Clicking back in after being AWOL. Will talk to you soon, teeny. And thanks, Dan, for reminding me of that alternate method of multiple clicking. I will give it a try.
Wish I had a pretty picture to post. Must connect with some public sites so that I can do so. Any ideas, other than Google images? Sometimes I can get a National Geographic photo to upload properly.
sue, some sites don't allow a transfer - copyrights, but you can type a specific image you are looking for and google's good at listing a few good sites to check.
Takes a bit of research, for instance if your looking for animal pics, check advocacy sites, or type in a name: Wildlife photos; Dog pics; cat pics, etc.
Teeny, glad they found what the prob was. So often gall bladders are overlooked as the cuprit and by the time the docs decide that's whats ailing ya - the damned thing nearly kills ya!
Take good care, rest, and you'll be good as new in just a few weeks...
alex,
That's a great shot of the large and the small of life.
Thanks
Great photo, alex. I will try the various tips.
Will go click now.
back from a late night walk with the dogs - the first one this year without being bundled up
aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,883,433.5 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 206,263.1 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 300 friends have supported: (206,263.1)
American Prairie habitat supported: 65,266.2 square feet.
You have supported: (15,942.9)
Your 300 friends have supported: (49,323.3)
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,611,904.2 square feet.
You have supported: (186,829.3)
Your 300 friends have supported: (2,425,074.9)
~~~
Passover's coming
April 19, 2008
With Guns and Fines, Brazil Takes On Loggers
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
ALTA FLORESTA, Brazil ?- A convoy of six black sport utility vehicles pulled into a lumberyard unannounced here one recent morning. Out popped about two dozen members of Brazil's security and police forces, packing sidearms and rifles. But the weapon the foreman feared most was carried by a separate group of agents of Brazil's national environmental agency: bright yellow tape measures.
"Thirty-eight! Seventy!" the agents shouted from the logs clustered in the thick mud as they quickly went to work. One agent, Mario Rubbo, jotted down the volume of each log for comparison with what the lumberyard had declared to state authorities. Discrepancies could mean fines or criminal charges.
This is Operation Arc of Fire, the Brazilian government's tough campaign to deter illegal destruction of the Amazon forest. It is intended to send a message that the government is serious about protecting the world's largest remaining rain forest, but so far it has stirred controversy for its militaristic approach to saving trees, and the initial results have been less than promising.
The operation began in February after new satellite data showed that deforestation had spiked in the second half of 2007 after three consecutive years of declines. The new data rattled the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which has been trying to play a bigger role in discussions about global climate change amid mounting scientific evidence that some 20 percent of annual global greenhouse emissions come from the clearing of tropical forests, including the burning, decay and decomposition of the land.
The government says it will now spend $118 million over at least the next year to crack down on illegal loggers. It has mobilized some 600 officials in three states ?- Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondonia ?- as well as 175 cars and trucks and four airplanes. In the operation's first few days, the police discovered hidden troves of wood, sometimes underground and invisible from the air.
Already, the authorities have issued $25.9 million in fines, made 19 arrests and seized more than 51,140 cubic yards of wood, which has been transferred to local governments, said Kézia Macedo, an analyst with the federal environmental agency, known as Ibama, in Brasília.
But the challenges are daunting. The Amazon is vast, with some 1.3 million square miles still forested. The 48 police officers and two dozen environmental agents involved in Arc of Fire here seem minuscule for the territory in northern Mato Grosso.
That is one reason the agents are mostly concentrating on bottlenecks where the wood must be transported, catching loggers coming in and out of Alta Floresta, a city of about 50,000 people in northern Mato Grosso.
The federal government has tried such police operations before, notably in early 2005. But those efforts were only sporadic. This time government officials say they plan to establish permanent operations in the region to control the exit of wood from the forest, and keep pressure on the loggers.
Tensions were high in the first few days of the program in Tâilandia, a city in Pará State, where loggers joined local officials to protest and harass agents involved in the operations.
Here in Mato Grosso, Brazil's giant agricultural state where the most deforestation has occurred, Ibama agents are confronting a powerful governor, Blairo Maggi, the world's largest soybean producer, known in Brazil simply as the "King of Soy." While Governor Maggi has softened his public stance the past few years on deforestation, he remains a forceful advocate for agricultural expansion.
He has reportedly sought meetings with Mr. da Silva in recent days to discuss Arc of Fire. Ibama agents privately suggest that Governor Maggi exerts a strong influence over Mato Grosso's state environmental agency. The state officials have successfully challenged Ibama's method of measuring wood volumes and criticized the deforestation-detection system of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research.
Both the federal and state environmental agencies have struggled with accusations of corruption. In 2005, Governor Maggi fired his environmental secretary after he was charged with bribery, though the charges were never proved. In Alta Floresta, the Ibama agents are led by Rodrigo Almeida, a former travel agent who has been with Ibama for 14 years. They try to maintain a low profile and declined to have their faces photographed for fear of being singled out for intimidation. "For sure, there are a lot of interests involved in these operations," said Glauco Saraiva, the Federal Police chief who is in charge of Arc of Fire here.
After averaging 7,700 square miles a year in the 1990s, deforestation in Brazil had slowed to 4,200 square miles a year in 2006, before increasing again last year. From August to February an average of 270 square miles was deforested a month, according to the National Institute for Space Research.
It is tough to say if the agents are managing yet to turn back the trend. In the operation's first month, February, deforestation in Brazil rose another 13 percent over January, some 88 percent of it in Mato Grosso, the space research institute reported.
Mr. Almeida, 35, said the alarming increase underscored the need for the government's campaign. In Alta Floresta, Lindomar Della Justina, the president of the local logging syndicate, said Ibama agents were waging a losing battle. "If you paralyze activity here, will that stop the deforestation?" he asked. "It won't stop it."
Mr. Rubbo, the Ibama agent, essentially agreed. "I am playing a game we are fated to lose," he said one afternoon. "The game is 12 to 1 against us and there are two minutes to turn it around. But I just try to do my part here."
Local industry officials like Mr. Justina are not happy. They say Arc of Fire is stifling commerce in an industrious town that answered the call of the military government in the 1970s for Brazilians to colonize the Amazon before foreigners did. "This strategy to put handcuffs on us is killing our morale," said Vicente da Riva, the president of Alta Floresta's rural association.
At the Ibama headquarters here, agents study satellite data from the space institute and Google Earth on computers. A large green parrot occasionally squawks from the roof next to the dining table where agents are briefed on their missions.
A call came one morning at 9. A truck suspected of carrying illegal wood was caught on the road into town. Three Ibama agents were dispatched to the Federal Police headquarters where the truck had been impounded.
Once there, one agent, Otaciano Matos, pulled a tape measure from his burgundy briefcase. He quickly declared it an open-and-shut matter: the truck had no license plate and the driver had no documentation proving the wood's origin or destination. "Illegal wood," he said simply.
Later that night a group of five Ibama agents drove eight miles out of town on a midnight "blitz." Mr. Almeida, the Ibama leader, wearing a knit ski cap to guard against mosquitoes, explained that agents had caught several trucks at this spot where two dirt roads merge into the main highway into town.
Illegal loggers prefer to travel deep in the night, he said. With moonlight forcing its way through the clouds, the agents gathered in a circle and smoked cigarettes and traded stories about their hometowns.
"Rodrigo, are we are doing the right thing?" asked Paulo Iribarrem, a burly 17-year Ibama veteran, breaking a momentary silence.
"Don't worry, pal, this is just the first stage" of the operation, Mr. Almeida replied. "There is more to come."
The agents stopped one passenger car, and a motorcycle or two passed by. But after nearly two hours, with no trucks hauling wood, they called it quits and headed home.
Mery Galanternick contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.
p-Ed Columnist
All Atmospherics, No Climate
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: April 19, 2008
The questioning at Wednesday's Democratic presidential debate has been roundly panned, and rightfully so. The moderators spent about 40 minutes on a trite list of recriminations apparently intended to bait the candidates into a "Jerry Springer"-like brawl.
Barack Obama was again asked to address the kerfuffle he caused by labeling rural voters "bitter" and to explain his relationship with the frightening Reverend Wright, and Hillary Clinton was again pushed back on her heels for saying that she had ducked bullets in Bosnia.
When they finally got around to the issues, they were the same ones that we've heard before: Who would best deal with an economy hobbled by predatory banks giving mortgages to anyone who could sign their names? How can we most quickly exit the Iraq debacle? Who would offer more tax relief for the not-so-poor while imposing the fewest new taxes on the not-so-wealthy?
Worthy issues all. But one was missing: the environment.
The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental watchdog group, reports that in the debates in which five Sunday-morning television anchors ?- George Stephanopoulos, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Wallace and Bob Schieffer ?- have participated (17 in total) and in their major interviews with the candidates (176 in total) only eight of the 2,372 questions asked have mentioned global warming or climate change.
That omission is baffling because the environment has become a big issue for Americans. Nearly 6 in 10 people responding to a Pew Research Center poll in January said that protecting the environment and dealing with energy problems should be top priorities.
Americans have awakened to some simple and frightening realities. The earth is getting hotter. The world's ice is melting. The sea level is rising, and will continue to do so. How much? That's the question. The answer may largely depend on the course America takes, since we have been the most egregious at treating the air like a sewer for carbon emissions. (Although China may already have caught up.)
Apparently, the moderators didn't get the message. Instead they revived a more trivial issue, allowing a question that called Mr. Obama's patriotism into question for not wearing a flag pin on his lapel. Better to have tied patriotism to the environment and ask whose global warming plan will best ensure that no one will ever have to go to Lower Manhattan and point to the spot in the water where ground zero used to be.
Today, Charles M. Blow, graphics director for The Times from 1996 to 2004 and art director of National Geographic magazine from 2006 to 2008, starts as a graphics columnist for the Op-Ed page. His column will appear on alternate Saturdays.
Care2 has been giving me a lot of problems with clicking. Keeps on insisting that I have already clicked.
"Debate moderators abuse the public trust every time they ask trivial questions about gaffes and 'gotchas' that only political insiders care about. Enough with the distractions?-ABC and other networks must focus on issues that affect people's daily lives."
sumac - sometimes if care2 tells me I've clicked already, I sign out completely and go back in and click again (even if the message again says I've clicked already) - it will accept the fresh click
In honor of John McCain's April Fools' Day appearance on David Letterman, "Human Rights" asked activists to present a Letterman-style Top Ten list:
Top Ten Signs We Finally Have an Anti-Torture President
10) The President goes waterskiing instead of waterboarding.
?-Jill - Redding, Connecticut
9) Grand opening of the "Sandals Guantanamo Bay Beach Resort".
?-James - South Orange, New Jersey
8) "Stress Positions" are only for Corporate CEOs, and the phrase "torture memo" refers only to long, painfully boring email sent by superiors.
?-Janis - Sunland, California and Megan - Rohnert Park, California
7) "Enhanced interrogation techniques" now defined as ordinary techniques filmed in HD.
?-Megan - Rohnert Park, California
6) The phrase "Extraordinary Rendition" now used to describe American Idol performances.
?-Joseph - San Diego, California
5) Jack Bauer starts acting more like his brother, Eddie.
?-Travis and Benjamin - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
4) "Secret detention" means not telling your parents you had detention.
?-James - South Orange, New Jersey
3) Calling Geneva Conventions "quaint" now seen as quaint.
?-Megan - Rohnert Park, California
2) "I can finally stop wearing my 'Who Would Jesus Torture?' bracelet."
?-Sarah - New York, New York
1) Superman no longer having to fight for truth, justice and the Canadian way.
?-Edward - Los Angeles, California
The only thing that would make it better is Paul Shaffer cackling in the background.
aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,883,597.4 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 206,380.2 square feet.
You have supported: (0.0)
Your 300 friends have supported: (206,380.2)
American Prairie habitat supported: 65,266.2 square feet.
You have supported: (15,942.9)
Your 300 friends have supported: (49,323.3)
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,611,951.0 square feet.
You have supported: (186,852.7)
Your 300 friends have supported: (2,425,098.3)
Stradee - that's funny.
sumac, I'm having the same problem - I now have to login on the original site page and then click the rain forest icon to get it to say the square footage saved - otherwise, it just says I've already clicked. I have checked and evidently the clicks do count. If you run Windows XP, the program will observe certain actions on your computer that are repetitive and begin to go ahead and do them for you without your having to click. Maybe that has something to do with it.
ehBeth and Dan,
This is a new phenomenon. I have been clicking on the same shortcut on my desktop for a long time. Recently, with it clearly showing me as not logged in, it rejects my click as "you already did that today". And yes, I run on Windows XP, but it is not logging me in for me and I fail to see how it can click for me. Unless someone has access to the user members who have clicked for a particular day?
The care2 site is definitely having some technical problems.
I've noticed that once I log in it shows my name in the upper right-hand corner while telling me (more toward the middle and a bit lower down) that I've logged out. I continue to the 'donate' button - click - and it says thank you for clicking (and I can see that the number of clicks does go up).
I will try logging in and see what I see.
Stephanopolous interviews McCain tomorrow morning. Check this out:
:
http://bravenewfilms.org/watch/18251297/36224?utm_source=rgemail
This is too weird. This time I was clearly logged in already, it said Hi Susan in upper right, and accepted my click. But what is it with all of the ads for Cadillac on top of the click page?
