Yay! Wait…oh.

Well, Michigan now has a budget, and the Governor did not use her line item veto to completely destroy Extension. That’s the good news.

But.   The Extension budget will still be cut 44%, which is a LOT.  Part of the problem is that Extension funding is incredibly complex. Between County, State, and Federal inputs, it’s hard to say what the actual final reductions will be. The Ann Arbor Chronicle has some good coverage of how this plays out at the County office level.

The reality is there will be big cuts. In everything.
In fact, most of the big holes in the Michigan budget are backfilled for 6 months by stimulus money.  Which means that nothing is actually resolved.

All State Universities and public education systems will also be cut–and the pain slightly deferred for now with Stimulus money. From the Detroit News:

“Michigan State University has proposed eliminating 40 academic programs and shutting two departments in effort to save the university money…..The recommendations called for eliminating two doctoral programs, two education specialist programs, 13 master’s programs, four graduate specializations, 16 undergraduate majors and three undergraduate specializations.”

Now, the loss of the Canadian Studies major…yeah. BFD.
And I don’t think it’s a bad thing (in the abstract) to have some departmental/program consolidation at the bigger schools.
But disbanding the entire MSU geology department? Didn’t see that one coming.  And when you know the people involved, it’s a lot harder.

I am happy that there will be time for people to at least try and plan for the big hit that’s going to come in 2010 when the stimulus money goes away.  And folks are doing their best to put this on a positive spin, and to see good stuff to come from consolidation.

I have to say, the whole thing reminds me of this Monty Python sketch–with Michigan’s education system as the Black Knight.  “Tis but a scratch! Just a flesh wound!”

Holy F’N Shit

You might remember that I got in trouble in the past for saying what I thought about some cuts to Michigan’s State Budget in early 2009. And that was NOTHING compared to what’s about to happen.

It appears the state of Michigan is about to lead the nation…in dropping all its Extension Service funding.  It would become the ONLY state to not have Extension.

For someone who works in Agriculture, this is just…

Apocalyptic.

That’s the only word I can come up with.

This isn’t about just ending consulting services to farmers. Michigan Extension runs the Economic Development Programs for many counties. They run breastfeeding workshops and the state’s supplemental nutrition programs.  They train childcare providers.

They do a lot of really important stuff that we need when the state’s employment rate is the highest in the nation.

A few bullet points from an official MSU website:

• Every county, every legislative district, will be affected by the elimination of MAES and MSUE funding. These are outreach programs that make a significant impact on people’s lives. From babies to seniors, urban, suburban or rural, people of all communities will feel the impact.
• 236,000 Michigan youth and 27,000 volunteers would face the elimination of 4-H programming, making Michigan the only state without 4-H youth development programming.
  
• In 2008, MAES and MSUE funds generated a total economic impact for the State of Michigan of $1.062 billion. This would be gone. For every $1 provided by the state, MAES and MSUE generate another $2.33 for research and extension work in Michigan. This income would be lost, with much of it going to other states.

If you have a story to tell about how you have benefited from Michigan Extension, the Michigan Experiment Station System, or other related parts of MSU, please contact your legislators ASAP!

Michigan House of Representatives
Contact your Representative

Michigan Senate
Contact your Senator

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
Office of the State Budget

Update on the Challenge

You might remember that last month I threw down the gauntlet to some of the bigger cousins in the interwebs for the DonorsChoose Challenge!

DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that provides an easy way for people to fund projects in schools by donating online.  The Challenge is a  month-long competition between blogs to see who can bring in the most donations to help low-income classrooms.

I chose schools in high poverty areas that have insect-themed or garden themed projects. A couple of them are in Michigan!

I invited some of my Nature Blog Network Friends to come along, and talked some smack about kicking some A-list blogger asses.

So, how are we doing?

Ah.

Err.

Fashion Blogs and Gawker are beating us into a pulp. This is fairly embarrassing.

Please visit my Giving Page to make a donation. Or, choose another of the NBN blogs to make a donation to!  If we can gain additional donors by this weekend, HP will make an additional donation to the NBN blogs!

It doesn’t have to be a lot–the whole idea of DonorsChoose is that lots of people can pool little amounts of money to do big things.

Thanks!

Book Review: The War against the Chtorr

Bug Rating:

Synopsis: Long-winded Libertarians lead the fight against an extra-terrestrial insectish species in this 1983 sci-fi novel.

I had such high hopes for this book. Its cover promised all sorts of awesome. And then, I discovered the author wrote the Star Trek “Trouble with Tribbles” episode.

Cheezy cover! History of Tribbles! Silly rhyming title!  (War/Chtorr)

Alas, it was not to be.

Like most sci-fi/fantasy books I’ve reviewed here, the biology is a bit muddled.  Although, really. When you have a post-apocalyptic world invaded by aliens, who’s going to quibble about a little bad biology?
(Well, besides me, anyway?)

The Chtorr are described as insects in several places, but also as having “purple skin and varicolored fur.”  Or as “giant, pink, fur-covered caterpillars.”  Or “a large, purple and red, man-eating caterpillar.”  An eye-witness account:

“It was huge! Nearly twice the length of a man, bright red and more than a meter thick at the head! Its eyes were black and lidless. It reared up into the air and waved its arms and made that chirruping sound again; its mouth was a flashing maw. “Chtorr!” it cried. “Chtorrrrrr!”

Perhaps the Chtorr are foreshadowing Lady Gaga’s wardrobe and career?

But I digress.

In 1998 the world is destroyed by a series of plagues, and only a few Americans are left. They are gathered into “re-education” locations and given mandatory civics classes on the duties of citizens in this new world.  Apparently, those classes make an impression, because fully one third of this 397 page book is the main character flashing back to high school discussions of wealth redistribution and federal abuse of power.

It is just about as fascinating as you would expect.

That’s a shame, because the fundamental concept of the book (which you figure out when you FINALLY arrive at page 213) is centered around invasive species displacing the native inhabitants of Earth’s ecosystems. Aliens are terraforming the Earth by ecological invasion.

That is a brilliant thing to build a novel around!  The invaders are more competitive ecologically. Alien plants change the light transmittance and oxygen level in water.  Alien insecty-things become the top predators in their new ecosystem.

Add to that the invaders can only be killed by fire or explosives, and you’ve got a firecracker of a book.
Um, unless you bog it down with tedious discussions of what money is, and how the state and individual power balance is maintained.

The portrayal of women in this book just adds to the Dismal.  All but one of the female characters in the book are “comfort women.” In fact, a topic covered in that high school civics class is the duty of all hotties under 18 to put out for the betterment of humankind.  Not the most enlightened future society, but if you’re going to kill everyone, I guess stockpiling nubile young women as well as weapons is to be expected.

Sigh.

So there you have it. Disappointing.

(As a final aside, one of the main characters is named Dr. Obama!)

Stupidity….there’s an app for that

Just when I think I’ve seen everything…I discover there is an app for your iPhone that claims to  repel mosquitoes with high frequency sound:

“Have you ever been camping and you were worried about those mosquitos [sic] outside near your camp light? Wondering how soon it will be before they attack you in your sleep? Well, today’s the day that the “AntiMosquito” app will save your life! It produces ultrasonic-sounds, ranging from 16 KHz to 20 KHz, at frequencies that are way too high for us — humans — to hear!

I personally tried this app when I was on vacation and it worked perfectly! There is one downside to this app, but it’s not really the developer’s fault but rather Mother Nature’s: other animals can here [sic] these sounds and could make them go crazy. The only other problem is that a few people stated that some mosquitoes (again Mother Nature) aren’t affected by these sounds. So a “patch” would be appreciated to cover these specific mosquitoes.”

And, gentle readers, I believe you know what I’m going to say about this:

BULL.

SHIT.

I have covered, in detail, the utter failure of any ultrasound device to repel anything besides common sense.
And, perhaps, money is also repelled out of your wallet.

The developers of this app have clearly gone to a great deal of time and trouble to make this thing look like it’s doing something. And, for all I know, if the iPhone is *capable* of producing sound in these frequencies–which is doubtful–it may really be doing so.  However, that doesn’t change the fact that ultrasound has been shown again and again and again over the last 20 years to utterly FAIL at repelling mozzies.

I would like to direct your attention to this excellent publication by Purdue University’s Extension service.

Whatever Works For You: “New Magical Remedies for Pest Eradication”

I can provide that note in a PDF form, if you would like to print it out and have it handy to give to credulous folks that want to tell you that this app does anything.

Whoops

In late August, I thought things would slow down for me in September. Clearly, I was incorrect.

Oh well.  Here’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months:

• 

• Getting more people in on the DonorsChoose Challenge! Are you in for the WIN?
• Work work work. Still putting in those 60 hr weeks, but a few big projects are finishing up with happy (mostly) resolutions.  If you manage people and aren’t hip to Manager Tools, then get with the podcast program!
• I WENT TO COSTA RICA AND IT WAS AMAZING. I saw bullet ants. I saw leaf-cutter ants. I saw howler monkeys and poisonous frogs.  I quadrupled my bird life list in 4 days.  I had massive bad hair days in the humidity, was almost killed multiple times by rickety bridges and crazy drivers, and had a wonderful, wonderful time.  Costa Rica during the “green” (i.e, rainy) season was just heaven for a biologist.  I spent 4 days running around yelling “OMG W00t OMG!”
• Did I mention that I saw leaf-cutter ants? Did I mention how GEEKED OUT I was about that?  These little animals are the dominant herbivores in this ecosystem.