Benson's Blog

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/11/rally-at-penn-state-students-taking-lead-on-clean-energy.html

This post was co-written by Kim Teplitzky, field coordinator for the Sierra Student Coalition

Today at Penn State University, dozens of students, faculty, and community members rallied in front of university’s coal plant, calling on the university to move beyond coal to clean energy solutions.

“Young people have been at the forefront of the greatest social movements in history, including the fledgling environmental movement that brought us Earth Day and put out flaming rivers,” said Penn State junior Chris Billman, who spoke at the event.  “We’re working to continue that legacy of creating a better future and the most important thing we can address right now is our dependence on coal. We can’t have a clean energy future without moving beyond coal.”

Many find it strange that the Nittany Lions still rely on coal despite the university’s other strides toward clean energy. “The biggest surprise to people is how much we rely on coal,” said sophomore Rose Monahan, a leader with Penn State Beyond Coal. “They know we use it, but they didn’t know that we get 80% of our energy from coal-fired power plants.”

And yet Penn State has made some progress. For example, Penn State is a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Sustainability Partnership Program, which has the school committed to reducing its global warming pollution 17% by 2012.

University clean energy student groups have praised the administration for its commitment to sustainability and for initiatives the school has already undertaken to reduce carbon emissions.  According to the College Sustainability Report Card, Penn State purchases 20% of its power from renewable sources.

Students and faculty are now calling on the school to commit to developing a plan and timeline for phasing out the school’s 80-year-old on-campus coal plant. 

Thankfully, there is some progress on that end at Penn State. University President Graham Spanier has agreed to meet student leaders this semester to discuss the topic. 

“This is an enormous opportunity for Penn State,” said Monahan.  “We’re looking forward to working with President Spanier, the rest of the administration, faculty, and students to expand Penn State’s reputation for leadership and excellence to the clean energy movement.”

Penn State Geography Professor Brent Yarnal, who has spearheaded regional and national greenhouse gas inventories and climate change impact assessments, also spoke at today’s rally and praised the students for understanding the urgency of climate change and for wanting their school to lead the movement.

We agree: With some of the world’s leading climate scientists on faculty and a history of student activism, Penn State should be a leader for Pennsylvania and all the large, public university systems in the nation.

Monahan echoed that sentiment.

“People are finally really start to talk about (clean energy),” said Monahan. “They realize how big an issue it’s going to be. Penn State is worried about carbon emissions, but we could definitely go bigger.

“If there’s any school that can step up to address the enormous challenges associated with coal reliance, it’s Penn State.  As President Spanier says, Penn State thinks big.  Coal is too dirty for our school—we’re better than that.”

Learn more about how coal is Too Dirty For College

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/11/freaky-or-just-arctic/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12383

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/11/one-small-stepfor-global-warming.html

This post was written by Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club Green Transportation Campaign.

We've talked about needing an effort on the scale of the Apollo Project to launch a clean energy revolution. To follow that comparison, yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took one small step for bureaucracy, but a giant leap towards solving global warming. The EPA sent its finalized decision that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare to the White House for review and approval. This decision will put into law what has become quite clear – climate change is real, the threat is serious, and the time to act is now.

This ruling, when finalized, will recognize that emissions spewing from the tailpipes of new motor vehicles are contributing to global warming (they account for 20% of our country's global warming emissions) and lay the groundwork for new greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles. These standards will reduce our dependence on oil, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and save consumers money at the pump. The decision will also allow the EPA to reduce emissions from other major sources of global warming pollution.

This may seem like old news – EPA has already proposed historic new vehicle standards and received coverage when it announced this endangerment finding – but there's more to it. The White House now has 90 days to review EPA's endangerment finding. It's now official, before the United Nations meet in Copenhagen to work towards a global solution to climate change, President Obama can finalize EPA's decision and show the rest of the world that the US recognizes the danger of global warming and is acting to stop it.

One other thing: When EPA announced that it had sent the endangerment finding to the White House, it mentioned that the agency received more than 300,000 comments from the public regarding the decision. This shows me that the public is engaged, people want global warming solutions, and the administration is listening.

Over the next few months, there will be plenty of opportunities to make your voice heard and, as EPA notes, make a difference. Right now you can send EPA and the Department of Transportation a message to make our vehicles as clean and efficient as possible, or stay involved through the Sierra Club's Big Picture Campaign to learn the latest on what actions the administration is taking to reduce global warming pollution. As the United Nations prepares to meet in Copenhagen, show Washington and the World that you want to move to a clean energy economy. It will make a difference.

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/11/senate-hearing-wrapup-halloween-is-over.html

This post is by Justin Guay, apprentice for the Sierra Club Global Warming and Energy Team

Halloween is over, but someone forgot to tell the obstructionist Republican party that. Their tired litany of scaremongering tactics employed continued in today's Senate Finance hearing covering climate change legislation and future jobs. Not surprisingly, Republican senators didn’t see many jobs. In fact, surprise, surprise, they only saw scary China stealing our jobs if we decide to act. Oh and energy prices will skyrocket and we will all be sent straight to the poor house. Oh and then the President will pull the plug on Grandma. Oh wait, wrong issue to obstruct…

So if climate legislation is so scary, what is their alternative? Well, they would prefer it if you didn't ask, because it consists of quite a bit of looking backwards to technologies of the past while other nations continue to outpace us in the new clean energy economy. You can see how this position is very difficult to sell – apparently it's just not sexy.

Their official "we are frightened by the future" motto has become so ridiculous that it visibly frustrated even Senate veteran John Kerry (D-CA) who thankfully came to the hearing’s rescue. He pushed back on all the endless supply of scare tactics, questioning the assumptions of faulty economic analyses and calling them "out of whack." The most glaring of these faults being the absence of costs associated with inaction. Abraham Breehey of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers strongly backed Kerry on this point, going on to say that climate action is vital to securing America's economic future and that American jobs were worth protecting.

Senator Kerry and Senator Stabenow (D-MI) then teamed up to show that inaction is so costly that it is simply not an option. Senator Kerry set Kenneth Green from the American Enterprise Institute straight by demonstrating that China is indeed acting and that they are moving faster and more boldly than we are. Stabenow followed up by pointing out that we are in a clean energy race with China. She pointed out that we can not afford to repeat the errors of the computer age when American ingenuity drove technology development only to see it manufactured overseas.

As U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern often repeats in his testimony, our real problem with competitiveness is not whether we can get the Chinese to act, but whether we will be chasing them in five years when we ourselves have failed to do so. Towards the end of the hearing John Kerry put his mark on the hearing by saying that the costs of inaction will come back to haunt us. Considering the severe economic hardship we are currently facing, that is the truly scary thought.

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/11/tweeting-from-todays-climate-hearing.html

Well, we'll only be tweeting from one Senate hearing on climate legislation today, since the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee postponed theirs. So follow @SierraClubLive and the hashtags #cejapa and #sfc on Twitter for updates from today's Senate Finance Committee hearing on "Climate Change Legislation: Considerations for Future Jobs."

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/11/horizontal-vertical/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12380

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/11/tweeting-from-tuesdays-senate-climate-hearings.html

Tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov. 10th) we'll have two of our folks tweeting from the two very important Senate hearings. Justin Guay, the apprentice for our global warming and energy team, will be twittering with the @SierraClubLive from the Senate Finance Committee hearing on climate legislation and jobs. You can also follow those tweets with the #cejapa and #sfc hashtags.

And then Julian Carmona, our global warming and energy team intern, will be twittering using his own account from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on global warming policy. Follow along @JulianCarm or using the #cejapa and #enr hashtags.

Both hearings begin at 10am ET.

http://www.cottontimer.com/2009/11/10/kick-butt/

This snapshot from a video of the kids dancing the twist makes me laugh. Megan looks like she’s kicking butt!

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/11/and-neither-one-wears-pants/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12377

http://www.cottontimer.com/2009/11/08/dont-photoshop-my-kid/

A father in Sweden is upset because the school photographer photoshopped a scar off his 3-year-old daughter’s nose. What’s worse, the photog apologized by saying that they “just want things to be nice and cute.”

First of all, our children are not things.

Second of all, just because our children aren’t perfect looking doesn’t mean they’re not nice and not cute.

Even if the girl’s scar wasn’t permanent and was the result of a fall, maybe it would be a snapshot of history to remember that – hey, remember the day of your preschool photo you had that cut on your forehead from falling during hopscotch?

My one-year-old daughter has some pigmentation on her body that probably won’t go away. I hope that she will never be self-conscious about it but how can I prevent that when even the school photographer might find the need to take a few swipes here and there?

I know it’s unrealistic to expect that she’ll never care. Someday she will probably be embarrassed and will probably prefer to wear clothing that covers it up. But I think all of us go through those kinds of phases at some point during our growing up years. In sixth grade, I wore a windbreaker at all times no matter how hot I got because I was embarrassed by my plump, developing body.

Fortunately, I’ve escaped unscathed with relatively good body image. Most likely because the adults in my life just let me be. Just as that photographer should have done.

Dad angry about retouched photo of girl, 3 – UPI.com

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/11/the-19-bloggers-inc-thinks-you-should-read.html

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/11/coal-ash-causing-birth-defects.html

There is a shocking article in today's Miami Herald about a town in the Dominican Republic being plagued by terrible birth defects. The residents claim all the birth issues are being caused by coal ash that was dumped nearby by a U.S. company. The company denies it.

From the article:

A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

The case highlights the debate over coal ash, an unregulated byproduct of coal energy, which when processed and recycled is used in everything from cement to the foundation for golf courses. Popular Mechanics magazine this month calls a concrete made from coal ash one of the "10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009.''

It's a sad and eye-opening article, be sure to read it.

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/11/piranhas-chainsaws-wolves-knives-whatnot/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12374

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/11/another-coal-plant-bites-the-dust.html

This week’s post was co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign

We’re celebrating great news out of Minnesota and South Dakota this week:

“After almost five years of planning and permitting efforts, the participating utilities in the proposed Big Stone II Project announced…Monday that they will end their quest to build the project’s large coal-fired power plant and associated transmission facilities.”

We echo our own Cesia Kearns, a Sierra Club staffer from Minnesota, in what the halting of Big Stone II means for the region.

“The failure of this enormous proposed coal plant expansion unravels the myth that the Midwest is starving for more electricity, and that coal is the only way to adequately meet that perceived need,” Kearns said.  “This victory demonstrates that even when we may lose the battles - consistent pressure, engaged citizens, and strong partnerships can win the war.  It's a strong example of how even though the regulators may be on the side of a developer, the public is not.”

We salute our tough band of local residents in South Dakota and Minnesota (the plant was proposed for northeastern South Dakota, near the border with Minnesota), who spent the last five years fighting this dirty coal plant. The Sierra Club also partnered with grassroots, state, and regional organizations during this long and difficult campaign. They knew how bad the air pollution and global warming contributions this plant would spew forth would be, they wanted clean energy for their region, and even when the going got tough, they never gave up.

 

Stopping the Big Stone II project prevented about 4.7 million tons of CO2, or the equivalent of the pollution from roughly 670,000 cars (substantially more than all the cars in South Dakota) from entering the atmosphere every year.

 

The residents so entrenched in this fight against Big Stone II helped lead a long fight against the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for its issuance of an air pollution permit for the plant and, equally importantly, an enforcement action targeting the existing coal-fired unit at the Big Stone facility for past violations of the Clean Air Act.  We also challenged the state of South Dakota's Clean Air Act plan for failure to comply with federal law.

 

Kearns added that one noteworthy example of the grassroots push for clean energy was the mention of Sierra Club's "footprint petition" in the Administrative Law Judge's written recommendation to the MN Public Utilities Commission to deny the certificate of need for Big Stone II’s transmission lines.

 

“The footprint petition was a long swath of fabric with the signatures and outlines of the footprints of over 2,000 Minnesotans who wanted to see global warming solutions in Minnesota,” explained Kearns. “It was presented to the Administrative Law Judge during a public hearing in Ortonville, Minnesota - the town closest to the location of the proposed plant.”

 

This plant’s demise is also a sign of impending climate legislation. Otter Tail Power had pulled out of this plant back in September, citing, among other reasons, “a high level of uncertainty associated with proposed federal climate legislation and existing federal environmental regulation.”

 

No other utilities stepped in to take over the Big Stone II expansion themselves – because the companies all know that this legislation is coming.

 

Coal power is not the future of U.S. energy. The public is speaking up for more clean energy. And from coast to coast, that voice is getting louder every day.

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
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http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/11/recent-coal-news-dirty-dangerous-as-ever.html

There's been a lot of news out about various aspects of the coal industry lately, so I wanted to share the links to get it out there. These are in no particular order, but all are interesting.

First up, last Friday the newspaper Business Lexington in Kentucky published side-by-side editorials on mountaintop removal coal mining, one from our Sierra Club folks there and one from a coal industry rep.

Also last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notified officials in West Virginia and Ohio about the integrity of coal ash storage site (impoundment) at an AEP facility in West Virginia. EPA officials say the impoundment is suffering from issues similar to those that caused the coal ash dam failure in Tennessee last December:

As part of that effort, EPA contractors identified factors at the AEP Philip Sporn facility that are similar to the Kingston facility – specifically, both facilities piled coal ash and bottom ash around the impoundment to raise the impoundment’s walls.

In similar news, residents in Trimble, Ohio, are worried about a planned coal ash impoundment expansion near the Ohio River.

More in coal ash news, did you see EPA's coal ash report? The agency released it last week, and we've taken a look at it:

The report shows that coal power plants are discharging huge amounts of toxic pollution including arsenic, mercury, and selenium into rivers, streams, and groundwater across the country, contaminating wells, killing wildlife, and risking lives.  EPA’s report concludes that an “increasing amount of evidence indicates that the characteristics of coal combustion wastewater have the potential to impact human health and the environment.”  The report documents decades of damage, ranging from a single spill which wiped out 200,000 fish to reports of well water laced with selenium, which can cause infertility.

The Tennessean had a good article on the report and what it means.

In "that shouldn't be funny but it is" news, the Faces of Coal folks tweeted a disturbing note recently: "Coal helped us get a healthcare industry, which we did not have" In response, a friend of ours quipped, "Yeah, helped us get a healthcare industry by creating a market for it with ailments like black lung." To that we'd add the thousands of health and respiratory issues caused by pollution from burning coal.

Moving on to other coal environmental health issues, the Sierra Club has worked on coal dust issues before, and we're at it again - this time in Alaska. Our Alaska chapter teamed up with the Alaska Center for the Environment and Alaska Community Action on Toxics:

Local conservation groups put Alaska Railroad Corporation and Aurora Energy Services on notice that the companies need to control the coal at the Seward coal loading facility. A lack of adequate pollution controls at the facility has resulted in ongoing dumping of coal debris into Resurrection Bay and uncontrolled blowing coal dust, damaging water quality in the Bay and threatening the tourism industry it supports.

You can read the full press release here (PDF).

And finally, as if that wasn't enough news about the risks of using coal, here's another link to back that up. Pediatrician Dr. Keith Sebert wrote an editorial in Georgia's Bryan County News about mercury in waterways being a risk to children. Where does the mercury come from? You guessed it: Coal-fired power plants.

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/11/ordinary-is-abundant/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12371

http://www.cottontimer.com/2009/11/05/test-your-thinking/

When researchers put the following three problems to 3400 students in the US, only 17 per cent got all three right. Can you do any better?

1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2) If it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of it?

The answer is here: Clever fools: Why a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re smart – life – 02 November 2009 – New Scientist

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/11/how-to-get-found.html