Laha Lele

Musical Events Happening Now

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:28:42 -1000

MUSIC-AT-MANOA-EVENTS List

April 3-10, 2013

Nathaniel Stanton, piano

Wednesday, April 3, 2013
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

free admission

Nathaniel Stanton, a student of Thomas Yee, will present a senior recital as part of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance.

Tadahiro Meya, percussion

Thursday, April 4, 2013
1:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

free admission

Tadahiro Meya, a student of Steven Dinion, will present a junior recital as part of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Education in Music.

Andrew Ramos, piano

Thursday, April 4, 2013
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

free admission

Andrew Ramos, a student of Thomas Yee, will present a senior recital as part of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance.

Malka Rappaport, soprano

Friday, April 5, 2013
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

free admission

Malka Rappaport, a student of Maya Hoover, will present a graduate recital as part of the requirements for the degree Master of Music in Performance.

UH Percussion Day

Saturday, April 6, 2013

workshops 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. in room 108
concert 1:00 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

$10 general admission, $5 for students and PAS members

Go to hawaii.pas.org for more information. To pre-register, call 808 543-6054 or email percussiveartshawaii@gmail.com.

Performances by local percussion ensembles of all ages from Niu Valley Middle School, Kahuku High School, BYUH, UH Manoa, and the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra.

The concert follows clinics on drum set and vibraphone by Noel Okimoto, Dalcroze Eurythmics for percussionists by Jordan Schifino, and ensemble playing by Rhythm Summit (Kenny Endo, Noel Okimoto, and Dean Taba).

Cosponsored by Percussive Arts Society and BYUH Department of Fine Arts.

UH Chamber Music Ensembles

I-Bei Lin, director

Sunday, April 7, 2013
4:00 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

free admission

Student ensembles perform a variety of chamber music selections, including:

Cafe 1930 (guitar & flute) Ástor Piazzolla Clarinet Quartet Grant Carvalho Catatonic (tuba & euphonium) W. Jordan Y. Goto Trio in G minor, op. 63
I. Allegro Moderato (flute, cello, piano) Carl Maria von Weber Second Suite in F (trumpet quintet) Gustavo Holst String Quartet no. 13 in A minor D.804, op. 29 (Rosamund Quartet) Franz Schubert Night Club 1960 (guitar & flute) Ástor Piazzolla Symphony no. 7, op. 92
III. Presto, IV. Allegro con brio (wind nonet)Ludwig van Beethoven

(Mus 199 credit for Music Majors)

UH Opera Workshop in Concert

John Mount, director
Grant Mack, piano
Sister Grace Capellas, costume coordinator

Monday, April 8, 2013
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

$10 general admission
$6 students, seniors (65+), UH faculty/staff (ID required)

Students perform staged scenes from operas and operettas.

The Marriage of Figaro, Act III SextetWolfgang Amadeus MozartLa Bohème, Act III QuartetGiacomo PucciniOrpheus and Euridice, Act III DuetChristoph Willibald GluckDeath Takes a Holiday, “Alone here with you”Maury YestonElixir of Love, TrioGaetano DonizettMadama Butterfly, “Flower Duet”Giacomo PucciniMerry Widow, “Vilia”Franz Lehár

(Mus 199 credit for Music Majors)

Chelsea Fujitani, clarinet

Tuesday, April 9, 2013
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

free admission

Chelsea Fujitani, a student of Henry Miyamura, will present a recital as part of the requirements for Post Baccalaureate Certificate in Music Education.

William Watson, composer

Wednesday, April 10, 2013
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

free admission

William Watson will present a performance of his works as part of the requirements for the degree Master of Music in Composition.

and coming in mid-April…

Wyatt Nagao, trumpet (junior recital)
Graduate Composers’ Symposium
Seola Kim, composer (master’s recital)
UH Jazz Ensemble
Grant Carvalho, composer (senior recital)
Sara Stejskal, soprano (senior recital)
Francesca T. Panunto, bassoon (senior recital)
Miguel Cadoy III, tenor (junior recital)
Bai He, soprano (master’s recital)
Lisa Haber, violin (junior recital)
UH Percussion Ensemble
UH Chorus, Concert Choir, and Chamber Singers
UH Gamelan Ensembles

More events listed at www.hawaii.edu/uhmmusic

olelooftheday: Hawaiian Word of the Day: Hiʻipoi ( To tend,...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:11:02 -1000

olelooftheday:

Hawaiian Word of the Day:

Hiʻipoi

(
To tend, feed and defend;
to cherish or take in the arms
)
Kō aloha nō kaʻu hiʻipoi
Hana mao ʻole i ka puʻuwai
Noho ʻoe a hoʻomanaʻo mai
Hoʻi mai kāua e pili

Your love is mine to cherish
It disturbs my heart endlessly
If you should think of me
Return to me here

From the song Pua Onaona by Charles E. King

Photo

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:07:55 -1000

“NOVA Earth from Space” (Courtesy PBS)

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:24:37 -1000

“NOVA Earth from Space” (Courtesy PBS)

Upcoming Events from PBS Hawaii Weekly Newsletter - February 10 through February 16

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:15:00 -1000

“Global warming is causing a rise in sea levels and temperatures, extreme weather and a loss of rainfall that could threaten our water supply. The next INSIGHTS ON PBS HAWAII (Thurs., Feb. 14, 8:00 pm) examines Climate Change from scientific, environmental and policy perspectives.

“Host Dan Boylan moderates a discussion with scheduled guests: William Aila, Chair of Hawaii’s DLNR; Stanton Enomoto, Cultural Adaption Coordinator at Pacific Islands Climate Change Cooperative; Charles Fletcher, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Geology and Geophysics at the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology; and Victoria Keener, East-West Center Fellow and Editor of Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment.

“INSIGHTS is also available online via live streaming. We want to hear from you! Your questions and comments are welcome via phone, email, Twitter or live blogging. You may also email your questions ahead of time to insights@pbshawaii.org”

*******

“PBS NEWSHOUR SPECIAL REPORT: State of the Union Address 2013 (Tues., Feb. 12, 4:00 pm) presents full, live coverage of President Obama’s address, the Republican response and analysis by the NewsHour team.”

"HOW ARE WE CONNECTED?"

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:59:10 -1000

by Will Espero

How are we connected to the spirit of the land

How are we connected to the single mother’s hand

How are we connected to those who want to wed

How are we connected to the man who is not fed?

What do we say to the person with no home

What do we say to the addict who’s alone

What do we say to the dying from a war

What do we say to the teacher who needs more?

Where do we go to help our children learn

Where do we go to touch the fragile fern

Where do they go to find another job

Where do they go when the pain is a throb?

When will we act and help a nation rise

When will we act and see through teary eyes

When will we act and build a better dream

When will we act and be a human team?

What will we do when they ask us to lead

What will we do for the family in need

What will we do if the business cannot stay

What will we do when they say we cannot pray?

How are we connected to the spirit of this earth

How are we connected to an inmate’s rebirth

How are we connected to the ones who want to love

How are we connected to God up above?

“Colors may be evolution’s most beautiful accident.”...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:49:26 -1000

“Colors may be evolution’s most beautiful accident.” —The Scientist

Photo

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 13:30:43 -1000

Upcoming Musical Events on Oahu

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 13:26:48 -1000

Hawaiian Hula, Chant, and Song

UH Hula & Chant Ensemble
Vicky Holt Takamine, kumu hula

UH Hawaiian Chorus
Nola A. Nāhulu, director

Wednesday, November 28, 2012
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

$10 general admission, $6 students, seniors (65+), UH faculty/staff (ID required),
tickets at the door

(*Mus 199 credit for Music Majors)

Undergraduate Composers’ Symposium

Thursday, November 29, 2012
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

free admission

Hear new works by undergraduate composition students. The program includes:

A Christmas Carol: Act IIRichard Bragdon3 MovementsKevin TsunodaHaiku of BusonJames MaresSaudadeChristopher PetersenClari(POP!)net Quart(POP!)etGrant Carvalho

(*Mus 199 credit for Music Majors)

UH Musical Theater Review

Laurence Paxton, director
Phil Hidalgo, musical director

Friday, November 30, 2012
7:00 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

Please note: start time is 7:00 p.m. (not 7:30)

$10 general admission, $6 students, seniors (65+), UH faculty/staff (ID required),
tickets at the door

Students of the UHM Musical Theater program present staged songs. The program includes:

Alone Here With You from Death Takes a Holiday An Original Musical from [title of show] At the Ballet from A Chorus Line I Wish I May from The Witches of Eastwick If I Loved You from Carousel It Takes Two from Into the Woods Matchmaker, Matchmaker from Fiddler on the Roof Opening Sequence: The New World from Songs For a New World People Will Say We’re in Love from Oklahoma! Stepsisters’ Lament from Cinderella Sue Me from Guys and Dolls The Good Old Glory Type Days from Glory Days The Riddle from The Scarlet Pimpernel You and Me (But Mostly Me) from The Book of Mormon When the Children are Asleep from Carousel

(*Mus 199 credit for Music Majors)

and coming up in December

More events listed at www.hawaii.edu/uhmmusic

Upcoming Musical Events at UH Manoa

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:48:46 -1000

MUSIC-AT-MANOA-EVENTS List

October-November 2012

Eruption Music Festival All-Stars

Tim Mayer, flutes and saxes
Zaccai Curtis, piano
Abe Lagrimas Jr., drums
Greg Paré, vibraphone
Randy Wong, upright bass
UH Jazz Ensemble, Reggie Padilla, director

Friday, October 26, 2012
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

$12 general admission, $8 students, UH faculty/staff (ID required),
$5 UHM music majors, tickets at the door

The program will include Art Blakey-inspired arrangements from Tim Mayer’s album Resilience, and tunes by Lee Morgan, Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock, Arthur Lyman, Michael Dease, and Randy Wong.

More about the Eruption Music Festival artists.

(*Mus 199 credit for Music Majors, ticket purchase required)

Anthony White Jazz masterclass

Friday, November 2, 2012
6:00 p.m., Music Department room 36

Free admission

Music educator and free-lance saxophonist Anthony White will present a master class covering varying approaches and concepts to playing jazz.

A native Californian, Mr. White studied at the University of California Riverside and performas a multitude of styles ranging from pop and rock, to hip hop and Latin jazz.

UH Jazz Ensemble

Reggie Padilla, director

Saturday, November 3, 2012
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium

$10 general admission, $6 students, UH faculty/staff (ID required),
tickets at the door

Big band jazz and small ensembles are featured.

(*Mus 199 credit for Music Majors)

UH Chamber Music Ensembles

I-Bei Lin, director

Thursday, November 8, 2012
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium, free admission

Student ensembles including piano quintet, perform a variety of chamber music selections, including works by Dvorak, Frackenpohl, Rossini, Rachmaninoff, Piazolla, Beethoven, Bach, and others. See the complete program listing.

(*Mus 199 credit for Music Majors)

Joyce Yang, piano

Friday, November 9, 2012
7:30 p.m., Orvis Auditorium,
$35 general admission, $15 students

Tickets at WWW.HMTA.ORG

Presented by the Hawaii Music Teachers Association (HMTA).

Critically acclaimed as “the most gifted young pianist of her generation” with a “million-volt stage presence,” pianist Joyce Yang captivates audiences around the globe with her stunning virtuosity combined with heartfelt lyricism and interpretive sensitivity.

She came to international attention in 2005 when she became the Silver Medallist of the 12th Van Cliburn International Competition. In 2010 she was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, one of the most prestigious prizes in classical music.

Ms. Yang’s program will include works by Scarlatti, Chopin, Bartok, Rachmaninoff, and Schumann. See the complete program listing.

(*Mus 199 credit for Music Majors, ticket purchase required)

More events listed at www.hawaii.edu/uhmmusic

Obama’s Science Report Card (reprinted from “The Scientist”)

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:56:30 -1000

ATCC

- The Scientist »
- Magazine »
- Features

Obama’s Science Report Card

A look at what the President achieved during his first term in the areas of health, space science, energy, environment, and science education

By The Scientist Staff | October 1, 2012

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In the heat of presidential elections, a conscientious electorate hopes that the nation’s most pressing issues bubble to the surface, helping to inform the decision of who is most fit to lead the country for the next 4 years. This time around, jobs, the economy, health care, and foreign policy are taking center stage in the national discussion surrounding the presidential candidates. But with all that is at stake in this election, America’s scientific research cuts across all of these sectors, and the candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, have voiced different visions for the future of the scientific enterprise.

It behooves scientists of all stripes—especially biomedical researchers, whose funding often comes from federal science agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—and members of the public who value scientific research to consider the candidates’ stances on matters of science policy. Their differing views on the benefits of scientific information and the federal government’s role in supporting research could hugely affect how the scientific community interacts with the public and with policymakers, and how US researchers earn their keep.

Jump to discussions on:

But predicting the future direction of science policy is nigh on impossible. Thankfully, political candidates are increasingly apt to address science policy issues and questions as part of their unofficial campaign platforms. Just last month, Obama and Romney each answered 14 questions about science policy, from the federal government’s duty to invest in research and the effect of innovation on the economy to biosecurity and ocean health. Obama pledged to double funding for key research agencies and train 100,000 science and math teachers to prepare 1 million science, technology, engineering, and math graduates over the next decade. Romney promised to raise visa caps for highly skilled foreign workers, to offer foreign graduate students in relevant fields resident status upon graduation, and to reform the tax code and regulatory costs to incentivize corporate funding of innovative science. While distinctly different stances are evident in the candidates’ answers, both men espouse a respect for science and the role it should play in driving economic growth and policymaking.

Campaign promises, party platforms, and answers to science policy questions, however, are one thing. A candidate’s record is quite another.

The Scientist canvassed people from both sides of the political aisle, asking them to evaluate the performance of President Obama and his administration in five key areas of science policy—health, environment, energy, science education, and space—through his first term in office. We also talked to people familiar with Mitt Romney’s treatment of science policy issues while Governor of Massachusetts (though, admittedly, the rigors of dealing with these issues on the state level differ from the challenges facing the federal government), and asked sources to prognosticate on a Romney/Ryan administration’s potential science policy stances. Here’s what we heard.
—Bob Grant

.
In the run-up to the 2008 US Presidential election, candidate Barack Obama ran on a platform that included serious environmental action, promising, among other things, real progress on tackling climate change. Four years later, one environmental policy area that has seen great progress is pollutant regulation, instated under new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules. In July 2011, the EPA finalized the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which would have required power plants to reduce their ozone and particulate emissions had it not been struck down by a federal appeals court in August 2012. Last year also saw the Obama Administration announce new vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, which require car and light truck manufacturers to raise the average fuel efficiency of new vehicles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And the EPA’s new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards placed limits on power plant emissions when they came into effect this April.

Credit: © C.J. Burton/Corbis

“Both the car standards and the mercury restrictions are long overdue,” says David Goldston, senior advisor for the National Resources Defense Council Action Fund. “They’ve been delayed for decades.” Senior Vice President of Government Affairs for the League of Conservation Voters Tiernan Sittenfeld says those policy plays are “all in the spirit of looking at what the science tells us is necessary to protect public health and the environment.”

All these regulations have been drawn up by an EPA under constant fire from critics wary of what they characterize as the agency’s expanding regulatory reach. Obama has staunchly defended the agency’s role, stating in a speech to EPA employees in January 2012: “Because of you, across the board, we’re cutting down on acid rain and air pollution. We’re making our drinking water cleaner and safer. We’re creating healthier communities.”

While the vehicle fuel standards represent real greenhouse gas restrictions, David Victor—whose research at the University of California, San Diego, focuses on how the design of regulatory law affects issues such as environmental pollution and energy markets—thinks Obama could have done more to push for climate change legislation. “You really need new legislation to make a dent in the mission,” Victor says. “I think [the Obama Administration] made the legislative process too complex; they didn’t put a high enough priority on climate.” Sittenfeld also expresses disappointment that Obama backed down on another environmental policy issue—smog standards. The President shelved tighter restrictions on cities, citing economic considerations.

Fossil fuel extraction has also been a topic of interest over the past 4 years, with discussions focusing on the huge damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the boom in natural gas drilling in some states, and proposed pipelines like Keystone XL, which Obama rejected. To many, Deepwater Horizon represents the environmental dangers of pushing oil drilling into new offshore areas, such as Arctic waters, where the Obama Administration’s interior department will grant new permits to oil companies with drilling to begin in 2016. “[The Obama Administration] has carried out some important protections, but they have been more open to exploitation of public land than we would prefer,” says Goldston. “The Arctic is the clearest case of that.” While some new National Monuments have been established under Obama, including Fort Monroe in Virginia and Fort Ord in California—both large open areas with ecosystems threatened by development pressures—Sittenfeld says he would also like to see wilderness protection for Arctic sites, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
—Hayley Dunning

.
Orchestrating the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 was the defining legislative accomplishment of Barack Obama’s first term as President of the United States. It’s also one of the hot-button issues of the 2012 presidential election campaign. The comprehensive legislation seeks to expand coverage to approximately 32 million uninsured Americans while attempting to reduce the costs and improve the quality of health care. It will also boost revenue for Medicare and Medicaid by instituting significant reforms to those programs.

“There’s no question that the passage of ACA is monumental,” says Ellen Shaffer, codirector of the nonpartisan Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health. “This has been the biggest development since Medicaid and Medicare [were established] in 1965.”

Among the health-care law’s strengths, says Linda Spears, Vice President of Policy and Public Affairs at the Child Welfare League of America, is the inclusion of adults under the age of 26 in their parents’ health plan. It is estimated that the law helped 3.1 million young adults retain coverage in the first year and a half since it was implemented. Many would have otherwise been stuck in health-care limbo after graduating college and before landing a job with health benefits.

But “the picture on reproductive health care is mixed,” Shaffer adds. In implementing the ACA, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandated that insurance companies must cover contraception without a copay for insured women. But HHS also overturned the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of selling over-the-counter emergency contraception for people under 17. Shaffer says she sees that move as the Obama Administration “hedging their bets on support for women’s reproductive health.”

The law still faces the serious logistical problem of guaranteeing quality health care to the expanding pool of beneficiaries, says Gilbert Ross, medical director of the American Council on Science and Health. “Just having insurance coverage doesn’t mean you’ll have access to a physician in the near future,” he says, adding that the current health-care infrastructure is unable to adequately handle the influx of new patients. “This unfortunately devolves into a question of rationing,” he adds.

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, says that the Obama Administration has made other key contributions to the nation’s public-health system beyond the ACA. These include lifting the ban on human embryonic stem cell research, devoting $8.2 billion to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and overhauling the food-safety industry through the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, which plans to create five new centers dedicated to food-borne illnesses and grant greater authority to the FDA to issue food recalls, among other things.

But not all of the Obama Administration’s health-based initiatives have been as successful. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, for example, fell short of its promise to limit the health damage done by tobacco products in the U.S., Ross says.

Nevertheless, “this has been an amazing 4 years in terms of what the administration has done,” Benjamin says. Obama has “reestablished the credibility of science in decision making,” he adds. “I hope all administrations in the future continue to do that.”
—Cristina Luiggi

.
Anyone concerned about the state of science and math education in the United States needs look no further than 2009’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which ranks countries around the world according to their students’ achievement in math and science. According to the report, the United States ranks #23 in science and #31 in mathematics among the 60 countries and 5 other jurisdictions (such as Hong Kong and Dubai) included in the assessment. Countries that top the U.S. in both math and science include Finland, Estonia, and Slovenia.

To address this dismal state of affairs, President Obama has focused on improving the country’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. “He has been one of the most outspoken presidents on this issue,” says Ellie Dehoney, vice president of policy and programs at Research!America. “He’s faced some incredible obstacles.” But, she adds, “his ideas have been bold.”

In March 2010, the Obama administration released its blueprint for revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which had been renamed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. The administration proposed that $206 million be channeled to high-need schools to improve their STEM teaching and that $300 million go to an Investing in Innovation fund that awards grants to schools demonstrating improvement in student achievement. However, most of the provisions to strengthen STEM education were excised from the legislation, although the bill has yet to be finalized. Even if Obama is reelected, he may face the same difficulty in pushing science-focused initiatives through the legislature, says Dehoney. “There’s such skepticism about things like global warming and evolution that it puts a taint on science as a whole,” she says.

President Obama has had more success in areas where congressional approval is not a prerequisite, such as his public-private partnerships that aim to bring the expertise of the science and technology sectors into the classroom. Through a nonprofit organization called Change the Equation, CEOs mobilize other business leaders to help improve STEM education in pre-K through grade 12 classrooms by contributing funds to existing programs, developing new partnerships, and engaging in advocacy.

In 2009, the president also announced his appointments for the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a group comprising leading scientists and engineers, which drafted an executive summary of five major goals and best practices to improve STEM education. “Since then there have been a few initiatives that have been acted on,” says Jodi Peterson, co-chair of the advocacy group STEM Education Coalition.

PCAST has called on colleges and universities to produce 1 million additional college graduates in science and math through inquiry-based learning and early preparation in math skills. Additionally, in this year’s Department of Education budget the Obama Administration dedicated $100 million of its Teacher Incentive Fund to creating a STEM Master Teacher Corps, which would give the best science and math teachers up to a $20,000 salary boost for sharing their secrets of classroom success. This year will only support 50 teachers, but if his request goes through, that number could increase to 10,000 teachers over 4 years.

In addition to these initiatives, President Obama has repeatedly mentioned the importance of STEM education and retraining for maintaining our technological vitality in his State of the Union addresses, invited the winners of several science fairs to the White House to show off their experiments, and promoted a National Lab Day across the country. More than anything, though, Obama has “changed the tone of the conversation to say science is important,” says Shirley Malcom, head of education and human resources at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
—Edyta Zielinska

.
In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama said that he would make energy policy his #1 priority if elected President. For a variety of reasons, that promise didn’t quite materialize. As the tide of partisan rancor rose in Washington, DC, soon after he took office, Obama’s optimistic visions of a new energy economy—replete with solar cells and windmills—began to fade.

But was it a lack of political will or political skill that prevented Obama from achieving his energy goals? According to Tom Konrad, an independent clean-energy stock portfolio manager and blogger, it was the latter. “Did [Obama] get the science right? The answer is yes,” he says. “Did he get the policy right? Somewhat. Did he get the politics right? No.”

Konrad says Obama “spent his political capital” on health-care reform, leaving few bargaining chips for dealing with issues such as establishing cap-and-trade carbon credits, which would allow American corporations to generate more or less emissions, as long as total emissions for the country stayed at or below a predetermined level. A 2009 bill that would have established such a system died in the Senate after being narrowly passed by the House of Representatives. But, Konrad adds, Obama is “pushing us in the right direction” with regard to weaning the country off fossil fuels while encouraging the development of alternative energy sources, as reflected in Obama’s continued requests for increases to the Department of Energy (DOE) budget.

Indeed, through both annual budget requests and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Obama has devoted billions of dollars to energy research and has offered tax credits to home and business owners for making buildings more energy efficient, among other initiatives. “Having that clear commitment and clear funding for clean-energy technology has played a significant role in the shape of the market today,” says Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University earth systems scientist who served as a DOE policy fellow for the Obama Administration from 2009–2011.

But, much to the chagrin of fervent environmentalists, the Obama Administration hasn’t abandoned fossil fuel development, recently showing support for natural gas drilling operations and for plans to develop offshore areas for oil and gas drilling. (See Environment Report Card on page 36.) For example, the Administration announced earlier this year that the Department of the Interior would sell leases for oil companies to drill off the northern coast of Alaska, and this past June it granted final permits to Shell for other Arctic drilling operations. After the expiration of the 6-month moratorium on new deepwater oil-drilling permits triggered by 2010’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Obama Administration also resumed leasing in the Gulf of Mexico, and the administration has okayed seismic testing of areas off the Mid-Atlantic Coast to evaluate the viability of gas and oil drilling there.

While many would rather no such offshore drilling occur at all, Hope Babcock, codirector of the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center, notes that at least the Obama Administration is being cautious about it, requiring extensive impact testing before the next round of Arctic drilling permits are issued in 2016. “They shouldn’t be in Alaska developing offshore oil and gas,” she says. “But by God, they’re regulating the hell out of it.”

Though Obama wasn’t able to make energy his primary focus during his first 4 years in office, he has taken steps in the right direction, Babcock avers. “Obama is delivering what he said he would deliver,” she says—“a balanced energy program, pushing alternatives, but not stopping traditional modes of energy delivery.”
—Bob Grant

.
In April 2009, when President Obama announced his plan to double the budgets of “key agencies,” including the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, NASA was left off the list. In fact, for the past 4 years, the Obama Administration has been generally hands-off with regard to space science, which came as a surprise given the President’s demonstrated emphasis on science and technology.

“The Obama Administration has not focused on NASA science at all,” says Bethany Johns, the John Bahcall Public Policy Fellow at the American Astronomical Society (AAS). “NASA’s budget has stayed relatively flat.”

But that changed for the worse earlier this year when the Administration released its fiscal year 2013 budget proposal, in which Obama would see NASA’s robotic planetary science program cut by some $300 million, or 20 percent. This drop in funding compelled the U.S. to drop out of upcoming missions to bring back samples from the surface of Mars, even after the recent successful landing of the Curiosity rover captured the public imagination this summer.

“[It was] rather unexpected and surprising,” says solar and space physicist Dan Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. “This has been one of the most high-profile and one of the most successful aspects of NASA’s portfolio.”

Some speculate that the anticipated success of the Mars Space Laboratory mission was behind Obama’s decision to cut NASA’s planetary science program. Now that the Curiosity rover has landed, the logic goes, scientists can receive data from the Red Planet with only minimal operating costs. But to planetary scientists, such remote sensing can’t beat Earth-bound research done on samples retrieved from space. “The science that you can do in a lab here on Earth [with] samples from a planet is a lot different than the type of science you have to do in situ on the surface of Mars,” says Johns.

Baker thinks the cut could simply be the Obama Administration’s way of letting the planetary-science community know that the National Academies’ Planetary Science Decadal Survey, a ranking of planetary exploration priorities for 2013–2022 by a committee of scientists, is a bit unrealistic. The plan’s Mars missions, for example, “represented a multibillion dollar investment that would have to be made over the course of many, many years,” he says. “The Office of Management and Budget felt that … this represented too large and too dramatic a long-term commitment for one component or one approach to planetary science.”

To his credit, the President has been upfront about his decision not to increase the budget for basic space science research, instead focusing more on commercial spaceflight and eventual human exploration—an effort that could get a nearly 6 percent bump if his proposed 2013 budget is approved by Congress—and space technology to support development of space exploration equipment, which is slated for a 22 percent increase.

“[He’s] kept his promises,” says Kevin Marvel, executive officer at AAS. “But he didn’t really make any promises about the kinds of space science that we at the American Astronomical Society are concerned with.”
—Jef Akst

10/18/12

ATCC

- The Scientist »
- Magazine »
- Features

Obama’s Science Report Card

A look at what the President achieved during his first term in the areas of health, space science, energy, environment, and science education

By The Scientist Staff | October 1, 2012

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Jump to discussions on:

Campaign promises, party platforms, and answers to science policy questions, however, are one thing. A candidate’s record is quite another.

10/18/12

Zero Minus One

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:18:17 -1000

    I live on an island that is entirely and essentially about being rich or poor. The chronically exhausted, traffic-fumed, caffeinated “middle” that used to keep the place alive is evaporating. While a tiny percentage of residents drive new Mercedes, Jaguars, and Lexuses, almost three-quarters of the population qualify for food stamps.

    The employers who come here for tax loopholes break labor laws without ever looking back. Stimulating the economy translates into damaged people and ruined lives, plus more homeless shelters on the sidewalks. The ultimate joke is that everyone is supposed to call this place “paradise” to promote tourism. We use a stolen language from a stolen culture to add verisimilitude.

    I have lived too many places to call anywhere “paradise.” Especially the places that are promoted as “getaways,” “wonderlands,” “exciting destinations,” and “ideal climates.” If tourism is the driving economic wheel, I know what it feels like to get run over. Imagine being completely and severely miserable in “destinations” ranging from Cape Cod, the Blue Mountains of Australia, rural New England, the Pacific Northwest, coastal Maine, Napa Valley, San Diego, and O‘ahu. Perhaps I have a unique talent for misery? Or maybe because I avoid shopping in malls, cook my own food, and require companions with more tools in their toolbox than I have, I have a skewed perspective. I’ve broken myself cycling, gone camping alone with nothing but a plastic sheet and matches, and played “survival cooking” with residual ingredients in friends’ refrigerators—no shopping allowed.

    Once a rich Italian guy I dated for a while told me that making money was easy. All you had to do is concentrate on nothing but making money. And I had my epiphany: I don’t even believe in money. Money is an abstraction that people play games with. Without a gold standard or a true labor equivalent, without any reality behind the concept, I find it uninteresting. Of course, this is what gets me in trouble.

    While I lived in Seattle I was once a part of a little anarchy group. I had a great time … baked bread, involved myself in many long and distracted conversations, dated dangerous and mysterious men. Unfortunately, being an anarchist isn’t very productive for a single woman’s career, so I drifted off into yuppiehood for a while. That didn’t last long, because I got hit by a truck. (I also have incredibly bad luck—so bad it’s funny.)

    So I moved to a small island in the West Indies, where even though I cried a lot from isolation and culture shock, I was actually the happiest I have ever been. As an army brat from childhood, I was used to being the “outsider.” Amazingly, within six months, I had established my credentials and didn’t get yelled at walking in town or cheated in the market. But now it’s different times, different places. I am not so certain I could recreate that feeling of belonging if I returned today, after the island allowed the ultimately corrupting force of gambling into its heart, and more and more “outsiders” have been torched and shot and kidnapped.

    Yet I still wonder if I can take some poverty lessons from a “banana republic.” What if I were to take some of the aloe stalks that proliferate on my lanai, tie them up in red yarn, and wander the beaches of Waikiki, selling them to tourists with sunburns? That would be a very West Indian business. Aloe vera is the only plant that grows on my shaded, breeze-blocked lanai. I would need to be quick-talking and incredibly good at sales … all the guys that sold stuff on the beach were incredibly gifted that way, speaking multiple languages, zeroing in on the heart of the sale with an instinct that American companies would pay millions for. They were facile, incredibly quick, handsome, and barefoot.

    Yes, there were other ways to make a dollar, and if they had to, they did. And I am not making light of the incredible number of birth defects from the agricultural “inputs” to the banana crops, the mosquito rings sold with chemicals banned in all “first world” countries, the offshore pollution from raw sewage, the governmental cronyism, the hardships encountered by long-term residents in obtaining deeds to their cultivated and developed land, and many other abuses. I considered it my mission to promote agricultural diversification, organic crops, and permaculture. A few of my articles were reprinted … baby steps, baby steps.

    Now, with no income, no unemployment checks, living on borrowed funds and time, I think more and more about those healthy aloe vera stalks on my lanai. Compared to my garden in the West Indies, which provided almost all my vegetable needs, this dirty street-side lanai is like a piss-stained city alley. Nevertheless, this one plant grows, and even thrives. I should reconsider my status: perhaps I too could run a business, greeting burned tourists with a salve for their skins, if not for their consciences.

Lost in the Reggae House

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:50:00 -1000

    I remember. I miss that glorious body heat, that social animal feeling. There we were, my so-handsome (possibly already paired? address this question later? now, he’s a very attentive neighbor) dance partner, and me, butt against the plank walls of the reggae house. We were wining away … move those hips. I’m the only white girl in the place, but I’ve been here so long, they have made me honorary West Indian. Plus, I’m one of the best dancers (so they say) … and hot. Gossip is too trivial a word. Too hot? Apparently, there is much discussion at the Lime. “To lime” means to have a good time.   (Later, I lived next-door to the owner of the island’s most popular bar, and greeted her adopted son every evening when the vegetable truck came by, while I purchased my dasheen, onions, and ground provisions.)

    Here, we just get lost in time. There is so much smoke in the air you can get high simply by breathing. Bodies packed in space, nothing but rhythm: beat, heat, beat, heat. Ganja. Rastafarians. Hours lost already. Shabba …

    Oh, my neighbor/dance partner is so nice … so totally male. One thing about West Indian men, they work so hard, their bodies are rock solid; they have back muscles American men have only dreamt of. Hands on, hips joined, let’s rock it. Let’s wine.

    Another beer. I’m the princess. Princess of hips, breasts, shoulders. He is looking happier song by song. I’m still against the wall—I like this possessive approach. Not too many women stay until closing in the reggae house. Most of the dancers are committed Rastafarian men. I, being of here but not of here, can break many rules. Jah rules. I’ve never felt such joy. Such universal communion.

    Nothing but spirit. Nothing but joy in the dance. Nothing but shared music. Actually the tapes are all pirated.   (I have a frequent buyer card at Castries’ most popular tape pirating enterprise.) The house is a wood plank shack with a tin roof—just the kind of home I am trying to build for my future.

    Although future is not really a reliable concept any more. Nothing but present moment, present moment, beat, beat, heat, beat.

    Minimum three times a week, I go to Indies, the island’s hottest night club. Ladies’ Night, Friday Night, Saturday Night. I brought a police chief in charge of Immigration, to everyone’s surprise. They let us in for free. It took me almost six months to break the race and foreignness barrier. What was it that changed? I already knew how to move, had been thrown out of Seattle’s clubs for dancing “too dirty.” Nothing is dirty here. I, a student of dance, totally respect this. If you are wining away against a partner behind you, and something anatomically normal should happen, who cares? It’s just part of the dance. Respect, mon.

    The reggae house. The timelessness. The peaceful waves against the wooden wall, against his pelvis, against his rib cage. At last, after so many years of working in a weird crunched American way, I have become perfectly female. Forget yin/yang. This is bigger. I can both lead and follow, and the language is body. Rock wine. Bend. Unbend. Butterfly those hips. Tiptoe, rock hard.

    Remember the Trinidadian Karate Conference? Again, I was the only white girl. Woman. Studying shao lin karate in a small island gym. We all flew to Trinidad for the competition, our passports stamped “Sport.” We spent a lot of time trying to best the Bajan team as better partiers. Eh, St. Lucia? I ended up with the guy who next day won the entire championship, dancing some place in Trinidad, up in the mountains: that place, dance, and partner, I will never find again. We were so hungover the next day. But I had not yet earned my black belt; I was just happy to be there with my friends. They all came to my birthday party, where my young bodybuilder boyfriend was D.J., and when my dishes ran out, my island friends cut plastic water bottles to hold the drinks, some with bottom sections as cups, some with top sections capped as glasses. That was the best party ever. Everyone showed up: the women at the magazine I wrote for, my entire karate club, the friends I had made dancing and trying to find a job, when the job I had moved there for turned out to not be real. I remember tripping in a ditch, walking some friends to the bus stop. Laughter that lasted forever …

    But who cares about real? We’re in the reggae house. I have no fears. Not like in America, where it’s nothing but bills and terror and staying alive. Here, I can live fearlessly just because I’m strong, resourceful, resilient, and open to change. And there is music, everywhere. On the minibus public transport. Every home, every public space. Beckoning from the horizon at night, when the heat keeps you awake. Live by music and you can stay alive—in an entirely vital way.

    Bump and grind was the two-dimensional adaptation. This dance is in four dimensions. Beyond male and female, this is communion at some entranced, supra-human ecstasy. The reggae house has a back yard, surrounded by tamarind and coconut palm trees. Most of the smoking goes on there. The inside room is the chapel.

    For the moment, I believe. I believe in the possibility of male and female connection. I believe in community joy. I believe in the resources of soil and sea and sand. I believe in an enduring destiny—perhaps not a personal choice—but which, because I have felt it, will change my life forever.

    How often is feeling an acceptable experience in America? In my personal history, not often. Male doctors tell me how much pain I should feel when an unwanted lump of muscle tumor grows inside me (they all say the same thing: “Women can have a tumor the size of a football, no problem.”). But when that tumor grows behind the uterus, externally, pressing on the broken spine, and is considered inoperable, what then? I told them, and told them, that this lump of unwanted muscle tissue was causing me pain—and then it took ten years to get relief. After percocet, morphine … when all I wanted was the reggae house, and beer.

    Relief. I am still young (younger?), and happy in the reggae house. All I have to do is hold up this wall and dance. I have never been so content. Contented. Afterwards, I realize this is a defining experience. I have spent my entire life moving my body to make people happy, changing my mind, chasing the spiritual spiral, and now I think back, and back, to the reggae house.

    America needs a reggae house, a culture of poverty and agriculture, a nonprofit future, and then we will be whole. Jah rules. I and I can prophesy. Believe me. Take me to the river.

Instead of APEC

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:02:46 -1000

Instead of APEC

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Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:12:13 -1000

While Hawai‘i Waits for Curbside Recycling ...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:20:00 -1000

While Hawai‘i Waits for Curbside Recycling ...:

Recycling Redemption Centers (October 2011)

Note: RRR Center on Kapahulu is actually open M, T, TH, F, 9 - 5 (error on website), S & S 8 - 4 (Closed on Wednesdays)

When the Bough Breaks

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:01:49 -1000

    “Look, that’s a second line—isn’t that a second line?” I was blearily sure…in that mildly nauseated early morning way…that the home pregnancy test was showing up positive. Even at 5 a.m., the faint pink line preceding the sunrise was discernible, not just an object of hope, but actual, a chemical and physical reality.
    John wasn’t as certain, donning his chef whites and making sure all his knives were in his kit. “Take it again tomorrow,” he said. “It’s probably too early to tell.” He kissed me. “Sa mwen sa fé son ou?” (Our ritual greeting and parting, the language of the West Indian island home we had deserted for the freezing coast of Maine and its exclusive resorts.) I sighed, put the magic wand down on the kitchen counter, and responded, “M’a sa fé anyen son ou.”
    What can I ever do without you? I am nothing without you. Since our marriage I had taken this ritual too literally, disappearing while my husband was at the restaurant, and only slowly warming back up to a living state with his return, like some kind of vestigial, cold-blooded creature. I felt as if the creative writing classes I taught, the freelance advertising assignments I had landed, were tiny shadows on the real object, the huge desired moon, of my existence: a baby before I turned 40.
    And here it was. This tiny pink line actually represented a cluster of fertilized cells, no longer part of my being, in me but not of me. All day I held my abdomen, thrilling with the knowledge. I couldn’t tell anyone yet; it was too early.
    The next week, when I began to bleed a bit, I panicked and called the doctor. “It could be normal,” he reassured me in his calm, kind way. “Sometimes women spot early on in pregnancy. But if it keeps up I want you to go to the emergency room, OK?”
    A week later I started to bleed again, early in the morning before John headed to work. I was leaning out the window of our bedroom, checking on the bird nest that had appeared in the corner of the shingles over the dining room downstairs. I could see the nest had moved.
    “I think the nest got knocked down,” I said. “We’d better call my parents.” So while I headed to the ER for tests my parents came with their ladder and tried to put the baby birds and the nest back where they had been: a complete chaos, this jumble of twigs, threads, bloody feathery thumb-sized creatures tumbled into the rain gutter.
    At the hospital my hcG levels were tested; I was definitely at least one month pregnant, but the bleeding concerned the doctors. “It’s possible you’re having an early miscarriage.”
    I wrote in my journal. “Blighted ovum.” Dictionary: “blight” - to destroy, ruin, or cause to decay. Preceded by “bless,” “blessing,” “blew.”   I have an ultrasound this afternoon to find out what is really going on, as it looks like my hcG levels are going down instead of doubling upward, as they should. Now, being realistic, I must record the data: one in four pregnancies fail before 10 weeks. In the old days women wouldn’t even know they were pregnant; they thought they had a late period, or didn’t even keep track until they saw the bleeding. But this complex negotiation of cellular growth offers so many opportunities for dead ends, I guess it’s a surprise that three of the four survive.
    I had a terrible nightmare last night: we had a small son, about 3 years old, named “Nicholas.” We were walking through a city, planning to catch a bus to somewhere, I don’t know where. Nicholas suddenly ran on ahead as fast as his little legs could waddle…a green and white bus was pulling up to the curb, and through the windshield I recognized the driver I used to speak with on my runs into Portland. Then I noticed that a chunk of sidewalk up ahead had crumbled away: a big square of concrete had fallen into a deep, cliff-like ravine running underneath a portion of the roadway. And Nicholas, not seeing the hole, hadn’t stopped at the edge in time and was hurtling down, far far down, to the broken cement slabs and hard rocks and gravel and piping way down at the bottom. He hit a big segment of concrete and lay still, a dark segment on a larger white rectangle.
    Somehow a person was at the bottom of the ravine. He or she, I couldn’t distinguish the sex from so far above, lifted the body of our child, and I craned to see: was he moving, did he breathe, did he open his eyes? As I strained my eyes I must have leaned too far forward, and I lost my balance at the broken edge of the sidewalk, and hurtled downward, just like my son, only I knew that I was too big, I couldn’t possibly survive such a fall, even if he had, and I woke up before I died.
    Two surgical procedures later I learned that there were no chorionic villae in my uterus, a sure indicator that the pregnancy, while it existed, was not in the uterus. And I first heard the words, “ectopic pregnancy.”
    So this child, this baby I’d been waiting for, dreaming of, ever since losing a pregnancy after a rape in my early 20s, had been so eager to live, it couldn’t wait to spin and swim all the way to the growing place. Instead, it planted in my fallopian tube, that gently waving arm in the video from one of my laparoscopic surgeries—as if it carried a sign, welcoming all visiting tadpoles.
    The HMO, wanting to contain costs, first tried chemotherapy. But when the methotrexate didn’t seem to knock the little creature from its place in the branches, I took another look at the literature. After the ectopic pregnancy reaches a critical size, the tube ruptures, and the woman bleeds to death. Feeling weak and nauseated and lightheaded, I called the doctor who had first correctly diagnosed my condition. Yes, I was feeling abdominal pain. Yes, I had shoulder pain. She told me to get into her clinic right away.
    Then—doctors arguing—how had the HMO ignored my rising hcG levels? What had happened to my chart? The lab confirmed the obvious; I was still pregnant, and the baby was growing. But it was growing in the wrong place. So suddenly I was an urgent hospital admission, no longer a mother-to-be but a woman in danger of dying. Funny how in a single day your identity changes.
    I was hemorrhaging. I didn’t feel any different, only lost and broken and a little sick to my stomach, as usual. I blamed the chemotherapy, but really I was just about to die.
    The surgeons took my baby. It was almost four months, the size of my thumb. Unfortunately, like its mother, it had no common sense: it had planted in the wrong place. Not an enduring place, but the first comfortable place that made it welcome. And I was losing all my blood into my abdomen. Ectopic pregnancies can’t be transplanted, they had told me, when I desperately begged them to take it and put it into my uterus. Out of place. Pau.
    My husband held my hand when I came back. I kept fainting after the surgery, so despite the HMO the hospital had to keep me until my hematocrit approached a very low normal level. I refused a blood transfusion. My parents appeared above my stretcher: I remember voices and kisses, concern on their faces.
    Home again, I stopped searching for signs of the baby birds. They couldn’t have made it. The nest had disintegrated, and despite everyone’s best efforts, there was no way to put them back where they belonged.

Photo

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:24:08 -1000

Help Make a Difference Now

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:43:14 -1000

Help Make a Difference Now:

Click to Commit

Homeless cleared out near convention center - Hawaii News - Staradvertiser.com

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:25:34 -1000

Homeless cleared out near convention center - Hawaii News - Staradvertiser.com:

More proof of the destruction of Hawai’i’s middle class. The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported its study on Honolulu’s economy: only 20% of residents are earning over 45% of total income. With unemployment nearly 10%, salaries much lower than on the mainland, rents much higher, and cost of living skyrocketing, where do we go from here?

Laha Lele

Musical Events Happening Now

olelooftheday: Hawaiian Word of the Day: Hiʻipoi ( To tend,...

Hiʻipoi

To tend, feed and defend; to cherish or take in the arms

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“NOVA Earth from Space” (Courtesy PBS)

Upcoming Events from PBS Hawaii Weekly Newsletter - February 10 through February 16

"HOW ARE WE CONNECTED?"

“Colors may be evolution’s most beautiful accident.”...

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Upcoming Musical Events on Oahu

Upcoming Musical Events at UH Manoa

Obama’s Science Report Card (reprinted from “The Scientist”)

Obama’s Science Report Card

Obama’s Science Report Card

Zero Minus One

Lost in the Reggae House

Instead of APEC

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While Hawai‘i Waits for Curbside Recycling ...

When the Bough Breaks

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Help Make a Difference Now

Homeless cleared out near convention center - Hawaii News - Staradvertiser.com

To tend, feed and defend;
to cherish or take in the arms