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As Colorado River water supplies dwindle, plans for desalination litter the West
As Colorado River water supplies dwindle, plans for desalination litter the West
As climate change, infrastructure projects and politics continue to imperil future access to water in the West, Boulder Weekly will be examining the landscape of water rights, markets and infrastructure in Colorado and beyond over the next several months.
There is less than 60 miles of coastline between Huntington Beach and Carlsbad, California. In that space, there exists one desalination plant, and plans for two more, which have been in the works for years.
Up the coast, a desalination plant in Santa Barbara was recently reactivated. Down the coast, in Rosarito, Mexico, plans are in place to construct the Western Hemisphere’s largest desalination plant. Treated seawater from that plant will likely be pumped back across the border to thirsty communities in California, Nevada and Arizona. And in Yuma, Arizona, a desalting plant capable of producing potable water from a brackish underground reservoir is going back online.
There are currently 16 proposals for desalination plants in California alone, with more planned in Mexico and the inland U.S. Southwest. The technology has long been talked about as a solution to water shortages in the West caused by drought, population increases and the dwindling resources of the Colorado River, which are expected to be reduced by an additional 30 percent by 2050. That’s according to a recent study from the University of Arizona and Colorado State University. In addition, the advancement of projects in Colorado, including the Gross Dam expansion and Windy Gap, could remove up to an additional 100,000 cumulative acre-feet of water from the Colorado and Poudre Rivers. All this seems to indicate a get-it-while-you-can attitude among water authorities and corporations. …
How to Stand in Solidarity With Undocumented Immigrants
As politicians debate the fate of Dreamers, we all need to join the fight.
A protester stands outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, Oregon, to protest the detainment of a DACA participant.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of The Nation’s Take Action program, which we use to point our readers toward actions they can take on the issues we cover. To get actions like this in your inbox every Tuesday, sign up for Take Action Now.
On September 5, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions strolled into a Department of Justice conference room, stripped away deportation protection from 800,000 people, and walked away without taking questions. The revocation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) won’t go into effect for six months, but the administration will take no new applications, and, on a rolling basis, nearly a million young people will become, along with the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, targets for detention and deportation. Within minutes of Sessions’s announcement, social media were ablaze in indignation, and soon people across the country joined marches, rallies, and walkouts to protest the decision.
Despite the quick turnout that day, Maria Castro, a community organizer with Puente, in Arizona, expressed to me her conviction that “the American public doesn’t understand the magnitude of trauma that this administration has inflicted not just on undocumented communities, but on Latinos [and other minority groups] in general.”
Indeed, there are now conflicting reports regarding a supposed deal reached between the Trump administration and leading Democrats that would help DACA recipients in exchange for added “border security”—a compromise that goes against the wishes of many groups at the forefront of the fight for DACA and is likely to criminalize and harm more undocumented immigrants.
It is clear that there is a need for people not in danger of deportation or detention to engage in meaningful solidarity. On the afternoon of Sessions’s announcement, I stopped by a pro-DACA/anti-Trump rally outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. “Keep the kids, deport the racists!” the crowd chanted. Though most of the documented protesters I spoke with identified as allies, Daniel Shaw, lecturer in Latin American and Caribbean studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who lent his booming voice for a while as chant leader, balked at the term. He identified as a revolutionary, not an ally, explaining how Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ, an organization that “moves white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability”) and other activist groups are steering away from the idea of “allyship.” “We need to be part of the struggle, not behind the scenes. Allyship implies a political misorientation,” Shaw told me. Those in solidarity with marginalized groups need to put “more on the line,” he said. And yet, according to Shaw, supporters should also cede leadership to those most affected. …
‘How do we survive?’: fearful Californians prepare for nuclear attack
Retired Lt Col Hal Kempfer and his group, Knowledge and Intelligence Program Professionals, see Long Beach as a prime target for an attack from North Korea.
Long Beach, California.
Hal Kempfer, a noted international security expert, is getting a roomful of California public health officials and emergency responders to think about the unthinkable – a nuclear bomb exploding at the port of Long Beach, about four miles away.
His message – coming on the same day North Korea threatened to reduce the mainland United States to “ashes and darkness” and then launched a ballistic missile over Japan – is unvarnished and uncompromising: get ready, because we all need to prepare for what comes after.
“A lot of people will be killed,” he said, “but a large percentage of the population will survive. They will be at risk and they will need help.”
Most likely, Kempfer tells his audience, if the device is fired from North Korea or smuggled in by North Korean agents, it wouldn’t be the sort of high-yield weapon that planners worried about during the cold war, with the potential to wipe out most life and civilization across the Los Angeles region and send radioactive materials halfway across the American continent.
Rather, it’s likely to be a Hiroshima-sized bomb – large enough to obliterate everything within a square-mile radius and kill tens of thousands of people, either immediately or through the lingering effects of radiation. But still leaving millions of survivors across the region who would need help. …
WELL THAT SETTLES IT! INSURANCE AND DRUG LOBBYISTS SAY MEDICARE FOR ALL “CANNOT WORK”
The for-profit health care industry and its political surrogates were quick to criticize the sweeping universal Medicare legislation unveiled this week by Sen. Bernie Sanders and more than a dozen Senate Democrats.
“Whether it’s called single-payer or Medicare for All, government-controlled health care cannot work,” David Merritt, vice president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobbying group for health insurance companies, said in a statement to reporters.
The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers, another insurance lobby group, released a statement declaring that it “adamantly opposes the creation of a single-payer regime, and our guard is up on these efforts.” The release cited the rising popularity of single-payer proposals in California, New York, and Colorado, and now Sanders’s effort in Congress.
“These are worrisome developments, and the increased volume on single-payer is setting off alarms on what Democratic priorities could represent following seven years of failed ACA repeal efforts,” the CIAB statement noted. …
The great nutrient collapse
The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention.
Irakli Loladze is a mathematician by training, but he was in a biology lab when he encountered the puzzle that would change his life. It was in 1998, and Loladze was studying for his Ph.D. at Arizona State University. Against a backdrop of glass containers glowing with bright green algae, a biologist told Loladze and a half-dozen other graduate students that scientists had discovered something mysterious about zooplankton.
Zooplankton are microscopic animals that float in the world’s oceans and lakes, and for food they rely on algae, which are essentially tiny plants. Scientists found that they could make algae grow faster by shining more light onto them—increasing the food supply for the zooplankton, which should have flourished. But it didn’t work out that way. When the researchers shined more light on the algae, the algae grew faster, and the tiny animals had lots and lots to eat—but at a certain point they started struggling to survive. This was a paradox. More food should lead to more growth. How could more algae be a problem?
Loladze was technically in the math department, but he loved biology and couldn’t stop thinking about this. The biologists had an idea of what was going on: The increased light was making the algae grow faster, but they ended up containing fewer of the nutrients the zooplankton needed to thrive. By speeding up their growth, the researchers had essentially turned the algae into junk food. The zooplankton had plenty to eat, but their food was less nutritious, and so they were starving. …
We Are Subsidizing Rich Suburbanites to Clog Cities With Their Cars
We Are Subsidizing Rich Suburbanites to Clog Cities With Their Cars
Not a new problem, but an annoying one: The federal tax code encourages companies to provide free parking to their employees by exempting the fringe benefit from taxation. That means the government is subsidizing commuters to drive themselves to work instead of carpooling or taking mass transit or walking or biking or working from home.
The tax break promotes traffic congestion and eats up parking spaces. It’s worth the most to the people in the highest tax brackets. And it’s worth the most in places where parking is the costliest—that is, the places where congestion is the biggest problem.
Plus, of course, the tax break is money that the government doesn’t collect that could have been used to reduce other taxes or fund other programs.
A new report from TransitCenter, a foundation that says it “works to improve urban mobility,” calculates that the parking benefit is worth up to $1,000 a year for commuters who are in high tax brackets and work in big cities. Collectively, it calculates, the break costs $7.3 billion a year in lost tax revenue. …
The Suburb of the Future, Almost Here
Millennials want a different kind of suburban development that is smart, efficient and sustainable.
The suburbanization of America marches on. That movement includes millennials, who, as it turns out, are not a monolithic generation of suburb-hating city dwellers.
Most of that generation represents a powerful global trend. They may like the city, but they love the suburbs even more.
They are continuing to migrate to suburbs. According to the latest Census Bureau statistics, 25- to 29-year-olds are about a quarter more likely to move from the city to the suburbs as vice versa; older millennials are more than twice as likely.
Their future — and that of the planet — lies on the urban peripheries. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma made clear that, especially in suburbs, the United States desperately needs better drainage systems to handle the enormous amounts of rainfall expected from climate change.
They also made clear that new, sustainable suburbs can offer an advantage by expanding landscapes that can absorb water.
Housing affordability is a major driver of the appeal of suburbia, which has historically been, and still is, more affordable, especially for first-time home buyers. …
5 Ads That Tried To Be Sexy But Were Just Disturbing Instead
Sex sells everything from power tools to yogurt. Its constant presence in advertising is a weird fact of life that we’ve all come to accept. We get turned on by the Oscar Meyer Weiner song now, and we just have to live with that. But there are a few products so inherently un-erotic that sexy advertising simply isn’t an option. Or so we thought …
#5. Liquid-Plumr Wants To “Double Impact” You
There’s nothing sexier than a clogged toilet, right? Hell yeah! … is what Liquid-Plumr says. In this commercial, a desperately lonely woman purchases their “Double Impact” snake and gel, then gets ready for a little double impact of her own …
And for once, we’re not referring to the Van Damme masterpiece.
Porno music plays as two large men show up to “snake her drain” and “flush her pipe,” because her shit-wracked toilet is apparently an ill-conceived metaphor for her body. Yes, Liquid-Plumr really is saying that if you eat too much Golden Corral and ruin your bathroom, buying Double Impact will be like getting DP’ed by two plumbers who somehow don’t look like the Mario brothers.
And that’s not a one-time fluke. Liquid Plumr’s print ads double down on associating clogged toilets with thirsty genitals, pounding that message home like two plumbers on a confused housewife.
They Photoshopped out the other seven he was bringing.
Aw yeah, this guy will finish having sex with you as fast as possible. That’s what you want, right, ladies? …
These seven words changed my whole perspective on working out
Just Try It
You can (maybe?) do it.
The General is on his knees. We are in the astroturf section of the gym—a space littered with balls, weights, and bands—and he is kneeling over a yoga mat, explaining exactly how awful the next 90 seconds of my life are going to be.
“So you’ll have your palms flat on the mat, and your toes on the turf, like you’re about to do a push-up. You’ll lift one leg up behind you, then back down. Then the other leg: up, down. Then one arm, then the other arm. Altogether that counts as one. I want to see if you can do 12.”
I look down at The General—my personal trainer’s self-assigned nickname, which he takes just the right amount of seriously—while still trying to catch my breath from lugging two 31-pound kettle balls around the room. At five feet, four inches and 269 pounds, this new exercise (dubbed the “limb-movement plank”) is like all of my nightmares combined. I picture myself in push-up stance, my stomach nearly touching the ground. I picture myself from behind, lumbering through a single set like a bear that’s been hit with a tranquilizer dart. I picture the worst-case scenario: not being able to do this at all.
That insecurity slideshow has for years guided my approach to exercise: Things that cannot definitely be done should not be attempted, thus avoiding all potential embarrassment. Except that there’s no judgment in The General’s implication that I might not be able to do what he’s asking me to do. His phrasing acknowledges that this whole process is about first testing, and then challenging, what my body is capable of. In fact, not being able to do things is entirely expected. Those are the things we’ll keep trying until they are eventually possible. …
South Park trolled Amazon Echo owners in the best way possible
This is one of the minor dangers of owning an Amazon Echo. Most anyone can activate the device by just saying the wake word, including Cartman. And in the season opener of South Park, that’s exactly what happened.
Watch.
South Park messing with Alexa #SouthPark #Alexa pic.twitter.com/4qtJkwQJ6R
— Moritz Wittmann (@MoritzWittmann) September 14, 2017
If someone watched that episode of South Park in the same room as an Echo, their Amazon shopping list was filled with random, gross items. …
People are seeking refuge from today’s chaos in the soothing promise of graph paper
The Grid Beckons
So peaceful.
There are few things more reassuring in life than the simplicity of a gridded notebook. The orderly squares associated with our school days promise that knowledge can be neatly condensed into periods and tables, rows and columns; our mornings and afternoons divided into blocks, and our years into quarters.
In these chaotic and uncertain times, perhaps that’s why the gridded notebook is experiencing a popular resurgence among creative-minded adults. Nearly all of today’s popular luxury notebook brands—Moleskine, Rhodia, Leuchtturm, Fieldnotes, MUJI—have gridded options. The London-based Present & Correct, a specialty stationery shop dedicated to sourcing paper products that nod to “the things we have enjoyed since school,” offers a steady supply of gridded goods—from the functional (a 1970s graph paper roll) to the purely decorative (gridded envelopes). McNally Jackson’s Goods for the Study, a high-end purveyor of new and vintage office goods in New York City, sells chic gridded paper; Poketo, in Los Angeles, stocks graph-paper-patterned pens. The trend has seeped into markets beyond stationary: Urban Outfitters sells graph paper wallpaper, and the Company Store sells a graph-paper duvet cover.
“I think the attraction is nostalgia and a curiosity,” Neal Whittington, the owner of Present & Correct, writes in an email. “My customers love any kind of niche graph paper which they haven’t encountered before.” …
Musical vaginas, dining on humans, and cat fluidity honored with Ig Nobels
The awards that dare to ask whether you can feel your ears growing.
The speaker goes where?
As the person who is responsible for covering the annual Nobel Prizes in the sciences, it’s always good to get a warning that they’re about to be awarded. For me, that warning is provided by the Annals of Improbable Research, which has spent the last 27 years hosting its First-Annual Ig Nobel Prizes.
Complete with a ceremony that features a mini-opera and a Nobel Prize winner who’s tasked with sweeping paper airplanes off the stage, the awarding is an act of inspired lunacy that’s matched only by the prize-winning research itself. As is typical, this year’s winners are a mix of scientists being goofy, taking scientific methods to unconventional problems, and real scientific questions that have… unconventional consequences. Without further ado, let’s get to them.
Obstetrics: Whose idea was this anyway? Presumably, one of the three Spanish researchers being honored came up with the question that nobody else was asking: would a fetus enjoy music more if it was played in the nearby vagina? To find out, the team played music against the mother’s abdomen and from a speaker inserted in her vagina and compared those to vibrations in the vagina. Though there was no discussion of the mother’s facial expression during the vibrations, the fetus only responded to intravaginal music, though it had to be older and better developed to do so. Naturally, the team patented an intravaginal speaker and has a product on the market. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Bill dishes on Donald Trump’s dealings with Democrats in his Real Time monologue.
Bill takes a stand against the “outside agitators” who wants to interfere with California’s progressive agenda.
THANKS to HBO and Real Time with Bill Maher for making this program available on YouTube.
In this segment of American Jobs, VICE News Howard Ring, an 82 year widower living alone in Massachusetts. He works a full time job at Vita-Needle, a company known for their high quality surgical needle manufacturing.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Trevor’s fed up with Donald Trump’s children switching back and forth between being the president’s kids and being federal employees.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Just another lecture from Max.
FINALLY . . .
What would you do?
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately, thanks to the Trump administration’s war on immigrants. It was bad enough during the campaign when Trump’s racism was limited to his really big, best words ever, but now that his hateful discriminatory rhetoric is being turned into actual policies, it’s far worse.
None of us should be able to sleep at night. Unfortunately, the polls tell us that 38 percent of us can.
I’ve lost track of how many local families we’ve covered as their worlds have been torn apart by seeing a mom or dad or brother or sister or child deported. I should point out that most of this cruelty was dispensed at the hand of Barack Obama and his band of Democratic Party hypocrites, but there can be no doubt that the current situation under Trump has intensified the pain for millions of our neighbors.
With one wave of his tiny hand, Emperor Trump recently disrupted the lives of 800,000 of our nation’s best and brightest, aka the dreamers. And yes, I did mean to say “our nation’s” because the U.S. is basically the only home the dreamers have ever known and, it is the place where they hope to contribute with their many talents.
When Trump killed DACA for no reason other than appeasing his base of racist supporters, he sent a wave of fear washing over the lives of millions of people who make our country better by their presence. And that is only his most recent assault on immigrants. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Not?