Marisa Kakoulas at the excellent tattoo blog Needles and Sins writes about Tattooed Under Fire, a documentary by Nancy Schiesari on the tattoos -- and lives -- of soldiers at Fort Hood. The film was created long before yesterday's mass shooting, and will air on public television stations around the country starting next week.

Fort Hood -- the largest US military facility in the world -- is a major center for soldiers being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and also houses the Army's Warrior Combat Stress Reset Program, which helps soldiers deal with post-traumatic stress when they return. In both cases, deployment and return home, soldiers work out heavy issues, and many seek tattooing as a way to express them or even see the process as therapy.

Tattooed Under Fire documents the young men and women at Fort Hood who seek solace at the tattoo studio, confessing fears, expressing anger, sharing secrets, and relaying personal war stories.

(Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Related, on BB: An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy

I don't know about you, but I get tired of hearing about what climate change may possibly do to our planet in 150 years. It's important stuff to know. But the emphasis on that sort of implies we're not already experiencing the fallout.

Public radio's Marketplace has put together a big series on the impacts of climate change. And, instead of reporting-as-usual, they're actually taking the time to explain what's already happened, as well as what's to come. Besides some well-reported radio stories, they've also got an interactive map that breaks the United States down into eight regions, and compares---side-by-side---that area's past (mostly based on what things were like between 1960 and 1979), present and future.

To get self-centered about it, here's what climate change has already wrought in the Midwest:

• •Frost-free season has become longer by more than a week. Again, that's just since the 60s and 70s.
• •More frequent heatwaves.
• •Two record-breaking floods within the past 15 years
• •Heavier summer and winter precipitation.
• •Increased average temperatures, especially in winter.
• •Heavy downpours are twice as frequent as a century ago.

Marketplace: The Climate Race

This is a kea. Isn't he cute? Happy, little green parrot...tra la la.

This little parrot will mess your s**t up. If you are a sheep. Image courtesy Flickr user PhillipC, via CC.

Happy, little green parrot who calmly burrows through the still-living flesh of sheep and dines upon their kidney fat while they lay bleating in terror. No, really. You can see a video here. Watch Clip 4, starting about two minutes in.

And now, the context....

Rebecca from EFF sez, "The Yes Men prank -- they put out a press release and held a spoof news conference on Monday, claiming that the Chamber of Commerce had reversed its position and would stop lobbying against a climate bill currently in the Senate -- apparently hasn't embarrassed the Chamber of Commerce enough yet. Attorneys for the group have issued a takedown demand for the website connected to the prank, claiming copyright infringement. The demand ignores the parodic nature of the stunt (parody enjoys First Amendment protection) and may just serve to put the Yes Men's criticism in the news for one more day."

EFF: Chamber of Commerce Takes Aim at Yes Men (Thanks, Rebecca!)

Darren sez, "350.org, one of the coolest bottom-up, grassroots activist orgs around, is running a huge International Day of Climate Action this Saturday, Oct. 24. They have, at last count, over 4000 actions (parades, protests, flash mobs and so forth) in 170 countries. They're trying to cover off every country on the globe, but they're missing 22 (North Korea may prove particularly tricky). From the site:"

"Below you'll find a list of the UN-recognized countries where as of yet there is no action registered. Do you know someone in any of these countries. Does your church or synagogue or mosque or temple have contacts there? What about your professional society? University alumni group? Would you be willing to send an email like this to them, explaining 350 and asking them to join in by organizing some event, large or small, for the 24th of October? Can you imagine the kind of message it would sound if every country on the planet joined in actions on Oct. 24th?"

1. Angola
2. Bahamas
3. Turkmenistan
4. Comoros
5. Djibouti
6. East Timor
7. Equatorial Guinea
8. Eritrea
9. Guinea
10. Guinea-Bissau
11. Kiribati
12. Lesotho
13. Liechtenstein
14. Luxembourg
15. Mauritania
16. Micronesia
17. Monaco
18. Namibia
19. North Korea
20. San Marino
21. Sao Tome and Principe
22. Seychelles

170 Countries! (And the "Missing 23") (Thanks, Darren!)

The Freakonomics guys have apparently either really dropped the ball when it comes to understanding science, or they're willfully ignoring it. Either way, I'm pretty disappointed.

The sequel's contrarian take on climate change--and the bad science it's steeped in--have been analyzed in exquisite detail by everybody from Paul Krugman, Berkeley economist J. Bradford DeLong, to the Union of Concerned Scientists, to various climate scientists spread hither and non about the Web.

That's a lot of links, but they're there so you can go back and read page-by-page breakdowns of the mistakes and inaccuracies, by experts, if you want. I think that's important, because I know at least some of you are going to assume that any criticism of this book and its contents is all about some violation of pseudo-religious orthodoxy. I want you to be able to go see that this is about science. If you just want a quick summary, though, read on...

Earlier today, we looked at why leaves change color--or, more specifically, why some trees change to red and some to yellow. Now, we turn our attention to the skies.

So, birds fly south for the Winter. But how do they pull off a trip like that, while you and I (or, maybe, just I) have no idea which way is north outside our hometowns? Actually, nobody knows for certain. But Matt Soniak at mental_floss has summarized three of the theories. My favorite:

A particularly cool study showed that migratory birds also use "celestial navigation" to find their way around in the dark. Captive birds placed in a planetarium changed their directional orientation when the star pattern on the ceiling shifted and became confused when the images of stars were dimmed. The scientists conducting the experiment suggest that birds use the layout of constellations in the sky as a compass.

I just like to imagine the phone calls between the bird guys, and the owner of the planetarium, both before and after the experiment.

Image courtesy Flickr user Corey Leopold, via CC

A couple of years ago, a botanist emailed Cory some nifty insights into why some leaves on a vine maple turn red and others yellow, and still others a mix of both. Go read that again first, then come back here, because it provides some good background information. Since then, it seems, scientists have been able to add to our understanding of leafy color change--particularly when it comes to answering the broader question of why some tree species tend toward yellow and why others tend toward red.

According to this Discovery.com slideshow, the answer could lie in the composition of soil, or in competition with leaf-eating pests.

One thing I'm curious about, after reading this, does Europe really have less red leaves in Autumn than the U.S.? I'd never heard that before...

Image copyright John Bennett and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

A century ago, farmers relied on these big, steampunk-y contraptions called threshing machines to bring in the harvest. The machines were portable, and expensive--they were usually owned by a third party, or by a cooperative of farmers. The threshers traveled from farm to farm, region to region, separating grain from stalk and turning crops into commodities.

Pictured: This threshing machine's body lies a mouldering in a barn, but its spirit is marching on. From Flickr user exfordy, via CC.

Now, researchers from the University of Minnesota are hoping to repeat history with a portable machine that could turn prairie grasses, small trees and corn stalks into liquid biofuel. It's a nifty idea that could be great for both the environment and rural economies...provided the boys in the back room can work out a few bugs.

The Yes Men strike again. Posing as members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they held a press conference today to announce that the chamber would abandon its opposition to climate-change legislation now in Congress. Well, that would explain the sneaky spam press release I received this morning which pointed to "chamber-of-commerce.us" instead of the actual website for the US Chamber of Commerce, at "uschamber.com." Wonder if any bloggers or reporters were done in by the emailed version of the Yes Men prank?

Here's a snip from Washington Post article about the meatspace hijinks today:

The event, complete with fake handouts on chamber letterhead, at least a couple of fake reporters, and a podium adorned with the chamber logo, broke up when a spokesman from the real chamber burst in. What followed was a spectacle not usually seen in the John Peter Zenger Room at the National Press Club: two men in business suits shouting at one another, each calling the other an impostor and demanding to see business cards.

"This guy is a fake! He's lying! This is a stunt that I've never seen before," said Eric Wohlschlegel, an official at the actual Chamber of Commerce, who said he'd heard about the hoax event from a reporter who'd mistakenly shown up at the chamber's headquarters.

The fake Chamber of Commerce official, who called himself "Hingo Sembra," did not give his real name to reporters, saying only that he represented a coalition of climate activists.

Pranksters stage Chamber of Commerce climate change event (Washington Post, via @tomzellerjr). Related coverage: GOOD, Roll Call, Talking Points Memo.

Photographer Chris Jordan has published a series of images identified as dead albatross on Midway Atoll whose bodies are filled with bits of plastic they ingested.

Midway Island is an anemic little line of sand and coral reefs, way out in the middle of the Pacific. Now, I don't know Mr. Jordan personally, and haven't fact-checked the story behind the photos -- but presuming it's all as presented, this really is a horrifying set of images. Birds that live as far away from civilization as you can imagine, their innards packed with petroleum flotsam? Wow.

The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

Midway (chrisjordan.com, Thanks, Susannah Breslin and Sean Bonner!)

"Lampreys don't charm most people," begins a pamphlet from the Minnesota Sea Grant.

Truer words, my environmental research friends, truer words.

Yes, it's hard out there for a lamprey. Already cursed with a face not even their mothers (who die shortly after spawning) could love, these fish were further saddled with 50 years of bad PR brought on when one invasive species, the sea lamprey, moved into the Great Lakes and wreaked a trail of parasitic havoc from New York to Minnesota. Lost in the shuffle were several native lamprey species, some of which aren't even parasitic. Despite living in the Great Lakes for 1000s of years in co-evolved cooperation with other fish, non-invasive lamprey have paid the price for their cousin's misdeeds.

Quick, what's pink and thrives on hydrocarbons?

It's not every day that nature serves up a creature roughly the shade of Barbie-doll packaging. Rarer still for an animal to live, quite happily, in a habitat saturated by methane gas and seeping crude oil. But the ice worms discovered in the Gulf of Mexico in 1997 manage to cover both characteristics handsomely. Naturally, I kind of adore them.

Flat and luridly pink, with a stunning array of creepy looking appendages, these worms live at the bottom of the ocean, on the surface of sea-floor gas hydrates--solid, ice-like lumps that form when molecules of methane are encased in a tasty candy shell of water molecules, kept at low temperatures and under high pressure. (Note: Shell not actually tasty.)

Did you know that some of the best hardwood can be found underwater? When people built hydrodams and created lakes in valleys to get quick, cheap power, they flooded the trees and essentially forgot about them. A small underwater logging industry has ensued, but no company has taken it as far as Triton Logging of Vancouver, BC.

Instead of sending human divers underwater, Triton built a giant yellow submarine called the Sawfish — a 5,500-pound unmanned logging device capable of finding, chopping, and floating trees weighing up to 200 pounds to the surface from deep underwater. When pictures of the Sawfish circulated the blogosphere in 2006, three years after its initial deployment, the sub was harvesting softwood on the west coast of Canada. It has since increased its fleet to four, doubled each machine's lifting power, and expanded its mission to underwater hardwood forests in tropical reservoirs in Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. Join me and Jim Hahurst, Triton's VP of Marketing, for a photo tour of how the new Sawfish works.

Lechuguilla Cave is part of the Carlsbad Caverns Natural Park in New Mexico and is regarded as one of the most beautiful caves, with some of the most unique geography, in the entire world.

You can't visit.

Because of the delicacy of many of the formations, the cave is only open to scientists and the explorers who are still figuring out what all is down there. Nobody else is allowed in. Or, rather, nobody else but David Attenborough.

This video from the Planet Earth TV series takes you down into Lechuguilla for some amazing sights and fascinating commentary on the chemistry and biology that make this cave so strange and lovely. Even more impressive, nobody knew it was there until 1986.

Psst, Nova has a whole page on Lechiguilla, if you want to read more.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user n3pb, via CC

The environmental committee of the city of Taichung, Taiwan is trying something different to clean up its streets — it's offering $3 in shopping vouchers per kilogram of dog poop collected. From the city council's web site:

By means of offering rewards, the bureau hopes to goad the public into spontaneous clean-up efforts that protect the environment.

The problem in Taiwan isn't that dog owners don't pick up poop — it's more an issue of strays, where pet owners get bored of their dogs and leave them on the streets. The poop initiative seems like an odd, half-assed initiative given the greater issue of animal negligence on the island (180,000 strays among a population of 23 million people, according to Reuters), but I suppose it's better than nothing.

Fetch! City pays for dog poo

When I was visiting BoingBoing last spring, I told y'all about some research being done by Lewis Ziska from the USDA and Jackie Mohan from the University of Georgia on how poison ivy responds to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. (Answer: In a way that kind of sucks for people.)

What I didn't tell you was how the scientists figured out that CO2 makes ivy grow incredibly fast, and problematically poisonous. While some of the evidence comes from controlled studies done in a tidy, little lab, there's more to it than that.

Alex from Worldchanging sez, "It's our sixth anniversary today, so we're running the 70 of our most popular and enduring pieces, in the 7 categories - Cities, Shelter, Business, Politics, Planet, Community, Stuff - we cover. Some great stuff here, which leads on to other great stuff, over 10,500 pieces in all... if you want a quick reminder of the ideas Worldchanging's been exploring these last six years, you couldn't do better than this. It's sort of like How to Change the World, an Overview"

Worldchanging 101: An Anniversary Collection (Thanks, Alex!)

This week's most wonderful posts from Treehugger:

5 Places Riding Your Bike is Banned or Illegal (You'll Be Surprised)
So many places exist in the world where it is actually illegal to ride a bike. Perhaps the funniest example is Baldwin Park, California, where it is prohibited to ride a bike in a swimming poo. The saddest is the injunction against Saudi Arabian women bikers: read on for wild and crazy rules, keeping bikers from their bikes.

Researchers Say 'Good To Pee On Tomato Plants' - Just Don't Let The Neighbors See
If you want bigger, better tomato plants with bigger, better tomatoes that are actually better for you, one option is to mix in some of your own pee. No, seriously. Research has proved it.

First Living Building Successfully 'Grown'
Living walls are great--they can reduce pollution, better insulate buildings, and lower the need for maintenance--but it's time to expand the concept. Introducing the 'living building', where trees are grown into the structure of a building and melded with cables and metal supports. Talk about 'green buildings!'

Joules, the Tandem Bike Robot that Pedals for You (Video)
If you have a tandem bike but no one to ride it with you, perhaps Joules could be your partner. He'll do all the pedaling!

Video: "Angeles Crest Highway after the Station Fire," by Hal and Susan McAlister, who were joining staff at the Mount Wilson Observatory.

We were escorted by LA County Sheriff's deputies. We were stunned by what we saw, and inattentive to keeping the little Flip video camera stable and accurately pointed. The devastation speaks for itself.

(via YouTube user Lndacurtss)

Engineers in Los Angeles are baffled by the recent epidemic of failing underground water pipes throughout Los Angeles. Every time you turn on the local TV news around here, over the last few months -- there's new footage of a "major blowout." After examining "dozens of ruptures, some of which flooded streets, damaged vehicles and buildings and created a sinkhole so big that it almost swallowed a firetruck," officials and city engineers have agreed that something odd is going on, but they don't know exactly what, or why so many points of failure in such a compact window of time. Snip from Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles' water system was put in place by William Mulholland, who figured out how to tap water from the Eastern Sierra and the Owens Valley and designed an aqueduct system that let it flow to Los Angeles on the force of gravity alone. The influx allowed semi-arid Los Angeles to boom -- and subdivisions marched outward in the 1920s and the years just after World War II.

The system remains a marvel to many engineers and still sends water over the Santa Monica Mountains from Sylmar to San Pedro using gravity. But parts of it are now almost 100 years old, and many of the pipes are wearing out.

One note on which most agree: a bankrupt state and a city crippled by slashed budgets are ill-equipped to solve the problem.

Here's one LA Times story, and here's another from this morning after two more pipes burst. (Image: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

From Treehugger

Rm w Vu: Tall, Terrifying and Terrific Towers
Would you live in one of these architectural wonders (read: oddities)? Even for the view?

Wild and Wacky Places to Stay in the Countryside
Maybe one of these kooky cabins is more up your alley for a unique vacation get-away.

Tick Saliva May Cure Skin, Liver and Pancreas Cancer
Turns out a stay in a tick-infested woods might be just what the doctor ordered if you have a particular type of cancer.

Green Porno 3 with Isabella Rossellini Now Live
Green Porno has been renewed for a 3rd season (and a book), and today is the official launch online, with the TV launch scheduled for next week (September 21st).

PETA Has Pamela Anderson Stripping People at Airport (Video)
There's another group that knows how to use sex for education...here's the latest from PETA.

Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Cool and Crazy Commuter Bikes
We want to see your bad ass commuter bikes. Send us your photos of ultra sleek designs, hideous hacks, fabulous rebuilds, or whatever it is you use to pedal from place to place.

Hatchery Horrors: Readers React
Both TreeHugger and Boing Boing posted about the gag-inducing male chick massacre video. TreeHugger readers react and cover all angles of the debate. Who do you agree with?

Pestival: A Festival of Insects in Art
It's called " Pestival A Festival of Insects in Art" and if it sounds crazy, well that's because it is...but in a cool way.

Interactive Flood Maps show us how familiar land contours will change as the oceans rise. (via Tim O'Reilly)

Over at Wired's Danger Room blog, news that an environmental nonprofit has obtained photos of the Department of Energy's "specially designed trucks" used to transport nuclear material around the United States. They pretty much look like any other transport truck, which is a little creepy, considering what they contain while they're rollin' down the highway. Just this week, a similar vehicle carrying missiles overturned -- so, safety concerns are in the air right now. Snip:

"The trucks carrying nuclear weapons and dangerous materials such as plutonium pass through cities and neighborhoods all the time and the public should be aware of what they look like," says Tom Clements of the Friends of the Earth group based in Columbia, South Carolina, which obtained the photos through a Freedom of Information Act request. "Release of these photos will help inform the public about secretive shipments of dangerous nuclear material that are taking place in plain view."

Here's the original news on the Friends of the Earth website.

NASA image of the Los Angeles fires, as viewed from high above our planet.

The image was acquired mid-morning on Sunday -- the fire has since more than doubled in size, mind you! -- by the "backward (northward)-viewing camera of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite."

To give you a sense of scale, the image you see here covers an area 152 miles wide. Them's some big blazes.

More about the image here, and larger sizes. And here's more, from scientists at NASA JPL. Robert Mackey at the NYT has a related item. I cringe at linking to the Daily Mail, but hold your nose and click on this image: an annotated version of this same NASA shot that shows you where various parts of LA are located. I am happy to report that I am safely near the edge of the blue stuff, and not downwind of those huge, nasty smoke plumes.

(Warning: video is totally gross). Via this SF Gate item, a Chicago-based animal rights group called Mercy for Animals shot the video above of baby chicks being ground up alive at an Iowa chicken processing factory. It's pretty disgusting, and reinforces a personal decision I made to avoid consuming eggs that come from this sort of place:

Hy-Line admitted to the Associated Press that "instantaneous euthanasia" (e.g. grinding up male chicks) is a standard practice and claims that it is also supported by the animal veterinary and scientific community. (Male chicks are less valuable because they can't lay eggs or be raised quickly enough for meat.) Mercy for Animals estimates that 200 million male chicks are killed annually and United Egg Producers confirmed this figure.

I'll take the happy kind of eggs Mark grows in his back yard, or none at all, yo. (Thanks, Brian Lam)

A ginormous amphibious air tanker called the Martin Mars just made a massive water drop over Mount Wilson, the hill northeast of Los Angeles where the century-old Mount Wilson Observatory and nearby TV, radio and cell phone towers are all located. The World War II-era flying boat literally water-bombed the peak today to douse flames from the Station Fire, which has burned 127,000 acres (the largest in LA County history).

Here's an LA Times pic of this bad boy in action over Mt. Wilson. Snip from the accompanying story:

Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Steve Martin said, "We are going to burn, cut, foam and gel. And if that doesn't work, we're going to pray. This place is worth a lot, but it's not worth dying for. "

In a worst-case scenario, firefighters were expected to retreat to the safety of the observatory parking lot or seek refuge in the concrete and steel basement of the 105-year-old, 100-inch telescope observatory. A Martin Mars air tanker, also known as a Super Scooper, dropped 7,500 gallons of water on Mt. Wilson.

In previous BB posts about the LA fires, I mentioned these giant 747s that have also been spurting water from the sky, to extinguish the blaze. Wired has a nice photo gallery of those guys in action here. And Popular Science has some interior shots of the 747s. Spoiler: they are friggin huge inside.

The managers of the observatory are now very optimistic that the historic site will make it okay.

Below: Astronomer Mike Brown has been tweeting while the area around the Mt. Wilson Observatory burns, and he spotted the WWII flying boat in action.

(Photo: Dave Bullock, more here, click image to enlarge). Yes, they come every year, but the 2009 fires are now being reported as the largest ever in LA County's history. 122,000 acres and counting (the land mass of San Francisco and Las Vegas combined, with room to spare). Watching the blaze from a seaside rooftop last night was like gazing out at a distant, roiling Mordor.

Two firefighters died. Today, a quick Twitter scan reveals ambient "air-fear," worries over E.T's house, gay porn stars vowing to soldier on while studios scorch; confusion between snow and ash; citizens afraid their cars have developed dandruff overnight, and cigarette smoking as training. The web yields many a moody video of "pyrocumulus" and slow-moving doomclouds, and abundant photosets.

The hundred-year-old Mt. Wilson observatory is a site of huge importance in astronomy history. It's seen its share of blazes. And last night, it was as if the observatory webcam had suddenly plopped down on the surface of the Sun. Communications towers nearby carry signals for every major TV channel in LA, as well as a number of radio frequencies. The site is still at risk.

Some of what I'm following: On Twitter, hashtag #stationfires. @LATimesfires is doing a nice job. And Load this KML in Google Earth for a comprehensive data set. Please share other resources of note in the comments.

Todd "Telstar Logistics" Lappin is wowed by the giant planes we're using to fight the fires. Snip:

Aviation history was made today as a Boeing 747 Supertanker made its debut drop on a live wildfire.

Tanker 979 is a specially modified Evergreen 747 configured to carry 20,500 gallons of retardant, enabling it to lay down a fire line as much as three miles long from an altitude of 300 to 600 feet.

Things are slowing down today, as temps ease and humidity rises. The fire chief just downgraded the Station Fire status from "angry" to "cranky." But containment is still only at 5%, and officials say the fires won't be fully controlled for two more weeks. For now, my advice for fellow LA residents? Don't inhale.

Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Ultra Rare Tiger Dismembered at Zoo and Sold on Chinese Black Market
It's something you'd think would only happen in a movie. But one of only 400 of these rare tigers was literally taken apart at a zoo and sold off on the black market.

Inflatable Solar Panels Zip Together To Power Most Anything
This lightweight, inflatable solar panel concept brings renewable energy access to any building and without that pesky renovation.

First Gray Wolf Hunt in Decades Begins Today
Starting today, the gray wolf is about to be hunted for the first time in decades. Unless a judge steps in, hundreds are likely to be shot, starting in Idaho.

buBle is More than a Tent, Less than a House
Check out this awesome piece of design for a temporary home.

Video: Time Lapse Test: Station Fire, a haunting little piece put together by Eric Speigelman.

The "Station Fire" has now spread to nearly 100,000 acres. Fires are a predictable, seasonal, and natural aspect of ecology and life in Southern California. The Onion nailed it here.

I know we say this every year, but the ones blazing out there as I type are particularly large and powerful. All weekend, it really did look (and smell) like a giant atomic bomb had gone off. The air throughout LA county was unsafe to breathe. Two firefighters died yesterday, while battling the blazes. I live and work in LA, nowhere near the flames and not at risk. All best wishes go out to BB friends who are in the danger zone. Be safe.

Below: Anthony Citrano's photo coverage of the Station Fire. There are several fires active right now, but this is the big one threatening Pasadena/Altadena/etc., including the NASA JPL facility. JPL's statement about the fire emergency is here, looks like they're pretty safe now. Citrano's Flickr set is here, with a number of truly stunning and scary shots (CC).

After the jump: WHOAH, BB reader Danimation shot another *incredible* time-lapse of the giant smoke clouds, you really have to see this one. Click ahead to view. Feel free to post other resources of interest in the comments.

Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Ex-Enron-er Goes On The Road
Ex-Enron speech writer starts a cross-country tour with a surprisingly heated message about how the world is not hot.

Cob House Built For Less Than $3,000
And you thought there was no way out of the housing market crash... You can build your own charming house for next to nothing.

Vanishing Creatures Chocolates Feature Packaging with a Bonus Surprise
Waste not, want not. This zero waste packaging is an extra transformer treat to go with your sweet.

Goat Patrol Revisited: The Transportation Question Answered
The idea of using goats for landscaping maintenance always begs one question: What's the carbon footprint of getting them to your garden? Mystery solved...

GyroMagician sez, "After Kingsnorth and the G20 climate change protests in the UK (and subsequent police violence), the police are trying to present a new, kinder, fluffier image. A protest is due in London this week, and the police would like to know where it will be. Climate Camp reply, and I don't think they're buying it. Result is hilarious. Linking to Guardian because they have been big supporter of activists, publicising police abuse."

Context: Climate Camp is a lawful, peaceful gathering of people (old, young, men and women) to talk about alternatives to environmentally devastating ways of producing and consuming. Earlier Climate Camps have been met by unprovoked and savage police assaults and harassment.

Climate Camp's YouTube letter shows the police's charm offensive has failed (Thanks, GyroMagician!)

Nothing new in here for slow/sustainable food junkies, but it's wonderful to see this discussion expand beyond alt.food.michael.pollan. Noteworthy in that it's an easy item to forward to friends and relatives who won't have the patience or inclination to read through a dozen Boing Boing posts on the matter, or subscribe to Ethicurean. Snip:

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon -- circa 2009.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food (TIME, via Wayne's Friends List)

Fiji Water isn't just devastating to the environment of Fiji, the planet that endures the cost of shipping it, and the environments of the places where it is consumed. It is also the product of a brutal military regime that monitors all outgoing Internet traffic from the island for criticisms of the water business and immediately arrests people who transmit them, bringing them in for intensive questioning and the occasional prison-rape threat, as journalist Anna Lenzer discovered.

I sat down and sent out a few emails--filling friends in on my visit to the Fiji Water bottling plant, forwarding a story about foreign journalists being kicked off the island. Then my connection died. "It will just be a few minutes," one of the clerks said.

Moments later, a pair of police officers walked in. They headed for a woman at another terminal; I turned to my screen to compose a note about how cops were even showing up in the Internet cafés. Then I saw them coming toward me. "We're going to take you in for questioning about the emails you've been writing," they said.

What followed, in a windowless room at the main police station, felt like a bad cop movie. "Who are you really?" the bespectacled inspector wearing a khaki uniform and a smug grin asked me over and over, as if my passport, press credentials, and stacks of notes about Fiji Water weren't sufficient clues to my identity. (My iPod, he surmised tensely, was "good for transmitting information.") I asked him to call my editors, even a UN official who could vouch for me. "Shut up!" he snapped. He rifled through my bags, read my notebooks and emails. "I'd hate to see a young lady like you go into a jail full of men," he averred, smiling grimly. "You know what happened to women during the 2000 coup, don't you?"

Eventually, it dawned on me that his concern wasn't just with my potentially seditious emails; he was worried that my reporting would taint the Fiji Water brand. "Who do you work for, another water company? It would be good to come here and try to take away Fiji Water's business, wouldn't it?" Then he switched tacks and offered to protect me--from other Fijian officials, who he said would soon be after me--by letting me go so I could leave the country. I walked out into the muggy morning, hid in a stairwell, and called a Fijian friend. Within minutes, a US Embassy van was speeding toward me on the seawall.

Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle (via Kottke)

Update: Fiji's response and Mother Jones's rebuttal here.

(Image: Fiji Water, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Jessica N. Diamond's Flickr stream)

Each week, our friends at TreeHugger share some of their most curious and provocative posts with us. We're doing the same over on their turf. Enjoy! -- The Boingers

A poisonous cloud of endosulfan blew through the Sierra Mountains and into crucial frog habitats. What happened next?

You thought Fiji water was evil because it is shipped halfway around the world in plastic bottles. Here's another reason for it to deserve your ire.

An oldie but a goodie: our green guide to sex! (PG-13 photos are safe for work, unless you work around kids)

An iPhone app for controlling your car? It's real. Just not your car...yet.

Had a bird poop facial or Bull Semen conditioning treatment lately? What other horrors are we massaging into our heads?

You won't get fries with that. Bicycle discrimination at the drive through.

After sending skinny nude models to protest fur, PETA calls overweight women "whales" in a new ad campaign. Sounds like PETA has a body image problem. Does it need a hug?

Here's a quick video snapshot I took over the weekend from one of my favorite local hikes here in Southern California: the Solstice Canyon trail above Malibu. The video's nothing special, but as I was shooting it (on my iPhone 3GS, with a twig for a tripod) I thought "this might be an inspiring little ambient morsel for BB readers to zone out to during their work day. So here it is. I mention the device used because I was pretty wowed by the video and audio quality. Here's my Flickr set of more video snapshots from the waterfall (others are higher-quality and less compressed than this).

There are some spots on the trail where you can look out over the Pacific, and if the season's right you may view a migrating gray whale or two. According to an LA Times article published in 1988 when this land became a state park,

[The site] was formerly used as a laboratory to test payloads for space shots for TRW Inc. and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. (...) [T]he aerospace firms picked the site because they needed a "non-magnetic setting," or an area far removed from telephone lines and electrical cables. One of the buildings had a removable roof so that heavy equipment could be lifted from the structure.

Near this 30-foot waterfall, there's an old stone cabin from the late 1800s, one of the oldest residences in the area. Also on this trail: the burnt-out remains of an amazing midcentury ranch mansion designed by African-American architect Paul Revere Williams. I love walking through those ruins. More on that after the jump.

Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Creative Ways to Steal German Cash for Clunker Cars
Cash for Clunkers in Germany is successful...too successful. German thieves have stolen over 50,000 of the clunkers turned in for cash, often putting them right back onto German roads!

How To Keep a Laptop Running for 10 Years
Trevor's Powerook Pismo turned 10 years old, and he dishes on how in the world he's managed to keep the ancient hunk of metal running efficiently...and fast enough that you don't want to throw it out the window every time you try to open a new program.

Getting Wired Without Electricity: The Hourglass Coffee Maker
There is no end to the caffeinated concoctions you can whip up with this cool hourglass coffee maker. It's not for your average cuppa joe - no, this is for a special kind of brew.

Awesome Inventions from the James Dyson Awards
Feast your eyes on these killer inventions submitted to the awards. It's prototypes galore.

Giant Rat-Eating Plant Discovered in the Philippines
Speaking of feasting...this incredible, newly discovered carnivorous plant is big enough to catch rats and other small animals in its pitcher of death. Fascinating in that wonderfully morbid, sci-fi way.

We covered Doug Fine's radical off-the-grid lifestyle experiment last year on Boing Boing TV -- embed above. He is the author of Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living, and he's still going strong out there on the Funky Butte Ranch. When he's not out in the fields turning the compost heap or feeding chickens, he's working on his next book, which I'm looking forward to reading. Doug has a thought-provoking piece out in this Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section, here's a preview:

I have a fiancee and a son to provide for, so I decided to take a hard look at our prospects for survival if our consumer safety nets went away. For now, my green lifestyle choices at my remote 41-acre outpost in the American Southwest are optional. You know, growing lettuce instead of buying Chilean. Using organic cotton diapers instead of buying Pampers. But what if one morning in, say, 2049, I wake up to milk my goats and find out that supplies are no longer streaming in from China and California? What would I do if both box stores and crunchy food co-ops suddenly were no more? In other words, I'm examining my place in a hypothetical post-oil, post-consumer society 40 years in the future.

Now, I'm not rooting for such a thing. Slave labor, forest depletion, climate change and global resource wars aside, globalization has a lot going for it. I love that I can email a musician in Mauritania and ask to download his latest album. And anyway, lots of people still see globalization as the economic model for the foreseeable future. But when I was covering the former Soviet Union as a journalist in the 1990s, every single person I met told me that they'd thought pigs would fly before the Politburo crumbled.

On My Ranch, Ready for the Great American Meltdown (Washington Post)

Because of farm fertilizer runoff, the seaweed in coastal waters in Brittany is growing like a monster. Scientists warn that as the seaweed rots, it forms white crust that traps hydrogen sulphide gas. When the crust breaks, it can poison people.

Alain Menesguen, director of research at the French Institute for Sea Research and Exploitation, said: “This is a very toxic gas, which smells like rotten eggs. It attacks the respiratory system and can kill a man or an animal in minutes.” Some scientists believe that a build-up of hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere wiped out the dinosaurs 300 million years ago.

Fumes from rotting seaweed on France's northern beaches could kill

If America comes to a catastrophic end, what will the causes be? Josh Levin of Slate wants to know. He's created a "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" web-based application that lets you select five causes from a collection of "144 potential causes of America's future death." Based on your choices, Slate will tell you what kind of a doomsayer you are. People who take the poll are also asked to supply age, gender, zip code. On Friday, Slate will publish the results.

I picked Peak Oil, China Unloads U.S. Treasuries, Deficit Spending, Peak Water, and Megadrought, which makes me a "humanitarian internationalist." Compared to the average Slate reader, I believe more people will survive and that the disaster is more man's fault than nature's.

If and when America expires, we probably won't agree on the cause of death. For proof that autopsies of empires are inconclusive, consider the case of Alexander Demandt, the German historian who set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness.

In tribute to Demandt, I've gone looking for every possible reason why America could fall. I've paged through the work of scholars who have studied the characteristics of declining and failed societies. I also collected theories from futurists, doomsayers, separatists, economists, political scientists, national security experts, climatologists, geologists, astronomers, and a few miscellaneous crazy people. The result: a collection of 144 potential causes of America's future death.

Choose Your Own Apocalypse

Dr Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), says his agency's recent study of 800 oil fields around the world (representing three quarter's of the world's oil reserves) reveal that we are facing a global energy catastrophe even sooner than researchers thought.

The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.

This means the pressure will be on to start using enivonmentally-disastrous tar sands in Canada.

Catastrophic oil shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world's top energy economist

Here's writer, futurist and all-round dude Karl Schroeder's talk from this year's O'Reilly Open Source Con: "The Rewilding: A Metaphor." In his inimitable style, Karl first describes a semi-human future in which things as abstract as "nature" and "politics" participate directly in the economy and in online discussions, then connects this to open source and open government. It's a hell of a mind-bender, as only Karl can manage. Bravo!

OSCON 09: Karl Schroeder, "The Rewilding: A Metaphor" (via Futurismic)

Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Fish are the Secret Sauce for Better LEDs
What happens when you mix fluorescent dyes with salmon DNA? Awesome lighting!

Killer (Veggie) Robots for the Military
It can drive and feed itself, but veggie style. We aren't that ready to go Terminator yet.

Australians + Bikes + Hip-Hop Videos = Hilarity
Would you ditch the car and hop on a fixie after seeing this video?

Ginormous Solar Flowers with Free Wi-Fi Taking Over US Cities
Six lucky cities will get some ridiculous looking solar flowers for a little free wi-fi and rest time. Is your city on the list??

Jeffrey sez, "We just finished making this fancy table for Penny Arcade. It's full of crazy teak and resin inlay, all sustainable woods, and get this: the moon center bit glows in the dark. We made it that way as a surprise, and didn't tell them about it prior! You can see it in the 'making of' video that's at the end of the blog post. To make it even better, it costs the same as a normal boring 'mid-level' large conference table from an office furniture store. Take that, Ikea and DWR.com!"

Penny Arcade themed conference table (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

Photo Credit: Shweeb

Each week we're bringing you some of our favorite posts from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Rappers Say Get Outta Your Cars!
Anti-car-idling rappers flow about green issues in this quick street film.

Shark Attack Victims Head to Capitol Hill
"We've been finned...and it's not a good thing." A group of shark attack victims are sympathetic towards the ultimate predators, and head to DC to lobby Congress for tighter protections for sharks.

Wind-Powered Tank Uses No Fuel, Confuses Infidels
They had the right idea back in 1335 with this tank that looks like a windmill. Now that is something for Don Quixote to joust!

Get in a Tube and Pedal Across Town
A pedal-powered monorail idea makes you feel a little bit like you're in one of those air tubes at the bank that gets sucked up into the ceiling. But it could end up being the public transportation of the future.

Photo credit: scrapthispack @ Flickr

Note: Each week we'll be bringing you a roundup of fresh green topics from our friends over at TreeHugger. Enjoy!

Packaging Design At Its Worst
Poor packaging design and ridiculous examples of over-packaging come in all shapes and sizes, but it doesn't get much worse than these individually-wrapped bananas.

Human Shrub Attacks Town
Citizens of Colchester beware! Take to your houses. A creature from the swamps has been filling empty planters and baskets with brightly-coloured marigolds and begonias, last seen wandering the streets carrying a sign saying "Save the Roses."

Your Eco-Wood Might Be Illegal
Thinking of buying sustainably harvested wood from Brazil? Check the label, could be illegal wood passed off as eco-certified.

6 Ways To Defuse Anti-Cyclist Road Rage
If you are a cyclist and the victim of Auto Road Rage, there are a number of things you can do to keep the peace. I like #5, don your best plumage.

Google new Belgian data-center uses weather prediction to save energy, shifting work to cooler centers when the mercury rises, rather than using energy-sucking electric coolers.

Google has taken the strategy to the next level. Rather than using chillers part-time, the company has eliminated them entirely in its data center near Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, which began operating in late 2008 and also features an on-site water purification facility that allows it to use water from a nearby industrial canal rather than a municipal water utility.

The climate in Belgium will support free cooling almost year-round, according to Google engineers, with temperatures rising above the acceptable range for free cooling about seven days per year on average. The maximum temperature in Brussels during summer reaches 66 to 71 degrees, while Google maintains its data centers at temperatures above 80 degrees.

So what happens if the weather gets hot? On those days, Google says it will turn off equipment as needed in Belgium and shift computing load to other data centers. This approach is made possible by the scope of the company's global network of data centers, which provide the ability to shift an entire data center's workload to other facilities.

Google's Chiller-less Data Center (via /.)

Apollo sez, "This is a YouTube video of some West Virginia pro-coal thugs (dressed in Massey issued uniforms) crashing the peaceful 23rd annual Mountain Keepers Festival. The festival is a gathering of West Virginians who live in the hollows that are being destroyed by Mountaintop Removal mining, and their fellow advocates from all over the country. At one point the most vile of the thugs threatens a man and his child verbally and with a throat slitting gesture. Simply appalling."

Mountain Madness - Invasion of the Coal Thugs (Thanks, Apollo!)