the Cancer Active has added a disclaimer, in the end, the piece has been republished and promoted by a registered medical charity, with all of the credibility and legitimacy charitable status confers. The charity may be offering some sound information, but it is also making disturbing claims about some alternative therapies.

Other organisations are also deeply concerning. The Maun Homeopathy Project (registered charity #1109958) is run by a board member of the Society of Homeopaths with the charitable purpose of Providing a free homeopathic service for women, men and children living with HIV and AIDS and/or traumatised by rape in Maun, Botswana. Given the lack of convincing evidence and total absence of plausibility that homeopathy is effective for any condition at all, it is in our opinion hard to see how the Maun Homeopathy Projects work aimed at some of the worlds most vulnerable people can be said to offer any real public benefit.

There are financial issues with granting CAM organisations charitable status too: The Vaccination Awareness Network (registered charity #1072794) defines its goal as To advance the education of the public in all matters relating to vaccination and immunisation . However, its website betrays a bias: its url is not vaccinationawareness.com, but vaccineriskawareness.com and the sites banner slogan is the Latin quotation Qui medice vivit misere vivit which translates as He who lives medically lives miserably.

There is little sign of this charity presenting balanced scientific information; instead, their efforts involve spreading anti-vaccine advice such as is contained in their article Your Immune System, How It Works and How Vaccines Damage It:

Vaccination the act of artificially acquiring a disease so as to become immune to it is flawed in a number of ways. Firstly, a vaccine contains many hazardous chemicals and not just the viruses to immunise against. These each have their own toxic affect [sic] on the body.

This anti-vaccination rhetoric in the Vaccination Awareness Networks material can be very persuasive to parents of young children as the current re-emergence of the anti-vaccination movement in the UK and elsewhere demonstrates. It raises the question of whether it is right, at a time when Public Health England is working hard to raise vaccination rates across the country, that an organisation which discourages vaccination by spreading misinformation should be given charitable status and afforded tax benefits. The organisation has a right to free speech, of course, but it does not have an automatic right to charitable status. It is hard to see how it can be convincingly argued that the government should, through tax breaks and eligibility for Gift Aid, be subsidising the spread of dangerous vaccine misinformation.

The review by the Charity Commission is long overdue, particularly as Commissions existing policy already states that claims to offer public benefit should be backed by more than anecdotal evidence. The review needs to acknowledge this policy and emphasise the importance of applying it in order to protect the public and patients.

This is also an opportunity for the Commission to protect public confidence in the charity sector as a whole after all, those people who are generous enough to make donations to charitable organisations need the reassurance that charities are acting for the public benefit, and in particular that health charities are promoting treatments that are based in evidence.

If the Commission actually implements its policy in relation to requiring evidence of public benefit, then it may mean that some organisations lose their charitable status. However, organisations which do not meet the criteria for charitable status will not be shut down, they simply will not be given the credibility and the financial benefits that come from being a registered charity. In some cases, it may mean that a charity stops its non-evidenced activities, and focuses on its projects that have a demonstrable public benefit.

In turn, the public will have more confidence that when they give their money to charities especially health charities those organisations will have shown their treatments offer a public benefit, which ultimately means more people will be helped more effectively, and fewer people will be harmed unnecessarily.

The Charity Commissions CAM consultation closes on 19 May, and the public are invited to respond. As project director at the Good Thinking Society, I have submitted a response, which is available to read via our website. We know that supporters of alternative therapies will be responding to the review, so it is vital that doctors, nurses, scientists, those who care about evidence-based medicine and evidence-based philanthropy, as well as everyone who donates to charity, make their voices heard by taking part in the consultation.

In prompting and contributing to this review, we feel we are making a very fair and reasonable request, namely that those who want charitable status to promote or offer an alternative therapy should be able to present an appropriate level of evidence to show that they offer a public benefit, in accordance with the law. Is that too much to ask?

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Should complementary and alternative medicine charities lose their charitable status? - The Guardian (blog)

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Eye on Extension: Using native shrubs in landscapes – Valley Courier

Posted: at 5:49 am

VALLEY What makes native shrubs better than introduced plants? Lets thing about the advantages they offer. Native shrubs fit their native environment, including climate and soils quite well. They are naturally adapted to their specific climate.

When correctly sited, they can be ideal plants for a sustainable landscape that requires reduced external inputs such as watering, fertilizer, and pruning. In order to realize these benefits, the planting site must approximate the natural environmental conditions of the plant in its native habitat.

Another benefit of using native plants in landscapes is that they may attract a wide variety of wildlife. This can include mammals, birds and butterflies. With urbanization reducing the biodiversity as habitat is used for building, native plants, even on a small scale, can maintain biodiversity.

When deciding where to plant these shrubs there are things that need to be considered. The variation in elevation and topography offers a variety of habitats. To maximize survival and minimize external inputs, plants should be selected to match the sites life zone and the plants moisture, light and soil requirements. Even if a plant is in the correct life zone the aspect (north, south, east, west facing) of the site should match moisture requirements.

Growing native shrubs does not exclude the use of adapted non-native plants. There are many non-native plants well adapted to Colorados climate. They can be used in a natural landscape if the soil, water and light needs are similar. Some adjustments can be made to help such as using irrigation. Dry land plants can be used in non-irrigated pockets within the landscape.

Colorado can be divided into five life zones, three of which include the San Luis Valley. The Upper Sonoran life zone is located below 8,000 feet in the San Luis Valley. This zone contains semi-desert shrub-lands and pinon pine-juniper woodlands at the upper limit.

The montane zone covers 8,000 to 9,500 feet in elevation. Aspen woodlands, and Douglas Fir trees inhabit these areas. Dense forests of Subalpine fir and Englemann spruce from 9,500 to 11,500 feet include areas of the San Luis Valley.

A successful native planting may need supplemental water after planting. Once the plants are established the watering can be reduced or eliminated if the plants are in their native environment. Container grown shrubs can be planted at any time during the growing season.

Using native shrubs offers many benefits in addition to reduce maintenance. They are part of the natural heritage and the ecosystems of Colorado and the San Luis Valley. The plants make Colorado unique and are distinct between different parts of Colorado. Native plant gardens are wildlife friendly and each plant contributes to the biodiversity of the community.

For more information, call the Colorado State University Extension, San Luis Valley Area Office at 719-852-7381.

Extension programs are available to all without discrimination, Colorado State University

Extension, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Colorado counties cooperating.

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Five on Friday: 5 ways to step back in time in Singapore – Channel NewsAsia

Posted: at 5:48 am

SINGAPORE: The Singapore Heritage Festival signs off this week after another successful stint delivering nostalgia and tidbits from yesteryear.

But why let the fun stop there?

Hard as it may be to believe, stepping back in time does not have to be a yearly affair. Scratch the surface of glossy, glassy Singapore and youll find many ways to connect with numerous strands of bygone eras.

After all, Singapore is not just a city zooming into the future, its also a continuum stretching back 200 years. Yup, theres a hunk of old stuff, old places and even old-school hobbies to enjoy on a daily basis here.

So, put away that smartphone. Get out your lomo, pack your 555 notebook and take a plunge down the retro rabbit hole.

GETTING DOWN WITH ART DECO

Could there be a more handsome style of architecture than Art Deco? With its OCD-pandering symmetry, its bold use of anthropomorphic curves, decorative twists, geometric forms and clean lines, no other architectural movement perfectly captured the zeitgeist of an era quite like it did.

A bit of background, if you will: The 20th century was a period of unrivalled technological advancement and Art Deco, as a burgeoning aesthetic movement, sought to incorporate and express the speed and intensity - through swishes, swooping facades, curved walls, speed lines and stepped profiles - at which electricity, the motorcar, radio, trains, planes and ocean liners were fast transforming life in the period between the world wars.

At least now youll know why certain buildings look the way they do when you traipse around town.

And while Art Deco isn't quite as common as it is in New York, Chicago or Miami Beach, theres enough to go around.

Among the highlights: The rectilinear wonder that is the Asia Insurance Building off Raffles Place; the thick-set Old Tanjong Pagar Railway Station; the streamlined moderne sensibility of Old Kallang Airport; and the architectural curiosity that is Parkview Square aka the Gotham Building.

If you are the ambulatory sort, there are Art Deco clusters to go on walking tours of particularly around Chinatown, Little India and Tiong Bahru, where a conspicuous feature of the 1950s flats is their pillbox gun turret-like staircases.

YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND IN SUNGEI ROAD

Ever wanted to know what it was like to get hold of music in a time before Spotify? Well, youve got two months left.

Back in the day, you could, after enjoying a steaming bowl of laksa for S$0.50 in a coffeeshop by Rochor Canal, amble down one of Sungei Roads offshoot lanes and find yourself in the middle of a thriving bazaar. You could find just about anything here, from wigs to taps, bicycles and even pets.

But one of the real pulls of Sungei Road was its music purveyors. Youd be able to find boxes upon boxes of records from Motown to punk or, if youre really lucky, a stash of Paul Anka and Nana MouskouriEPs.

Best of all, these music selling uncles also sold record players.

And props to them, even if it was a tenth-hand turntable, it would still work. In the old days, very few of them sold stuff that didnt work. If items werent in working condition, the sellers would find a way to get them repaired before they put them up for sale.

These days, while records can still be found, youd be hard-pressed to find anyone selling a turntable in working order. With Sungei Road reduced to a sliver of its former self, theres naturally a limit to what you can find.

But who knows: Sungei Roads charm lies in never knowing what you may find. You could head there tomorrow and come away with a sputtering, albeit functioning, turntable. Therein lies its (soon-to-be-gone) charm.

BRIC-A-BRAC BOUNTY

In the days before Sungei Road was scaled down, youd be able to find much more than worn out white goods, rare LPs, barely functioning transistors, records and spare parts.

But all the good old stuff havent disappeared for good. There are still a few places where youd be able to find them.

Odds n Collectibles on 128 Telok Ayer Street is a true imaginarium of period pieces, from rusting clocks to antique rotary phones and rickety typewriters. This is one of the few places in the city to head for if youre looking to pimp out your pad as a retro niche.

Elsewhere, Yasashii Trading in Bukit Merah (#01-114, Block 123 Bukit Merah Lane 1) is another vintage furniture shop that is a potpourri of evocative knickknacks from ivory bird cages, to ornate grandfather clocks and bulky cathode ray tubes masquerading as furniture.

Youll also find seasoned copies of Life and National Geographic, soft drink signs, old-fashioned amplifiers and speakers - and even an elegant armoire here.

OLD SCHOOL GRUB

Back in the day when school was out and your exam results good, you could always look forward to a treat at Swensens.

Even today, long after the banana split went out fashion, theres something out of the ordinary about tucking into its creamy goodness amid the stained glass finery of a Swensens outlet.

It's kinda cute that some old school culinary faves continue to cling on for dear life.

If you thought the banana split was an antediluvian number best left to the 80s, then what about the disremembered dessert that is the peach melba?

Would you also like plate of lobster thermidore and a bowl of prawn cocktail to go with that? You would? Then step into The Ship Bar & Restaurant (#03-16/18, 1 Scotts Road, Shaw Centre) for an ineffable platter of long forgotten comestibles.

Another yum throwback treat: The baked potato with sour cream and crispy bacon bits at Jacks Place.

THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT

No one does retro better than the dead.

A jaunt of Singapores cemeteries is always a neat way to get in touch with a past long gone. With its expansive grounds and visitor-friendly paths, Bukit Brown is always worth a visit even if to only check out the many luminaries (Chew Boon Lay, Chew Joo Chiat, Gan Eng Seng) that rest there.

But there are two lesser known graveyards worth poking about in.

One is the Japanese Cemetery Park in Chuan Hoe Avenue, where youll learn about the sizeable Japanese community that existed in Singapore before World War II. Theres also a memorial here for 135 Japanese war criminals executed at Changi Prison for wartime atrocities.

Another cemetery to head for is the Kubur Kassim cemetery in Siglap which served as a burial ground for many prominent Muslims in the area. Some grave plots here are dedicated to the Orang Bunian, which are supernatural human-like beings from Malay folklore. Spooo-keh!

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BWW Review: HAIR Lets the Sun Shine in at Ephrata – Broadway World

Posted: at 5:48 am

When HAIR billed as "the American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, came out, America was shocked. Hippies! Drugs! Sex! Nudity! Burning draft cards! Did someone say nudity? It had a limited Off-Broadway run of six weeks, and was notable at the time as producer Joe Papp's first non-Shakespearian play... but maybe it's not so far off from Shakespeare at that, including in its nudity. Although many Americans who know of the show may connect its name with "that show with the naked people," in truth those same people know as much if not more of the songs in this show than they do of most musicals. Most musicals don't have songs that are almost completely identified with the zeitgeist of their time. James Rado and Gerome Ragni, with help from composer Galt McDermot, created a musical that encapsulated the discontent and discomfort of a generation.

It may not speak to a younger audience as it did to a generation fifty years ago, fearing being drafted into a bloody and pointless war, interested in marijuana as an aid to spiritual consciousness rather than as a social lubricant like alcohol, and for whom tuning in, turning on, and dropping out spoke volumes more than career education programs and the drive to find jobs immediately. But if younger audiences want to understand the America they're in today they need to understand the America their parents remember, and many of us remember a time very much like the 1960s of HAIR.

It's in a stunning production at Ephrata Performing Arts Center, directed by Pat Kautter, who remembers the days of draft cards and deferments and has done an excellent job of conveying the sentiments of 1960s hippie and wanna-be hippie youth to her own younger cast. "Aquarius," "Let The Sun Shine In," "Easy to be Hard" are all here, as is "Good Morning Starshine," which children of the 1970s were able to hear on Sesame Street at the time, so ingrained was the music of HAIR in popular culture. (This writer first learned the song on Sesame Street and had it on on of the show's back-in-the-day vinyl record albums.)

HAIR, in its loose plot, is the story of Claude Hooper Bukowski (no relation to the poet Charles Bukowski), a middle-class blue-collar kid whose family can't wait for them to make them proud by joining the Army during Vietnam. Claude has other ideas, like being cool, like staying alive, like relating to the universe. He's part of Berger's pack of hippie kids and twenty-somethings running around the parks of New York, meeting up, lighting up, hooking up, and avoiding the draft. Sean Deffley is a particularly charismatic Claude, trying to fake being English (from Manchester, no less), rather than being a Polish kid from outside Manhattan, and trying to decide if he's brave enough to avoid the draft. Berger is played by Bo Irwin, who lets loose a cheerfully wild, manic side that's barely tempered by waving peace signs. Maggie Shevlin plays Sheila, resident love interest and seriously brainy college student, who's possibly the biggest idealist of them all. Hud, the African-American hippie who wishes the movement would focus more on civil rights, is played by a spot-on Michael Roman, who nicely channels Hud's frustration with American racism and who illustrates the fact that the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement didn't really meet and shake hands - despite the war's disproportionate impact on African-Americans.

It's a beautiful production, with stellar lighting design by Jeff Cusano, and sharp musical direction from Zach Smith, and Kautter's own direction is strongly to the point; it's easy in many productions of this show to realize that the vignettes really are all directed to the story of Claude's life and to his relationship to the draft and the war. With vast quantities of music and non-linear vignettes, the point is sometimes obscured, but Kautter's direction and Deffley's performance keep the story in front rather than behind the music.

Whether HAIR is nostalgia or news for you, this production is worth seeing, and indulging your desire to sing along to. It's a multi-dimensional treat, consciousness-expanding even without having your bong handy. Enjoy. And realize that you're reading the only theatre program in the area disclosing the content of what's being smoked on stage - fortunately for your nose, it's not banana peels.

At the Sharadin-Bigler Theatre at Ephrata Performing Arts Center through May 13. Visit ephrataperformingartscenter.com.

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Cape Falcon Marine Reserve presents Oswald West Action Day – North Coast Citizen

Posted: at 5:47 am

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Oregons Beach Bill right! Come out and explore the coastal edge with the Surfrider Foundation Portland Chapter, Friends of Cape Falcon Marine Reserve and our other local community partners on Saturday, May 20 at 10am. Learn about all the different citizen science projects focused on monitoring and protecting Oswald West State Park and the Cape Falcon Marine Reserve. Join us in protecting the Oregon we all know and love! FREE BBQ and surf / hang time afterwards!

Agenda for the Day:

10:00-10:30 Meet + intro to the day (Lower Parking Lot at Short Sands)

10:30-12:30 Citizen Science adventures at or around Oswald West State Park

12:30 Hands Across the Sands (www.handsacrossthesand.com/) photo shoot @ noon,

12:45-2:00 FREE BBQ with locally-sourced fish tacos @ picnic area (or possibly a later gathering at Public Coast brewing if the weather is bad).

Citizen-Science Choose your own Adventures:

Seabird Monitoring and hike on the Coastal Edge: Join Audubon Society of Portland and Friends of Cape Falcon Marine Reserve for a fun hike out to Audubons monitoring site at Devils Cauldron in Oswald West State Park. Devils Cauldron is a short (0.25 miles), easy hike open to all ages. Experience the unique story of our coastline, from natural history to ongoing land and ocean conservation activities, including the new Cape Falcon Marine Reserve and Audubon Society of Portlands efforts to monitor seabirds.

If youre up for more, continue on Elk Flats Trail for a 1.5-mile moderate to difficult hike to Short Sands Beach and the rest of the days festivities. The Elk Flats Trail, which leads hikers through a variety of forest structures, stunning old growth trees, and to vistas of the marine reserve, is steep in some sections. Hikers should prepare for slick, muddy trails and to scamper over and under sizable fallen trees. Please wear sturdy shoes, dress for coastal Oregon weather, and bring water.

Clean Beaches and Water: Surfrider Foundation and CoastWatch are teaming up at the beautiful Falcon Cove Beach to highlight efforts to keep our waterways and beaches clean. Explore the monitoring sites at Falcon Cove Beach and learn about the Blue Water Task Force program and marine debris monitoring efforts going on coast wide. Discover where the trash on our beaches is coming from, how you can get involved, and all the partners that are contributing from local volunteers to schools to national organizations. If you havent spent time on Falcon Cove Beach, this is a great opportunity to view this remote coastal beach along the Cape Falcon Marine Reserve.

Short Sand Intertidal Exploration Tour: Discover the amazing creatures living along the coastal edge. Hunting for sea stars will be the main objective during this outing highlighting the impacts of Sea Star Wasting Syndrome. Haystack Rock Awareness Program and The Nature Conservancy will team up to take participants on a tour of the rocky intertidal areas at Short Sand beach. These organizations support coast wide and local efforts to monitor sea star populations. Recent surveys have shown a decrease in diseased animals and the first signs of the populations recovering. Along the way, you never know what you will discover! From dueling anemones, a sea stars patient hunt for its next meal, to predatory snails. Its another world to discover. Join the fun!

Join us in celebrating our coastline and learning how you can do your part to protect our legacy for generations to come! #LongLiveOregonBeaches!

This event is part of the Explore Nature series of hikes, walks, paddles and outdoor adventures. Explore Nature events are hosted by a consortium of volunteer community and non-profit organizations, and are meaningful nature-based experiences highlight the unique beauty of Tillamook County and the work being done to preserve and conserve the areas natural resources and natural resource-based economy. Learn more at http://www.explorenaturetillamookcoast.com.

Register on Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/oswald-west-action-day-citizen-science-extravaganza-tickets-33919489105

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Cape Falcon Marine Reserve presents Oswald West Action Day - North Coast Citizen

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Ottawa Valley a unique place for politics – Pembroke Daily Observer

Posted: at 5:47 am

The Ottawa Valley is a unique place, and has been since the beginning of recorded history.

This continues to be well reflected in the character of its people, its culture and its politics, according to former MPP Sean Conway, the latest guest lecturer to take part in Algonquin College's ongoing speaker series.

On Monday evening, Conway spoke on the colour and character of the Ottawa Valley political tradition, which has been shaped by a number of unique factors. These include the Ottawa River, the timber trade and being on the borderlands between settlement and the wild lands, and being bi-provincial with the overlap of English and French Canada, which included a mix of Irish, Scots, Germans and Poles to make things interesting.

You get a sense the Ottawa Valley developed a strong regional culture, with its own folklore and its own music, he said. One with a strong ethno-cultural orientation.

Conway said there is something within that mix which brewed a strong independent streak which persists to this day. Unlike most of eastern Canada in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the Ottawa Valley remained essentially on the frontier; it's economy wasn't primarily based on agriculture due to the rugged landscape and didn't look to Toronto for leadership.

Not looking west to Muddy York for political or any sort of guidance was in large part the result of the timber trade, he said, which really kick started the region in the early 1800s. The Napoleonic Wars had cut Britain off of its European source material for its mighty navy, so it looked westward to its Canadian possession in North America for its stands of white pine and other wood prized in shipbuilding.

Conway said this focus forged a resource-based economy which would influence the area throughout its history. Everything in the 1800s and early 1900s would be directly influenced by the timber trade, from society to its politics. By the mid-19th Century, some 25,000 were working in the lumbering industry.

Due in part to its isolation, the Ottawa Valley would remain on the fringe of pre-Confederation Canada for many years afterwards. The frontier nature of the region, coupled with the hazards of lumbering and the log drives, meant a wild independent streak developed within those who lived and worked in the region. The area attracted those who often had a strong dislike for regulations and central authorities trying to impose its will upon them.

Conway said it was a rough and dangerous place, where rough and dangerous people lived. When Irish immigrants brought in to work on the canals near Bytown became unemployed, they muscled their way into the lumber business, which was run primarily by French speaking people. The resulting gang war in the 1830s ranged from Bytown to Pembroke and beyond.

The region was thought of as the Toronto bypass, he said. Using the Ottawa River meant one could stay away from the lower Great Lakes of Erie and Ontario when heading out west, and the timber trade itself kept the settlers and businessmen looking to Ottawa then Bytown Montreal, Quebec City and onward to Liverpool and London in England, rather than to Toronto as the majority of commerce did at the time.

Conway said the political power houses of the area were based on those same rough and ready people who made their fortunes in the timber trade. Families like the Whites, the Dunlops, the McDougals, the Maloneys, the Brysons, the Murray Brothers and so forth supplied MPs, MPPs, senators, mayors and council members for generations.

Provincial borders meant little to those whose fortunes were made on both sides of the Ottawa River, he said. For instance Thomas Murray of Pembroke served in Parliament for 20 years, representing at differing times both the Renfrew constituency and the Pontiac while remaining in Pembroke.

The highly diverse nature of the region meant politicians had to become skilled at reading the nature of people they were looking to for support. Conway said building a successful coalition meant a balancing act between religion, creed and geography as individuals looked at seats in office.

That same mix could easily topple the same person the very next election. Conway said Peter White, a long-time MP for North Renfrew, was defeated because his independent streak rubbed some voters the wrong way.

He didn't like what happened in the Manitoba School crisis, he said, and opposed his own government's stance on it, but kept that to himself. But there are no secrets within the Valley, and many knew where he stood.

In that, separate French Catholic school, as well as English Protestant ones, had their funding stripped away by the Manitoba government in favour of a public system. It was seen as an attack on the French language and sharply divided the ruling Conservative party, which backed funding the separate schools. Wilfred Laurier, strongly opposed to the funding issue, would use it to help win the 1896 election for the Liberals, ending 30 years of Conservative rule.

White lost by 50 to 60 votes, Conway said, the same amount by which he won his seat. He said it showed, as has been characteristic of elections in the Ottawa Valley, that to be successful in politics here, one has to understand the local voting base, and find people who would appeal directly to that base in all circumstances. It also demonstrated the volatility of the electorate.

Conway said this nature of Ottawa Valley politics had some election campaigns resemble professional wrestling matches, with both sides doing everything possible to ensure their candidate won. Few batted an eye when fistfuls of money would be exchanged for voter support.

Over time, things changed. New election financing laws and the way politicians were to conduct themselves removed much of the wild west style of politicking. Conway said these days, especially within the last 20 years or so, the individual politician means less than the party brand he or she represents.

These days, the individual is mostly gone from a situation, he said, especially in this age of message control, where MPs and MPPs are no longer free to speak their minds as they once were.

The party brand and the leader brand tends to be the determinant, he said.

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Ottawa Valley a unique place for politics - Pembroke Daily Observer

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The case for and against a universal basic income in the United States – Vox

Posted: at 5:47 am

What would happen if we gave everyone free money, every year, forever, with no strings attached?

This is a concept known as a universal basic income, or UBI. The idea is to guarantee everyone some minimum amount of money so that no one has to live in poverty. And while it might sound a little crazy, the idea is being tested around the world with pilot studies in Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, Kenya, and even one in the United States, based out of Silicon Valley.

In the most recent episode of the Weeds in the Wild podcast, we explored a Kenyan pilot experiment run by a nonprofit called GiveDirectly. Theyre giving everyone in a small village around $22 a month for the next 12 years. We talked about how it might shape policies overseas.

In our reporting, we also talked to two people about something slightly different: what a universal basic income might mean here in the United States.

Bob Greenstein has been working on poverty-related policies for 45 years. Hes with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Andy Stern is a former national union leader.

Stern and Greenstein both like the concept of universal basic income and think that people could be trusted to spent a basic income appropriately.

But when it comes to making an American universal basic income a reality, the two have examined the same set of facts and come to fundamentally different conclusions. We spoke to Greenstein and Stern on different occasions, but we asked each of them questions about arguments the other had raised. Weve put them into a kind of dialogue, so that they can address each others claims.

Greenstein is skeptical of the idea. He worries, given his experience in the United States, that creating something like a UBI here would mean slashing other important safety net programs. And he doesnt think its worth the trade-off:

UBI would replace virtually every program in the federal budget focused on low- or moderate-income people.

No food stamps. No Medicaid. No low-income housing. Forget child care. Head Start. Job training. Pell Grants to help people attend college.

You're going to have more deep poverty, homelessness and things like that. That's not what UBI proponents favor, I know. I've had discussions with people where they say, Bob, that's not what we're calling for! I know!

But what they're calling for? I don't see it in the US politically. I share the goals; I just dont think you can get there from here. And I want to focus on progress we can make.

Stern argues that the US is losing jobs to automation and new technology, and is only going to lose more. He says we need to start getting very creative about ways to solve the problems that job loss will create. A universal basic income might mean cuts to welfare, Stern admits, but he argues that it would be an effective way to build bipartisan support, or crossover.

I think it's politically unfeasible in a ... world that, at the moment, politically, is controlled at a federal level by Republicans that we're going to hold on to the things that Bob says we need to improve upon.

I think you need crossover. And I think Bob is right that if you gave the Republicans a free rein, they would cut too many programs and hurt too many people, but I don't think that's the starting place for the discussion.

I am for getting rid of some of basic welfare as we know it. I would get rid of EITC [the earned income tax credit], food stamps, [and] unemployment insurance, and substitute cash for it. I would never touch, you know, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. So I'm taking about half of the existing welfare programs and repurposing them for a universal basic income.

The two also disagree about whether it would be possible to fund a universal basic income even if you did make cuts to welfare as we know it. Stern has a plan to offer $1,000 a month to every citizen between the ages of 18 and 64. He estimates it will cost around $1.7 trillion, and believes we could find that by shuffling around our tax code:

I think paying for things is always important. I say that there's $500 billion as part of the 122 current cash transfer programs that could be repurposed for this.

There's $1.3 trillion in sort of corporate tax expenditures, which mostly go to [the] middle and upper middle class. Therere tax breaks, you know, for things like charitable deductions or your second vacation home that most working people don't ever get to take advantage of...

People who've lived in other countries understand that we're the only country in the OECD that doesn't have a value-added tax of any level. You know, that would raise a tremendous amount of money.

So to me it's about political will, not a question of is there enough money in the United States.

Again, Greenstein doesnt believe thats politically feasible. He told us that a radical shift like this is unlikely to pass, especially since it involves the government giving cash payments to people without jobs. Policy change, he says, is incremental:

Yes, I know that UBI supporters, some of them, say, No, no, we'll do huge taxes on the rich. Well, we haven't done a really good job of getting them through. You completely lose the right side of your left-right coalition when you do that.

And besides, we're going to need very substantial tax increases in the years ahead just to shore up and prevent insolvency in Social Security and Medicare, to deal with other big problems like crumbling infrastructure, climate change...

If I thought the political culture in the US was like Western Europe, where you have much higher levels of taxation, and more universal support, I'd love that. I'm for that. But that's not the real world in the US.

The political culture and history of the US is very clear that policymakers and the general public do not support big cash payments for poor people who don't work, who don't have jobs, who aren't employed.

I dont agree with that! Ive spent years fighting that!

I have really learned in 45 years in the trenches that there is not the same kind of support in this country. I wish there were!

Wishing doesn't make it so.

I've been working here on poverty and budget issues since 1972, and what I've really learned is: Change comes incrementally in this country.

It's unglamorous. It's frustrating. It's imperfect. The name of the game is just to spend year after year, decade after decade, working as hard as you can.

Stern thinks the loss of jobs to automation is going to change what is and isnt politically feasible:

I think technology is gonna destroy the labor market as we know it, and it's going to create a desperate need to find solutions in order to provide social stability.

Wealthy people, historically when there were riots in the 60s, you know were able to respond in order to in some ways protect themselves. But now their kids, middle-class kids, are going to be affected.

So I think there will be a growing political movement that includes middle-class people involved.

And, Stern adds, the policies Greenstein is fighting for may not be any more feasible than a UBI in the current political climate.

We're about to lose some of the most basic programs we had, like Medicare, potentially. I dont think there's any proof that it's any more politically feasible to hold on to what we have than to build on a big new idea.

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The case for and against a universal basic income in the United States - Vox

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