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These bonfires always remind me of the UK group Lamb's 1999 "Bonfire" on their Fear of Fours album.

Have you ever wondered why those days exist

When life just seems to be a conspiracy against you

I don't know where the answer lie

But I try not to get hung up on the questions

And I burn like a good bonfire

In whatever I do

Burn like a good bonfire

And I know I'll come through

Henry David Thoreau said of wood piles

"Every man looks upon his wood pile with a sort of affection."

We should all long for those simpler times!

And more of Lamb's lyrics:

The time is long overdue for a house clearing of the soul

We all get so complicated in our lives

When walking just walk

When sitting just sit

When being just be

Above all don't stray from your chosen path

And burn like a good bonfire

In whatever you do

Burn like a good bonfire

And I know you'll come through

Burn like a good bonfire

In whatever you do

Burn like a good bonfire

And may peace come to you

The time is long overdue for a house clearing of the soul

We all get so complicated in our lives

Burn like a good bonfire

In whatever you do

Just burn like a good bonfire

And I know you'll come through

Burn like a good bonfire

In whatever you do

Burn like a good bonfire

And may strength flow through you

I posted a few of these photos on instagram and I found a whole wood-pile loving community. Who knew? Try#woodpile

Tones and textures of a woodpile become abstract art.

also try

#wood #lumberjack #woods #trees #timber

I think my favorite so far is

@samstackswood

his woodpiles are true works of art

and he liked mine back even though

I'm sure he thought it quite lame by comparison

definitely makes our Florida wood piles look a bit wimpy. . .

Some other sayings about woodpiles:

There's a snake in every woodpile

Somehow I imagine there is more than one here.

and

Leave the woodpile higher than you found it

(secret to a happy life)

and what nature-lover could ever forget the poem of

the little bird and the wood-pile by Robert Frost?

Would the world today be a better place if we took the

time to remember such things? I say, yes.

The Wood-Pile

by Robert Frost

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,

I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.

No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'

The hard snow held me, save where now and then

One foot went through. The view was all in lines

Straight up and down of tall slim trees

Too much alike to mark or name a place by

So as to say for certain I was here

Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.

A small bird flew before me. He was careful

To put a tree between us when he lighted,

And say no word to tell me who he was

Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.

He thought that I was after him for a feather—

The white one in his tail; like one who takes

Everything said as personal to himself.

One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.

And then there was a pile of wood for which

I forgot him and let his little fear

Carry him off the way I might have gone,

Without so much as wishing him good-night.

He went behind it to make his last stand.

It was a cord of maple, cut and split

And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.

And not another like it could I see.

No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.

And it was older sure than this year's cutting,

Or even last year's or the year's before.

The wood was gray and the bark warping off it

And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis

Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.

What held it though on one side was a tree

Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,

These latter about to fall. I thought that only

Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks

Could so forget his handiwork on which

He spent himself, the labor of his ax,

And leave it there far from a useful fireplace

To warm the frozen swamp as best it could

With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

So until the next storm. . . our neighborhood woodpile

Road to Rio:

Men's Sevens Rugby is back

Who to watch

Chris Wyles

6-foot, 205 pound Wyles (@ChrisWyles) made his Eagles debut at the 2007 Churchill Cup in Stockport, England, against England. Wyles has played with and captained the Eagles Sevens team as well. Currently, Wyles plays professionally for Saracens in the Aviva Premiership. He was pivotal in the 2014-15 squad starting at a variety of positions--full back, center and wing--during the season. The Saracens went on to win the Premiership Final defeating Bath by a score of 28-16. Wyles started at wing and played the entire 80 minutes.

Ed Jenkins

Sevens games last just 14 minutes, but play six of them in one weekend and with a significant chunk running at “high intensity” and you start to understand why sevens players have to be a mix of sprinter, middle-distance runner and muscular footy player.

Or to put it another way, why they have to look like 6'2", 210 pound (95 kg) Aussie captain Ed Jenkins.

It’s all fairly simple: with less people on the field, you have to do a lot more. Measured by GPS units, sevens players will run an average of 1.5km to 1.8km per game. Total distance on a weekend is similar to one 15s game but the big difference is how much is done at “high intensity” levels.

Sevens players clock up 8% of total distance at high intensity — double or triple the normal level of a 15s player in a game. Most sevens players will hit top speed (nearing 10 metres per second) several times, whereas 15s players often won’t hit it at all.

Jenkins can run 40 metres in under 5 seconds, putting him in the top bracket of Super Rugby speedsters.

Tom Mitchell

Named England captain in January 2014, the 26-year-old excelled in his first full series, in 2013-14, and was the top points scorer with 358 that campaign, some 98 points ahead of Fijian flyer Samisoni Viriviri. Struggled with injury last term, but when fit he is the beating heart of England – as evidenced by his inclusion in the dream team of the 2014-15 series.

Cameron Clark

The former Australian Schoolboy international – son of Greg, Fox Sports' main rugby commentator – turned 23 in March and the talented Auckland-born back has been a mainstay of the sevens side since making his debut in the 2012 tournament in Wellington.

Seabelo Senatla

One of three South Africans to make the dream team last year, alongside Kwagga Smith – who has struggled with injury and form so far this term – and Werner Kok. Was the leading try scorer.

Sonny Bill Williams

The 30-year-old multi-code mega-star has already represented New Zealand at rugby union, rugby union (and in 2015 won his second World Cup medal, before promptly giving it away to a lucky fan at Twickenham), and even boxing. The back, famed for his outrageous off-loads in the tackle, will make his sevens debut in Wellington and has set his sights on Olympic gold – more medals for his collection.

Osea Kolinisau

The Fijian captain will make history if he can inspire his country to win their first-ever Olympic medal later on this year, when sevens makes its bow. The 30-year-old is an all-round talent, and a livewire of a player. He made his debut in 2008, and scored the most points overall in the 2015-16 campaign, with 312, making him a shoo-in for a dream team berth.

Perry Baker

Ahead of round two, in Cape Town, the former American Football flier had amassed 34 tries in 10 tournaments, including six in Dubai, the opening event of the 2015-16 campaign. The USA winger is keeping out the fastest man in rugby, Carlin Isles, so 'speedstick' is certainly one to watch.

Madison Hughes

The former Wellington College schoolboy, who won the Rosslyn Park National Schools Sevens in 2011, is the current America captain, and the 23-year old led from the front last term. The scrum-half and goal kicker amassed 296 points – second only to Fijian captain Osea Kolinisau (312) – and has started the 2015-16 series in impressive form.

Rieko Ioane

A frighteningly talented player, and the younger brother of Māori All Blacks and fellow New Zealand Sevens player Akira Ioane. Burst on to the international scene in Wellington early in 2015, scoring six tries – including two in the final against England, which the hosts won. Not bad work for a 17-year old, as he was then.

Terry Bouhraoua

After the first two round of the 2015-16 campaign the French captain, 28, was joint-equal in the scoring charts, on 113 with Fijian Vatemo Ravouvou, having crossed for 11 tries. The diminutive scrum-half, 5' 5", has been part of the French sevens set up since 2010, after spells with Brive, Stade Francais and Beziers.

Savenaca Rawaca

Crossed for 42 tries last season – second only to Seabelo Senatla, the South African (47) – and after two rounds of their campaign gone has already managed 10. Was named in the dream team in 2014-15, and proving equally tricky to stop this series.

Largeflower Rose Gentian (Sabatia grandiflora)

spreading in our dry lake

The summer solstice is upon us in the northern hemisphere. For many of us who live in the subtropics or tropics of Florida this is a welcome date because we know its downhill to cooler weather, though if past years are any indication of what will occur this year it will likely be mid-November before we feel our first cool air of Fall. Still, November is only 3 months distant.

Florida Narrow-leaved Sunflower (Helianthus angustifolius)

also likes the dry lake bed

Monster Heat Wave

for First Day of Summer

Father's Day will likely be the hottest in memory for many in the West as dangerous heat continues to build from Southern California through Texas. The core of the heat will migrate slowly westward and will take root in the Southwestern states, where the most extreme temperatures are likely and could rival levels rarely felt over the past 100 years.

Blood Lily (Scadoxus multiflorus)

only blooms when the ground is saturated

The heat will be so intense that roads may buckle and tires could blowout if traveling at maximum speeds. You'll also notice a lot of those "do not use the AC" signs across the southwest. Pay attention to those signs to avoid overheating while driving through the steepest inclines.

Earth's Heat Extends Unprecedented Streak of Shattered Records

American Beauty Berry (Callicarpa americana)

has started to bloom. These will add great

purple colors to the woods in fall.

How Hot Will it Get?

The most severe heat wave so far this year is bearing down on the West. In Southern California places will see temperatures in excess of 120°F. As the heat builds over the Father's Day weekend it will peak on the first day of summer with temperatures around 100° in Los Angeles, 110° in San Bernadino, and 121° in Palm Springs. Further east the forecast is for 119° on Monday, June 20, 2016 while the high temperature is forecast to reach 111° on Tuesday in Las Vegas.

The blistering heat is the result of an upper-level ridge of high pressure that is building slowly over the Southwest USA.

The Moth Orchids (Phalaenopsis) have started

to bloom as humidities rise in mid-summer

Warmest May on Record

The warming influence of the intense 2015 - 2016 El Niño event is waning, but May 2016 was still the planet's warmest May since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Thursday. In the NOAA database, May 2016 came in 0.87°C (1.57°F) warmer than the 20th-century average for May, beating the previous record for May, set in 2015, by 0.02°C. This is the smallest margin the monthly global temperature has broken a record by since August 2015. NASA also reported the warmest May in its database, although the Japan Meteorological Agency placed May 2016 slightly (0.01°C) behind May 2015. May 2016 marked the 13th consecutive month that the global monthly temperature record was broken—the longest such streak since global temperature records began in 1880. Global ocean temperatures were the warmest on record for any May, but global land temperatures were the third warmest. Global satellite-measured temperatures in May 2016 for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were the 2nd warmest for any May in the 38-year record, and the year-to-date period was the warmest on record, according to the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

Rosy Camphorweed (Pluchea rosea)

spreads across drier sections of our 700 acre lake bed

3rd Consecutive

Warmest Year on Earth

The impressive global warmth in recent months is due to the steady build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases due to human activities, plus a spike due to a large amount of heat being released from waters in the Eastern Pacific due to the powerful 2015-16 El Niño event. This event peaked in December, and has NOAA’s global surface temperature for the year so far(January-May 2016) is a remarkable 0.24°C (0.43°F) warmer than the previous record, set in 2015. Last month, NASA/GISS director Gavin Schmidt reported 99% odds on this yearbecoming the warmest in global records, which would make it Earth's third consecutive warmest year on record.

Why Do Planes Have Trouble Flying in Extreme Heat?

This week's building heat wave in the West coincides with the summer solstice. It could give the great heat wave of June 1990 a run for its money in some areas. On June 26, 1990, Los Angeles set an all-time June record of 112°F, while Tucson and Phoenix set all-time highs for any date with almost-unfathomable readings of 117° F and 122° F, respectively.

Temperatures in this range can make air travel difficult, since the near-ground atmosphere becomes so thin that some types of aircraft cannot obtain sufficient lift to take off. Extreme heat can also damage the internal components of some aircraft. Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport halted all takeoffs as a precaution during the all-time record heat of June 1990. Urban legend has it that the closure was due to the tarmac melting, but an airport spokesperson confirmed to KJZZ radio last year that it was uncertainty about aircraft performance at that temperature that actually led to the closure. More recently, on June 29, 2013, 18 US Airways flights were cancelled because the regional aircraft involved had been certified for takeoff in temperatures of no more than 118° F, according to the UK Telegraph. Temperatures on that day hit 119°F in Phoenix, the city’s third-highest reading on record.

Golden Shower Tree (Cassia fistula)

in full bloom

Hot Times at the Poles and Everywhere Between

Global temperatures continue to run at a near-record pace as we transition from the recently deceased El Niño toward a potential La Niña. We’ll have a full report on May’s global climate with the release of NOAA’s monthly summary later this week, including another bumper crop of all-time local heat records. Two of the most striking heat reports in the last several weeks have come from opposite ends of the globe.

On May 27, the daily low temperature at Esperanza Base, on the outer end of the Antarctic Peninsula, was 8.8°C (47.8°F). This was the warmest daily low on record anywhere in Antarctica, including the Antarctic Peninsula, King George Island, and other islands lying below the 60°S latitude that are considered part of the continent by the Antarctic Treaty. This temperature smashed previous daily lows by an amazing margin.

Common Guava Bloom (Psidium guajava)

A few days after the mild night at Esperanza, a major burst of early-season warmth swept across southwest Greenland. According to the Dutch meteorological agency DMI, temperatures at the Nuuk airport hit 24.8°C (76.6°F) on Friday, June 9. This was the warmest reading ever observed in Greenland for the month of June, easily topping the 23.3°C (73.9°F) set on June 15, 2014, in Kangerlussuaq, about 200 miles north of Nuuk. Downslope winds blowing offshore from the mountains of southwest Greenland helped warm the atmosphere in the Nuuk area (the same process that drives foehn and chinook warming). Nuuk’s record high resulted from this downslope warming on top of already-unusual mildness throughout the depth of the atmosphere over much of Greenland. This extreme early-June warmth led to the third noteworthy spike of the year in surface melting atop Greenland’s ice sheet, following major melt events in April and May.

We're Following:

Illustration by Selman Design, Photographys by The New York Times

The Republican's Big Hot Mess

What a total, utter freak show the Republican National Convention promises to be, and not in the manner that Republicans feared just months ago when they thought there would be a Cruz v. Trump battle for delegates. Now they're looking at four excruciating days that will be light on appropriate speakers, short on cash and long on God[-knos-what other than the music of Trump's voice and the shimmer of Trump's hair.

#ShootBack

West Hollywood Inundated with

Amazing Pro-Gun, Pro-Gay Posters

Ahead of Pride 2016, Castro's Rainbow Colors are Undimmed by Orlando Massacre

#AskTheGays

The Best Twitter Meme Trump Never Wanted

Flamingos Return to Florida

After Long Absence

@majikphil

@prattprattpratt

Chris Pratt Stunt Double Tony McFarr

Modus Vivendi Hole Line

So what are they selling in this ad?

Underwear, of course.

Its a little odd when you look at it up close (like above)

and so we had to try a pair.

Convenient. Oddly comfortable. Pricey.

If you go up one step from the Grand Canyon on the geological “Grand Staircase” of the western United States, you will reach Zion National Park. Zion is the middle step on this tilted, eroded, staircase-like feature of the Colorado Plateau. It connects the very old, exposed sedimentary rocks of the Grand Canyon with the relatively newer rocks of Bryce Canyon.

My favorite season in Zion is winter as there are no crowds (or lighter crowds) no shuttle buses to ride, and cool temps with plenty of snow to add perspective to the magnificent formations.

ＰＨＩＬＬＩＰＬＯＴＴＰＨＯＴＯＧＲＡＰＨＹ

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The Seasons of Zion National Park

The images above, acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, show Zion National Park, which spans 593 square kilometers (229 square miles) of semi-arid desert in southwestern Utah. The four images show the four seasons, starting with fall 2015 (top left) and progressing clockwise.

Most rainfall and snowmelt runs off of the hard, dry surfaces; only a small percent percolates through the sandstone to collect as groundwater. Runoff long ago helped jumpstart erosion in the area, but it wasn’t until about 4.5 million years ago that the Virgin River began sculpting Zion Canyon—one of the park’s most visited features.

The Virgin River is typically calm, not too deep, and hikers in the canyon can easily wade through it. But when the river floods, it has an increased capacity to move huge amounts of sediment downstream. The sediment acts like sandpaper, scouring and deepening the canyon.

In one particularly narrow part of the canyon, aptly named “The Narrows,” the river has cut down through 305 meters (1,000 feet) of rock. In some sections, hikers maneuver though canyon walls only 5 meters (16 feet) wide. Hikers need to be extra cautious, particularly during the monsoon season, as the canyons can quickly flood.

But Zion is not the only canyon in the park worth checking out. The Kolob Canyons area in the park’s northwestern corner takes visitors deep into the desert wilderness. Here you will find Kolob Arch (above), the world’s longest natural arch, which spans 94.5 meters (310 feet).

No lines, few cars, few tourists (late Feb. 2016)

References and Related Reading
Los Angeles Times (2015, September 20) Seven hikers’ descent into doom at Zion National Park. Accessed June 17, 2016.
National Park Service (2016) Zion National Park. Accessed June 17, 2016.
National Park Service (2016) Zion National Park, Geologic History. Accessed June 17, 2016.
National Park Service (2016) Kolob Canyons. Accessed June 17, 2016.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.

Road to Rio

More to Watch

Luca Dotto

Dotto Bond Record Italiano e sotto i 48″

Marcelo Chierighini, Brazil

Australian Water Polo Team

Joel Dennerley, Richard Campbell, George Ford, John Cotterill, Nathan Power, Jarrod Gilchrist, Aidan Roach, Aaron Younger, Lachlan Edwards, Joe Kayes, Rhys Howden, (Captain), Tyler Martin, James Stanton.

Rhys Howden (Water Polo), Australia

@RhysHowden

Aaron Yonger

by Bill Hatto

Aussie Sharks Hungry for an Olympic Medal

The Aussie Sharks intend to use their superior fitness and speed to exploit rivals at this year’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics, with WA water polo star Aaron Younger confident they will be medal contenders.

Water Polo Australia

Never Forget

@lifeaschad

#AskTheGays

#ShootBack

#OneHeart

I'm often asked where I got my Sunflower Trees and how one can grow some of their own. I've sent cuttings to people around the world, but with a warning, they are not for the lazy gardener. In the Florida summer they can grow out of control to 30+ feet (10 m). They have to be trimmed and pruned to keep them in place at least every other week in summer.

Here, I've looked up all the uses for Sunflower Trees that I could find and put them together with some of my favorite photos of the trees, which after a few years are almost constantly in bloom.

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Phillip's Natural World

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@philzcatz

Sunflower trees are known colloquially by dozens of different names; Mexican sunflower, tithonia, tree marigold, Japanese sunflower, Mexican tournesol, Bolivian sunflower, Nitobe chrysanthemum, shrub sunflower, wild sunflower [English]; tournesol mexicain [French]; fleur la fête des mères, petite fleur soleil [French créole]; árbol maravilla, falso girasol, guasmara, jalacate, árnica de la tierra, girasolillo, crisantemo de Nitobe, margarita gigante, tornasol mexicano, girasol mexicano, girasol japonés, margarita isleña, margaritona [Spanish]; margaridão-amarelo, girassol mexicano [Portuguese]; Mexikanische Sonnenblume [German]; harsaga, kembang mbulan [Indonesian]; dã quỳ [Vietnamese]; ニトベギク [Japanese]; காட்டுச் சூரியகாந்தி [Tamil]; บัวตอง [Thai], are just some of the local names for this tree.

Scientifically, they are Tithonia diversifolia (Hemsl.) A. Gray [Asteraceae] which is a lot easier to remember than all those other local names for the plant. They have one synonym in the literature, Mirasolia diversifolia Hemsl

In Florida they are considered an invasive weed. In other parts of the world they are prized for their nutritional value and their ability to improve poor soil. Once established they are virtually indestructible. The only thing I've found that will kill them is cold and then its only a brief death as they almost immediately sprout new growth as soon as cool weather passes.

The plant has a unique ability to convert Nitrogen from the atmosphere into protein and essential minerals in its foliage. It thrives in our 98% quartz, extremely poor soil, because it extracts its "fertilizer" from the atmosphere.

Sunflower Trees are a tropical herb or shrub cultivated in many countries of Africa, Asia, and South America for its multipurpose value. As fodder, it is rich in protein, valuable for ruminants and rabbits, but less for poultry and pigs, probably due to the presence of fibre and antinutritional factors.

Morphology

Tithonia diversifolia is a woody herb or succulent shrub, stoloniferous, annual or perennial, that can reach a height of 30 feet (10 m). It has a taproot with many fine secondary roots. The herbaceous mass can develop from subterranean stolons (a creeping horizontal plant stem or runner that takes root at points along its length to form new plants). The leaves are alternate or opposite, sub-ovate, densely pubescent, 5-17 cm long x 3.5-12 cm broad. Each mature stem may bear several large yellow flowers, up to 12 cm in diameter. The tree prefers really mature stems for blooming. Where frequently pruned it will delay blooming until stems mature.

Utilization

Sunflower trees are used for a variety of purposes: ornamental, fuel, compost, land demarcation, soil erosion control, soil remediation, building materials and shelter for poultry. Sunflower trees are commonly used as fodder for ruminants and rabbits, who can eat the leaves, soft branches and flowers. Its potential has been tested in pigs and poultry with mixed results.

Distribution

Sunflower Tree is native to Mexico and Central America but naturalized in Florida. It was introduced into tropical regions of Asia and Africa, into Australia and several Pacific islands, including Hawaii, French Polynesia and New Caledonia. It escaped from cultivation and is now growing wild in many tropical regions. In Kenya, Sunflower Trees are one of the most popular indigenous fodder tree species in the sub-humid highlands, where it is frequently coppiced (cut back to create thicker plants) for denser fodder.

Sunflower Trees are a fast-growing plant that tolerates heat and drought and can rapidly form large herbaceous shrubs. It is adaptable to most soils. It is found in disturbed areas, abandoned and waste lands, along roadsides and waterways and on cultivated farmlands. It can be found from sea level up to an altitude of 1500 m.

My biggest issue with my Sunflower Trees is that they must be cut back frequently in the Florida summer or they become far too tall and unruly. I try to cut them back every couple weeks in summer with the last cut coming around the first of September. The tree prefers to bloom from old growth so cutting any later than September will hinder bountiful flowering in winter.

Establishment and yields

Sunflower Trees can be easily propagated by direct seeding or by planting of 20-30 cm long cuttings from green stems, at a spacing of 0.5-0.75 m x 0.75 m. They are easy to grow and do not require fertilizer or special attention. The plants tolerate regular heavy pruning. Post-flowering cuttings result in higher yields than pre-flowering cuttings. In Côte d’Ivoire, annual biomass yields of 60 t/ha have been obtained at cutting intervals of 4 months.

I established my 1200-foot hedgerow of Sunflower Trees from one stalk indiscriminately broken off a mature tree 6 winters ago. During my first summer with these trees I trimmed them often. At one trimming I put about 50-1 gallon pots out and stuck the sunflower tree trimmings in potting soil. I produced 50 new plants and thus started my hedgerow.

Environmental impact

Weed control and invasiveness

Tithonia diversifolia is a pioneering species that grows quickly and produces significant amounts of seeds. It can grow from its subterranean stolons and forms dense stands that prevent the growth of young native plants. In Thailand, it was used successfully to control Echinochloa colona (sawa millet, wild grass) in rice fields, where it increased rice tillering, leaf area and rice biomass production. However, Tithonia diversifoliais considered to be invasive in some parts of Africa and Australia, and in many Pacific islands.

Crop and soil improver, soil erosion control and soil remediation

Sunflower Tree produces a nutrient-rich (N, K and P) biomass and its positive effect on subsequent rice and maize crops has been reported from Africa and Brazil. Its abundance and adaptability, coupled with its rapid growth rate and very high vegetative matter turnover, makes it a candidate species for soil rejuvenation and improvement, as a green manure or as a major component of compost manure. Different practices have been reported: Sunflower Tree can be left to decompose on the field, or it can be turned into green manure. In the latter case, leaves and soft twigs should be cut and chopped into small pieces before flowering and the resulting mixture evenly spread on the ground before being incorporated in the soil. In Kenya, Sunflower Tree's green manure is profitable for high-value crops such as Brassica sp., French beans, tomatoes and Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum). In the Philippines, 1 to 2 tons of freshly chopped Sunflower Tree forage was shown to have a positive effect on a sweet potato crops. From the Philippines, it was also reported that Sunflower Tree could be a potential organic foliar fertilizer for rapeseed. Sunflower Tree has a positive effect on crop yields when used in intercropping.

Sunflower Tree was used to control soil erosion in the Usambara mountains of Tanzania, but it was not as effective as Napier grass or Guatemala grass (Tripsacum andersonii). In Brazil, Sunflower Tree has been used for soil remediation along roadsides where heavy metals, and particularly lead, accumulate.

In the Florida garden Sunflower Tree attracts all types of insects but none (so far) appear to kill the foliage.

Nutritional attributes

Tithonia diversifolia foliage is rich in protein and comparable to forage legumes in that respect. However, variability is high with protein content ranging from 12% to more than 30% DM, depending on the stage of maturity and on the proportion of stems in the fodder. Likewise, fiber content is highly variable: ADF content varies from 23% to more than 40%. One study found that nutritive value was highest in the vegetative stage and decreased sharply during flowering, but another study reported very low protein values even at the pre-flowering stage. Stems were found to contain less than 10% DM of protein. Tithoniafoliage is rich in minerals (10-16% DM), particularly calcium.

Potential constraints

Antinutritional factors

Sunflower Trees contain limited amounts of secondary metabolites (tannins, flavonoids, esteroids, alkaloids, saponins, terpenoids and anthocyanidins) that can act as antinutritional factors. Though these antinutritional factors are in much lower concentrations that in other tropical forages, such as Leucaena leucocephala, it can be useful to reduce their level through air-drying. Decreases in white blood cell content have been observed in pigs and poultry fed increasing amounts of dried Tithonia diversifolia forage. This could be explained by the presence of terpenoids (sesquiterpene lactones) in the leaves.

Ruminants (cattle, sheep)

Sunflower Tree foliage is a valuable fodder for ruminants, due to its high protein content and relatively high digestibility and degradability. However, the expression of this potential requires supplementation with fermentable carbohydrates to improve rumen microbial growth, and/or to increase the supply of bypass protein. Most studies of Sunflower Tree foliage have involved sheep and goats.

Hedgerow of Sunflower Tree in background along fence line.

Palatability

In Venezuela, a series of comparisons of the palatability for cattle, sheep and goats of 11 tropical fodders showed that Tithonia diversifolia had a moderate palatability, much lower than that of Chlorophora tinctoria (dyer's mulberry) and white mulberry (Morus alba) for all three livestock species. It was less palatable than Leucaena leucocephala but as palatable as Gliricidia sepium for cattle and sheep, though Leucaena and Gliricidia were more palatable to goats. These differences may be explained by the presence of secondary metabolites such as polyphenols, terpens and saponins.

Digestibility and degradability

The protein of Sunflower Tree foliage is both highly digestible and highly degradable. In vitro protein digestibility has been found to be 77-79%. In vivo protein digestibility ranges from 68 to 84%. In sacco protein degradability of Sunflower Tree foliage is high (more than 80%). As a consequence, N excretion was higher and N retention was lower in growing goats fed with Tithonia fed alone compared to Stylosanthes or jackfruit foliage fed alone, or with Tithonia supplemented with cassava roots and/or mulberry foliage.

Dairy cattle

Sunflower Tree could be a potentially valuable forage for dairy cows though only one trial had been reported at the time of this writing. In that Colombian study, Tithonia diversifolia foliage replaced up to 35% (5.6 kg/d/head of fresh foliage) of the concentrate supplementation for grazing dairy cattle with no effect on milk production and quality.

Other Uses

There are countless other uses for Tithonia diversifolia. One of the most interesting found in the literature is for rabbits suffering from scabies, a recurring skin problem of rabbits raised in tropical countries, a Tithonia leaf extract (300 g of leaves extracted in 100 ml of water) applied 4 times per day over a period of 5 days on the affected areas was as efficient as ivermectin to treat the condition. This would be useful to any Florida hiker as well.

References

For an exhaustive list of references related to Tithonia diversifolia go to Feedipedia: Feedipedia Tithonia Diversifolia

Road to Rio

some of America's hopefuls. . .

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Pride London Festival

Buttonbush (Cephalantus occidentalis)

Scrubby shrub found in moist wetlands. Was a favorite among American Indian tribes, practically all parts had medicinal applications. The inner bark was said to have dental, ophthalmic, and liver functions. The leaves were often made into a tea for "woman's" medicine and treatment of blood disorders and fevers. WARNING: contains glucosides cephalanthan and cephalin, which may cause poisoning when eaten.

How much do you know about the plants that occur in your neighborhood? Knowing that buttonbush (above) is poisonous might be useful even in today's world. Prior to this generation humans passed down this type of information. The study of how humans use(d) plants is Ethnobotany.

Ethnobotany was probably first coined as a term in 1894 by one of America's early botanists, John Harshberger, and describes the study of the interaction between people, plants, and culture. There are many components to ethnobotany, including food, fibre, medicine, shelter, fishing and hunting, religion, mythology, magic, and others.

Here we detail 15 (of 29; 14 more to follow) common native plants that have played an important role in Florida's ethnobotanical history, all are considered native or naturalized, are easy to locate and identify, and have interesting histories that lend themselves to teaching about practical implications for Florida's plant communities. WARNING: None of these plants should be used as a food source without consulting a medical professional.

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The ubiquitous Sabal Palmetto, the heart of which is edible and was a staple of early Floridians. You should note, however, that by removing the heart you kill the tree.

Ethnobotany in Florida

Plants create their own chemical components that may be used to attract or repel insects and animals, attack other plants, or defend against fungi and other plant pathogens. For humans, these chemical components may be nutritious, poisonous, hallucinogenic, or therapeutic. Humans have been accumulating knowledge of plants and their uses for thousands of years. The first recorded culturally significant plant remains were found in Iraq at a human burial site estimated to be 60,000 years old.

Food

Many plants provided important sources of food for Native Americans and early settlers in Florida. Important food plants included fruits, nuts, roots (starch), grains, and greens that varied by habitat, region, and time of year.

Saw Palmetto (Serenoa repens)

gets its common name because of its brutal thorns

A few examples of important food plants included fruits from cocoplum (Chrysobalanus icaco), pond apple (Annona glabra) and saw palmetto (Serenoa repens); and starch from coontie (Zamia pumila) roots. The "heart" of the cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto), commonly referred to as swamp cabbage, was and still is commonly eaten in many rural areas. Generally speaking, ethnobotanical uses of plants can be ground in to six main applications: food, fiber (including dyes), medicinal, housing/construction materials, transportation, and miscellaneous uses (tools, toys, weapons, ceremonial objects, etc.).

The following is a list of the first 15 (of 29) plants important to Florida natives for food (and other uses). The subsequent 14 plants will follow in a later post.

1. Red Maple (Acer rubrum) - medium sized tree, with young branches appearing red, generally found southward through south Florida. Mostly in lowland woods, coastal plains, in and along swamps, floodplain forests, river and stream banks. Although A. saccharum is the best source for producing maple syrup, all maple trees produce sugary sap. In the 1800s native American tribes introduced settlers to red maple. The wood of the tree has been employed for making tools, such as cookware, arrowheads, and ox yokes. Medical accounts of various acer species relate to its use by Indians and settlers for liver and skin disorders, as well as in ophthalmic treatments.

2. Pond-apple (Annona glabra) - common tree throughout the tropics and west Africa. This plant is no longer abundantly found and is currently restricted to south Florida swamps and bogs. Fruit are yellow with pinkish orange inside. CAUTION: powder from seeds, used as fish poison, can cause irritation and blindness. Fruits can be eaten raw, boiled, or made into jellies. Early Indians and settlers used fruit as a food.

American Groundnut flowers

Photo: ©Adam Peterson

3. American Groundnut; Potato-bean (Apios americana) - twining vine found throughout Florida. Preferring rich fertile soil, it is found at the borders of swamps, stream banks, shoreline thicket,s, meadows, wet clearings, and open woodlands. Commonly was used as a food due to the nutty-like flavor and availability in all seasons.

Photo: ©Sage Ross

4. Butterflyweed, Pleurisy root (Asclepius tuberosa) - perennial herb growing throughout Florida usually in dry habitats, but also in moist pinelands. Lacking milky sap, it is used as an ornamental to attract butterflies. Used medicinally by Indians and settlers for bronchial conditions (pleurisy) also topically for bruises and sore muscles. Southeast tribal accounts state the entire plant was boiled and eaten as a vegetable. CAUTION: large quantities may be harmful.

5. Cocoplum (Chysobalnus icaco) - shrub or small tree occurring in coastal regions southern part of Florida. Occurs in cypress hammocks, coastal dunes, and wetland areas. The fruit was used by Glades and Seminole Indians for food. Preserves currently made from fruit for export industry.

6. Sawgrass (Cladium jamaicense) - principal plant of the Everglades, common in marshes. Tolerant of saline, alkaline or acidic, poorly drained to sandy soils. Leaves with saw-tooth margin. Plant was used to make small baskets and blowing tubes from the stems. The heart at the base of the stalk is edible, and may have been a survival food.

7. Seminole Pumpkin; Winter Crookneck Squash; Butternut Squash (Cucurbita moschata) - creeping vine common in south Florida. Grows in moist or dry soils, in swamp hammocks, near historical Indian campsites. Fruits have many shapes, with orange or yellow flesh. This plant was a staple food for early Indian tribes, especially the Seminoles. The fruits and flowers have been, and still are, employed in soups, bread making, or eaten as a vegetable. The leaves are infrequently used as a vegetable or meat stuffing. Now found around the world, it is especially regarded in Greece and Italy.

8. Strangler fig (Ficus aurea) - usually a tree, with aerial roots that can become epiphytic to other plants sometimes "strangling" them. Scattered throughout south Florida, limited northern distribution in north central Florida. Found growing on mostly wet to slow drained soils of drainage canals, swamps, tropical hammocks, mangrove edges, and cypress domes. Fruits; spheres yellow (unripe), dark red (ripe).

Not the same figus you buy in a grocery store, but the fruits are edible (raw) and have been eaten by indigenous peoples of Florida and settlers. The latex of this plant has been processed into chewing gum by many of the southern Florida Indian tribes. It is also said that Native tribes made a poultice from the inner bark for treating sores and cuts. Reports imply usage of the aerial roots for making lashings, arrows, bowstrings, and fishing lines.

9. Sweet Gum, Red Gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) - tree found throughout Florida and most of the eastern U.S. inhabits mesic woodlands, wet swamps, and will grow in standing water. Aromatic star-shaped leaves with serrated edges. Storax is a balsam obtained from the plant and sold commercially in many pharmaceutical products used as stimulants, antiseptics, and expectorants. The use of the Asia minor Specie L. orientalis dates to 12th century. The American variety was documented as early as the 16th century, with indigenous citations throughout the 19th century. During the Civil War, Confederate doctors used the leaves as an astringent and to treat diarrhea and dysentery. European settlers did not use the plant until the late 19th and 20th centuries. Today, most pharmaceutical storax comes from Turkey and Honduras, with American storax being used in cigarettes, candy, soda pop, and chewing gum as a flavoring agent.

10. White Water-Lily, Pond Lily (Nymphea odorata) - aquatic plant found from throughout Florida. Common in ponds, lakes, marshes, sluggish streams, ditches, canals, and swamps. Leaves heart shaped in outline, usually green above and purplish below. Flowers fragrant, white (sometimes pink or yellow), and floating.

The young leaves, seeds and tubers (N. tuberosa), are edible delicacies. Both indigenous tribes and European settlers (taught by the Native tribes) found food and medicinal value for this plant throughout its range. North Carolina listed the plant as a remedy against bronchial problems, sore throats, and dermatological ailments. The chemistry is yet undefined, however, alkaloids, and many tannins (dermatological interests) are present.

11. Prickly Pear Cactus, Indian fig (Opuntiaspp.) - at least 3 species found in Florida (O. humifusa, O. austrina, O. dillenii). Erect species (O. dillenii) is only found in Florida and the tropics. Cacti prefer well-drained, sandy, or rocky soils of sand dunes, pastures, woodlands, coastal hammocks, and mangrove swamps. Leaves in pads, spined, flowers red, salmon or yellow, fruits red or purple, pear shaped. Rich in beta-carotene, potassium, phosphorus, calcium and vitamin C, all parts are edible (after preparation) or used as thickening agents. Used by native peoples and settlers throughout plant range. Folklore (Indian and pioneer) medical applications were for treatments of lung, kidney, and urinary disorders. CAUTION: has many tiny spines with barbs. Gloves are a must when preparing the plant and fruit.

12. Purple Passion flower, Maypop (Passiflora incarnata) - climbing vine with a range throughout Florida in shaded thickets, fence lines, and wooded areas with well drained sandy, fertile soils.

The name maypop thought to originate from the popping sound made when the fruits (yellow or orange berries) are crused. A favorite game of pioneer children of the Southern USA was to jump on the fruits. Passion flowers have been adn still are used in many cultures as food and medicine. The fruits, with skin, can be eaten cooked or raw after removing seeds. The pulp can be prepared iinto jam, syrups, and beverages. Leaves are used to make drinking or tonic teas. Medicinally, most species of this genus have been used as a sedative, or cdalming agent. An estimated 50 European sedation drugs and US natural products contain passionflower extracts. CAUTION: possible presence of cyanogenic glycosides in Passiflora.

13. Red-bay, Swamp-bay (Persea borbonia) - shrub or small tree found throughout the coastal plain. Common in mesic to xeric habitats; woodlands, hammocks, pinewoods, swamps, and marsh/stream edges. Flowers whitish. Fruit a dark drupe. Preferring wetter places is the species P. palustris.

This was always one of my favorite species before I knew of its importance or of the threats it faces (see below). On the hottest days of summer a grove of Red-bays in our backyard would spritz water from its crown cooling the tree below. Fascinating stuff.

Culinary bay leaves are used as a flavoring agent. Bay leaves in Florida are not the same. However, they were and still are employed in the same manner by Native Americans and settlers alike. Used medically as an analgesic, in rituals such as funerals, and also as a love potion by some southeast American Indian Tribes.

NOTE: FLORIDA REDBAY ARE FACING RAPID EXTINCTION DUE TO INTRODUCTION OF LAUREL WILT DISEASE TO THE SOUTHERN USA. FOR MORE READ THIS LINK: FLORIDA LAUREL WILT DISEASE

14. Pokeweed, Pokeberry (Phytolacca americana) - perennial herb, distributed throughout Florida. Prefers well drained to wet habitats such as moist woodlands and fields (sometimes flooded), and riverbanks. Purplish stems, white to pinkish flowers on stalks, fruit is a dark purple - black berry. Southern poke salad is a local delicacy that contains many vitamins. All parts of the plant are considered poisonous, but if processed correctly (several water changes) the young leaves are tender and eaten as a vegetable, or put in salads. Festivals and parades honor the plant in southern USA. Canned commercial goods are exported to African and Europe.

Highly regarded as a medicine first by Native American tribes, later by settlers. Usage includes; emetic, cathartic, dyspepsia treatment, chronic rheumatism, and ringworm. Because pokeweed is highly toxic, it was used by the best-trained medicine people, and physicians of the time, not by the casual practitioner. EXTREME CAUTION: every part of the part is HIGHLY TOXIC. Many people have become fatally ill after consumption. Symptoms are extreme stomach upset and depressed breathing. Gloves should be worn when handling.

15. Slash Pine (Pinus elliottii) - medium to large unbranched tree endemic to Florida. Usually in low, wet flatwoods of poorly drained, acidic soils, and coastal sands. National Champion tree reached 55 feet tall, 11.5 feet in circumference, with a 63 foot spread in Sarasota.

The hard heartwood has always been a favorite in southern folk and indigenous architecture, resulting in large-scale logging with harvesting continuing into the 21st century. Commercial processes include use in the paper industry and chemical industry (turpentine and gum resins). Resins are obtained by slashing the pine bark like a cat face and harvesting the compound. The USA is the world's largest producer of turpentine, with much of it coming from Florida. There are also medical applications as a counter-irritant applied topically. Limited references imply the eating of inner bark for food during famine times.

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Canaveral National Seashore, deserted on a mid-summer afternoon
looking north toward New Smyrna Beach

Florida's brutal heat wave is forecast to continue at least through another week. Daytime temperatures in the interior have been peaking around 100° F (38° C) with humidities above 50% making it feel more like 110° or more. In this extreme heat it becomes difficult to conduct outdoor activities.

The heat wave is expected to break, sort of, around the end of next week, July 13 or 14 when daytime temperatures are forecast to only reach 95° and there is finally a chance of some rain. July has been painfully humid and dry across most of Florida.

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How hot is it?
So hot that even little anole lizard newborns are seeking a relief from
the heat by finding their way toward air conditioning.

Deep layer moisture should be plentiful with mean relative humidity values between 60 and 70% and even deeper layer moisture lurking off of each coast of Florida. All of these changes will make it feel quite sultry but might also make for clouds and some much-needed rain, which would bring welcome relief to Floridians. Meanwhile it is more of the same with temperatures in the interior at or just above 100° every afternoon.

At 3:00 am on July 8th the temperature is still a sultry 84° (29°C) with a dewpoint of 73° making the heat index 90° F (32° C).

Unfortunately temperatures across the southeast and indeed most of the country east of the Rocky Mountains are forecast to be much above "normal" for the foreseeable future. Whatever that means? Anything lower than 90° across Florida would likely feel like a winter cool wave.

Sequestration and Deserted Florida Beaches

So why is this spectacular beach so deserted in the afternoon on a perfect summer day? Mainly due to Congressional Republicans and Sequestration reducing the National Park Service's budget. No money to pay Park Rangers.

Budget sequestration is a procedure in United States law that limits the size of the federal budget. Sequestration involves setting a hard cap on the amount of government spending without regard to the type of spending budgeted.

Sequestration has caused the National Park Service to dictate that beaches be opened late in the mornings and closed early in the evenings. That means everyone has to vacate miles of beach by 6:00 pm at the very latest despite the fact that it doesn't get dark in summer until nearly 9:00 pm. There is no money budgeted for park rangers to patrol beaches due to sequestration.

Cocoa Beach Pier, July 5, 2016

Florida's heat wave is being caused by persistent areas of high pressure (ridges). During recent years the low level ridge axis has been centered near Florida's Lake Okeechobee while the mid-level ridge extends across the southeastern USA, north of Florida. This week the ridges are vertically aligned across the Florida peninsula roughly from Vero Beach to Sarasota. Underneath the ridge of high pressure creates descending, hot air that is relatively stable (few clouds and storms).

A Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) hangs around picking through sargassum
on a recent afternoon at Cocoa Beach. This gull is a non-breeding adult as he has
lost his mating plumage (black head and red bill).

Hopefully these areas of high pressure will begin to erode allowing for cooling rains to return to Florida. At Cocoa Beach on a recent afternoon it was so hot and steamy that I found it difficult to breathe except when I was in the water, which is filled with sargassum being blown in by the persistent easterly flow around the areas of high pressure.

A few of our redbays have survived through multiple attacks and infestations.
The tree is a special part of the Florida landscape, and one of my favorite
forest species. The underside of the leaves are rust colored and they smell
of bay spice, especially on very hot days.

Laurel Wilt and the Extinction
of Florida's Redbay Trees
(Persea bornonia)

Florida's redbay trees (Persea bornonia) are being driven to extinction by an exotic fungus that is moved from tree to tree by a small alien beetle. Both organisms are native to Asia and were brought to the southern United State in some type of wood material.

About the size of a grain of rice, the redbay ambrosia beetle (Xyleborus glabratus) on a dime for scale.

In 2002 the exotic wood-boring beetle, the redbay ambrosia beetle (Xyleborus glabratus) and its fungal symbiont (Raffaela lauricola) were first detected in the southeastern USA. At first the appearance of the beetle did not cause significant alarm because in Southeast Asia the beetle was not known to cause significant tree mortality.

It was a surprise to scientists when it was discovered that R. lauricola caused laurel wilt and that it was rapidly killing all of the South's redbay trees.

A recently deceased redbay in our woods.

In only ten years, it is estimated that laurel wilt has killed more than a million trees in the Lauraceae plant family in the southeastern USA. Mortality rates are between 92% and 100% in larger redbay trees.

Estimated timeline for infestation of all redbays in the USA.
By 2045 there will likely be no redbay, sassafras, or avocado trees remaining in the USA

Palamedes Swallowtails

in Danger of Extinction Due to Redbay Mortaility

The loss of these redbay trees is a tragedy in itself and accelerates an already alarming reduction in biodiversity being observed globally. Pressure is put on species that use these trees for food, nesting sites, nectar, or other survival needs.

Palamedes swallowtail mating pair near (Papilio palamedes) zinnia

One example is the Palamedes swallowtail (Papilio palamedes), a butterfly that depends on redbay and sassafras leaves as a larval food source. The loss of the trees means that the butterfly is also in danger of extinction.

Palamedes swallowtail on Mexican sunflower

Avocado trees (Persea americana) are also susceptible to laurel wilt and as the beetles have run out of redbays on which to feed they have moved to Florida's avocado groves. The disease is moving thirty-to-fifty miles a day through wild laurel trees.

More on this story

Drones and Dogs Battle Beetle to Save Guacamole
A tiny beetle is threatening America's supply of guacamole not to mention Florida's $100 million avocado industry.

Disease-carrying Beetle Kills Thousands of Trees in Tampa Area
Smaller than a grain of rice, the redbay ambrosia beetle is causing big trouble for Florida's redbay and swamp bay trees.

An Exceptionally Damaging Exotic Disease Threatens Florida's Forests
Laurel wilt explained.

Florida Department of Agriculture Laurel Wilt Page

A Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) kept us company on a recent afternoon at the beach.

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The Sixth great mass extinction event has commenced. Which species are most at risk? Orchids and Lemurs. Almost 80% of orchids and over 90% of lemurs are threatened with extinction, according to the latest update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. In total 41% of amphibians and 25% of mammals are threatened with extinction in coming years.

What's The Cause of India/Pakistan Heat Wave?

Global warming and climate change are likely factors in the current India/Pakistan heat wave. India is experiencing Loo winds, hot and dry westerlies from Pakistan and northwest India which dries out the region. That means that air moisture, or dew point, is low. When a monsoon advances, and one is expected to hit as early as the first of July, there is always more dry heat in its wake.

Where is the Best Spot to See

Lake Okeechobee?

So you want to see Lake Okeechobee, Florida's largest lake and the 7th largest lake in the United States? But you can't find the lake? Don't feel bad, neither can anyone else. The lake is hidden behind a massive dike, that's why you can't find it.

The best place we've found to view Lake Okeechobee is from atop the Port Mayaca Dam and Locks on the east side of the lake, above the St. Lucie River Canal.

Lake Okeechobee has been extensively engineered, damned, ditched and diked. The current dike around Lake Okeechobee is an average of 30 feet (10 m) high and encompasses the entire lake, making it impossible to see the lake from the road that circles the lake. Getting atop the dike to see the lake is another challenge.

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Phillip, checking out how the dike is constructed, my back facing northwest.
At the Port Mayaca Dam and Lock.

There is no port. There are no fishing boats. There is just a massive
public works-type project built to protect Florida east coast cities from the
waters of Lake Okeechobee.

The view from the bottom of the dike looking up to the top of the dam.
From this perspective the dam is much more imposing.

The coral, coquina and other rocks and shells that make up the Lake Okeechobee dike are held together with an intricately woven metal net of what appears to be something like chain link fence. Imagine the effort to put this mesh over this entire 100s of miles long, 30-foot high dike. This project was undertaken after devastating hurricanes in the 1920s and again in the 1940s flooded and killed thousands of people living on the east side of the lake. While the dike may have been well-intentioned, at the time, the architects of the Lake Okeechobee dike likely had no idea that it would kill the Florida Everglades by cutting off their supply of fresh water. The dike also spurred massive, unsustainable growth on the southeast coast of Florida by implying a safety that really does not exist. While the lake may not be what eventually floods the megalopolis of southeast Florida (because of the massive dike) some future storm coupled with climate change will.

It is hard to imagine a public works project of this size in today's America where nothing gets done. It is also ironic that two of the leading Republicans who ran for President of the USA this year were Cubans (Rubio and Cruz) who both support public flood control projects like the Lake Okeechobee dike and corporate welfare for the sugar farm barons who have set up their modern day plantations all around the now-presumably safe Lake Okeechobee.

There are a lot of navigation markers, but no boats.

All of these images were made around the St. Lucie Canal detailed in the aerial photos of Lake Okeechobee, below.

Massive Algae Bloom in Lake Okeechobee

This year there is a massive algae bloom in the lake caused by the sugar farms that were aforementioned, big supporters of Rubio and Cruz and who pollute the lake with runoff from their enormous tracts of drained swamp farms.

In early May 2016, the algae bloom grew to cover 85 square kilometers (33 square miles) of Lake Okeechobee. The conditions that gave rise to the bloom have persisted into July, and have been blamed for affecting water quality downstream all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

The blue-green algae bloom is visible in these images of Lake Okeechobee, acquired on July 2, 2016, by the Operational Land Imager(OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite. The natural-color image combines red light, green light, and coastal aerosol (blue) light (bands 4, 3 and 1).

A green and blue algae bloom has overtaken a neighborhood marina and other parts of the St. Lucie River (canal) in Stuart, Florida

Photo: Greg Lovett/Palm Beach Post, AP

Reeking Oozing Algae Closes South Florida Beaches

A rancid smell penetrates the area around the St. Lucie River (really nothing more than a canal from Lake Okechobee) in this area that bills itself as "America's Happiest Seaside Town."

Blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, are single-celled organisms that rely on photosynthesis to turn sunlight into food. The bacteria grow swiftly when nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen are abundant in still water. The bloom pictured here may contain blue-green algae, as well as other types of phytoplankton; only a surface sample can confirm the exact composition of a bloom.

Algae blooms are a regular phenomenon in Lake Okeechobee during the summertime. Pollution, such as runoff from farms, and lake water that warms through the summer, create an environment favorable for growth. This year the bloom grew large early in the season and it affected more people than usual, showing up far beyond the confines of the lakeshore.

Water managers started discharging water from the lake early this year to counter the large amount of winter rainfall. That discharge flows through St. Lucie Canal—visible on the lake’s eastern side—and enters the Atlantic Ocean near Stuart, Florida. The river outflow carried nitrogen and phosphorous from the lake; it also freshened some downstream areas that are usually too salty for much algae growth. On June 29, Florida’s governor declared a state of emergency in Martin and St. Lucie counties after the blooms appeared in local waterways.

According to news reports, water samples collected from the lake and from the river near Stuart tested positive for high levels of toxins produced by the algae. The algae and their toxins can disrupt ecosystems. They also pose concerns for human health, as ingesting algae-tainted water can cause nausea, vomiting and, in extreme cases, liver failure.

Related Stories

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Cyanobacteria in Florida Waters. Accessed July 5, 2016.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation CommissionBlue-Green Algae (Cyanobacteria). Accessed July 5, 2016.

National Public Radio (2016, July 2) Thick, Putrid Algae Bloom Overwhelms Miles Of Florida Coastline. Accessed July 5, 2016.

The New York Times (2016, July 1) Reeking, Oozing Algae Closes South Florida Beaches. Accessed July 5, 2016.

Orlando Sentinel (2016, July 1) Florida's biggest lake fouls coastlines. Accessed July 5, 2016.

Rick Scott: 45th Governor of Florida (2016, June 9)Gov. Scott Declares State of Emergency in St. Lucie and Martin Counties Following Algal Blooms. Accessed July 5, 2016.

TCPALM (2016, July 1) Lake Okeechobee discharges into St. Lucie River will go up before they decrease. Accessed July 5, 2016.

TCPALM (2016, May 17) St. Lucie River algae could be blue-green and toxic microcystis type. Accessed July 5, 2016.

The Weather Channel (2016, July 2) 2 Florida Counties Added to Algae Bloom Emergency; Government Reducing Water Releases From Lake Okeechobee.Accessed July 5, 2016.

The lake's beach is composed of a coquina like mix of shells and sand.

So how do you get atop the dike? It should be easy, the Florida National Secnic Trail (1,300 mile, 2,090 km) runs the length of the dike on a 100 ft (30 m) wide paved trail. At most of the trail entrances along the lake there are scary homeless encampments which make parking or scaling the dike sketchy, at best and parking one's car for any length of time risky.

At this NENA trailhead north of Belle Glade and south of Port Mayaca I encountered a homeless encampment and plenty of human waste and trash. It was not a desirable place to try and see the lake.

NENA

NENA is the Northeast Everglades Natural Area. Located mostly in Palm Beach County on the east side of the lake. Visitors should be careful traversing the area, especially alone. Port Mayaca is more desirable as it is open, near the main road, and there might be some help around if one were accosted. We never saw anyone while at Port Mayaca but there was plenty of traffic on nearby Hwy 98.

Port Mayaca

Using Google Maps I found this nice, relatively safe spot at Port Mayaca. Port Mayaca is a sparsely populated area north of Belle Glade located on the east side of Lake Okeechobee at roughly 26°50' N 80°30' W on Hwy 98. From the east coast take Hwy 76 west out of the Stuart-Jupiter area and you'll run directly into Lake Okeechobee and the Port Mayaca Dam and Locks. The area was named for the Mayaca Indian Tribe. Don't expect to see any Mayacans, however. There are none.

Hwy 76 meets Hwy 98 and several other signed roads at this point (SR 15, US 441) but there really are only the two roads (Hwy 76 and 98). There are few houses, no stores, no boats, no port, no post office. Nothing. Nearby (to the east) on Hwy 76 is the Port Mayaca Cemetery which is the location of the mass burial ground for 1,600 unidentified people who died in Palm Beach County during the September 1928 unnamed hurricane when Lake Okeechobee's then-earthen dike collapsed. The cemetery is operated by the City of Pahokee.

The light was just about perfect on a recent afternoon when we visited.

I like how the lake's water shimmered purple in the shot below.

There is a large bridge over the St. Lucie Canal at the Port Mayaca Dam and Locks. Exit the highway just north of the bridge and drive onto the top of the dike along the Florida Trail. It is at that point that these images were made.

Rim Canal

There is a conspicuous absence of boats in this massive lake, in part because the waters are currently so shallow (as in many Florida lakes) due to many years of below normal rainfall and human intervention (ditching, diking, and pumping) which has accelerated as Republicans have controlled the Florida legislature and decimated Florida's Water Management Districts in recent decades. Navigation is easier in the Rim Canal.

During construction of the current dike, earth was excavated along the inside perimeter, resulting in a deep channel which runs along the perimeter of the lake. In most places the canal is part of the lake, but in others it is separated from the open lake by low grassy islands.

Even when waters are higher than today navigating Lake Okeechobee can be tricky, whereas the rim canal is easily navigated.

From atop the dike you can see for miles across the lake.

In these shots, looking west, a large thunderstorm develops.

Below: Looking southwest, toward The Everglades.

Below: Looking northwest, toward Up the Grove Beach.

St. Lucie "River" (Canal)

Below are two different view of the St. Lucie River (really nothing more than a big ditch).

The first view is from the Port Mayaca dam looking east toward Stuart. The second is from atop the bridge looking back at the Port Mayaca Dam and Locks.

Below: A distant view of the Port Mayaca Dam and Locks from atop the Hwy 98 Bridge over the St. Lucie Canal (or "river"). Interesting how small the structure appears depending on
which perspective. Presumably there is a tender who works at the dam and locks but we did not see them.

Belle Glade

We drove through Belle Glade, to get a look at this town that Big Sugar built. It is a miserable shanty town displaying some of the worst abject poverty to be found in Florida. It is disgraceful that Big Sugar and Florida Republicans have let Belle Glade become what it is today. The City of about 17,000 is often referred to as "Muck City" for the muck (former lake bottom) in which it's sugarcane is grown. The City also has at times had the infamy of hosting the highest violent crime rates in the USA and the highest AIDS infection rate per capita.

Big Sugar = Corporate Welfare

Sugarane (Saccharum officinarum) fields spread for 700 square miles around the south and east side of Lake Okeechobee mostly from south of Belle Glade to Clewiston, 16 miles to the north. These modern day plantations represent one of the most blatant examples of corporate welfare that currently exists in the United States.

About 450,000 acres of what should be Everglades is now dedicated to sugarcane monoculture heavily subsidized by the US Federal Government through farm subsidies and tax breaks. Irony-of-ironies that federal money then then flows into the pockets of rich Republican politicians who have a stranglehold on Florida governance. Imagine what this area would be like if sugarcane subsidies were eliminated and we bought sugarcane from Cuba or wherever else it is grown (much cheaper).

Of course Big Sugar paints a different picture. One of their propaganda websites flows endlessly with slick talk about their rich, environmentally friendly crop.

If Big Sugar's 700 square miles of heavily subsidized monoculture of sugarcane were allowed to die off, The Everglades, and Lake Okeechobee would be a much healthier place.

Big Sugar: Sanders and Rubio Share A Sweet Tooth

Forbes' analysis of Rubio and Sander's Big Sugar lust: The federal program that resembles a Soviet Union relic, strongly supported by Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio, works as follows: the U.S. Department of Agriculture guarantees a price floor for American sugar, below which it spends hundreds of millions of dollars to buy up excess sugar and bump the price back up to the minimum. Uncle Sam then sells the sugar at a steep discount to ethanol producers. Limits on imports also artificially prop up the prices that domestic sugar producers can charge.

Marco Rubio and Big Sugar

The Wall Street Journal details how the Senator and former Presidential candidate, now new Senate candidate, even though he swore he was through with public life, defends what may be the worst farm subsidy ever.

Sugarcane stands about 9 feet tall (3 m).

I stand in a field of cane above for scale.

Every few thousand feet there is a canal slicing through the sugarcane fields,

destroying the natural environment.

Muck

The muck that once was the bottom of Lake Okeechobee is technically soil made up primarily of humus from drained swampland. Muck farming on drained swamps was once an important part of Florida agriculture that has been scientifically discredited and blamed for destroying the Florida Everglades. Muck farming destroys wildlife habitats and results in a variety of environmental problems. It is unlikely that any more muck farm lands will be created in the United States because of modern environmental regulations.

Miles and miles of muck farms are found to the south and east of Lake Okeechobee

Big Sugar Fights to Protect a

Sweet Deal with U.S. Lawmakers

Bloomberg's analysis of payouts by the US Government to Florida Sugar Barons.

Typical farmland in the area looks like this. . .

When we were finished exploring the big thunderstorm was starting to fade, like so many others this summer, it was all noise and promise but delivered little in the way of cooling rain.

We've Watched:

Reverend Paul Harris (Julian Morris) as a wildly entertaining con-man, meth addicted preacher in Hand of God.

Hand of God

In Hand of God a morally-corrupt judge suffers a breakdown and believes God is compelling him onto a path of vigilante justice. While most professional reviewers panned this Amazon Original Series it gets nearly 8 of 10 stars from viewers. Garret Dillahunt steals most of his scenes as an astonishingly delicate and nuanced KD, an answer-seeking ex-con hired to do the murderous dirty work of corrupt Judge Pernell Harris.

For our money, however, the real breakout performer is Julian Morris (above and below) who plays a con-man, meth addict preacher who seduces the judge with his crazy Christian babble, and in the process becomes an unwitting accomplice in the murder and mayhem that drives the series. Why is the good Reverend Paul Harris so often naked? You have to watch. . .

Reverend Paul Harris (Julian Morris) and Bishop Bruce Congdon (Obba Babatundé).

Road to Rio
Nathan Adrian's Body Was Built to Swim

Olympic Freestyle swimmer Nathan Adrian is used to showing a lot of skin in front of large crowds, so perhaps it's no surprise that he agreed to pose for this year's Body Issue. But, we discovered, the three-time Olympic gold medalist is still full of the unexpected. Click the link above to discover 8 things we learned about Adrian in the ESPN Body Issue.

Kyle Snyder 97kg

Freestyle Gold Winner 2015

Youngest-ever Wrestling

World Champion

On His Way to Rio

Check out the rest of the USA Team

USA WRESTLING

Wrestling Powerhouse Russia

Selects Men's Freestyle Team

for Rio

Reigning World Champion

Abdulrashid Sadulaev

was the only previously announced

representative (86 kg, 189.5 lbs)

The Russian Team

57kg: Victor Lebedev

World No. 7

Two-time world champion (2010, 2011)

2015 World bronze medalist

65kg: Soslan Ramonov

World No. 2

2014 world champion

2015 World bronze medalist

74kg: Aniuar Geduev

World No. 2

2015 World bronze medalist

Three-time European champion (2013-2015)

86kg: Abdulrashid Sadulaev

World No. 1

Two-time world champion (2014, 2015)

The only team member previously announced was 86kg (189.5 lbs) representative Abdulrashid Sadulaev. The 20-year-old, who is currently ranked No. 1 in the world in his division, is a two-time reigning world champion and gave up a total of four points over all his world championship matches in those two tournaments combined. Considered by some to be the best pound-for-pound wrestler in the world right now, he will be favored to win gold in Rio.

97kg: Anzor Boltukaev

World No. 1

2013 World bronze medalist

2016 European champion

125kg: Bilyal Makhov

World No. 2

2012 Olympic bronze medalist

Three-time world champion (2007, 2009, 2010)

2015 World bronze medalist in 125kg freestyle and 130kg Greco-Roman

Oh No, He Didn't

The Trump/Pence Logo is

Undeniably Homoerotic.

Can it be Accidental?

The Donald stuck with boring typography for his new logo.

Boring, if it didn't look like his gigantic 'T' was energetically penetrating Pence's little 'P'

Even CNN is calling it "off color"
others suggested that it looked like what Pence and Trump
would do to America if they somehow won

Native Plants Important to
Florida's History

Native Plants Important to

Florida's History 1-15

at this link

Ethnobotany of Florida

16. Pickerelweed (Pontideria cordata) - This emergent aquatic, with its leaves and flowers above water and portions of the stem under water, is found typically in shallow, quiet water. The seeds can be eaten like nuts and the young leaf-stalks cooked as greens. Native Americans added the seeds to a granola-like mix. Fishermen would fish by the plants, believing pickerel fish might be there. CAUTION: While not poisonous, pickerelweed is known to absorb water contaminants.

ＰＨＩＬＬＩＰＬＯＴＴＰＨＯＴＯＧＲＡＰＨＹ

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17. Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) - Trees native to the southeastern USA. Found in well-drained to seasonally wet soils on edges of salt marshes, pastures, mixed woodlands, hammocks, and roadsides. Nutgalls (galls) found on young twigs. Blade appearance may vary on branches, within populations, and between seasons. Summer leaves are often toothed and lobed, whereas winter leaves tend to be blunt. Fruit: Acorn.

Live oak galls

perhaps home of "little people"

Live oaks are of the "white" oak group having acorns less bitter than "red" oaks. Native Americans, settlers and explorers harvested the acorns for food, with some southeast USA tribes using them in animal feed. The wood (still prized) is often utilized as fuel, as well as in tool making. Uses include: building (lumbers, timbers, etc.), component of mortar and caulks, sources of lye, and for tanning hides. There is a mythical belief that "little people" live in the galls and should never be disturbed. The use of galls (Q. infectoria) dates to ancient Greeks (450 BC). Galls are formed when an insect (Cynips tinctoria) deposits eggs in young wood. Galls are the chief source of tannic acid, used in tanning and dyeing, formerly in ink manufacturing, and medicinally as an astringent.

18. Sabal Palm, Cabbage Palm (Sabal palmetto) - Pictured above with Live Oak, the Florida state tree, medium sized with solitary trunk. Widespread in southeast USA from Florida to North Carolina and throughout Bahamas and west Cuba. Often found at or near sea level on sandy soils common to inundated savannas, riverbanks, tree islands, dunes and flats. Fruits pear shaped and black.

Swamp cabbage festivals are still popular in Florida. It is undocumented whether native Americans used the plant as a food source, however, early Floridians cut out the main bud and ate it cooked or raw. This process kills the tree, so harvesting should be done only in dense stands.

19. Elder-berry; Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis; photos above and below) Shrub found from Florida to Mexico, with northern ranges of Nova Scotia, and Quebec. Found in moist disturbed clearings, swamps, wet-woodlands, riverbanks, and ditches. Soft-stemmed with white pith.

Sambucus is derived from the Greek word "sambuke," a musical instrument believed to heal the spirit. References to uses include food, liquor, medicine, toys, musical instruments, and textile dyes. Sometimes referred to as starvation food, it was used by southeastern US tribes (and likely settlers). The berries are edible and commonly made into liqueurs, jams, pies, and syrups. Flowers can be dipped in flour, deep-fried or eaten raw. CAUTION: Plant contains cyanogenic glucosides and could cause illness in those with a sensitivity.

20. Sassafras (Sassafras albidium; above and below) - small shrub to large tree generally a tree, found throughout Florida. Prefers well-drained soils, which are usually found along fencerows, hedges, fields, and woodlands. Often forms shrub thickets, all parts aromatic. The flowers are yellow; fruits are dark blue drupes.

Native American Indians called it "green stick" tree because of its bright-green branches. The bark and the root was used in medicine by the Seminoles for chest and digestive pain (cow sickness), and the plant was made into a drink for wolf ghost sickness (digestive troubles), and as a cold and cough mouthwash. Famous since pioneer days for making sassafras tea, made by boiling the bark of the roots. Oil of sassafras is distilled from the roots and bark, and was/is used to perfume soaps and lotions. Extracts of sassafras bark are used as flavoring agents in various beverages. WARNING: Test on lab rats have led to development of tumors.

Typical Saw Palmetto and Live Oak forest with Yucca aloifolia (Spanish Bayonet) in foreground.

21. Saw palmetto (Serenoa repens; above and below) - Generally a shrub, sometimes a tree endemic to southeast USA, once very common in Florida. Found in sandy soils, pinewoods, and sand dunes. Now disappearing with rapid and uncontrolled development. Stems are usually subterranean, but sometimes are upright forming dense colonies. Fruit dark blue to black in color.

The fruits have a long folk history as an aphrodisiac and have been used for centuries in treating conditions of the prostate. Native American Indians used the saw palmetto fruits as a subsistence food in the fall. Base of new leaf stalks were also cooked or eaten raw. The Seminoles used the plant for fiber; baskets, brooms, fans, and ropes. Further uses included fish drags, fire/dance fans, and dolls. Modern day development of a purified extract from the berries is said to improve symptoms of enlarged prostate. Florida is the biggest source and producer of saw palmetto products.

22. Bamboo-vine, Laurel Greenbriar (Smilax laurifolia) - evergreen shrub or vine ranged include all of Florida. Prefers areas of prolonged inundation such as bogs, swamps, stream banks, cypress mounds, bays, and marshes, all which are now threatened in Florida. Where there is no other vegetation, it may form thick, dense tangles. Thick, reddish in color, tuberous rhizomes. Older stems, with irregular prickles, on lower part of stem. Berries, shiny black at maturity (second season).

My dog Saffy, sniffing out a pile of rhizomes of Smilax that I had unearthed. I threw the dollar bill atop the pile for scale. To stop the rhizomes from continuing to grow I would thrown them into the lake where they would eventually rot. Since the lake is mostly dry now the Smilax has come back furiously forming dense thickets everywhere I do not mow.

This species has been cited extensively as a dye plant, food, and medicine. Smilaxes were very important resources throughout the Caribbean, their technologies and uses were brought to Florida with migration and slave trade. Wild asparagus is the term for the young shoots that are a favorite in salads (or in sautees). In many species, a thickening agent (like gelatin) can be processed from the rootstock, often used in jellies. The first Europeans found native Americans making bread or fritters from Smilaxes in Florida. The flavoring agent sarsaparilla is obtained from more southern species. Modern uses of Smilaxes include synthetic cortisone and steroids.

For more on this species check out

Florida's Thorniest Native Plants

23. Common Sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) - A common herbaceous plant (resembling dandelions) found throughout North America. Common in disturbed soils associated with fields, pastures, roadsides, meadows, etc.

Romans (23-29 AD) used sowthistle leaves and stalks as a salad herb and vegetable, recommending it as nourishing, curative, and sustaining. The species name of oleraceus means "an edible vegetable." The leaves are high in minerals and vitamin C. A 13th-century herbalist recommended a diet of sowthistles "to prolong the virility of gentlemen." In the 16tyh century, people who couldn't afford goose down stuffed their matters and pillows with sowthistle down. Early 17th century herbalists used its medical powers to combat bad breath, deafness, wheezing, and as a facial cosmetic, to clear the skin and give it luster. Sowthistle stems are filled with milky juice, which in early times suggested it could stimulate milk production, hence it was given to nursing mothers (human and animal). Still valued today, especially in England, as a veterinary herb, and for the treatment of fevers, high blood pressure, and heart disorders. Sowthistle is also a favorite livestock food but has invaded crops and is considered one of the world's toughest weeds. CAUTION: not poisonous, but does have a tendency to absorb nitrogen containing contaminants from soil.

24. Florida Betony, Rattlesnake weed, Indian Artichoke, Skullcap (Stachys floridana) - considered a weed, it is found on the coastal plains of the south and throughout Florida. Flourishes in open habitats and on well to poorly drained soils. White-segmented tuber roots gave it the name "rattlesnake weed." Racemes with white to pale pink flowers.

The tuberous roots are edible and sometimes boiled like peanuts. Use as a food is well noted among southeast US Indian tribes and settlers of Florida's early history, as well as today by many nature enthusiasts.

For everyone else, rattlesnake weed is the bane of the Florida garden, impossible to extricate. Easier to pull off the tops and leave the tubers in the ground than trying to remove them all.

Bald Cypress hung heavy with Spanish Moss

Most of the leaves have fallen off of the giant Bald Cypress

in our area due to the extreme heat and lack of rainfall this summer.

The trees are not dead. When the water returns they will sprout anew.

25. Bald Cypress, Pond Cypress (Taxodium spp.) - Cypress trees range throughout Florida. Found on poor to moderately drained sandy soils, of drainage ditches, canals, and pine flatwoods, often in standing water. A single brown, leafy stem, with spike green, yellow and red flowers. Uses are not well recorded; some tribes used this plant for treatment of diarrhea, vomiting, and appetite loss. In the late 18th century, Bald Cypress was used extensively in Florida as a common slave remedy for yaws (common at the time).

Yaws is a tropical infection of the skin, bones and joints caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum pertenue. The disease begins with a round, hard swelling of the skin, 2 to 5 centimeters in diameter. The center may break open and form an ulcer. This initial skin lesion typically heals after 3 to 6 months. After weeks to years, joints and bones may become painful, fatigue may develop, and new skin lesions may appear.

Physicians in the 20th century used Bald Cypress widely for venereal disease, until the 1940s because syphilis is closely related to yaws. Modern chemical analysis is lacking. Early works suggest fresh (not dry) matter contains the alkaloid stillingine, resins and oils.

Current uses of the tree are mostly ornamental as furniture or ground up as mulch. As an important keystone species it should not be disturbed where it occurs naturally.

26. Spanish Moss, Old Man's Beard (Tillandsia usneoides) - usually epiphytic plant with reduced to absent stems. Found mostly in tropical to temperate Americas. Hangs in the trees of hammocks and swamps of the southeast coastal plains.

Many US Indian tribes used the moss while cooking to absorb unwanted liquids, for bedding, magically to rub on newborn babies heads for curly hair and for tanning hides. One legend tells of the Spanish explorer, Gorez Gorez, a bearded ruffian who traded goods for a beautiful Indian maiden. The sight of the Spaniard frightened the girl, and she ran away. Gorez chased her, climbing after her to the top of a tree. The maiden escaped, but Gorez's beard became entangled in the tree branches. There he died, but we can still see his "graybeard" hanging on the trees throughout the low country.

Colonial pickers harvested moss with long poles during the winter. The harvest hung for many months to cure in a moss yard. Curing loosened the outer gray scales making it ready for commercial ginning. The black filament core became stuffing for early automobile cushions, and mattresses. Mills operated in Florida and Louisiana, ginning from 1900 until 1975, when synthetic fibers replaced natural. Up until 1996, moss was still brought to markets in Tampa, mainly for the arts-and-crafts trade. In the past, doctors prescribed medicines from the moss to treat diabetes. One of the first successful environmental legal cases in Florida involved cattle ranchers suing the phosphate mining industry over cow tooth loss due to contaminated Spanish Moss.

After a storm, Spanish Moss falls to the ground, and cattle eat it for nutrition, however, the cattle were losing teeth. The moss absorbs many pollutants; one of these is Fluorine, resulting in fluorine toxicity, a form of tooth decay. One of the by-products of phosphate mining (in western peninsular Florida) is fluorine.

27. Common Cattail, Narrow-Leaved Cattail (Typha spp.) - often forming dense stands, Typhas, in general , are erect, rhizomatous herbs found practically worldwide. Common in brackish or freshwater marshes, shallow water, ditches, ponds, slow rivers and streams. In Florida , we have 5 recognized species. The leaves are long, stiff, and sword-like. Stems are topped with yellow (male flowers), forming a cylinder, and green turning brown sausage-like (female) flowers below.

The two most widely distributed and employed are T. latifolia, and T. angustifolia, primarily used as food, but also for medicine and textiles. Recipes describe the asparagus quality of the shoots, and quality pancake flower obtained from the pollen. Medical uses are primarily from Native American citations and only later, by settlers. Frequent uses are as a dermatological aid, such as treatment for abrasions, burns, and chaffing in babies. Other uses are woven mats, roof thatching, toy making and textiles. The pulp may exude rayon type compounds. CAUTION: plants are not harmful, but are nitrogen fixers and absorb atmospheric and soil pollutants.

28. Muscadine Grape, Scuppernong (Vitis rotundifolia) - Vine found throughout Florida. Found in diverse sites, well drained to poorly drained and sometimes flooded soils, of both upland and bottomlands. Green flower panicles and fleshy purple, black, bronze, bunches of fruit.

Most species of Vitis sp. have edible berries. Relative of the plants are used to make Merlots, Cabernets, and Zinfandel wines. Long stems were used to make a deer snare by the Seminole Indians who ate the fruit and traded them with pioneers.

29. Coontie (Zamia pumila) - Is one of Florida's oldest plants (Cycads - 200 million years old); it is low and palm-like or fern-like, with a subterranean stem, which is rich in starch. This plant was once widely distributed throughout Florida and among the Caribbean Islands. In drastic decline due to development. Often found in well-drained shallow sandy to sandy - loamy soils, usually overlying limestone, in scrub, pine, deciduous forests; coastal shell mounds. Male and female plants produce cones.

Eaumaeus atala florida

Photo by Scott Zona

Coontie has a long and widespread use as a food among Florida Indian peoples. A flour base called "sago" or "sofkee" is prepared from the roots, after washing or boiling has removed the poison cycasin. The caterpillar of the critically endangered butterfly Atala Hairstreak (Eaumaeus atala florida) is believed to only feed on Zamia. CAUTION: if eaten may be harmful due to the toxin cycasin, must be processed correctly before eating.

We've Read:

Temperature anomalies (departures from average) in degrees C, projected by the GFS computer model run on July 14, 2016 for 6:00 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2016. For readings in degrees Fahrenheit, multiply the Celsius readings shown by 1.8.

Massive Heat Dome to Bake Lower 48. Welcome to Our World!

Florida has been baking under a dome of high pressure for months with maximum heat and little rain, so we have little sympathy for our neighbors to the north. Temperatures according to the latest computer models will be as much as 15° C. above normal or 27° F above normal. That means many readings of 100°+ with little chance of cooling rainfall.

One positive is that this dome of high pressure over the continent may aid in the development of instability in the tropics which might bring much-needed rainfall to Florida. In the graphic below note that the driest areas of the country (in shades of brown) correspond to the presumed axis of the heat dome according to computer models.

Vanishing Act:

Why Insects are Declining and Why it Matters

Insect populations are declining dramatically in many parts of the world. Researchers blame monoculture farming, pesticide use, and habitat loss for the plight of insects, which are essential to agriculture and ecosystems.

Conor McGregor, UFC Star, posing for the ESPN Body Issue 2016

U.F.C. Sells Itself for $4 Billion

Ultimate Fighting Championship seemed for years to be a curio, a niche sport for those interested in seeing combatants pummel one another in an octagonal cage. No more. The global sports empire now commands an eye-popping price tag.

Instagram Star and Firefighter Marshall Perrin in the Garçon Model 2016 Summer Campaign

@garconmodel

@marshalliss

Garçon Model Web

@GarconModel

Fashion-Art-Design-Bizarre

Model Xexpose: Marshall Perrin

by Mike Ruiz

A massive upper-level high will envelop most of the lower 48 in the last half of July, setting up what could be a prolonged bout of extreme heat for millions of Americans. If the scorching weather persists into August, the odds of a flash drought in the nation's heartland will rise sharply (along with the odds that the United States will have its hottest summer on record along with what is very likely going to be Earth's hottest year on record).

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There's going to be no escaping the misery of the pattern projected for the next few days at upper levels, the upper high at 500 millibars (about four miles up) encompasses nearly all of the lower 48 by Thursday night, July 21. Because air expands as it warms, a higher 500-millibar surface is associated with a warmer air mass at lower levels. Computer weather forecast models agree on development of a mammoth upper ridge centered near the nation's Midwest for the next week to 10 days, perhaps longer. The atmospheric variables predicted to take shape later this week are similar to those observed during some of the nation's most infamous heat waves of recent decades.

The closest analog to the pattern developing is July 13, 1995, the second day of a catastrophic 5-day heat wave that took more than 700 lives in the Chicago area. The top analogs also include July 4 2012, and August 27, 1980, two peak days from the devastating central US drought years of 2012 and 1980. Excessive heat watches for later this week have already been issued by the National Weather Service for parts of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. We can expect many other areas to follow suit as the week unfolds.

Dangerous Heat

Scorching Temperatures and Wilting Humidity

With such strong computer forecast model support for a high-end upper ridge (heat wave), one might expect surface temperatures to be corresponding extreme. Indeed, readings near of above 100° (38° C) are likely to encompass large parts of the Great Plains by midweek, perhaps even topping 110° (43° C) in some spots with readings of 90°-100° over a large part of the nation. As an upper-level impulse rides along the north side of the ridge later this week, a burst of heat and humidity will be shunted eastward, approaching the East Coast toward the weekend. Highs are forecast to be in the 105° range this weekend in Washington, DC, approaching the city's all-time high of 106° set on August 6, 1918, and July 20, 1930.

Another important element of this heat wave: Some of the energy that would otherwise go into heating up the lower atmosphere will be diverted into evaporating moisture. Plants and soils are quite moist in many areas thanks to recent rains, especially through a belt from the Central Plains into the Ohio Valley. That moisture is a mixed blessing: While it will help to keep surface air temperatures a notch lower than they would be otherwise, it will also help raise the amount of water vapor in the air. In addition, the Midwest's vast corn crops are at a stage where they add moisture to the air through evapotranspiration, a process dubbed "corn sweat." As a result, heat index values will soar to uncomfortable and even dangerous levels as this week progresses over large parts of the central and eastern USA, especially toward the south. The atmospheric moisture will also help boost nighttime lows, which exacerbates the potential risk to human and animals health from a multi-day heat wave.

EDDI Flash Drought Prediction

New research has led to the emergence of new monitoring efforts that may help identify and even predict flash droughts. The National Drought Mitigation Center has been leading a multiyear effort to develop the Quick Drought Response Index (QuickDRI), which will monitor changes in vegetation over periods of a week or two. QuickDRI is building on VegDRI, an operational product that uses satellite and climate data to map vegetation change at the seasonal scale. Funded by NASA, QuickDRI is being tested this year.

Meanwhile, a group led by Michael Hobbins (NOAA/ESRL Physical Science Division) and Dan McEvoy and Justin Huntington (Desert Research Institute) has developed the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI), which focuses on the weather that drives both flash drought and long-term drought. Rather than assessing the landscape itself, or recent rainfall, EDDI looks solely at evaporative demand—the impact of atmospheric temperature, humidity, wind, and solar radiation over a particular time period—and how it compares to climatology. A positive EDDI indicates drier-than-average conditions. In evaluations thus far, EDDI appears to work well in providing advance notice of drought development, often ahead of other commonly used indexes. The EDDI is spotlighted in the June issue of the Journal of Hydrometeorology, where a pair of papers explains the rationale for the index and a U.S.-based evaluation of its skill.

Regularly updated EDDI maps for various time frames are available for download. The most recent 4-week EDDI map suggests that the eastern Great Lakes, New York, and western New England have experienced drought-favorable weather over the last month. Patches of moderate drought in these areas are now showing up in the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor. Central Florida is also exhibiting drought-favorable conditions.

Flash Drought

In 2012 a promising-looking spring morphed into a terrible summer for the US Midwest. A long-term drought that began in late 2010 had intensified over the Southern Plains in 2011, punishing farmers and ranchers and facilitating the loss of roughly 10% of all the trees in Texas. The real shock was how quickly drought conditions took hold further across the Midwest in the summer of 2012, leading to the most widespread US drought conditions since the 1930s. Even NOAA's 30-day and season drought outlooks from June 2012 failed to predict that month's emergence of drought in the Midwest,. It appears this wasn't a simple northward extension of the ongoing drought further south, but something else, a classic case of what's increasingly known as flash drought, a rapid-onset drying of the landscape.

While long-term drought can emerge simply through a lack of precipitation, a flash drought is closely linked to hot summer weather. The type of flash drought most often observed in the Midwest develops as a torrid air mass sweeps in for a period of a few days to several weeks. At first, the landscape may not be particularly dry, in which case large amounts of water vapor flow from vegetation and soils into the scorching surface air (as is expected later this week). If the heat is strong and sustained enough, the landscape quickly dries and flash drought takes hold.

Photo: Cristobal Herrera/European Pressphoto Agency

Miles of Algae
and a Multitude of Hazards

The stench from decaying algae began rising from coastal waterways in southeastern Florida early this month, shutting down businesses and beaches during a critical tourism season. Officials arrived, surveyed the toxic muck and declared states of emergency in four counties, then took off for Cleveland for the Republican National Convention.

Photo: Rhonda Wise/Agence France-Press/Getty Images

Photo: Greg Lovett/The Palm Beach Post/AP

Florida Governor Rick Scott doesn't believe in global warming or climate change anymore than does Donald Trump or Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and why should they care? They don't live amongst the dead fish and dying waterways of southeast Florida, and their reelection campaigns are largely funded by Big Sugar which polluted Lake Okeechobee and caused the algae bloom in the first place.

Road to Rio

@JJ_Engelbrecht

J.J. Englebrecht, South Africa, Rugby

@Math_Santana

Matheus Santana, Swimming, Brazil

@ddrouin10

Derek Drouin, High Jumping, Canada

@paul_ruggeri

Paul Ruggeri, Gymnastics, USA

@chadleclos92

Chad le Clos, Swimming, South Africa

@mearschris93

Chris Mears, Diving, Great Britain

Can't Miss:

#AskTheGays

Trump Speech Backfires

Inspires Hilarious Memes

with #AskTheGays Hashtag

Captain America
Ryan Lochte

Oh No, He Didn't

The Trump/Pence Logo is

Undeniably Homoerotic.

Can it be Accidental?

The Donald stuck with boring typography for his new logo.

Boring, if it didn't look like his gigantic 'T' was energetically penetrating Pence's little 'P'

Even CNN is calling it "off color"
others suggested that it looked like what Pence and Trump
would do to America if they somehow won

We're having our best Muscadine Grape harvest in 20 years, which is pretty amazing considering it has barely rained in July and temperatures and sun have been at their maximum. Presumably these native grapes like a relatively moist spring and a wicked hot and dry summer.

The muscadine grape (Vitis rotundifolia Michx.) is native to the southeastern United States and was the first native grape species to be cultivated in North America. The natural range of muscadine grapes extends from Delaware to central Florida and occurs in all states along the Gulf Coast to east Texas. It also extends northward along the Mississippi River to Missouri. Muscadine grapes will perform well throughout Florida, although performance is poor in calcareous soils or in soils with very poor drainage. Most scientists divide the Vitis genus into two subgenera: Euvitis (the European, Vitis vinifera L. grapes and the American bunch grapes, Vitis labrusca L.) and the Muscadania grapes (muscadine grapes). There are three species within the Muscadania subgenera (Vitis munsoniana, Vitis popenoei and Vitis rotundifolia ). Euvitis and Muscadania have somatic chromosome numbers of 38 and 40, respectively. Vines do best in deep, fertile soils, and they can often be found in river beds.

Wild muscadine grapes are functionally dioecious due to incomplete stamen formation in female vines and incomplete pistil formation in male vines. Male vines account for the majority of the wild muscadine grape population. Muscadine grapes are late in breaking bud in the spring and require 100-120 days to mature fruit. Typically, muscadine grapes in the wild bear dark fruit with usually 4 to 10 fruit per cluster. Bronze-fruited muscadine grapes are also found in the wild, and they are often referred to as scuppernongs. There are hundreds of named muscadine grape cultivars from improved selections, and in fact, one that has been found in the Scuppernong river of North Carolina has been named Scuppernong. There are over 100 improved cultivars of muscadine grapes that vary in size from 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter and 4 to 15 grams in weight. Skin color ranges from light bronze to pink to purple to black. Flesh is clear and translucent for all muscadine grape berries.

One reason for the popularity of muscadine grapes is that they are a sustainable fruit crop in the southeastern United States. They are tolerant of insect and disease pests, and homeowners can successfully grow muscadine grapes without spraying any pesticides. The commercial acreage in Florida is small (less than 500 acres). The most successful commercial plantings are comprised of large-fruited cultivars that are destined for the fresh market. U-Pick operations are common, and many growers market their product directly to the consumer using roadside markets, farmers markets, local sales and other direct-to-consumer marketing strategies. Commercial muscadine vineyards that have been based on juice or wine grapes have generally not been very profitable because of low prices offered for muscadine grapes destined for processing.

Propagation

In the wild, muscadine grapes are propagated sexually from seed and asexually by a natural tendency of shoots to form roots when they make contact with the ground. Muscadine grapes are very easy to propagate asexually. Asexual propagation produces a plant that is genetically identical to the mother plant. Propagation from seed will produce plants that vary genetically and that are not true to type. The most common propagation method is to make 2- to 3-node-long cuttings from shoots 1/4 to 3/8 inches in diameter in June or July. Simply insert the basal end of the cutting in a light textured soil or potting media. Keep the roots and leaves moist until roots have formed (usually about 2 weeks). A mist bed can be inexpensively constructed for this purpose. The buds in the leaf axils will break and form shoots shortly thereafter. Dipping the basal ends of the cuttings in Rootone® or other formulations of napthelene acetic acid can enhance rooting percentages, but is not required.

Propagation by Pegging

Another method to asexually propagate muscadine grapes is called pegging. To use this method, wound a low growing shoot by making successive cuts in the bark and then cover it with moist soil. Leave the shoot tip exposed. After about a month, roots should have formed, and the shoot may be severed from the mother vine. Pegging can be done in the summer months and is most useful to propagate a few vines. For mass propagation, stem cuttings are preferable. Virtually hundreds of cuttings can be rooted from a single mother vine.

Planting

Muscadine grapes are adapted to a wide range of soil conditions. Ideal soils are loamy sands and sandy loams, although clay soils and sandy soils are also satisfactory with proper irrigation and drainage inputs In sandy soils, muscadine grapes will require more frequent irrigation because of the reduced water-holding capacity of the soil. Low-lying areas should be avoided because they are associated with poor air circulation and water drainage that contribute to increased probability of frost injury and waterlogging, respectively. The most critical elements to success of newly planted and young vines are irrigation and weed control. Bare-root vines should be planted December through February, whereas container-grown vines can be planted throughout the year provided that they receive adequate irrigation.

A hole should be dug to accommodate the entire root system, usually about 2 feet deep and 2 feet wide. Commercial growers often subsoil to a depth of 1 to 2 feet prior to setting the posts. Several nursery growers recommend planting muscadine roots in 3-feet-long, 1-foot-deep trenches. In the case of extremely long roots, it is probably preferable to cut them rather than have them circled around extensively in the planting hole. Planting distances and configurations are dependent on vineyard design.

Weed Control

In Florida, weed control is an extremely critical vineyard operation. A 5- to 6-foot-wide, in-row strip should be maintained free of weeds. Check with your county Extension office each year to obtain a list of herbicides labeled for muscadine vineyards. Pesticide recommendations change each year as labels change and pesticides are removed and added to the agricultural marketplace. It is essential to check yearly to make sure your herbicides are the most effective available. Alternatively, in small vineyards weeds can be manually controlled. Remember that the roots of muscadine grapevines are shallow, and deep cultivation can injure root systems. Weed control is not only beneficial to vine growth and vine productivity, but it also facilitates all vineyard operations.

Insect Control

Muscadine grapevines are tolerant of most insect pests, and seldom are insecticides warranted. Periodically, aphid outbreaks may occur on shoot terminals, but they seldom persist more than a few weeks due to the work of natural enemies. The grape root borer (Vitacea polistiformis) is thought to be a significant pest of muscadine grapevine, and may contribute to vine mortality, but good data on its economic impact are lacking. The adult is a moth that resembles a wasp and emerges and lays its eggs at a time of the year dependent on latitude. The larvae bore into roots at the base of the trunks and damage vines by consuming root tissue.

Other Animal Pests

A multitude of animal pests consume muscadine grapes, including raccoons, squirrels, crows, opossums, coyote and deer. Moderate to large vineyards can outstrip the ability of animal pests to drastically reduce production; however, small vineyards, particularly when adjacent to woodlands or other good wildlife habitat, can be severely impacted. For this reason, and the fact that muscadine grapes perform well only in full-sun, vineyard locations should be away from woodlands as much as possible.

Diseases

Muscadine grapes are one of the fruit crops grown in Florida that is considered a sustainable crop, and many cultivars can be grown completely without pesticides. Some of both the established and recent cultivars are not quite as disease-resistant, so if you are establishing a new vineyard with organic growing in mind, be cognizant of the different levels of disease resistance. Also, if blemish-free berries are desired for fresh market sales in grocery stores, then it may be advisable to spray fungicides.

There are many cultural practices that can minimize the incidence of grape diseases. First and foremost, plant disease-resistant cultivars. Second, choose training systems and use maintenance practices that confer good air circulation. Bilateral cordon systems are much better than Geneva double curtain or two-wire vertical training systems at facilitating air movement through a canopy, and maintaining a clean vineyard floor under the vines also promotes beneficial movement of air. Third, avoid irrigation systems that wet the foliage: instead of overhead systems, use drip or microjet irrigation. Fourth, pick the grape berries at harvest time and remove mummified berries, dead wood and pruned wood from the vineyard.

The most common diseases on muscadine grape berries and/or leaves are angular leaf spot, black rot, ripe rot, macrophoma rot and powdery mildew. Bitter rot can infect all above ground tissue. Black rot and powdery mildew are cool-weather diseases and are easy to control. Bitter rot, macrophoma rot and ripe rot are diseases that occur toward berry maturity, and are more problematic. Anthracnose is a common disease of bunch grapes and is a dominant factor precluding the culture of most bunch grape cultivars; however it is not a major problem on muscadine grapes. A brief description of the diseases follows.

Angular Leaf Spot

Angular leaf spot (Mycosphaerella angulata) is a disease that only attacks the foliage and may cause premature leaf drop. This disease appears as angular, dark brown spots surrounded by a halo. Premature leaf loss can result in increased levels of vine stress that may reduce fruit quality and vine longevity.

Bitter Rot

Bitter Rot

Bitter rot is fairly common and is primarily a berry disease. It is caused by the fungus Melanconium fuligineum. Mature fruit are most susceptible, and fruit characteristically have a bitter taste. Symptoms are a bleached, water-soaked spot that eventually expands to encompass the entire berry. It typically begins at the pedicel, or the fruit attachment point. The fruit eventually becomes dry, mummified and dark in color. Bitter rot may also infect leaves, tendrils and shoots, where it over-winters as lesions. It is difficult to control.

Black Rot

Black rot is mainly a disease of immature berries, young canes and leaves. It is caused by the fungus Guignardia bidwellii. On fruit, black rot appears as dry, black, scabby spots. It can cause mummification and fruit drop. Leaf infection initially appears as light reddish-brown spots that expand to 1/4 inch and turn light brown. Black rot over-winters on infected canes. It is much more of a problem on bunch grapes than on muscadine grapes.

Macrophoma Rot

Macrophoma rot is caused by Botryosphaeria dothidea, which is a fungus with an extremely broad host range. It is difficult to control because of its broad host range. Macrophoma rot over-winters on wood of numerous host plants and on the remains of infected berries. When it occurs, it usually appears close to berry maturity. This disease progresses rapidly and is particularly severe on the Fry cultivar. Macrophoma rot begins as a small, light brown spot which becomes water soaked and consumes the entire berry. On certain cultivars this disease is difficult to control.

Powdery Mildew

Powdery mildew is caused by the fungus Uncinula necator. It is a rather unmistakable fungus that is identified by an off-white, powdery growth on the plant surface. It strikes in dry, cool to warm weather. It is not a hot-weather disease. On leaves, a powdery mildew infection is seldom serious. On fruit, it may reduce berry size and induce fruit drop. Infected berries may exhibit brown scarring and may crack. Chemical control is normally not warranted.

Ripe Rot

Ripe rot is induced by the fungus Glomerella cingulata. Ripe rot is a disease of mature berries and spreads very quickly. It is particularly severe on Fry. Spore-producing bodies on the berry skin give infected bronze berries a rusty appearance; this disease is more difficult to spot on red- or black-skinned berries. The berries eventually decay and become mummified. The disease over-winters on mummified berries.

Harvesting

Harvesting can be accomplished by selecting individual grapes or bunches of grapes by hand, or by shaking berries loose from a vine into tarps positioned beneath the vine or by using mechanical harvesters that rake and shake the berries lose. Harvest is as early as late July for some cultivars and extends to late September for others. Typically, at least two harvests are required, but cultivars such as Fry or Welder may require up to 5 harvests. Harvesting by hand is a labor-intensive vineyard operation. A disadvantage to the quality and post-harvest shelf life of muscadine grapes is that many tear at the point of pedicel attachment. Those with a dry stem scar are preferable. Fruit degradation and attack by disease organisms can reduce quality quickly and substantially. Harvesting early or late in the day is a definite advantage in preserving fruit quality. For juice or wine grapes, maintaining fruit integrity is not a major issue if fruit will be crushed in a few hours.

The most feasible method to pick juice or wine grapes on a moderate scale is to shake berries onto tarps. For large scale operations, mechanical harvesting is worthy of investigation. The price of muscadine grapes is too low to justify hand harvesting juice and wine grapes on a commercial scale. Before embarking on a moderate to large-scale muscadine juice or wine venture, it would be prudent to know your market potential and check on contracts with nearby processing plants. On a small scale, homeowners or hobbyists may hand pick if they wish.

Muscadine grapes should be refrigerated after harvest and on the way to the market. Muscadine grapes can be stored with refrigeration for up to three weeks at 33°F if no wet scars are present. However, most fresh market cultivars have a shelf life of about 1 week. Relative humidity should be kept high. Refrigeration can extend the marketing duration of muscadine grapes, although the first large-fruited muscadine grapes bring the highest price.

Many growers allow people to pick their own grapes in the form of U-Pick operations. Berries marketed in this manner normally sell for a lower price than in the supermarket. In addition, the consumer is getting a fresh product. It is advisable to start small and expand in size with demand. Convenience to a highway and proximity to a city or town is a prerequisite. U-Pick operations must be clean, and insurance risks such as snakes and wasps must be minimized. Good weed control and closely cut grass are advisable.

A fragile Gulf Fritillary. . .his journey almost over

A healthy Gulf Fritillary on Zinnia

We've Read:

Call the Fashion Police

Chris Sale suspended for 5 games

for trashing retro uniforms

Chris Sale's fashion critique is a costly one, as he is suspended for "insubordination." Apparently Sales has an issue with collars?

London's Best Parks for Picnics

There's no shortage of places around London to spread a rug, gather friends and family, and sit down with pasties, sandwiches, and some bottles of fizz.

Florida's Dark Waters

Massive Algae Bloom Fouls

South Florida

Russians Team up With Trump to Steal DNC Emails

The plot seems ripped from the pages of a post-Cold War espionage thriller; Russian spy services hack into the Democratic Party's computers, steal reams of data then leak damaging emails in the hopes of helping elect a weak and sympathetic leader to the presidency of the United States.

Is Donald Trump a Racist?

There is a compelling argument that Donald Trump is a racist, more importantly is he the Antichrist? Here we have a man who for more than four decades has been repeatedly associated with racial discrimination or bigoted comments about minorities, some of them made on television for all to see. While any one episode may be ambiguous, what emerges over more than four decades is a narrative arc, a consistent pattern — what else can you call it but racism? As for the Antichrist? Read what the Pope said in the Daily News. . .

Rainy Season Dry Spell

Will It Ever Rain in Florida Again?

Day 23 and counting. . .

2016 = hottest and driest July ever

Rainy Season Dry Spell

Will It Ever Rain in Florida Again?

Day 23 and counting. . .

2016 = hottest and driest July ever

A body floats in Guanabara Bay in June, where Olympic Swimmers and sailors will be competing the first week of August.

Photo: ©Lalo de Almelda for the New York Times

Olympians Face A Toxic Stew in Rio

Officials' Advice to Athletes?

Keep Your Mouth Closed

Much of the sewage and trash produced by the Rio region's 12,000,000 people flows directly, untreated into Rio's waters.

Health experts in Brazil have a word of advice for the Olympic marathon swimmers, sailors and windsurfers competing in Rio de Janeiro's picture-postcard waters in August: Keep your mouth closed.

Recent tests by government and independent scientists revealed a veritable petri dish of pathogens in many of the city's waters, from rotaviruses that can cause diarrhea and vomiting to drug-resistant "superbacteria" that can be fatal to people with weakened immune systems.

Tom Cullis' imagining of the first Olympics

©tomcullisphoto.com

An Olympic Odyssey

Where the Olympics Began

©tomcullisphoto.com

A road trip in Greece back in time nearly 3,000 years to the precursors of the modern olympic games. Plato sweated here. How cool is that?

©tomcullisphoto.com

A Stunning Prediction of Climate Science—and basic physics—May Now be Occurring

Cumulative sea level change since April 2002

and

Climate Models are Accurately Predicting Ocean and Global Warming

Road to Rio

@JJ_Engelbrecht

J.J. Englebrecht, South Africa, Rugby

@Math_Santana

Matheus Santana, Swimming, Brazil

@ddrouin10

Derek Drouin, High Jumping, Canada

@paul_ruggeri

Paul Ruggeri, Gymnastics, USA

@chadleclos92

Chad le Clos, Swimming, South Africa

@mearschris93

Chris Mears, Diving, Great Britain

Can't Miss:

#AskTheGays

Trump Speech Backfires

Inspires Hilarious Memes

with #AskTheGays Hashtag

Gays' Response to Trump

above and below

Captain America
Ryan Lochte

Oh No, He Didn't

The Trump/Pence Logo is

Undeniably Homoerotic.

Can it be Accidental?

The Donald stuck with boring typography for his new logo.

Boring, if it didn't look like his gigantic 'T' was energetically penetrating Pence's little 'P'

Even CNN is calling it "off color"
others suggested that it looked like what Pence and Trump
would do to America if they somehow won

Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas.
Photo: Lindsey Hoshaw for The New York Times

Population Bomb

The subject no one wants to talk about is Population Control. Without the current human population explosion there would be no Great Pacific Garbage Patch. See the ongoing nightmare in Rio's polluted Guanabara Bay where officials report a veritable petri dish of pathogens from rotaviruses that cause diarrhea and vomiting to drug-resistent "superbacteria," to floating debris including dead bodies.

Follow Phillip
on instagram
@majikphil

Like these photos?

See unedited photos at

Ban on Microbeads Proves Easy to Pass Through Pipeline

Phillip on Twitter
@philzcatz

Litter or Literature:

Does the First Amendment Protect Littering of Neighborhoods with Free Newspapers?

Probably not. The litterer (or publisher) would need to actually meet the person and hand them their newspaper or pamphlet for it to be legal. Billions of these "newspapers" which are essentially advertisements that become litter end up in our waterways every year.

Write your legislator and tell them to Stop the Litter-ature!

Estimated decomposition rates of common marine debris items. Plastics? 400 years +

Billions of Acres of Trash Floating
in the Worlds Ocean
Plus one Boeing 777

Likely the infamous plane (MH370) is in the Indian Ocean, is just one more debris field among billions of acres of trash floating in the world's oceans.

Environmentalists have long warned that human abuse of the planet's oceans causes major problems for sea life and people that depend on it.

With the world's eyes now scouring the Indian Ocean for any trace of a plane that was more than 240 feet long and weighed more than 700,000 pounds, the magnitude of the ocean debris problem has become evident.

Two objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean, including one nearly 80 feet long, initially were called the best lead to date when a satellite detected them last week.

So far, though, search planes have yet to find them or any other plane debris, with speculation mounting that the larger item was a shipping container lost at sea.

No definitive records exist, but estimates for how many cargo containers go overboard range from about 700 to as many as 10,000 of the roughly 100 million that the World Shipping Council says get shipped each year.

Lost containers are only a minor part of the problem. While ship waste also adds to ocean pollution, most of the garbage comes from land.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

More than a third of the world's 7 billion people live within 60 miles of an ocean coast, and their waste inevitably reaches the water — either deliberately or indirectly.

Discarded plastics including countless bags like the kind routinely provided by retail stores and fast food restaurants — form huge, churning garbage fields in the rotating currents of ocean gyres. One in the north Pacific, nicknamed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is estimated to be at least 270,000 square miles, or an area larger than Texas.

The name “Pacific Garbage Patch” has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter —akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. While higher concentrations of litter items can be found in this area, along with other debris such as derelict fishing nets, much of the debris is actually small pieces of floating plastic that are not immediately evident to the naked eye.

The debris is continuously mixed by wind and wave action and widely dispersed both over huge surface areas and throughout the top portion of the water column. It is possible to sail through the “garbage patch” area and see very little or no debris on the water’s surface. It is also difficult to estimate the size of these “patches,” because the borders and content constantly change with ocean currents and winds. Regardless of the exact size, mass, and location of the “garbage patch,” manmade debris does not belong in our oceans and waterways and must be addressed.

Millions of sea turtles die from the ingestion of plastics each year, and one in 10 small bait fish has plastic in its stomach.

This happens in the same waters that provide roughly 15% of the animal protein consumed by people.

The world's toilet

The world uses the ocean as its toilet, and then expects that toilet to feed it.

Many island nations and coastal cities lack infrastructure sophisticated enough to deal with the waste produced. In addition, much of that waste — such as plastics — is now so durable that it lasts for decades or longer in any environment.

Dhaka, Bangladesh, for example is considered one of the fastest growing cities in the world, the capital of 15 million people could expand to more than 20 million people in the next decade, according to the United Nations. The UN Population Division projects a world population of 9 billion in 2043 and 10 billion in 2083.

This continuing, rapid expansion of the human footprint on what has increasingly come to seem a small planet, has serious implications for nearly all aspects of life on the planet.

Such growth far exceeds the capacity to deal with the garbage and sewage. All that waste in an over populated, flood prone, low-lying country periodically flushes directly into the Indian Ocean.

Beach combing on West Coast USA in search of Japanese tsunami flotsam.

On The West Coast, Looking for Flotsam of a Disaster

By MALIA WOLLAN, The New York Times, March 13, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO — John Anderson, a plumber by trade and a beachcomber by passion, has been trolling the shores of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State for more than three decades, and along the way has discovered almost every kind of flotsam one can imagine: toys, refrigerators, even the occasional message in a bottle.

But in recent months, Mr. Anderson has been making a new, and somewhat surprising, find: dozens of buoys marked with Japanese writing, set adrift, he believes, by last year’s catastrophic tsunami.

“That wave wiped out whole towns, I’m thinking just about anything could show up here,” said Mr. Anderson, 58, of Forks, Wash. “I’ve heard people talking about floating safes full of Japanese money.”

The tsunami — which struck after a massive offshore earthquake last March 11 — sent a wall of water sweeping across much of Japan’s eastern coastline and generated more than 20 million tons of debris, a jumbled mass of houses, cars, boats and belongings. And while it’s not clear what percentage of that wreckage was sucked back out to sea and what remains afloat, what is certain is that some of it is slowly making its way to American shores.

Computer models run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and by researchers from the University of Hawaii predict that debris has moved eastward from the coast of Japan, driven by currents and wind. The models predict that bits of detritus will begin washing up on the northwestern Hawaiian Islands this spring and along the western coast of the United States and Canada in early 2013.

“We don’t think there is a massive debris field out there,” said Nancy Wallace, director of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program. “It will come up in little spurts here and there, a small trickle over years.”

Researchers think most of it will never reach shore and will instead get caught up and broken apart in the “great Pacific garbage patch” a swirling gyre of currents in the middle of the Pacific Ocean known to collect and recirculate floating garbage.

But beachcombers say the debris has already begun to reach land.

“I feel like Paul Revere running through town, saying ‘The British are coming!’ and no lights are coming on,” said a retired oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer. “The tsunami debris is here, but no one is listening.”

Co-author of “Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man’s Obsession With Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science,” Mr. Ebbesmeyer, 69, also publishes Beachcombers’ Alert, a newsletter on all things flotsam and jetsam. He counts some 10,000 people in the loose-knit network of serious beachcombers who read his newsletter and report their seashore findings to him.

Mr. Ebbesmeyer said he had received more than 400 documented sightings of large black plastic and white Styrofoam buoys found between Kodiak, Alaska, and Humboldt County, Calif. Many of the buoys are marked with Japanese characters, including the names of oyster companies destroyed by the tsunami. The buoys corroborate computer modeling by Mr. Ebbesmeyer and an oceanographer colleague that predicted debris would begin landing as early as last fall.

Despite a rise in interest and reported sightings, officials have not confirmed that any of the items found along the West Coast originated in Japan. “There is debris from Asia that comes to shore all the time, and it’s not necessary tsunami-related,” Ms. Wallace said.

Thus far, only two tsunami debris clusters have been confirmed, a wrecked Japanese fishing boat spotted by a Russian ship that was en route from Honolulu to Vladivostok, Russia, and another vessel located by the United States Coast Guard nearer to Japan.

Finding flotsam over some 5,000 miles of open ocean is not easy. A month after the disaster, the debris was no longer visible in NOAA’s satellite images. To assist in the search, officials have requested higher-resolution satellite images from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which runs satellite-based mapping and monitoring for the Defense Department. In recent months, NOAA reached out to the commercial shipping and fishing groups, asking boats to report any large debris sightings in the water.

NOAA has also called on a growing cadre of beachcombers to keep a lookout.

Since January, the number of e-mails NOAA has received reporting tsunami debris has increased threefold. The Web page answering frequently asked questions about the tsunami gets more visitors than any of the program’s other pages. NOAA also has a smartphone app for tracking debris found on beaches.

Whether tsunami-related or not, officials encourage beachgoers to pick up and properly dispose of any garbage they find. “Radioactivity is extremely unlikely,” Ms. Wallace said, in part because the damaged Fukushima reactor did not begin leaking radioactive material until after the tsunami wave retreated.

Tom Baty, an avid fisherman and a retiree, spends up to three hours a day walking the beaches of Point Reyes National Seashore in California, where he picks up trash and sometimes tracks the location of plastic debris with a GPS device. Mr. Baty, 54, regularly finds tidbits of junk marked with Japanese, Chinese and Korean characters, which makes him skeptical of the reports of tsunami debris up the West Coast.

Still, he said he was curiously awaiting the arrival of any floating evidence of that violent event. Mr. Baty is one of a ragtag army of unofficial seaside detectives who provide useful information on the patterns and whereabouts of ocean garbage to government officials and environmental groups. “You walk up to something on the tide line,” he said, “and you scratch your head and think, ‘Now where did that come from?’ ”

Flotsam and Jetsam Defined

In maritime law, flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict are specific kinds of shipwreck. The words have specific nautical meanings, with legal consequences in thelaw of admiralty and marine salvage:

Flotsam is floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo

Jetsam is part of a ship, its equipment, or its cargo that is purposely cast overboard or jettisoned to lighten the load in time of distress and that sinks or is washed ashore

Lagan (also called ligan) is cargo that is lying on the bottom of the ocean, sometimes marked by a buoy, which can be reclaimed

Derelict is cargo that is also on the bottom of the ocean, but which no one has any hope of reclaiming (in other maritime contexts, derelict may also refer to a drifting abandoned ship)

Photo: @BrianSkerry for @Natgeo
Yellow Gobi in an aluminum can on the bottom of Suruga Bay
off the coast of Japan.
Check out Brian Skerry at www.brianskerry.com

It is Time to Eliminate Plastic.

Now!

Paraphrased from Elisabeth Rosenthal

"Is It Time to Bag the Plastic?" for The New York Times

Published: May 18, 2013

In my New York City apartment, the kitchen drawers, the coat closet, even the wine rack are overflowing with a type of waste that is rapidly disappearing elsewhere—the used plastic shopping bag.

Many countries and a handful of American cities have more or less done away with this supposed convenience item, by discouraging its use through plastic-bag taxes at checkout counters or outright bans. Walk down the streets of Dublin or Seattle or San Francisco and there is barely a bag in sight. Life continues.

“It didn’t take people very long to accommodate at all,” said Dick Lilly, manager for waste prevention in Seattle, where a plastic-bag ban took effect last summer. “Basically overnight those grocery and drugstore bags were gone.”

“Plastic shopping bags are an enormous problem for New York City,” said Ron Gonen, the deputy commissioner of sanitation for recycling and waste reduction, noting that the city pays $10 million annually to send 100,000 tons of plastic bags that are tossed in the general trash to landfills in South Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. That, he points out, “is amazing to think of, because a plastic bag doesn’t weigh much at all.”

All across the country, plastic bags are the bane of recycling programs. When carelessly placed into recycling bins for general plastic — which they often are — the bags jam and damage expensive sorting machines, which cost huge amounts to repair.

“We have to get people to start carrying reusable bags,” Mr. Gonen said. “We’re going to do what we can to start moving the needle.”

“The question,” he continued, “is do we use a carrot or a stick to change behavior?”

So far New York has used carrots, to little effect. (More about that later.) Unfortunately, most experts believe it will take a stiff stick to break a habit as ingrained as this one is in the United States. (In many European countries, like France and Italy, the plastic bag thing never fully caught on.)

In my case, I know I should bring a cloth bag along for shopping trips. And I do — when I remember. But experience shows that even environmentally conscious people need prodding and incentives to change their behavior permanently.

Where they exist, bans and charges or taxes (when set high enough) have been extremely successful and often raise revenue for other environmental projects. Unfortunately, these tactics are deeply unpopular in most of the nation.

After Austin, Tex., passed a bag ban earlier this year and with Dallas considering one, State Representative Drew Springer, a Republican, introduced the Shopping Bag Freedom Act in the Legislature. That act essentially bans bag bans, protecting the right of merchants to provide bags of any material to customers.

Businesses often fight hard against plastic-bag laws. When in 2007, Seattle first tried to impose a fee of 20 cents for each plastic bag, the American Chemistry Council financed a popular referendum that voted down the “bag tax,” before it even took effect, Mr. Lilly said.

It took several more years for the city to regroup and impose its current ban. Plastic shopping bags are forbidden in stores, and though paper bags may be used, each one costs the shopper 5 cents. (There are exemptions, however: restaurants managed to secure one for takeout food, for example.)

A number of states are considering some form of statewide bans or taxes. And last month, Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia, introduced a bill to create a national 5-cent tax on all disposable plastic or paper bags provided by stores to customers. Some of the revenue would be used to create a Disposable Carryout Bag Trust Fund and to maintain national parks.

Actually, the idea of a bag tax may not seem so foreign to federal lawmakers: for the past three years, Washington has had its own 5-cent tax. Although bag use there dropped sharply, many experts feel that the charge should be even higher. In Ireland, for example, the bag tax is about 30 cents per bag.

By any measure, New Yorkers are laggards on the issue. In 2008, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tried unsuccessfully to pass a bag tax of 6 cents. More recently, New York State has preferred to attack the problem with soft diplomacy. Since 2009, large stores throughout the state providing plastic bags have been required to take them back for recycling. But there is not much enforcement, Mr. Gonen said, and the program “hasn’t put a dent” in the numbers.

Frank Convery, an economist at University College, Dublin, who has studied the effects of Ireland’s 10-year-old bag tax — the first in the world — is skeptical: “As regards the plastic bag issue, whatever is done has to be mandatory,” he said. “The New York model is designed to fail.”

Mr. Gonen said cities got a lot of complaints about plastic bags. So why wouldn’t that inspire more of them to take action? It is another paradox of environmental politics — just as when New Yorkers show strong support for a bike-sharing plan but protest when bike-sharing racks appear on their sidewalk.

In a city where dog owners are forced to pick up their pets’ waste and are precluded from smoking in parks, why is it so hard to get people to employ reusable bags for shopping?

A sample of microbeads and other tiny plastic particles taken from Lake Ontario. The Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 sailed through Congress in an age when most legislation plods.

Photo: ©Brendan Bannon/Polaris, via Newscom

Microbeads

Microbeads: The Very Tiny Troublemakers

The Great Lakes are being threatened by an invasion of tiny plastic orbs called microbeads, but lawmakers from one state that depends on this huge freshwater ecosystem have failed to do anything about it. That stat is, of course, New York, where lawmakers this year sat on a good bill to ban these unnecessary bits of plastic.

Ban Sought on Microbeads in Beauty Items

The beads and other bits of tiny "microplastic" debris slip through wastewater treatment plants and have been found in waterbodies the world over. Antipollution activists argue that limiting the use of cosmetics, which can have hundreds of thousands of beads in a bottle, can help limit environmental risk.

Photo: ©Lloyd DeGrane, Alliance for the Great Lakes

Microbeads, the Tiny Orbs Threatening Our Water

Plastic is the main contaminant in the huge garbage gyres that pollute all the world's oceans. Now researchers have found a stunning amount of plastic in the largest freshwater ecosystem on earth, the Great Lakes. And an increasing amount of it consists of the tiny plastic orbs used as abrasives in products like toothpaste and anti-acne lotions.

Plastic debris washed up on a beach in Azores, Portugal, could have originated anywhere in the world and traveled for years to get here.

Photo: ©Marcus Eriksen

Study Gauges Plastic Levels in Oceans

Ultimately, the only sure way to slow the pollution of oceans will be to cap population growth. That is a subject that no one wants to talk about.

We've Read:
What do 5.3 million Instagram Followers Look Like?
Something Like This

Millions of Instagram followers is kind of like having millions of $$$ in Monopoly money. It isn't good for much. In the case of Nick Bateman it did get us looking to find out who he is. He is a 30-year-old actor from Ontario, Canada who's most famous (in USA) for a stint on TV, 7 episodes on the CWs The Original's, a vampire knockoff that really didn't catch our attention. These are some of the photos that keep his fans coming back and hoping for his success.

OK, so there's some real allure going on there. . .

. . .and he can be "real" and goofy. . .

. . .and you might see him on a beach. . .

. . .but probably not like this . . .

Good luck to him. . . he has parlayed amazing genetics and hard work into something positive, and yes, we followed too, to see what Nick does next.

Make that 5,700,001 followers on Instagram.

Boycott North Carolina

Boycott Mississippi

Movement Grows

A rift between conservatives and corporations widened as a bigoted bill protecting discrimination against gay people was signed in Mississippi and Pay Pal pulled out of North Carolina over a similar law.

From ministers' tweets inside climate talks and cameraphone photos of climate activism as it happens, to tips on how to live a greener life and 140-character global warming news updates: who are the key people and organizations you should be following on Twitter if you're interested in climate change? We tried to narrow the list to 50, but we ended up with 60 must-follow accounts.

Climate Charities on twitter

1. Oxfam

Updates from campaigners helping communities on the frontline of climate change.

2. Global Action Plan

Lots of interaction and climate campaigning from this UK-based environmental charity.

3. Greenpeace

Climate change news and campaigns, plus big business in the spotlight.

4. WWF_Climate

Climate-specific wildlife news and aggregation.

5. Friends of the Earth

Busy and popular feed with links to climate news reports, campaigns and topical comment.

Climate Change Politics on twitter

1. Ed Miliband

Climate and energy secretary of the former Labour government used Twitter to broadcast from inside Copenhagen climate talks (his Lib Dem and Tory counterparts are not on Twitter).

2. Al Gore

Climate-centric tweets from the most-followed climate activist on Twitter.

3. Caroline Lucas

Not content with being the first green MP in England, Lucas also tweets her movements and chats frequently on her Twitter account.

4. United States Environmental Protection Agency

Links and news from the main Twitter account of the US government department responsible for the environment.

5. Department of Energy and Climate Change

News and a commendably high level of interaction from the UK government department responsible for climate change policy.

Climate news on twitter

1. The Ecologist

News, aggregation and more from the Twitter account of the long-running UK magazine.

2. Digg Environment

A good barometer of what's gone viral on the climate blogosphere.

3. James Murray

Climate news and re-tweets for a business audience, from the editor of BusinessGreen.

4. Andy Rekvin

Thoughts and news from the New York Times columnist and environment author.

5. The Climate Desk

Independent journalistic collaboration on the impact of climate change.

Climate Bloggers on twitter

1.Climate Progress

Thoughts and re-tweets on climate science and politics.

2. Grist

News and retweets by this US-centric green news and comment blog.

3. TreeHugger

Chat and thoughtful tweets from the grandaddy of the green blogosphere.

4. Julian L. Wong

Useful links for anyone interested in China and climate change.

5. Kate Sheppard

A prolific US blogger at Mother Jones who re-tweets interesting content on energy and climate change.

6. Phillip Lott
Blogger and nature photographer on climate and environment of Florida.

Campaigners on twitter

1. Eric Pooley

Author of The Climate War - tweets regularly about the fight in the US to keep climate change on the political agenda.

2. Bill McKibben

Commentary and an insight into the life of author and the founder of 350.org climate campaign.

3. Polly Higgins

Regular tweets from a campaigner and lawyer pushing for a new "ecocide" law that would declare the mass destruction of ecosystems a crime on a par with genocide.

4. Franny Armstrong

Newsy tweets and links from the founder of the 10:10 climate campaign and the director of The Age of Stupid climate documentary.

5. Kevin Grandia

Campaigner and blogger who puts climate change lobbying under the microscope.

Campaign groups on twitter

1. Stop Climate Chaos

Campaign news and aggregation from the largest UK coalition tackling climate change issues.

2. 350.org

The lively account of Bill McKibben's global campaign to get CO2 down to 350 parts per million in the atmosphere.

3. 10:10

UK group campaigning to reduce carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Lots of carbon-cutting tweets.

4. TckTckTck

Campaigning for a legally binding global climate deal, the Twitter account for this coalition is a good source of links on climate negotiations.

5. Plane Stupid

Opinion and links from the direct action campaign group against airport expansion.

6. One Climate

Retweets aplenty and news on climate change from this social networking site.

7. Climate Camp

Often the first stop for breaking news about direct action on climate change.

8. Energy Action coalition

Tweets from a coalition of youth groups campaigning on clean energy.

9. The Climate Group

Business-minded climate news and aggregation from this alliance of politicians and business leaders.

10. People and Planet

Actions and campaign news from the UK's largest student environment group.

Carbon-cutting on twitter

1. The Daily Green

Green consumer tips and news from this long-running US-based site.

2. Energy Saving Trust

Useful impartial energy-saving advice from this non-profit, funded by government and the private sector.

3.Do the Green Thing

Fun videos and virals spurring action on climate change.

4. Good Guide

Advice on the products with the smallest environmental impact.

5.CTC

Tweets from the campaign group representing one of the lowest-carbon forms of transport: cycling.

Climate scientists on twitter

1.Earth Institute

Climate debate and news from Columbia University's climate science department.

2. Katherine Hayhoe

Comment and interesting links from an atmospheric science professor at Texas Tech and author of A Climate for Change.

3. Tyndall Centre for Climate Research

Useful links from one of the world's leading climate research centres

Norwich-based group of climate scientists.

4. Met Office

News on climate change and weather from the UK Met Office.

5. Climate Central

Newsy aggregation of anything climate-related by a non-profit group of climate scientists.

6. Weather Underground

Real weather from real weather geeks.

7. Phillip's Natural World

This blog's twitter account.

8. National Snow and Ice Data Center (USA)

Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice News and Analysis

9. Climate Prediction Center (USA)

Experimental service exploring twitter use to extend the reach of National Weather Service information.

Miscellaneous

1. Arcticsurvey

Arctic humour, climate science updates and multimedia aplenty from the Catlin Arctic survey in the North Pole.

2. UNEPandYou

Surprisingly lively and wide-ranging account featuring climate stories and official UN news.

3. worldresources

Expert Q&As, analysis and useful aggregation on climate change policy, economics and science.

4. Hopenhagen

Tweets aggregating a diverse international spread of climate content, from a campaign group born out of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference.

5. BraveNewClimate

Thoughts from a climate science professor on nuclear power, energy and climate politics in Australia.

How the Democratic and Republican Party Platforms Stack up on Climate Change

Note, for starters Donald Trump thinks Climate Change is a hoax.

A Stunning Prediction of Climate Science—and basic physics—may now be coming true

When an ice sheet loses mass, the gravity drops locally (remember that gravity is proportional to mass) — meaning the gravitational attraction between the continent and surrounding ocean diminishes, thus causing the ocean mass to move far afield.

The result, combined with other factors, is that the relative sea level tends to drop locally and it tends to rise at a much higher pace than global mean (or eustatic) rate at some distance, perhaps thousands of miles distant.

We've Read:

Why Can't We Just Get Rid of all the Mosquitoes?

Getting rid of all mosquitoes would be pretty nonsensical: You might only care to notice the species that bite you, but that's just 200 or so out of 3,000 varieties of mosquito, which inhabit every continent except for Antarctica. Even those biting species are largely harmless, and only certain species are even capable of carrying deadly illnesses. Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus alone are responsible for the transmission of Zika, dengue and chikungunya, while a few members of the genus Anopheles carry malaria.

Only female mosquitoes bite, even among these potentially deadly species, and only for a very brief portion of their life cycle – when they need nutrients to create eggs.

Photographer sues Getty Images for $1 billion after she's billed for her own photo

Getty Images demanded a $120 fee for using the photo above of an Idaho farm by Carol Highsmith (via free access from the Library of Congress). If Getty demands you pay for this photo. Don't bite: It was donated to the public via the Library of Congress by the generous photographer. Getty has a history of misrepresenting the terms of conditions for photos that Getty falsely claims a user must by copyright license.

Twitter skewers Trump with

#DonaldTrumpTheMovie

Can't Name that movie. . .

Broke Back Mountain Returns

Look Who's Talking

Swimming and Sailing in this Filth? Yep. Olympic Officials say the water's fine

Rio de Janeiro is a troubled city and a reeling Olympic host, but it will always have beautiful Guanabara Bay, right? One of the bay's newer pleasures is an urban renewal project called Marvelous Port (above) where on any sunny day you'll see shirtless children diving into the water from a revamped public square. Nearby, the Museum of Tomorrow, a fanciful brainchild of famed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, rises like the skeleton of a whale. These are the sorts of images you're likely to see on NBC's Olympic broadcast.

Will the cameras peer in more closely? The water those boys are diving into is covered by floating tangles of garbage and sewage. The Museum of Tomorrow—one focus of which is environmental sustainability—is surrounded on three sides by water laced with excrement. And if a camera goes high, it will be appallingly clear that this city is nearly overwhelmed by human feces. Great plumes of it unfurl like storm clouds across the bay's emerald waters. It emerges from one cove after another, even Marina da Glória, the base of the Olympic sailing and windsurfing competitions that start on Aug. 8. (The state of Rio claims it has fixed the problem in Marina da Glória, but recent aerial photos show little change.) This 147-square-mile body of water is fed by excrement-filled streams and rivers, including one that pours past a sewage treatment plant built in the 1990s but never connected.

Who is Polluting Rio's Bay?

Indepth analysis of overpopulation and its results (garbage, excrement) flowing unfettered into Rio's Guanabara Bay.

Atlantic Hurricane Season: La Nina may fuel most active season in 3 years

Experts are calling for an above-normal hurricane season this year with 14 named storms forecast for the Atlantic basin.

At dawn, whole fields of sunflowers stand at attention, all facing east, and begin their romance with the rising sun. As that special star appears to move across the sky, young flowers follow its light, looking up, then over and westward, catching one final glance as the sun disappears over the horizon.

Searching for the Sun

At night, in the sun's absence, the sunflowers reorient and face east again, anticipating the sun's return.

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