A report on MSNBC’s website reveals that an organic certification we should be able to trust may not be trustworthy after all.

According to the report, a program manager named Barbara Robinson repeatedly bowed to pressure from large producers to weaken or override regulations, even allowing synthetics produced with hexane, a neurotoxin, to be added to baby formula that carries the USDA organic seal. Even organic milk, which should require cows to be at least sometimes put to pasture, may be produced from cows continually confined to feed lots.

“It will unravel everything we’ve done if the standards can no longer be trusted,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who sponsored the federal organics legislation. “If we don’t protect the brand, the organic label, the program is finished. It could disappear overnight.” [quoted from MSNBC]

I agree with the report’s contention that the USDA organic label is under serious threat of irrelevancy. Unfortunately, most consumers will continue to trust the seal as the utmost authority of what foods are indeed produced using trusted organic methods, if for no other reason than that they simply don’t have time to research the various organic certifications. Until the time comes that the USDA National Organic Program can be trusted, I will encourage others to visit the Organic Consumer Association’s site to find out more about what foods can be trusted as organic. And write to your representatives and the Obama administration and demand that the USDA National Organic Program be put back on track and that people like Barbara Robinson be fired, so that the taxpayer money spent on the program is not wasted on a soon to be meaningless logo.

(Maybe the whole USDA National Organic Program, as implemented, is not such a good idea anyway. Read USDA Organic Seal - Killing hometown organic farms in America? for more.)

from Grant and Caroline’s pix on Flickr

This summer I’ve seen more fireflies than I can remember. Well, I have to qualify that, as there weren’t many around the house where I grew up in south Georgia. Sure, we’d see the occasional yellow-green light flickering through the yard, or, sadly, obliterated on the car’s windshield when driving at night. My best remembered display was when as a young teen I was visiting my grandmother’s house in Clayton, Georgia. The lightning bugs flickered through the bamboo grove below the house, and in the trees and bushes surrounding the house on Duggan Hill. It was also on that trip that I saw my first Luna moth.

I don’t recall seeing fireflies here at home last summer, but just a week ago I walked outside and witnessed an awe-inspiring display of hundreds of tiny lights flickering in the woods at the edge of the back yard. I stood transfixed, amazed at nature’s magical beauty. I instantly understood why people once believed in fairies and wee folk, and for a moment I did, too.

Though they never really synchronized, their flashing seemed to come in waves. For a few seconds they flickered all over the yard, then there seemed to come a pause for a few seconds, with only a couple of fireflies sending their sparkling mating signals. For a few nights I spent time on the back deck, enjoying their spellbinding lights.

This week the number of fireflies has greatly decreased, and tonight I counted only three or four flashing among the trunks of the sweetgums and pines. Some floated through the back yard, almost as if they were desperately aware that the pickins for a mate are slimmer than just last week.

I did a quick search and found some interesting information about fireflies in Georgia. There may be many different species here, differentiated by color of the light, or the pattern of flashing. It also turns out that one of the nation’s foremost firefly researchers is Jonathan Copeland at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. He’s researched some species in the South that exhibit synchronized flashing, previously thought only to occur in Asian species.

I also discovered that, depending on the area, fireflies may be in decline or in others, increasing. They’re sensitive to environmental conditions, so, like frogs and other amphibians, may be indicators of the ecological health of an area. Given this year’s backyard display, I hope that means they’ve found a comfortable home here.

The Museum of Science in Boston is again working to collect information about firefly populations in New England and the rest of the US. I’ll be sending in my observations this summer, and hope that it adds to our knowledge of fireflies. Hopefully the public’s participation can help in our understanding these animals, and will help us to preserve these magical creatures for future generations.

Resources:

• Firefly.org
• The Synchronous Fireflies of Elkmont (Appalachian Voice)
• US Fireflies Flashing in Unison (Science News via bNet)
  
• Fireflies in decline as natural habitat destroyed (NowPublic)
• After cicada, firefly’s warm glow grows (Newport News Daily Press)
• Fireflies shine light on insect conservation (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• Grant and Caroline’s Firefly pictures (Flickr, Creative Commons License)

You can help conserve firefles by participating in the Boston Museum of Science’s Firefly Watch program at this website:

• Museum of Science Firefly Watch

An inventor has created a product which so closely mimics the look of one species of firefly that not only does it fool us humans, but has been used by researchers to lure fireflies. The product is called Firefly Magic, and is available to the public. If you live in an area without native fireflies, like much of the west coast of the US, you can place this system in your yard and experience much of the wonder of fireflies.

Seriously, what rock has this Republi-tard been for the last 8 years? This is not new news, folks!

ScooopThis.Org: NSA has ability to collect and read domestic emails!

Do you guys not recall all the news about the Bush Administration protecting AT&T and other phone carriers if they handed over call records to the government, and about that call center where the asshats where listening in on people (Americans, at that!) having phone sex?

Here’s a small sampling of old news to refresh you retards that haven’t been paying attention to for the last 8 years:

• Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say
• NSA Call Database
• Is the NSA Reading Your Email?
• Bush Authorized Domestic Spying

MSNBC reports on a pair of male Humbolt penguins at a zoo in Germany that incubated an egg and have continued to raise the chick.

Considering that the egg was originally abandoned by its presumably heterosexual penguin mother, it seems this is quite a good example of why letting same-sex couples adopt is really a good idea. See, it’s like this: the chick would have perished before hatching had the gay pair not incubated the egg. (Zookeepers placed the abandoned egg in their nest.) Similarly, gay couples in the human world can be fantastic parents for children currently being shuffled through foster care because they’ve been taken from abusive, neglectful, or otherwise harmful straight parents.

The “But it’s unnatural!” argument no longer works, folks.

What’s Up With That? looks like fun, and is an awarded blog. Have a visit!

One of my favorite sites is Cute Overload, and today I discovered that it has a counterpart, run by entirely different people, called Ugly Overload. Awesome!

Now, the interesting thing is that Ugly Overload isn’t about gross stuff (unless you think bugs are gross), but about the odd and not-so-cuddly creatures of the world. The thing that excited me most about the site is that there’s a lot of science to go with all that ugly. Here’s an example:

Bats belong to the order of Chiroptera, which means “hand-wing”. But did you know that there is also an order by the name of Dermoptera, “skin-wing”? (Think of the suffix “opter” and you’ll get a clue as to how the helicopter was named). [Link to original]

I love it! Ugly Overload now holds a spot right at the top of my mental blogroll, along with Cute Overload and I Can Has Cheezurger.

Haven’t blogged it yet, but looks like Google got their stuff together and fixed realtime traffic. Atlanta traffic no longer has gaps and looks like it used to.

This makes me wonder, since it took a few weeks to fix, is the data accurate, or did they just merge the gaps, so to speak? So far it looks right, and the usual slow-downs I encounter on the way home are as indicated, within reason and within what seems to be the update frequency of the map.

Thanks Google Map Guys!