The GLRC's Dustin Dwyer reports:

If you buy a Toyota Prius in the next two months, you can get the highest hybrid tax credit on the market, but if you buy after October 1st, you'll only get half the current credit, and the credit for all hybrids made by Toyota and Lexus will be phased out completely within a year.

That's because Toyota reached a total hybrid sales mark of 60 thousand vehicles in June, and, according to rules that took effect in January, carmakers that have sold more than 60 thousand hybrids can no longer offer tax credits to their customers.

Read or listen to CUTTING THE HYBRID TAX CREDIT

Y. writes:

YPSIDIXIT was enchanted to stumble across this Quicktime video of an Australian lyrebird. In its quest to make its song as unique and attractive to mates as possible, the lyrebird, an accomplished mimic, incorporates sounds around it into its song.

She continues:

In the video the lyrebird, puffed out into a glory of feathers, sings its little heart out to try and woo a mate--by making the sound of a chainsaw, the instrument of its own eventual extinction.

Read The Australian Lyrebird: Video and be sure to watch the AMAZING bird on video with narration by naturalist David Attenborough
Read Lyrebird from Wikipedia

Dave Dempsey writes:

Bill McKibben always has the most provocative things to say about environmentalism.

Environmentalism isn't dying. In fact, the need for it has never been greater. But it has to transform itself into something so different that the old name really won't apply. It has to be about a new kind of culture, not a new kind of filter; it has to pay as much attention to preachers and sociologists as it does to scientists; it has to care as much about the carrot in the farmers market as it does about the caribou on the Arctic tundra.

Also in the National Geographic article, McKibben writes:

Historians, I think, will look back on this as the time when denial finally began to crumble. When we finally began to understand that the planet as we've known it was at stake-and not from a possible scenario, like nuclear war, but from the consumption of the coal and oil and gas that power most of the actions of our lives. This is new. Humans have never faced a civilization-scale challenge before. Whether we deal with it gracefully or not depends, I believe, on what happens to that creed we call environmentalism.

Read the death of environmentalism? by Dave's Blog
Read the entire National Geographic Voices aritcle, Bill McKibben: A Deeper Shade of Green

Your Brother Kings writes:

I continue today with a transcription from the New York Times, June 23, 1907, pg. X4. This "society column" addresses, at length, the trend of European aristocrats marrying the daughters of wealthy American businesspeople in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

"Miss Edith Collins, a daughter of Clarence L. Collins, and who made a trip to the Klondike with Mrs. Roswell Hitchcock, married Richard Bey, Prince Czaykowski, a Pole. He was attached to the Turkish Diplomatic Service. Later the Countess sued for divorce and obtained it in 1904. The evidence, taken in Paris, was kept secret."

YBK concludes:

Please visit again tomorrow for the fourth installment; I will conclude the transcription on Friday.

Be sure to check back!

Read more of this installment: American princesses in Europe (continued, Part III)
Also read Part II: American princesses in Europe (continued).
And read the first installment: American princesses in Europe.

Kitchen Chick writes about her 2006 eGullet Heartland Gathering, that included a trip to the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the Clements Library at the University of Michigan.

She writes:

If you attended the University of Michigan, as I did, the Clements Library is one of those mysterious buildings that all students look at but most never dare to enter. The beautiful Italian Renaissance style building set on its spacious lawn is home to the American history and culture collections that span from the fifteenth to the early twentieth century, including the Culinary Archive.

Janice Longone herself gave us a tour of the current exhibit. Jan is a well-known food historian and antiquarian culinary publications dealer. She donated her extensive collection to the Clements and has, appropriately, become the Curator of American Culinary History. Her passion for our history from past through present shone as she shared stories about building her collection and the fascinating history and cultural context around each item.

Read An Afternoon at the Clements by Kitchen Chick
Visit the William L. Clements Library
Read about the William L. Clements Library Building, designed in the Italian Renaissance style by noted Detroit architect Albert Kahn
Clements Library's Current Exhibit (July 5 through Sept. 29): "Patriotic Fare: Bunker Hill Pickles, Abe Lincoln Tomatoes, Washington Crisps and Uncle Sam Apples" - Washington, Lincoln and Franklin as advertising pitchmen

Mike Wendland writes:

Google is going to start flashing a warning when you click on one of those sleazy Web sites that look legitimate but are really shell sites that load your computer with malware or spyware. The sites that will get the arning have been listed by the Stop Badware coalition.

Read Google to warn of "dangerous" Web sites by PC Mike's E-Journal
Also read Google's New Feature Warns Of Unsafe Sites by Moneycontrol.com's techblog

Matt writes:

So, as I mentioned, this past weekend I ran a pinhole workshop for middle schoolers at the local library. First we made cameras out of paint cans and cookie tins and then they ran around the parking lot taking pictures while I was mostly herding them through the darkroom and the un/loading process.

Read Pinhole magic...
Also take a look at Adventures in pinholery...
Check out Michigan Photographers: Michpics Talks with Matt Callow by Michigan in Pictures

The GLRC's Sandy Hausman reports on a dispute between a Native American tribe and local communities. She writes:

For hundreds of years, wild rice was a staple of the tribe's diet, but starting in the 1930s, private construction of hydroelectric dams pushed water levels in rice growing areas up. High water killed most of the plants and took a toll on wildlife. Bob Evans is a biologist with the U.S. Forest Service. He says fish, bird and insect populations dropped dramatically:

"Black tern is a declining, threatened species that is known to use wild rice beds, Trumpeter swans. They're a big user of rice beds. Um, just a whole lot of plants and animals. It's really a whole ecosystem in itself."

According to a recent press release:

Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin have significant populations of wild rice, or manoomin, as
the Ojibwe Indians call it. Wild rice populations, however, have declined throughout much of the plant's native range due in large part to human impacts. In an effort to share information and ultimately restore rice populations, a regional wild rice restoration and preservation conference will be held August 7th-10th at the Lac Vieux Desert Resort Casino in Watersmeet, Michigan.

Read or listen to BATTLE OVER THE RIGHT TO GROW RICE by GLRC Environment Report
Also read Project Seeks to Re-establish Wild Rice in UP by Absolute Michigan's Andrew McFarlane
The Acton Institute's The Manoomin (Wild Rice) Project offers a solution to both an environmental and a social problem

Jack Lessenberry writes about the Center for Economic and Policy Research's study comparing life in the United States with life in Europea study.

He writes:

Teenagers in the Slovak Republic do better in math than ours do. People in Spain can expect to live three years longer than we can --though we spend twice as much on health care per person.

He continues:

Here's the center's conclusion: "The U.S. economic and social model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion, including high levels of income inequality, poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration. And not surprisingly, it adds "the United States, therefore, stands as a poor model for Europe."

If you aren't shocked, you aren't conscious. But all this doesn't mean we are doomed. That doesn't even mean we can't catch up and pass Europe again, as we did in the past. It does mean we have to change our policies and our thinking. But not in the way we constantly hear from the cranks on Fox News.

Read or listen to Essay: The Unequal Future - 8/4/06
Also read or listen to the companion Interview: Ben Zipperer - 8/4/06

Following is a great collection of Gargoyles and Grotesques photographed by dETROITfUNK. As he explains in his post Grotesques:

The word "Gargoyle" shares a root with the word "Gargle"; they come from "gargouille," an old French word for "Throat." A true gargoyle is a waterspout. An unusual carved creature that does not serve that purpose is properly called a "Grotesque."

Take a look at Face it
And don't ignore this Heads Up
Ogle these Gargoyles Galore
And finally, More Goyles