Ruminant On This!

goats on campus
Originally uploaded by tom_robey.

Currently at a cost of $750 per day, a herd of 60 goats is eating ivy, blackberries and assorted other goodies along the southeastern most section of Ranier Vista. There's gotta be someone out there that knows if this is better for the environment, cost effective, or hilarious...

Light Reading

Seattle City Light's customer newsletter, Light Reading has some good information this month for people interested in Seattle's energy use.

First, the 2006 fuel mix disclosure indicates that 98.0% of all electricity used in Seattle is from non-carbon emissions sources. This is from from 2005's 93.7%. Here is the 2006 breakdown:

• Hydro: 89.8%
• Nuclear: 4.6%
• Wind: 3.5%
• Natural Gas: 1.1%
• Coal: 0.9%
• Biomass: 0.05%
• Petroleum: 0.01%
• Waste: 0.02%

I wonder what "waste" is.

The other resource in the newsletter is a personal emissions calculator provided by the Environmental Protection Agency. Unfortunately, the usage calculation for home electricity use is based on national averages, both for cost per KWH and power mix. This is important for assessing % generation from 'green' sources. For my ~$40/month bill, I've estimated that I should enter $2.50/month in order to account for this benefit of living in the Northwest. (2% of our energy comes from burning carbon, while the national average is 70%, but we pay about half of the national power rate average; Seattlites should multiply their bills by .06.)

Seattle still looks to me like a rather green city. Emerald in fact.

Crows and West Nile Virus

Lately, my walks to and from bus stops or around campus have included a little foraging for berries, flower, coyote scat and other cool stuff. A consequence of this is that I notice (more than usual) animal carcasses. Since I am on the lookout for an intact crow's head for a Wunderkammern project I am working on, there are a few health issues I need to pay close attention to. Namely, West Nile Virus. If you see a dead crow, and live in a region where WNV has been reported, there's a good chance your county has a reporting system in place. In King County, you can call 206-205-4394 M-F 8a-5p, or go to the easy web-based form I just used to report two crow roadkills I saw on Saturday.

More Coyote News

The P-I and King5 both featured urban coyotes today. Coyotes are not new to Nuevo Colony, but there is a big media buzz today. Check out my science blog for a more complete analysis! Or, if you have seen a coyote, head over to the Northwest Coyote Tracker to report it. The site owner has been deluged today with reports, but I think she will catch up after all the hype dies down.

Follow this link for video from the King5 report.

Keep Kerlikowske

And to think Seattleites want to can Gil Kerlikowske as police chief...
According to a hilarious article in the P-I this morning,

officers (including Kerlikowske) watched as a 30-year-old Seattle man shoved the eagle to the curb and then stomped on the costumed man's back as the eagle's costumed confederate -- a man dressed as a beaver -- looked on.

Other highlights of this blurb include a description of the fight as a

man-on-eagle fracas.

"Man-on-eagle fracas" is also what appears in the police documents. I'd chalk this incident up in the 'good cop' category. The chief is still protecting eagles, even after being removed from the endangered list!

SLU Neighborhood

Every so often, it comes to folks' attention that the South Lake Union community is undergoing major change. Today, it is a front-page story in the P-I.

I work at the University of Washington building at 9th and Mercer. When our lab moved here two and a half years ago, there was a 'vision' for SLU to be a biotech hub where scientists, grad students and biotech employees would all live and work. The only way students will be able to live here is if we bring cots into the lab!

SLU is turning into a nice neighborhood, and it will be nice to have a mixed tech-residential- commercial neighborhood. UNLIKE Belltown, Cappy Hill and the Central District, there are new businesses AND new residences moving in. This of course all comes at the expense of the poor, who were shut out of their low-rent apartments 5 years ago. Amazon.com replaces Pearl Jam. Yuppie replaces starving artist.

Ahhh... Progress!

Urban Coyotes

Two days of the last week, my wife and I have spotted coyotes near our Seattle apartment unit. She saw a group of three near our parking lot and together we saw one on the drive up to our building. It makes me really happy that there are predators in our neighborhood. Of all the mammalian predators, coyotes are the most likely to inhabit urban areas. Here are some specifics about them from Wikipedia:

Size and appearance: A member of the dog family, it stands about 24 inches at the shoulder, weighs 20-25 pounds and is 3.3 to 4.3 feet long, including its roughly footlong tail. The fur is long, coarse and generally grizzled, buff above and whitish below. It has reddish legs and a bushy, black-tipped tail. There is considerable local variation in size and color.

Characteristics: Noted for nightly serenades of short yaps and mournful howls, it is primarily nocturnal and hunts alone or in relays. Coyotes are intelligent animals with a reputation for cunning and swiftness. They can sometimes attain a speed of 40 mph. They virtually never attack humans.

How do they survive in Seattle, and why are they in our backyard? Our apartment abuts on one side with a golf course where coyotes have frequented for 20 years, and the other side consists of sloping brush down to the Burke-Gilman trail. Just beyond the trail is an old military base now called Magnusen Park. Coyotes love to den in ravines, and there are several near our place. They eat rodents and small pets - both menu items abound in Seattle. My guess is that they use the Burke-Gilman trail as a conduit. The wildlife service estimates that there are thousands of coyotes in King County.

I will be looking forward this summer to nightly serenades of short yaps and mournful howls.

Summer In Seattle

The 4 month stretch of sunny 70 degree days without a cloud in the sky that defines the Seattle summer started 5 days ago.

Shhhh.... don't tell anyone that it really doesn't rain that much in Seattle!

Evelyn the Envelope

Always interested in proper recycling etiquette, I recently emailed Seattle's expert on recycling (who also happens to be a cartoon character) about carbon copy papers. Here is our communication. Note that it only took a couple of days to hear back from 'her.'

Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 12:48:53 -0700
From: Ask evelyn SPU
To: Thomas Edwin Robey
Subject: Re: NCR paper/ carbonless paper

Yes, you can call me Eve, but you cannot recycle these
items.  They belong in the garbage.
Thank you Thomas!

For FREE monthly e-mail updates on conservation tips,
events and activities happening around Seattle, visit:
www.seattle.gov/lists/curbwaste.htm  to subscribe to
Curb Waste E-News.

>>> Thomas Edwin Robey  5/29/2007 2:45 PM >>>
Yo Evelyn,

May I call you Eve?

Can the yellow carbon copy paper from receipts and phone
message records be recycled in Seattle?

Thanks!

Thomas Edwin Robey
MSTP Bioengineering Student
University of Washington
206.616.8684 (lab)

Make sure you recycle right!

Water Water Everywhere!

The Lake Union water taxi may yet have a chance! As part of Seattle's grand plan to "bridge the gap" (between what?), crews are resurfacing Dexter Avenue North. Part of that plan seems to include a rapid transit path to Lake Union... for boats...

But seriously: right now water - some of it knee high - is streaming past my building at 9th and Mercer on all four sides! This main broke right in front of the King5 TV studios. A good slide show is available at their site. The Seattle Times reports that:

About two blocks away, Mayor Greg Nickels canceled a news conference scheduled at 9 a.m. to highlight major improvements to city roads.

It's too bad I didn't bring my canoe to work today!

Alaskan Way Viadebacle

My friend Jonathan just posted a comment on the alternative newspaper The Stranger's blog (called Slog) about the transportation debacle in Seattle involving the Alaskan Way Viaduct. It's worth a few minutes to check out.

One Night Count

Have you ever wondered how cities estimate homeless populations? If municipalities provide social services for homeless individuals, it is important to collect data to support proper resource allocation. In addition, King County has embarked on a 10 year plan to end homelessness - how do they plan to measure outcomes from their efforts? With a census, of course!

Last night was Seattle's One Night Count. The One Night Count is the primary data collection assessment for unsheltered homeless individuals, and is conducted in late January around the country. SF and I participated in a team that walked 30 block area of Seattle's University district between 2 and 5 AM this morning. 735 volunteers joined us in King County and tallied 2,140 people trying to survive without housing or shelter. Given the weather, the organizers estimate that another 6,000 homeless men, women and children resided in one of several transitional housing or homeless shelters in the area. Read the press release for more specifics, and also for some touching stories.

Once the caffeine overcame the delirium associated with waking at 1:30 AM after only a few hours of sleep, our cognitive functioning seemed quite normal. I am glad, however that it was easy to find parking in the U District. Parallel parking might have pushed my limits of spatial reasoning.

What was participating in the count like? Think of it this way. An alley we walked down could have been someone's living room. Some stoops we inspected were clearly once bedrooms. Vans with condensation inside and food on the dash are studio apartments. It makes me wonder how many folks I have incidentally woken with loud talk after a night out, or in the nervous energy following late night studies.

Will I transfer the 5 tallies on that waterproof paper into my memory as evidence of my concern? Or can I position those marks in the foundation of my motivation to work for justice?