AAMP!itude

missed NCAPA reception on Capitol Hill

I'm so out of it. I only found out about the following event, yesterday, the day it happened. I wonder how it turned out. If I were a lot closer to DC, I would've gone to this:

The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans

INVITES YOU TO A

COMMUNITY RECEPTION

Welcoming the new members of the 110th Congress and

honoring Congressman Al Green and Congresswoman Mazie Hirono

as new members of the Executive Board of the

Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC).

Date: Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Location: B-354 Rayburn House Office Building

This event is being held in collaboration with the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. (CAPAC)

To RSVP, please click here: http://news.apiavote.org/tinc?key=Mz59LUY0&formname=NCAPARsvp

For more information, please contact Nira Ly at (202) 223-2442 or nira@nationalcapacd.org .

The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA), founded in 1996,
is a coalition of key national Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)
organizations and serves to provide a national voice for issues impacting our communities.

NCAPA Members include:

Asian American Institute
Asian American Justice Center
Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum
Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
AFL-CIO
Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment and Leadership
Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations
Chinese American Citizens Alliance
Hmong National Development, Inc.
Indian American Center for Political Awareness
Japanese American Citizen League
Korean American Coalition
Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics
National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies
National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association
National Asian Pacific American Bar Association
National Asian Pacific Center on Aging
National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese Americans
National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development
National Federation of Filipino American Association
National Korean American Service & Education Consortium
Organization of Chinese Americans
Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Sikh Coalition
South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center

persistence of DDT

I was listening to a radio newscast, Sunday night. It must've been a slow newsday, as the last piece was about the high levels of DDT in fish caught near L.A.

So why did a national newscast pick up on this? What would warrant the attention of a listener on the other side of the continent?

The pesticide was banned 35 years ago.

And as I was to find out from my internet search, the next day...

The L.A. Times headline:
Waiting for the DDT tide to turn
Federal study shows that fish caught off L.A. County still contain the world's highest levels of the pesticide 35 years after it was banned.

The AP story said that:

"There has been no improvement since the last regional fish survey was conducted in the late 1980s, according to a federal survey based on data collected mainly in 2002 but only recently released."

The reason for this is the huge deposit of DDT in the Pacific Ocean, just off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, something I mentioned a year ago (in my Jan. 18 entry).

Here's a shot of PV, actually the Pt. Vicente lighthouse:

(across the water is Catalina Island)

If you turn your head to the right, and look northward:

(In the distance, across the Santa Monica Bay, is Malibu.)

vanishing vultures

As my previous post was about the unintended consequences of biochemicals in the environment (specifically, in the rivers), this entry is also along those lines...

Yesterday, I received the latest ish of Smithsonian magazine (Feb 07). One of the articles (by Susan McGrath) is about vultures in India and Pakistan that have been disappearing at dramatic rates. 15 years ago, there were tens of millions. Today, there may be only less than half a million.

[picture of slender-billed vulture by Asad Rahmani / BNHS]

"...three vulture species...serve as sanitation engineers in India, Nepal and Pakistan. For thousands of Years, they have fed on livestock carcases. As many as 40 million of the birds once inhabited the region. Obstreperous flocks of vultures thronged caracass dumps, nested on every tall tree and cliff ledge, and circled high overhead, seemingly omnipresent. In Delhi, perching vultures ornamented the tops of every ancient ruin. In Mumbai, vultures circled the Parsi community's hilltop sanctuary. Parsis, who are members of the Zoroastrian religion, lay their dead atop stone Towers of Silence so that vultures can devour the flesh. This practice, according to Parsi tradition, protects dead bodies from the defiling touch of earth, water or fire."

So what happened?

After painstaking investigation, biologists and zoologists from India, UK, and US discovered that a recently-licensed painkiller (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug), diclofenac, was being used by herders to treat their livestock. This drug turned out to be deadly for vultures.
Those livestock who soon died despite treatment were skinned and left for the vultures, as was customary. Investigators found that more than enough drugged carcasses existed to kill vultures at the rate observed.

The result is that:

"...across the subcontinent...vultures are disappearing. Dead livestock lie uneaten and rotting. These carcasses are fueling a population boom in feral dogs and defeating the government's efforts to combat rabies. Vultures have become so rare that the Parsi in Mumbai have resorted to placing solar reflectors atop the Towers of Silence to hasten the decomposition of bodies. International conservation groups now advocate the capture of long-billed, white-backed and slender-billed vultures for conservation breeding."

(It just so happens that for the past month or so, I've been corresponding with a retired Parsi from Mumbai. I'll have to ask him about this vulture problem.)

sex-change chemicals in Potomac?

Potomac pollution problem - sex change chemicals (endocrine disruptors) present according to BBC and AP
[There's a bit of a problem with these articles, which I'll get to later.]

Apparently, the detection of the bad chemicals stems from a USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) investigation of the large number of fish deaths in 2003. When smallmouth bass were examined, it was found that ostensibly male fish also showed a female characteristic.

Inotherwords, transexual fish were and are swimming in the Potomac.

(Not sure if the female fish are showing a male characteristic. Maybe the chemicals affect hormones in only one way?)

And where do the chemicals come from?
Possibly any combination of the found pollutants: pesticides, flame retardants, personal-care products and a banned fungicide.

So should people be worried?
The short answer is "maybe".

You see, the problem is that what is affecting fish, or a particular species of fish, may not have an effect or the same effect on humans.

Moreover, the news reports overlook one crucial thing -- the Potomac River studied by the USGS is not what the news stories assume it is. The title of the study is A reconnaissance of for emerging contaminants in the South Branch Potomac River, Capacon River, and Williams River Basins, West Virginia, April-October 2004.

Indeed the maps in the report show areas that are in West Virginia, along the border with Virginia. They appear to run at right angles to the Potomac River that is normally thought of.

For the sake of argument, I'll call the latter, the DC Potomac and the former, the West Virginia or WV Potomac.

The two would seem to share the same headwaters, but seem to flow away from each other. (Think of the two perpendicular sides of a right-hand triangle.)
No doubt there is a connection between the two systems, but i don't know in what manner and to what extent. I'll leave that to the geologists and geographers.

In any event, the point is that the DC Potomac of the news reports is not the same as the area studied, the WV Potomac.

looking back on Jan 1, 2007

Looking back on Jan 1, 2007...

I remember ringing in the New Year -- literally -- at the Korean bell-ringing ceremony at Angel's Gate Park in San Pedro, Calif.

I don't go every year, and this year, I almost didn't feel well enough. Fortunately, it took less than a 20-minute drive down the coast to get there.
Once I arrived, found a remote parking spot, and walked up to the Korean bell pavilion, the speeches were finishing and midnight was minutes away.

After the ringing, I walked around to take some pictures.
Of course I picked up some free rice cakes that were put out on refreshment tables.

[Note: later, when I compared one to a similar rice cake (also with red bean filling) bought at a Ranch 99 supermarket (Chinese chain), it (the Korean one) tasted a little saltier. At least, the rice dough seemed to have had some salt added to it.]

=- =- =- =-

Every New Year's morning, my mom will watch the Rose Parade on tv. A local channel will rerun their coverage, immediately after the parade ends, so that people can catch whatever they may have missed.

I watched the rerun, because I wanted to see the Oklahoma Rising float. My mom had told me, when I woke up and popped into the kitchen, "They have the man who woo!" And she raised her arms and hands when she conveyed this.

I wasn't sure what she was talking about (as I'm sure most people wouldn't). But I figured that further explanation would be forthcoming.

[Note: My mother did go to graduate school at Cornell many years ago, but currently does real estate and her English vocabulary seems to be most developed in that field, these days. So I have learned to adjust to her "limited" verbal skills in English. (Of course, she comes in handy when ordering in Cantonese or Mandarin in a Chinese restaurant, but that is another story...)]

Back to the Rose Parade... so I finally determined that a man had popped out of the Oklahoma Rising float wearing a rocket pack. I had to see this, so I had the kitchen tv tuned to the parade rerun, as I prepared brunch for myself.

Midway through the parade, the Oklahoma Rising float stopped at a bend in the parade route, and out popped the Rocket Man. The parade commentators pronounced the crowd as speechless after his 29-second flight.

It was pretty neat. But after reflecting on the technology, I wonder why it is used as a novelty act, and why the crowd would be stunned.
I guess they don't realize that the backpack-like rocket harness was developed over 45 years ago by Bell Aerospace in Buffalo, NY.
Maybe this sort of thing is dead-end technology, and has limited military capabilities. So there was no funding for further development? I don't know what happened, so I guess I'll have to do an internet search, when I have more time.