Whew.

Taking a brief break before diving back into the day job until ... oh, midnight, if this past week's history has been any indicator. But I'm making progress. Swear.

Miscellaneous tidbits:

*** I've moved the baby chicks out of the brooder and into the new barn. All I have to do now is add the trim and build the chicken run, and I can put everyone (except the ducks) in the new addition.

*** In another chicken-related vein, we put a light in the current coop. Hopefully, the chicks will decide it's back to summer and start laying. Chickens generally lay at 22 weeks, and the older chickens are ... 22 weeks. Lisa made me an egg basket in an uncontrollable burst of optimism.

*** Biofuels, The Good. A Charlie Rose interview with Luiz Lula da Silva of Brazil:




*** Biofuels, The Bad: A Reuters story about Jane Goodall's take:



Jane Goodall says biofuel crops hurt rain forests
Wed Sep 26, 6:08 PM ET


Primate scientist Jane Goodall said on Wednesday the race to grow crops for vehicle fuels is damaging rain forests in Asia, Africa and South America and adding to the emissions blamed for global warming.


"We're cutting down forests now to grow sugarcane and palm oil for biofuels and our forests are being hacked into by so many interests that it makes them more and more important to save now," Goodall said on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative, former U.S. President Bill Clinton's annual philanthropic meeting.


As new oil supplies become harder to find, many countries such as Brazil and Indonesia are racing to grow domestic sources of vehicle fuels, such as ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from palm nuts.


The United Nations' climate program considers the fuels to be low in carbon because growing the crops takes in heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide.


But critics say demand for the fuels has led companies to cut down and burn forests in order to grow the crops, adding to heat-trapping emissions and leading to erosion and stress on ecosystems.


"Biofuel isn't the answer to everything; it depends where it comes from," she said. "All of this means better education on where fuels are coming from are needed."


Goodall said the problem is especially bad in the Indonesian rain forest where large amounts of palm nut oil is being made. Growers in Uganda -- where her nonprofit group works to conserve Great Apes -- are also looking to buy large parcels of rain forest and cut them down to grow sugar cane, while in Brazil, forest is cleared to grow sugar cane.

*** I'm amazed at this one. I mean, what are the Chinese doing here? Don't they know better? How can they say they made a mistake? Without spin? Or bullshit?

Clearly, they have a lot to learn from, ahem, the other side of the Pacific.

CHINESE officials who previously defended the giant Three Gorges Dam as an engineering and economic miracle have admitted that the world's biggest hydropower project is at risk of environmental disaster if accumulating threats are not dealt with promptly.

A forum organised by State Council, China's cabinet, on Tuesday to discuss the dam's accelerating environmental problems concluded that "if no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe", the official Xinhua news agency reported, quoting senior officials at the meeting in Wuhan.

Wang Xiaofeng, the director of the Government's Three Gorges construction body, said that while China had largely overcome many challenges - including funding, technology and the huge displacement of people - it now had to face up to the increasing ecological threats.

These included erosion and landslides around the dam, pollution and "ecological deterioration" caused by "irrational development" along the river, he said.

"We absolutely cannot relax our guard against ecological and environmental security problems created by the Three Gorges project," Mr Wang told the meeting. "We cannot sacrifice our environment for short-term economic prosperity."

*** A very good NY Times story about running, biking and swimming:



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/health/nutrition/27Best.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1190931264-nnDw5BOmGlWt5jXcOXvfmA



Here's the money graf:



The rules of physics say that distance cycling and distance running are for small people. Rowing and swimming are for people who are big. The physics is so exact that when Dr. Secher tried to predict how fast competitive rowers could go, based only on their sizes and the weights of their boats, he was accurate to within 1 percent.



Explains a lot. Although I'd still like to have seen a graf that explains lazy people who have so much going on at the day job that they haven't been able to get their act together and get back into some serious training.



I'm just sayin'.