The Bed Bug Registry offers people the opportunity to report on bed bug sitings in hotels and apartments. The problem here is that reports can be made anonymously, so it’s really more of an entertainment site. It could be reeking with fake reports. I could make one for the Hoffman’s house across the street.
I reported recently about the growing bedbug problem in Ohio. According to the map, Columbus is a hotbed, which is probably no surprise, along with Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Toledo’s comments (which might be true):
1. up all night killing them. 2 beds in the room, only found them in one, but dozens. room 110. a fairly clean motel. (Aug. 2010)
2. following day awoke with bites over my back and upper arms. Visited my physician tuesday 7/14 who confirmed. Haven’t found anything in my home…yet…however currently being cautious. stayed in room 213. (2009)
3. I just found one bedbug crawling on me and I smashed it. I don’t see more, but I suspect that there are more. (2008)
Posted in Animal World.
By Green
– August 29, 2010
It’s ice-free in the north again, according to the Jeff Masters weather blog. He has details and links here:
The Northwest Passage–the legendary shipping route through ice-choked Canadian waters at the top of the world–melted free of ice last week, and is now open for navigation, according to satellite mosaics available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and The University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. This summer marks the fourth consecutive year–and fourth time in recorded history–that the fabled passage has opened for navigation.
Over the past four days, warm temperatures and southerly winds over Siberia have also led to intermittent opening of the Northeast Passage, the shipping route along the north coast of Russia through the Arctic Ocean. It is now possible to completely circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean in ice-free waters, and this will probably be the case for at least a month. This year marks the third consecutive year–and the third time in recorded history–that both the Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage have melted free, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The Northeast Passage opened for the first time in recorded history in 2005, and the Northwest Passage in 2007. It now appears that the opening of one or both of these northern passages is the new norm, and business interests are taking note–commercial shipping in the Arctic is on the increase, and there is increasing interest in oil drilling. The great polar explorers of past centuries would be astounded at how the Arctic has changed in the 21st century.
Posted in Enviro.
By Green
– August 28, 2010
A fire tornado? After three months of drought in the Sao Paulo state of Brazil, a fire tornado ripped through:
Fire tornados, also known as fire whirls or fire devils, are rare and depend on certain air temperatures and currents to create a vertical, rotating column of air.
In 1923, a fire tornado ignited by the Great Kanto earthquake in Tokyo grew to the size of a large city and killed 38,000 people in 15 minutes.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 28, 2010
Not only is a new Canadian car electric, but it also has a plant-based body:
The four-seat car, called the Kestrel, has an outer shell of a hemp-based composite, which developers say is lighter than glass fibre and more resilient than steel.
Top speed of 56 mph and a 100-miles range on a single charge. Excellent for many situations. I enjoy watching kestrels on utility wires alongside the road. In a few years I’ll see them on the road.
Posted in Enviro.
By Green
– August 28, 2010
What I learned today: Noah took dinosaurs onto the ark. I was reading about the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky where founder Ken Ham once stated proudly, “We are taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!”
The book I was reading, written by Charles Pierce, lists three premises of what’s befallen America:
1. Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings or otherwise moves units.
2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.
3. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.
Forget science and knowledge; the gut wins out.
Posted in Gone crazy.
By Green
– August 28, 2010
Brett Bovee makes a gain in the third quarter against Jonesville.
With 27 seconds remaining in the game, Jonesville scored to beat Morenci in the season opener, 37-30.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 27, 2010
How about James Watt suffering from faulty memory? Watt stated in a recent Washington Post article how the Reagan administration wanted solar, wind, conservation, etc. Andrew Leonard says it was quite the opposite:
The Reagan administration did not want solar, did not want conservation, and did not want wind. Reagan cut the Energy Department’s budget for conservation and alternative fuels by half. Photovoltaic spending dropped by two-thirds. Tax breaks for solar and wind turbine deployment were eliminated. And, in a symbolic tour de force, in 1986, the Reagan administration removed the solar panels that Jimmy Carter had installed on the roof of the White House.
Posted in Enviro.
By Green
– August 27, 2010
Brian McDermott has some criticism about the news media coverage of the Moslem community center in NYC. He says it’s too easy to push myths and catch phrases. I agree with him and it makes me feel like I’m in the wrong business:
Speaking to Michael Calderone at Yahoo News, AP New York assistant chief Chad Roedemeier said that the slug on the story has always been “Ground Zero mosque,” and that phrase has often appeared in headlines. But he said the wire service has always said the mosque was “near” ground zero in stories.
That distinction isn’t good enough in an age of six-word iPhone headlines, warp speed online skimming, and well-financed PR and political hucksters trying to smoke-bomb plain languge. Whether it’s birthers, Breitbart, or BP, there will always be cynical and reductive operators trying to exploit the uninformed in the age of too much information. The question is why responsible news media doesn’t fight as aggressively to reframe stories with the facts.
Our brains, like search engines, gauge information on a hierarchy, prioritizing headlines and the active nouns and verbs they employ. Copy further down in the story or watery qualifiers like “near” or “so-called” don’t stick in our brains as much, nor do they help a website climb the SEO ladder.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 27, 2010
Rev. Sun Myung Moon wants to buy the Washington Times back from his son:
Moon wants to buy the Times back from his son Preston Moon, who has threatened to shut down the foundering broadsheet altogether, said Charles Sutherland, the Times’s former director of development and promotions, who was laid off in May.
Times sources said Moon, who is 90, has tapped Dong Moon Joo, the former Times chairman who was ousted last year by Preston Moon, to purchase and run the paper. Messages left at Joo’s home and with his attorney were not returned Tuesday.
In Colorado, the University of Colorado may shut down its journalism department and reopen it as a school of information:
More than 30 schools of information, existing under various names, have been created at universities across the country, including the University of California’s Berkeley campus, Rutgers, the University of Indiana in Bloomington, Cornell and Carnegie Mellon.
“News and communications transmission as well as the role of the press and journalism in a democratic society are changing at a tremendous pace,” Chancellor DiStefano said in a news release. “We must change with it.”
Mama, don’t let your child go into journalism.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 27, 2010
Today marks the second morning in a row with a temperature in the 40s. Today, 44 degrees. Think how close to freezing that is.
Posted in It's life.
By Green
– August 27, 2010
The Year In Review Dec 30 PDF edition (
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