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Turning into the core of September, most of us are coming to grips with a decreased mobility, so it may be relieving for us to watch Arctic Chronicles, the log of Jessica Robertson a “public affairs specialist” for the U.S. Geological Survey. She will be going on a trip on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy as it maps the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean moving freely through waters with a record low amount of ice cover. By the end of the mission on October 1, the ice will thicken with the turning of the year.

This one goes out to Sarah Palin, a great little lady who’s running for Vice President of the United States, and maybe President too, if John McCain kicks the bucket.

Sarah Palin hits the trail
with a hunting rifle and a husky wail.
She’s travelled the world and knows it all!
Her foreign policy standin’ tall.

Sarah Palin told everyone that she had lots of foreign policy experience, and had travelled to Kuwait, Germany and Ireland. It turns out though, that Sarah Palin’s visit to the airport wasn’t nothin’ but a one or two hour layover in the airport while her plane got refueled on the way to Kuwait.

Well, shucks! Ain’t we all told some little fib now and then? It ain’t like we need our leaders to be honest with us or nothin’! Just you pay no never mind, and don’t make the little lady cry, now, y’hear?

So Sarah Palin ain’t been ’round much,
who needs experience and such?!?
From metropolitan Wasilla,
she’ll someday visit Canada!

Sarah Palin world traveller extraordinaire…
Yeah, hoooeeeee!

Ballad of Sarah Palin video podcast

It’s summer, and the Ohio State Fair is on in Columbus, Ohio. Of course, there is the butter cow:

But this year there are also the butter presidents of Ohio:

Presidents Garfield and Harrison look a little bored, or perhaps irritated, by the proceedings.

Plane Stupid is plain genius. Last month, a member of the UK activist group glued himself to the Prime Minister inside 10 Downing Street with the message, “You only have two possible legacies before you leave office: as the first prime minister to take climate change seriously, or the last one not to.”

Today, members of the group took part in a surprise protest at Gatwick Airport. The target of the protest was “short haul” flights - brief airplane flights that consume huge amounts of energy, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, in order to take passengers a short distance that could be easily covered by more efficient forms of transportation, such as train.

The message of Plane Stupid, that frequent air travel has become a grave threat to the natural environment and to human civilization alike, is even more relevant in the US than in the UK. The group’s tactics for successfully grabbing attention through dramatic action are something we Americans would do well to emulate.

“Pregnancy” was what caught my eye. Not a nonexistent overlap, I suppose. But pretty darned small.

Mother Davis opens up Microsoft Outlook as she writes,

If you’re traveling outside of the United States, even just to Canada or Mexico, you had better leave your computer laptops and cell phones at home. The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it has authorized the search and seizure of devices such as laptop computers and cell phones from anyone entering or leaving the USA.

There is no requirement that the owners of electronic equipment be suspected of any crime or any other form of wrongdoing. Homeland Security will take your computer at will, without explanation, just because it wants to, and you might never get it back.

It wasn’t too long ago that we could imagine computers as tools to transcend boundaries between nations. Now we can see that it’s the boundaries between nations that have the higher power.

Closing her Outlook,
Mother Davis

This morning, I was abducted from my usual round of reading by the discovery of an odd little article entitled, Why “The Greys” are here and what they want with us. The greys, we are to understand, are a kind of space alien that has visited planet Earth and taken people on board their flying saucers for unusual experiments that no one understands.

What do the greys want, and why are they here? I called them up on the telephone this morning to ask them, and here’s what they told me they want:

- Low, low prices
- A planet that isn’t so touristy
- No methane (stinky)
- Good beaches, with a warming climate
- A little bit of color (you’ll note that the grey in the photograph is actually turning a little beige)
- Zagat recommends Earth as a good place to eat
- They’re looking for a bartender who knows how to make a Long Island Ice Tea that isn’t too dry

The greys came to Earth several decades early so that they could get in line for the iPhone. The first 100 iPhones went on board their spaceships. Then, just a few months later, Apple went and cut the price in half. Watch out, Steve Jobs - ET is pissed, and he wants more than just a refund.

For environmental and economic reasons, I’ve tried to cut my travel back this year, but every now and then, for the sake of my work, it is necessary for me to go on the road. Right now, I’m in Chicago, staying out in the nether regions around the airport.

I’m being put up this week in the Westin O’Hare, a place I’ve been to many times over the years. The repetitive nature of my stays here enables me to notice differences that take place in the hotel over time.

Today, the Westin O’Hare is showing me concrete signs of a failing economy.

Little things are missing. There is one less towel in the bathroom than there used to be. There are no pads of paper to write on, and only one pen in the room. There is no more bathrobe in the closet.

The menu, which used to be printed up very nicely, is now a crude, wrinkled computer printout, stapled together.

Corners are being cut.

There is one little thing that the Westin O’Hare is trying to do to cover for these cut corners, and that’s to create the appearance of luxury by stuffing an extra thick envelope for my room key with brainbodyfitness tips. The idea, I think, is to give me the impression that the Westin is somehow a place of retreat and recuperation, when in fact it’s just a place with a room to sleep in, like any hotel.

The brainbodyfitness cards give me advice about how to be fit. One card, designated for the evening, advises me, “At the end of every day, connect your brain to your body.”

This explains a lot. Apparently, it’s a new trend in business travel to go through the day with your brain disconnected from your body, only to have it reconnected at night, so that you can enjoy sitcoms. I haven’t been doing this. Maybe it explains why I haven’t been getting ahead.

Then, for the morning, to give the brain I’m about to disconnect a little stimulation, there’s a card with a workout entitled, renew the mind elevate the senses. It gives me a math problem to do: “Morning Warm Up: What’s the next number in this series? 4 9 16 25 ___”

One thing I have never thought of as a reason to go to a hotel is to have worksheets with elementary school math problem on them. I did not find my senses elevated by this little bit of math work, and my mind was not renewed. Sadly, it is the same old mind as ever.

What’s next? Word problems?

An economy is careening out of control, riding an out-of-control locomotive down a mile-high mountain pass with a speed that starts at 5 miles per hour and increases 5 additional miles per hour every 100 feet. How long will it take for the economy to finally hit bottom? (Bonus question: What sauce should brussels sprouts never be served with?)

Are your senses elevated yet?

I was happy to report the good environmental news about British songbirds earlier this morning. Sadly, not everything that flies brings such good tidings.

The Environmental News Network reports that an unpublished study by pollution researchers has concluded that commercial airlines are releasing 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than previously believed. Carbon dioxide is, of course, one of the most significant greenhouse gases that contributes to global warming.

This report offers yet one more reason for the abandonment of airplanes as a significant means of intracontinental travel, in favor of more efficient methods of long distance travel, such as trains. Over a hundred years after the Wright Brothers went hop, skip and jump, it’s time for us to get over the gee whiz reaction to the invention of the airplane. Yes, we can fly, but to fly as much as we do is profoundly unwise.

One of the necessities of the long car trip with kids is the rest stop — a place not only for the younguns to decant, but also to run and stretch and get their restless bodies tired out before getting back in the car. The typical rest stop visible from the highways of our country is some fast food joint with a “human habitrail” — a two, three or four-story climbing sliding contraption.

[Find Peace at the Prairie Oaks Metropark in Central Ohio]

If you’re looking for an alternative to the fast food habitrail, and if your travels this summer take you on Interstate 70 through central Ohio, consider a stop at the Prairie Oaks Metro Park. Located one mile north of exit 85, 12 miles west of Columbus, the Prairie Oaks park is an area in which the natural grasslands and prairie habitats of the area have been allowed to come back. There’s an excellent playground near the park entrance with two rock-climbers, and a rope-climbing pyramid along with a typical gym contraption and slides. The playground also serves as the trailhead for the Coneflower Trail, a trail that leads to ten others of mild to moderate difficulty that take you through fields, near woods and by ponds. The Coneflower trail is appropriately suggestive; during the summer, Prairie Oaks Metro Park is covered with wildflowers. But even now there’s a lot to see. This past weekend my family encountered hawks, frogs, the ubiquitous cricket and a bunch of garter snakes slithering through gaps in last year’s matted-down grass.

Sure, your kids need a break during a long day of travel, but you need a break too. Refresh your senses with this unconventional pit stop.

Air travel has become a mess, with routine delays, cramped quarters and long lines. Federal government bailouts sweetheart local deals haven’t helped the airlines get their acts together.

It’s time for America to cut back on its air travel habit. It’s an extravagant waste for businesses to send employees into the air, flying across the country, for one day meetings that could be held over the telephone. Business air travel could be cut in half easily without any loss in productivity. In fact, there would likely be significant savings.

There would also be significantly less carbon pumped into the air. Sending a bunch of people surging at hundreds of miles per hour a mile high in the air just isn’t an efficient way to use energy to move.

Some long-distance travel is necessary, of course, and people ought to be able to get around and see the country. For that, people can use the train. The train is a much more enjoyable way to travel. There’s more leg space, and people are free to get up and walk, or use electronic devices, as they wish. Trains also use significantly less energy to get from one location to another, compared to airplanes. Moving from air travel to train travel is one way to cut a lot of carbon emissions.

It seems that the time is just right for America to expand passenger rail and reduce air travel. So, what have the Bush Republicans suggested in the proposed federal budget for 2009? They’ve proposed cutting Amtrak funding by 39 percent.

“Hey - how do you get to the laundromat near the military base? My dryer’s busted.”

“Let’s look at Google Maps and see. It looks like you head down Main Street, take a left on Elm, merge onto Walnut, and then, um, you look around a while until you find the laundromat. It’s gotten all fuzzy.”

“Oh, right. Google Maps has censored all the maps of all the streets that are near American military bases. There must have been a pretty bad terrorist attack against a military base to justify that.”

“Was there? The Pentagon got hit by an airplane on September 11, 2001, but they didn’t use side streets near the Pentagon for that attack. In fact, I don’t know of any terrorist attack in the United States that could have been foiled if the terrorist attacker didn’t know the local streets right next to a military base.”

“Don’t be too sure. How could you forget the infamous Times Square military recruitment center bombing last week?”

“Oh yeah. They broke the glass on a window.”

“And a door. Serious stuff. That guy was on a bicycle. You know why?”

“No. Why?”

“Because Al Quaida now knows that we’re checking the airplanes, and aren’t doing security checks against bicycles. It’s a huge gap in Homeland Security that must be closed at once. The thing about a bicycle, though, is that it’s useless if you don’t know the streets.”

“Are you suggesting that the military censor all maps that show the streets around Times Square?”

“There, and near all other military recruitment centers. There is a demonstrated terrorist threat, isn’t there? It could happen again. Do you want the blood on your hands?”

“Homeland Security depends upon Americans not knowing how to get where they’re going?”

“You are being called upon to support your Homeland. If you aren’t lost, you don’t support the troops.”

I’m becoming increasingly aware that there are different sorts of Internet users. Those that I identify most with are text-based, looking for information through word searches, trying to piece together different sources to get a bigger picture of their world.

There are others, however, who are more social and exploratory. There are people who want to watch and listen instead of reading, people who regard the Internet more as a new kind of television, with social interactivity, than like a new kind magazine with interactive information.

Thinking of that different approach some people take to online media, I decided to follow up the article written yesterday by the Green Man about the plight of sawfish and the people of Bimini with a quick video summary, available here and on ITunes video podcast but also to upload elsewhere on social networking sites like Gather and YouTube.

The convergence of human and animal issues that takes place around the sawfish is just one example of how activism in one area can have an impact in many ways. Engage in a boycott of the Hilton hotel brands listed below, all connected to the company that decided to build the Bimini Bay Resort ecoblemish, and you’ll be taking action on environmental issues, local community issues, and issues of corporate accountability.

Do yourself and the sawfish a favor, and avoid the following hotels:

Conrad Hotels and Resorts
Doubletree
Embassy Suites
Hampton Inn
Hilton
Hilton Garden Inn
Homewood Suites
The Waldorf-Astoria