Sunday, June 29, 2025

Elizabeth Cotten, noncommutative blues genius, wrote the U.S. national anthem: Freight Train

  In 1984 Cotten was declared a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts and was later recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as a "living treasure." She received a Grammy Award in 1985 when she was ninety, almost eighty years after she first began composing her own works.

 https://folkways.si.edu/elizabeth-cotten-master-american-folk/music/article/smithsonian

"It's time for the black and white to get together and love one another. I feel it." - Elizabeth Cotten

 Elizabeth Cotten playlist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My dad took me in a small airplane when I was 9 years old - while he worked on a Superwood lawsuit

 if insects are scared of superwood how toxic is it? What is it off-gassing? There already was a Super-wood plant made by Georgia-Pacific in Cloquet, MN. My dad did legal work for them at one time. I went there as a kid - probably 10 years old. Yeah we went to the Bemidji mn plant because we got a small airplane ride also. A flying lesson! Now it's a Superfund site! SUPERWOOD CORPORATION NUPLY DIVISION (EPA ID: MND057604563) Site Information Site Info | Aliases | Operable Units | Contaminants | Contacts Administrative Records | Reports and Documents Site Name: SUPERWOOD CORPORATION NUPLY DIVISION Street: MIDWAY DRIVE

City / State / ZIP: BEMIDJI, MN 56601311 N.W.2d 159 (1981) SUPERWOOD CORPORATION, Plaintiff, v. SIEMPELKAMP CORPORATION and G. Siempelkamp & Company, Defendants. No. 51867. Supreme Court of Minnesota. October 2, 1981. *160 Robins, Zelle, Larson & Kaplan, Robert M. Wattson and David Evinger, Minneapolis, Dorsey, Windhorst, Hannaford, Whitney & Halladay, William J. Hempel, Philip M. Chen, and Stephen R. Duerr, Minneapolis, for plaintiff. Faegre & Benson, Norman R. Carpenter, Robert L. Schnell, Jr., and Brian B. O'Neill, Minneapolis, for defendants.
 
 
 
  • Parties Involved:
    • G. Siempelkamp & Company (Defendant)
    • Superwood Corporation (Plaintiff)
    • Siempelkamp Corporation (Defendant)
  • Case Type: Civil
  • Jurisdiction: Supreme Court of Minnesota
  • Disposition: Other
  • Dispute Synopsis: Superwood brought an action in Federal District Court in 1979 based on negligence, strict products liability, breach of warranty, and breach of contract. Superwood Corporation purchased a hot plate press manufactured by G. Siempelkamp in 1954. The press operated without problems from 1954 to 1975. In 1975, the cylinder on the hot plate press failed and could not be repaired. The federal court granted summary judgment for the defendant on the contract and warranty claims due to statute of limitations. Superwood sought $616,716 in damages for damage to the press and lost profits.
  • Outcome: The Minnesota Supreme Court answered the certified questions in the negative, holding that economic losses arising out of commercial transactions, except those involving personal injury or damage to other property, are not recoverable under the tort theories of negligence or strict products liability.
  • Winning Party: Siempelkamp Corporation (Defendant)
  • Judges: Scott, Yetka, Sheran
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    Saturday, June 28, 2025

    Dr. Karen Filbee-Dexter: A blueprint for national assessments of the blue carbon capacity of kelp forests applied to Canada’s coastline

     npj | ocean sustainability Article https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-025-00125-6 A blueprint for national assessments of the blue carbon capacity of kelp forests applied to Canada’s coastline

     

    Karen Filbee-Dexter, Ph.D. researcher on Kelp MacroAlgae carbon sequestration rates

     A full description of the methods can be found in Filbee-Dexter et al.24
    . From this global model,  we determined the average carbon export rate for each of Canada’s three coasts (Expcoast). To estimate the carbon export flux potential from kelp
    forests on each coast (CFluxcoast), we multiplied the average carbon export
    rate (Expcoast) by the annual per-area carbon production rate of kelp forests
    for a given coast (CProdcoast; calculated above). Finally, we calculated the
    total carbon export capacity of kelp forests per coast in terms of the maximum, high, and lower extent estimates.

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXBx-UZaQ64

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PygqByI2vt0

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc74vrRe-nM

     https://wernberglab.org/current-staff-students-and-visitors/karen-filbee-dexter/

     My research focuses on the ecological impacts of climate change and the functioning of the world’s seaweed forests. This includes understanding kelp carbon cycling and storage, regime shifts to sea urchin barrens and turfs, and climate-driven expansion of kelp forests in some Arctic regions. I am working with seaweed cultivators to develop unscaled restoration approaches for kelp forests. I take a broad scale approach to ecology, leading multiple international networks and running comparative field experiments across 3 continents. I co-supervise and mentor 4 PhD and 3 MSc students.

     Sept 2021-Sept 2024: Collaborator Fisheries and Oceans Canada Science Contribution. Blue carbon as a Canadian climate change solution: modelling the mitigation potential of kelp under future climate change scenarios. UVIC. Budget: 300 000 CAD

     https://www.hi.no/hi/om-oss/ansatte/karen-filbee-dexter

     https://alaskabeacon.com/2022/09/20/ever-heard-of-ocean-forests-theyre-larger-than-the-amazon-and-more-productive-than-we-thought/