A Walk on the Wild Side
A visit to NSF
About Bees and the Bee Genome
Ant Life Part 1
Ant Math
Art & Science of Broadcast Journalism
Bats, Bones, and Biology
Been There, Dung That
Biology Business
Biology Net
Breath of Fresh Ocean Air
Bugs in Films
Bugs in Space
Build Your Own Ant Farm (Part 1)
Butterflies and Insect Vision
Casting a Podcast Line
Cataglyphis
Cell CAT Scans
Collecting Ice Cores
Cute Colorful Poison Dart Frogs and Their Mimics
Cybertaxonomy
Dear Aliens
Dr. Bio goes to Washington
Dr. Biology Visits the Laboratory of Michael Angilletta
Dr. Biology visits with Biologist Kate Ihle
Drawn to Bones
Ed Wilson 1
Evolution of Bird Flight
Feather Biology
Fire & Life
Food for Thought About GMOs
Good Cells Gone Bad
Hacking Nature
Healing with clay
Hiking South Mountain Park
Hulking Biology
Inner Space the Final Frontier
Insect Infatuation
Jaguar in My Backyard?
Keeping Cool
A Tasty Bite of Science
Are Plants Made from Thin Air?
Biology Explained by Cats
Living in Extreme Worlds
What Makes You, You?
Are Your Cells Cooperating or Cheating?
Beetle X-rays
Break Proteins in Eggs
CRISPR Science
Clawed Climbers?
Exploring the Dark Side of the Earth
High Flying Science
History, Rabbits, and a Deadly Virus
Honey Bee Waggle Dance
Leafcutter Ant Life
Learning from Darwin's Finches
Life in the Cold
Microbes Living Inside Us
See DNA
Superoxide, Superhero, or Supervillan?
Tiger Beetle Observations
Virus Quest
Why We Get Sick
Life & Building E.T.
Looking into Lucy
Make Your Own Pocket Seed Viewer
Math Biology
Micronauts and beyond
Monster DNA
Mysterious World of Dr. Biology movie
Mystery of the dying coral reefs
Ocean Winds and Climate
Oh No-Exersize
One Wormy World
Ouch! Body defense and repair
Panda-monium
Plant Detective
Putting the Touch into Biology
Queen Switcharoo
Rebooting the Immune System
Roses Are Red, But Why?
Science-Powered Games
Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
Skeleton Secrets
Social Nature
Space Physiology
Spiderwoman
Stinging Mystery
Strange Cricket Silence
Swarm Science
Tales of Termites
The Other Marine Biologist
Time Traveling Paleoentomologist
Tiny Matter
Ugly Bug Contest 2008
Ugly Bug Contest 2009 Winner
Venom!
Visit to the Plankton Zoo
Watching Grass Grow
Why Is Life the Way It Is?
Wickedly Cool Plants
You say dirt, I say soil
Young Women in Science Part 1
Zombie Ants
Edward O. Wilson Science Rock Star - Part 1
Ask A Biologist Podcast, Vol 046
Podcast Interview with Edward Wilson
Dr. Biology meets up with one of the rock stars of science - Ed Wilson. While one has a his own comic book character the other is larger than life in the world of science. Listen in as these two sit down for a fun conversation about science and art.
Download the MP3
Content Log
Intro 00:00
What is biodiversity? 02:11
Why is biodiversity important? 03:07
What is a bioblitz? 04:35
- Finding rare and new species. 05:58
- Discovering new species and IISE species.asu.edu. 06:30
- Naming new species 06:56
Can you do a bioblitz in your backyard? 07:21
Do you need special equipment for a bioblitz? 08:02
When did you start doing bioblitzes? 08:46
What is the Encyclopedia of Life web project? [eol.org] 09:22
How are we going to get people involved in EOL and can anyone participate? 10:51
Writing and the importance of writing. 12:56
What's your favorite part of writing? New novel - fiction and non-fiction. 13:40
- Fun creating your own world, but also hard work. 15:00
Is there a part of writing you don't enjoy? 15:36
The importance of writing what you know. 16:10
Writing dialogue. 17:22
New book Superorganism. What is a superorganism? 17:55
Pheidole in the New World. Illustrated by E. O. Wilson - 5000 drawings. 20:40
What was your process for drawing all these ants? 22:07
Why are the ants drawn in the way you have drawn them? 22:36
How are these drawings a form of art? 24:14
Why draw the ants instead of taking a photograph? 24:31
Is there one ant you liked drawing more than others? 25:56
Sign-off 28:33
Download Transcript PDF
Dr. Biology: This is "Ask a Biologist," a program about the living world, and I am Dr. Biology. To start us off today, let me list a few names; Elvis Presley, The Beatles, U2, Gwen Stefani, and E.O. Wilson. Why these names? Well, they've all been called rock stars. And even though you may not know all their names, you certainly know some of them. My guest today is one of the rock stars in the world of science, Edward O. Wilson, or for those that follow rock stars of science as well as they follow rock stars of music, he's known as simply "E.O. Wilson." If you haven't heard of him, try typing in "Edward O. Wilson" into the search engine Google, you'll end up with millions of results.
So just who is E.O. Wilson? Well, he's a biologist, author, and an artist who's been observing life on our planet with a particular interest in ants. Bu his interests extend far beyond these six legged insects to include all living things. In fact, he's one of the main persons behind the Encyclopedia of Life web project, as well as a very interesting activity called BioBlitzes.
Today we get a chance to talk about the Encyclopedia of Life, BioBlitzes, his scientific work, and his art. Welcome to "Ask a Biologist," Professor Wilson.
Edward O. Wilson: I'm delighted to be here Dr. Biology.
Dr. Biology: Would you mind if I call you "Ed"?
Ed: I prefer it. When I was a kid, I was known variously as "Bugs" or "Snake" Wilson. I just mentioned that, because to tell you that I started my interest in outdoors pretty young.
Dr. Biology: You did, and actually we get to talk about that a little bit later, because I think it's fascinating to know how a lot of the scientists do start young, and you had a really interesting find I would say, at a young age. We'll talk about that, but before we get into that let me start by giving you a test, something different. Biodiversity is a word that is being used a lot, well it's being used a lot these days. We often hear it in the classroom, as well as in the media, you might read it in a local newspaper. In two minutes or less, can you explain what 'biodiversity' is, and why it's important?
Ed: I better be able to, I introduced the word. [laughs] Biodiversity is short for biological diversity, it means all the different species, and all of the different ecosystems, habits that species live in, and it just means the totality, the whole life on Earth, but studying from a point of view of variation, variety among different life forms, different kinds of snakes, different kinds of plants, and so on.
Dr. Biology: So why is it so important?
Ed: It's so important, because our lives depend on it.
Dr. Biology: So you mean to tell me that if we lose a few hundred plants, it could be a problem?
Ed: Big problem, especially if they include the plants that we get all our food from, but even if they didn't, you'd have all sorts of things go wrong. You need a lot of different kinds of plants to collect the water up on the mountainsides and let it trickle down slowly, so we just don't get washed out every time. You need plants that support animal life of all sorts. You need plants of a great variety to give you enough oxygen in the air to breathe, and so on. The same is true with different kinds of animals that we need. Some of those animals incidentally, are very small, you never see them. They're there in huge numbers, in the soil, in the dirt in your feet, and up in the trees and so on.
Most people don't even know they're there, but it turns out that we need them up there and down there, doing all the things they need to circulating the materials, the nutrients, the things the soil consists of, and generally keeping the whole system we live on working. We need all of them, we can't start just letting too many of them get extinct, and throw them away.
Dr. Biology: Alright, well now that we have a basic understanding of biodiversity, let's shift to an activity that you were one of the pioneers of, it's called a BioBlitz. If a person didn't know any better, they might think it's something to do with football or some other sport. So what is a BioBlitz?
Ed: A BioBlitz is a great big celebration. It's a great big treasure hunt. To have a BioBlitz you get a lot of people together some time in the day, you can start in the afternoon or start in the morning; who are interested in finding different kinds of plants and animals out in nature, like a treasure hunt. They all gather together, and there are experts, and then there are just anybody, families and others who want to come along and be a part of it. The idea is to see how many different kinds of plants and animals you can find in a 24 hour period.
Dr. Biology: Oh, so it's got a time limit.
Ed: Yes it does, and actually you can even have contests, different towns having different BioBlitzes and competing. The idea then is to see how high you can get the score, and you have to verify that you did see this, and you saw that. You can easily get in a 24 hour period, if you have enough folks working, like over 1,000 different kinds. It's so interesting, because not only do you see people having a lot of fun, they're turning up rare species, that experts say, "We haven't seen one of these in 20 years around here," or, and it happens all the time, new species. The expert may be an expert on butterflies or an expert on dragonflies or something like that, says, "Well heavens! That's a new species! Let's get a specimen of that, and we'll get it in there. We'll get a scientific name put on it, because we need to know about that in the future."
Dr. Biology: I just think that's so cool that you can go out and explore, and you might during this treasure hunt, discover something for the very first time. From an earlier show, we got to talk to Quinten Wheeler, who runs [directs] the International Institute for Species Exploration, and it's easy to find. It's called species.asu.edu. One of the things he mentioned is not only do you get to discover them, you get to name them. Can you talk about some of the names you have put on some of the ants that you've discovered?
Ed: Yes. Well usually it's the scientist that you get them to, who knows all the different kinds, and knows that it's a new species, who names it, but he could name it after you! I named a lot of species of ants after the people who found them.
Dr. Biology: OK. Now I'm motivated. I need to go out and do this. Which brings me to the point of, can you do a BioBlitz in your backyard?
Ed: You can. Yes. It would be kind of tough on your backyard if you had 100 people showing up to just do a BioBlitz on your backyard. But you could do with two or three people. And you would be amazed at what you can find in a backyard. Even if you have sort of a scrubby little backyard with not a lot of plants in it, pretty soon, you would probably be getting dozens of different kind of insects. And if you've got a magnifying glass and start looking at the soil, the dirt down there, pretty soon you'll see other things there. But generally speaking, when you have a BioBlitz, we like to have a few square miles and a few 100 people searching through them.
Dr. Biology: Now, is there any special equipment besides, you mentioned a magnifying glass, is there any other kind of equipment you'd need?
Ed: Well, if you're interested in looking for certain kinds of things. Most people are. They don't want to just go out and look for everything that moves. Even just families who want to be part of it will join in and say, "Well, we just love butterflies. And we think we want to just see how many different kinds of butterflies we can get." And they ought to be able to get a butterfly net to do that. If they want to see all the different kinds of birds they can find, they'd want binoculars. And of course, if you want to see how many different kinds of ants or how many different kinds of little spiders and so on that live in the soil, you bring along a trowel. But it doesn't take much more than that.
Dr. Biology: All right. So when did you start doing the BioBlitzes?
Ed: Dr. Biology, we started it 10 years ago, 1998. And this is the 10th anniversary of doing that. I might add that it's so popular. I don't know the number of states around this country, but a large number of them have BioBlitzes. One year Massachusetts had BioBlitzes in every school district in the state. And then when you go abroad, you find a number of countries having BioBlitzes. It's now up to about 19.
Dr. Biology: You also are a champion of a project called the Encyclopedia of Life, which is a web based project. Can you talk just a little bit about Encyclopedia of Life?
Ed: Yeah. First of all, I invented the idea five years ago, and I suggested that we have an Encyclopedia of Life. It's on the web. The web address incidentally is eol.org, and I recommend it to anybody, eol.org. And we have a lovely introduction to the whole project. It is an electronic encyclopedia which is being built up now by a lot of scientists. It will have, does have already for many species, information on every kind of plant and animal, including right down to bacteria, known in the world, and everything known about each one in turn, with new information constantly being added. And information that's found to be wrong, taken out, and going on indefinitely. And available to every person, everywhere, anytime, free.
Dr. Biology: Wow. 24/7 Encyclopedia of Life. But when you talk about the Encyclopedia of Life, there's a lot of discussion about how many species we already know about. I see the number about 1.7 million species, and some say that might be only 10% of the species on this Earth. How are we going to make this really happen? How are we going to get everybody involved in your Encyclopedia of Life? And can we participate if we're not a scientist?
Ed: Well you certainly can participate. And the figure, you're right, is somewhere a little under two million. I say 1.8 is a good figure, but it's true that probably only roughly... This is my guess 10% of all of the different kinds of plants and animals and bacteria or fewer are known to science. In other words, 90% out there are still undiscovered by science. It's no big deal to find a new species. Well that means that we're on a little known planet. We need to explore this planet as though we're landing on Mars, and then get a way of understanding all of that life, because our life depends on knowing it.
And that's why I and a number of other scientists are really anxious to get people interested and get them involved. Because just people who haven't been trained at science even can add to this. Certainly, we need the support of everybody in promoting the idea of the Encyclopedia of Life and other scientific endeavors that help us explore this little known planet.
Dr. Biology: I'm very hooked on the website myself, and I'm encouraging anybody who has not been there to go look at it, because it's right now in its infancy even though it was conceived five years ago. We've got a lot of work to do, and I think we're going to need a big army. So, let's see if we can get people out there to do it.
I had the pleasure of having Bert Hölldobler as a guest on "Ask a Biologist." He is one of the preeminent ant specialist, myrmecologist, and your co author on several books, which brings us to writing. We talk about science and scientists. You can't do science without communicating. So one of the things I like to talk about is the craft of writing. So, how important has writing been to your science?
Ed: It's very important. Throughout my life, I've worked as a scientist, but let me tell you that when you get to writing up your results, especially if you want to make a lot of people aware of what you've found or what other scientists have found, which is so important in modern times. Then the better you can write, the more effective you'll be as a scientist.
Dr. Biology: What's your favorite part of writing?
Ed: Well, I'm going to surprise you. All my life, I've written what's called non fiction. That is, I don't make anything up. Everything is fact. Writing about fact is an art in itself, to make it clear, to make it organized, to get it right.
Dr. Biology: Make it interesting.
Ed: And to make it interesting. But most recently, since you asked me my favorite kind of writing, I decided I'd try to do a novel. I know a lot of people try to do novels. But I said to myself and my editor at the publishing house I use... I said, I think that if I use biodiversity and the search to save it and the fight to save it and to show how a young boy, in this case in the South, grew up determined to be part of the effort to study it and save it. This would be a book a lot of people would like to read. Also, it would help bring attention just a novel like that to what the whole subject is all about.
So I started writing it, and I've discovered that I really enjoy writing fiction, you know a novel. As anyone who undertakes it will discover. On the one hand, it's just a tremendous amount of fun to create your own world in your own head, your own people saying the things you want them to say. On the other hand, I'll tell you it's real hard work. I was surprised at how hard it is, writing a novel.
You really have to do a lot of thinking and a lot of imagining, and select your words just right to describe people and how they live, and what they look like, and what they're trying to do, and even what they think. So that's what I'm finding right now, and I think that overall, I'm having the most fun writing a novel.
Dr. Biology: So is there a part of writing that you don't enjoy?
Ed: I don't think so. Oh, wait a minute. Let me take that back. The kind of writing I do not enjoy doing is possibly to a department store, when I write and I say, "Are you sure I haven't paid that bill?"
Dr. Biology: [laughter]
Ed: [laughter] Most kinds of writing, I enjoy doing. Creative writing, both non fiction and fiction.
Dr. Biology: You set your novel in the South, or at least your character's a young boy in the South. It turns out you were a young boy in the South, and it sounds like, to me, you're doing one of the best things you can do when you start to be creative, is to write what you know.
Ed: That's exactly right, yeah. People have said that the best novels, the ones people most enjoy writing, and also most enjoy reading, are autobiographical. They're about the life of the author. But since they're fiction, and since you want to make them maybe more exciting than most of the life you actually live, then you are obligated to change things around. However, people you know, incidents that occurred, settings that you lived in, are valid background. You just don't try to present them literally, because this is fiction after all, and you need to combine them and break them up and add to them in ways that give them maximum amount of fun and drama in the work that you publish.
Dr. Biology: Right, and if you're writing a novel, now you're dealing with dialogue.
Ed: And you're dealing with dialogue. That's both tough and easy. For some people, they just can't get it down on paper the way they talk. But others and I've found it fairly easy myself can write just the way people talk. You've got to be willing to write some poor English once in a while, and sound a little dumb once in a while. But I find that it's very easy to sound very dumb, at least for me.
Dr. Biology: [laughter] All right, I hate to do this, but we're going to have to switch back to your [non]-fiction, because you and Bert Holldobler have written a new book. It's called Superorganism. Can you talk to us a little bit about this book?
Ed: Yes, certainly. This is a big book. It's non fiction, it's real science, it has over 1,000 footnotes, and thousands of references from the literature and so on. And it's very complete, but it's all about social insects. Ants, a little bit of termites, some wasps, some bees. And why we call this Superorganism and why that's important in biology in life generally is that a colony of ants or honeybees, to take an example, is made up of a lot of little members many ants in a colony, many bees, 50,000 maybe in a hive of bees. But they're so well organized, and they so depend on each other, and they're so altruistic, that is, self sacrificing and taking care of one another, that they've been able to build up very complicated and highly organized society, more than the ones humans have.
The results of that is that a colony of ants, or a hive of bees, almost acts like a single unit. The whole colony, all of the 10,000 harvester ants, or all of the 50,000 bees, acts almost in unison. So it's like one great big organism. It's a superorganism. And that's where that title came from.
Dr. Biology: Is this going to be a book that the average person's going to pick up off the shelf and want to read?
Ed: Well, yes. It's beautifully illustrated. I say that because, without being immodest, it's mostly the work of my co author Bert Hölldobler, who is really creative as a photographer, in rendering art, and so on, showing exactly how these creatures look and how they live. It's not as easy going as many books written for a broad audience, but it is very readable. Especially when it's connected up with the illustrations that we have. You can figure out what the ants mostly ants, but also bees really are like, how they live, and why we call them superorganisms.
Dr. Biology: Well, you've helped me move right along into my next question. I brought in the studio another one of your books, talking about Pheidole in the New World. Now Pheidole is the genus of ant that you have a particular passion for, I'd say. Right?
Ed: Yes.
Dr. Biology: And this book, we can talk about the science and your passion, but I also want to make sure that we talk about not only the writing that's in here, but your illustrations. You illustrated the entire book. From what I know, I think there's well over 600 species of ants in here. So how many illustrations do you have?
Ed: 624 different kinds of ants in that one genus. 344 were new to science, I had discovered them. And to illustrate all of them, all 624, over 5,000 drawings that I did myself.
Dr. Biology: 5000 drawings.
Ed: Yeah.
Dr. Biology: How long did it take?
Ed: Well, off and on, 18 years. But when you do a scientific project like this, you're not sitting and doing it all the time. In fact I did this one just at leisure, sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, or early Sunday morning before the paper arrived, or a weekend when I just wanted to do something relaxing like do a lot of drawings. And gradually it came into existence.
Dr. Biology: So it's something that you consider relaxing for you, and the process, because we are drawing ants... I've seen a picture of you in front of a microscope. So are you using a microscope, and then drawing the ants?
Ed: That's right, and listening to soft rock.
Dr. Biology: And listening to soft rock! OK, well that brings up another question I'll ask later. I like to hear that.
Dr. Biology: All right. The illustrations are simple, they're clean, but I know the word that I love the most about them. I consider them elegant. Why are they drawn this way? Is it purely for art purposes? Or is there a science behind this?
Ed: Mostly science, but a bit of art. I design the whole layout so that each one of the 624 species by the way, there are at least 624 species that make up about 20 percent of all the known ant species in the Western hemisphere. So in order to make it possible to identify them and look at their traits neatly, I arranged all the figures in the same way. Each species has, say, 10 or so drawings, or a little less than that, in many cases. But they're all drawn exactly the same way, so that you can compare species by species. But then, what I did was to take them exactly as they look in different poses, different directions, different parts of their bodies. I drew them with very simple lines, and I drew in the traits the exact shape of the head, the length of the little spines on their bodies that they had, the sculpturing as we call it, the little dots they have on the outside of their bodies and lines that run through part of their body.
I did those in a minimal manner, that is accurate, but in a way, that just highlighted what they really look like and why they're so different, one from another.
So basically, I suppose it does approach art, in that it requires the interpretation of the form, and how it's placed, and how it's depicted. But it's not imaginary. This is the exact way the ants look.
Dr. Biology: The thing I find interesting is, this day and age, when you can snap a picture in a second, you're still doing drawings. And after going through the book, I can tell why. Let me give my interpretation. If I look at a photograph, I get so much information that I'm often going to miss the subtle details or differences between different ants. With these drawings, I think I can see them almost instantaneously.
Ed: I think you've got it exactly right. What the artist does or, in this case, the scientist in using art is to depict exactly what makes that ant a different species. We see that used in caricatures, in cartoons of people and so on. And the art there is to show those traits that make the person in that cartoon immediately recognizable. I do that here, too, except that everything is accurate, it's not a distortion, not an exaggeration. It's exactly the ant looks.
Dr. Biology: So this brings us to the world of the taxonomist. The ones that are actually looking at these different parts of the insects, or plants, or whatever animal you might be dealing with. Being able to isolate those differences. Is there a particular species of Pheidole that you enjoy drawing more than another?
Ed: I enjoy drawing them all. The reason is that in most cases, when I was drawing, I was drawing something that was being seen for the first time. Very gratifying to be drawing something that no one has ever seen, this new species, and you're introducing it to science, you're giving it a name that will be there for all time. But I guess if I had to pick one out that I thought was the most fun, it's the moustache ant. And I had the one specimen collected in Mexico, and it's a soldier ant for that particular one, a great big head. And it has bristles that stick out on either side from where the jaws are. And it makes it look like it has a moustache!
I enjoyed really depicting that. Of course, I did it exactly as it looks. But when it came out, it's such a strange looking ant. So I called it this is the full name it's Pheidole, that's the genus name that they all have. But then I added a name: Mystax, which means moustache. So it's the moustache ant.
Dr. Biology: Right, that's the Latin for it, right?
Ed: That's Latin, yeah.
Dr. Biology: OK. Is there a part of drawing that you don't like or maybe that you get frustrated with?
Ed: I think probably just the more routine parts of the body. You have to get them right. But it's when you get to the distinctive parts of the body that make that creature that you're drawing absolutely unique, and it makes it stand out from all else. Just as a portrait artist doing a human face arrives at those features that allow, at a glance, the identification of a person, that's when it gets really interesting.
Dr. Biology: Is there anything that you draw, other than ants?
Ed: Actually, no. I have to admit. You caught me on that one! That's why I say I'm not an artist. I put my creative work in writing. That's where I do my best and most enjoyable work. I do say I so much enjoyed doing those thousands of drawings of these ants on this one occasion.
Dr. Biology: Well, maybe, if it's OK with you, we'll have to check and see if we can do a short article on you that includes just a couple of these plates, maybe even the moustache plant, on the "Ask a Biologist" website. I really would like people to see these things.
Ed: Sure.
Dr. Biology: And explain just a little bit more about them. Because they really are just exquisite drawings.
As I look down my sheet of questions, I can see that it looks like we should take a break, and we'll return for part two of our conversation with Ed Wilson, science rock star.
The "Ask a Biologist" podcast is produced on the campus of Arizona State University, and is recorded in the Grass Roots Studio, housed in the School of Life Sciences, which is an academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
And even though we don't broadcast our show live, you can still send your questions to us using our companion website, which is askabiologist.asu.edu, or you can just Google the words "ask a biologist." I'm Dr. Biology.
And don't forget, tune into Part Two with Ed Wilson, science rock star.
Article: Edward O. Wilson Science Rock Star - Part 1
Episode number: 46
Author(s): Dr. Biology
Publisher: Arizona State University School of Life Sciences Ask A Biologist
Date published: December 15, 2009
Link: https://askabiologist.asu.edu/podcasts/edward-o-wilson-science-rock-star-part-1
Dr. Biology. (2009, December 15). Edward O. Wilson Science Rock Star - Part 1 (46) [Audio podcast Episode.] In Ask A Biologist Podcast. Arizona State University School of Life Sciences Ask A Biologist. https://askabiologist.asu.edu/podcasts/edward-o-wilson-science-rock-star-part-1
Dr. Biology. "Edward O. Wilson Science Rock Star - Part 1." Produced by Arizona State University School of Life Sciences Ask A Biologist. Ask A Biologist Podcast. December 15, 2009. Podcast, MP3 audio. https://askabiologist.asu.edu/podcasts/edward-o-wilson-science-rock-star-part-1.
"Edward O. Wilson Science Rock Star - Part 1." Ask A Biologist Podcast from Arizona State University School of Life Sciences Ask A Biologist, 15 December, 2009, askabiologist.asu.edu/podcasts/edward-o-wilson-science-rock-star-part-1.
Can Gila monsters climb trees?
Answer >>


Joe Biden Will Sign Executive Order on Day 1 Forcing Americans to Fund Planned Parenthood
Steven Ertelt Mar 3, 2020 | 2:57PM Washington, DC
The liberal media likes to bestow the “moderate” descriptor on former Vice President Joe Biden. But when it comes to abortion, the former senator and longtime abortion advocate is anything but moderate.
Recently, Biden confirmed he would force Americans to fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business if he is elected president.
The 2020 presidential candidate spoke Thursday at a town hall in South Carolina where he confirmed that one of his first acts as president would be sticking taxpayer dollars behind the global abortion agenda.
An audience member attending the town hall asked Biden what he would do to “empower women” in poor countries to address overpopulation.
“Another serious issue is overpopulation,” the audience member said. “The majority of the world’s population growth takes place in the poorest countries in the world, where women aren’t being empowered. What will you do to help empower women in the world’s poorest countries?”
Instead of empowering women, Biden said he would fund the promotion and performance of abortions overseas.
“I strongly oppose the limitations on the ability for the United States to contribute to organizations in these countries that, in fact, provide women’s health alternatives for choice,” Biden said.
“We should end that limitation,” he added. “It’s called the Mexico City Rule. We should end that.”
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Biden would overturn a key pro-life policy President Trump enacted. During his first week in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order known as the Mexico City Policy or the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Act that revoked taxpayer funding to the International Planned Parenthood abortion business.
The policy prohibits taxpayer funding to international groups that promote and/or provide abortions overseas, the biggest of which is the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Trump’s decision applied to nearly nine billion dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds to foreign non-governmental organizations. The policy ensures U.S. funds continue to go to health care, humanitarian relief, and even family planning; it only blocks funding to those groups like IPPF that perform or promote abortion in other nations. Ultimately, that cost Planned Parenthood’s international abortion company $100 million.
Since that order, the Trump administration has expanded it to cover additional foreign funding – disqualifying the abortion giant from other taxpayer revenue streams.
Last March, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Trump Administration announced new enforcement mechanism designed to expand this executive order to the broadest extent possible. Pompeo announced that the U.S. State Department will refuse to work with any foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) engaged in the abortion business. The State Department will also refuse to fund foreign NGOs that give money to other foreign NGOs engaged in the international abortion industry.
Leading pro-life groups praised President Trump and the expansion of the pro-life foreign policy.
“By ensuring enforcement and compliance with existing pro-life policies, Secretary of State Pompeo and the Trump Administration reaffirm their commitment to protecting innocent human life at home and abroad,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “We applaud Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his dedicated pro-life leadership and for his efforts to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to fund or promote abortion overseas.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins commented: “The abortion industry is well known for relentlessly pursuing taxpayer dollars — and will exploit any opportunity to grab US taxpayer funds. Thankfully, President Trump and Secretary Pompeo are just as relentless in working to ensure taxpayers aren’t forced into a partnership with the abortion industry overseas.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, also praised the president in remarks to LifeNews.com.
“The Trump administration has been the most pro-life administration in history, and Secretary Pompeo and President Trump should be thanked for closing the loopholes that allowed NGOs to take our taxpayer dollars and give them to sub-contractors that commit or promote abortions. This is an 80-20 issue, and the American people have made it clear they do not want their taxpayer dollars subsidizing abortions. This step will start to rectify the mistakes we made in enshrining abortion into Kenya’s constitution, a grave mistake made by the Obama administration,” she explained.
This policy will close the 90 to 95% of the loopholes that allowed NGOs to skirt the Mexico City Policy’s prohibitions on taxpayer-funding of abortions through foreign aid dollars, Hawkins said. According to the announcement, NGOs will have to provide certification to the State Department that they are not involved with abortions.
It’s no surprise that Biden would force Americans to fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business, since he has a n extensive record supporting abortions up to birth.
When it comes to abortion and appointing federal judges who have the power to determine the direction of abortion legislation, Biden made it clear during a Democrat debate he would not compromise as president.
“It’s a woman’s right to do that. Period,” Biden said, “And if you call that a litmus test, it’s a litmus test.”
Biden went further. He said if the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade, he would push for a national law allowing abortions up to birth.
“If they ruled it to be unconstitutional, I will send to the United States Congress, and it will pass I believe, a bill that legislates Roe v. Wade adjusted by Casey,” Biden said.
Biden also touted his role in rejecting former President Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork when he was in the Senate, as Bork had said he favored overturning the landmark decision that has resulted in killing 61 million babies in abortions.
Biden once attempted to appear a a moderate on abortion but that has changed.
After Biden came out supporting overturning the Hyde Amendment and forcing Americans to fund abortions, pro-life Americans made it clear they opposed his position supporting taxpayer-funded abortions up to birth. Biden then flip-flopped and said he would not support efforts to overturn the Hyde Amendment, which protects Americans from funding most abortions.
But after an outcry from abortion advocates when he flip-flopped, Biden then flip-flopped again last June and now says he will support forcing Americans to fund abortions up to birth with our taxpayer dollars.
Biden said he supported forcing Americans to pay for abortions. “It can’t stay,” Biden said of the Hyde amendment during an exchange with an ACLU activist earlier this month. The video of the exchange was posted by the ACLU on Twitter on May 8th
Here’s the transcript of that exchange between Biden and an ACLU activist [emphasis added]:
ACLU Activist: I’m an ACLU Rights For All voter, and I have one quick question for you. And that is: Will you commit to abolishing the Hyde amendment, which hurts poor women and—
Biden: Yes…. Yes. And by the way, ACLU member, I have a near-perfect voting record my entire career.
ACLU: I heard you did. But I’m glad you just said you would commit to abolishing the Hyde Amendment.
Biden: Right now it has to be… It can’t stay.
Biden clearly answered “yes” and “it can’t stay” when asked if he’d “commit to abolishing the Hyde amendment.”
Naturally, pro-life organizations called Biden out for his support for taxpayer-funded abortion on demand and for changing his position repeatedly.
SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser told LifeNews: “Joe Biden’s support for taxpayer funding of abortion after decades of opposition is just the latest example of Democratic extremism on abortion. Long gone are the days of ‘safe, legal, and rare.’”
Polling data is clear that Americans oppose abortion funding.
A January poll conducted by Marist University finds an overwhelming majority of Americans support restrictions on abortion and would like Roe v. Wade reinterpreted to allow restrictions on abortions. It also found that three-quarters (75 percent) of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion abroad, fewer than two in 10 (19 percent) support such funding. Opposition to this funding includes most Republicans (94 percent) and independents (80 percent) and a majority of Democrats (56 percent).
By a double-digit margin, a majority of all Americans oppose any taxpayer funding of abortion (54 percent to 39 percent).
Despite the data, Biden is still an ardent abortion supporter.
Biden has a strong pro-abortion voting record that goes back for many years, and he supported President Barack Obama’s leadership as the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history. What’s more, pro-abortion movement leaders say they “trust” Biden to protect abortion on demand. As the vice president, he supported the administration’s pro-abortion policies, including Obamacare, which forced religious employers to pay for drugs that may cause abortions.
From 2001 to 2008, Biden’s voting record on pro-life issues was close to zero, according to the National Right to Life Committee. In 2005, for example, he voted against the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits funding to overseas groups that promote and/or perform abortions. He also voted repeatedly to require that military service members’ abortions be covered by taxpayer dollars.
Kate Michelman, a former leader of NARAL, is not worried.
“Joe Biden continued his evolution on the issue under Obama. He got there,” she told the newspaper. “I can’t say for absolute, 100 percent, but I would trust him as president to protect and defend a women’s right to choose.”
To show how far Biden has come toward the pro-abortion view, he once likened an abortion to an operation — as if taking the life of a baby before birth is somehow beneficial in the same manner as a patient’s operation.
Biden said: “Maybe where Romney is most sketchy is on women’s rights. I got a daughter and lost a daughter. I’ve got four granddaughters and Barack has two daughters. And this is to our core. Our daughters and our granddaughters are entitled to every single solitary operation, every single solitary opportunity!”


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The Girl with a Clock for a Heart
by Peter Swanson
First Love is Deadly. What if your college sweetheart, the girl of your dreams, suddenly disappeared? Twenty years later she's back, she's in trouble and she says you are the only one who can help her..."Very hard not to read in one sitting". (Alison Flood, Observer). "A twisty, sexy, electric thrill ride". (Dennis Lehane). "Takes your breath away ...a plot that twists like a corkscrew". (Daily Mail). "A well-plotted, enjoyably twisty debut". (Sunday Times).
Peter Swanson's debut novel, The Girl With a Clock for a Heart (2014), was described by Dennis Lehane as 'a twisty, sexy, electric thrill ride' and was nominated for the LA Times book award.
His follow up The Kind Worth Killing (2015), a Richard and Judy pick, was shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Silver Dagger, was named the iBook stores Thriller of the Year and was a top ten paperback bestseller.
He lives with his wife and cat in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Thriller / suspense Crime & Mystery
Be the first to review The Girl with a Clock for a Heart.


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USALCO Completes Acquisition of AlChem and CalCHEM
MIAMI – January 5, 2021 – H.I.G. Capital ("H.I.G."), a leading global alternative investment firm with $42 billion of equity capital under management, announced today that its portfolio company, USALCO, LLC (“USALCO” or the “Company”), has acquired Al Chem Specialties, LLC (“AlChem”) and CalChem, LLC (“CalCHEM”). USALCO is a leading provider of specialty chemicals used primarily in the water and wastewater treatment processes and for the manufacturing of refinery catalysts.
Operating as a unified business under common leadership, AlChem / CalCHEM is a leading manufacturer of high-quality specialty chemicals for municipal water treatment and industrial applications and operates premier manufacturing plants in Mentor, Ohio and Modesto, California. AlChem / CalCHEM was founded in 2004 and has grown significantly under the leadership of Founder and CEO Scott Williams over the past two decades. Mr. Williams will join the USALCO leadership team following the acquisition.
“AlChem / CalCHEM builds our presence in Ohio and establishes a base of operations on the West Coast,” said USALCO CEO Ken Gayer. “The combined business is a leading manufacturer of specialty chemicals used in water and wastewater treatment, refinery catalysts, food production and other industrial applications with the ability to serve customers anywhere in the continental U.S.”
Scott Williams, Founder and CEO of AlChem / CalCHEM, noted the synergistic benefit of joining USALCO. “We see tremendous commercial opportunity in the combined platform given our complementary product set and go-to-market strategy,” he said. “We look forward to partnering with Ken and his team to continue serving our customers and expanding our offering across the United States.”
“We are pleased to partner with Scott and the AlChem / CalCHEM team,” said Keval Patel, Managing Director at H.I.G. “The transaction fits squarely into our strategy of further expanding our geographic reach within the U.S. and acquiring best-in-class companies that produce significant value creation opportunities.”
About USALCO
USALCO is a leading provider of high-quality aluminum chemicals used in water and wastewater treatment, refinery catalysts and other industrial end market applications in the United States. Headquartered in Baltimore, MD, USALCO operates 11 manufacturing facilities throughout the United States. For more information, visit https://www.usalco.com/.
About H.I.G. Capital
H.I.G. is a leading global private equity and alternative assets investment firm with $42 billion of equity capital under management.* Based in Miami, and with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, H.I.G. specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/ value-added approach. Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 300 companies worldwide. The firm’s current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $30 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at www.higcapital.com.
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The Five-Minute Forums > Search Forums
Search took 0.03 seconds. Search: Posts Made By: Scooter
Forum: Science Fiction 01-27-2007, 01:31 AM
Old Doctor Who question: What's 'DARDIS' supposed to stand for?
Posted By Scooter
DARDIS was used in the third Dalek serial, "The...
DARDIS was used in the third Dalek serial, "The Chase" (1965), to refer to the Dalek time machines. (This is the first time we see directly that the Daleks have developed the capacity for time...
The importance of being Sci-Fi
If you're going to include film 2001 is a...
If you're going to include film 2001 is a compelling choice, because it made it possible to view sci-fi in a serious light, building on what had been done by Robert Wise with The Day the Earth Stood...
Forum: Science Fiction 12-10-2006, 04:19 PM
David Tennant named 'best Dr Who'
Hey, it's cool if you don't watch, it's cool if...
Hey, it's cool if you don't watch, it's cool if you don't like it. We all have our things. I don't want to be the guy who gets wound up if people don't like his show. My original responses were to...
Interesting point, and the way fans talk about...
Interesting point, and the way fans talk about the ten Doctors (not even mentioning the extra, non-canonical Doctors (speaking of Curse of the Fatal Death -- or how about Scream of the Shalka?)), it...
Well, DT definitely has the "cute" and...
Well, DT definitely has the "cute" and "energetic" thing going. I wonder about the lack of exposure to other Doctors -- I'd be interested to find out how much of the voting audience had either seen...
Fans have named David Tennant the best ever Doctor Who in a poll, beating Tom Baker into second place.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6211584.stm?ls
Man, Valium must need a Valium...
Torchwood discussion (spoilers)
I still haven't seen it (or anything but Lost, to...
I still haven't seen it (or anything but Lost, to be honest), so I reserve the right to get passionate about it. The who let's-be-sexy-because-it's-not-teatime thing kind of dulled my initial...
Forum: 5MV Talk 11-16-2006, 04:01 AM
Zeke, I demand that I may or may not want answers!
It's great if you're not also working full-time...
It's great if you're not also working full-time and teaching. I love teaching and I love being in grad school and I kinda wish those were the only things on my plate.
Forum: 5MV Talk 11-15-2006, 10:55 PM
Two words: Grad. School.
This is a really cool discovery, IJD, thanks. For...
This is a really cool discovery, IJD, thanks. For some reason it reminds me of the clarihew, in which you give a pithy biography in the space of a brief quatrain. I only ever remember the famous one...
I read Homer Price 15 times when I was a kid, but...
I read Homer Price 15 times when I was a kid, but I'd forgotten about it too. For some reason the main thing I remember is that it was the first time I encountered the phrase "nothing new under the...
Forum: News 11-05-2006, 09:48 AM
Great, now I have a head revolving on a turntable...
Great, now I have a head revolving on a turntable stuck in my brain.
Poll: The Quinessential Trek Episode
Some people I know habitually rename Trek eps...
Some people I know habitually rename Trek eps using the "Friends" format -- "The One with the Gorn," "The One with Ricardo Montalban," "The One where the Crew Are Turned into Dodecahedrons," etc....
You know, I was going to say "Amok Time" but then...
You know, I was going to say "Amok Time" but then I saw your reply and went, "Duh." Definitely "Corbomite Maneuver." It's one of the few episodes that captures the real vastness of space, the sense...
I thought there was also one about there always...
I thought there was also one about there always being coffee in that nebula. Could be wrong.
Anyway you're forgetting:
7. Always make references that are so obscure that, even if they're not...
As much as I would prefer to be classical than...
As much as I would prefer to be classical than ancient, all other things being equal, "classical" refers to a narrower range of history than "ancient."
"Only"? . . .
"Only"?
The Ring-Ship Enterprise
Hmm, isn't your point that the Daedalus comes...
Hmm, isn't your point that the Daedalus comes from a more primitive time? I was assuming no turbolifts. My guess would be something more along the lines of an airport moving walkway. I'm picturing it...
I sure wouldn't want to serve on the Daedalus. It...
I sure wouldn't want to serve on the Daedalus. It doesn't look very practical. Everything arranged along a long thin shaft like that? Archer would have a five-hour hike every time he had to go from...
I think the lack of placement of the NX-01 in the...
I think the lack of placement of the NX-01 in the rec room in TMP can be easily explained by the fact that the movie was made several years before the NX-01 was developed for Enterprise.
Doctor Who wins Hugo Award
More minor awards for Doctor Who: ...
More minor awards for Doctor Who:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5314890.stm
Now now, Mrs Whitehouse never said Dr Who was...
Now now, Mrs Whitehouse never said Dr Who was tasteless. It was perfectly fit for the Queen to watch as long as they stopped drowning the Doctor in freeze-frame at the end of the episode. Which I...
This rocks, especially since it beat out serious competition from BSG.
From Outpost Gallifrey:
Doctor Who Wins Hugo
Steven Moffat's first series episodes The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances...
We should do some of our own. It'd be kind of...
We should do some of our own. It'd be kind of like that "Five Second Star Trek" we're always talking about...
to submit a fiver..
Are you at work? The software that Derek wrote...
Are you at work? The software that Derek wrote for the fiver submission site can be inhibited by browser restrictions imposed at some workplaces (like mine). I have to do all my submissions from my...
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When HR gets hold of academe, quackery and gobbledegook run riot
In expanding its empire, human resources damages intellectual standards and peddles nonsense, argues David Colquhoun
HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers ... They don't sell or produce: they consume. They are the amorphous support services." So wrote Luke Johnson recently in the Financial Times. He went on: "Training advisers are employed to distract everyone from doing their job with pointless courses." Mr Johnson is no woolly-minded professor. He is in The Times Power 100 list, he organised the acquisition of PizzaExpress before he turned 30 and now runs Channel 4.
Why has human resources acquired such a bad public image? Like most groups, those in HR are intent on expanding their power and status, hence the name change from personnel. As personnel managers, they were seen as providers of a service and even, heaven forbid, as being on the side of the employees. As HR they become part of the senior management team, and see themselves as managing people.
My concern is the effect that that change is having on science. The problem with HR people managing science is that they have no idea how it works. They think every activity can be run as though it were Wal-Mart. That idea is old fashioned even in management circles. Good employers know that people work best when they are not constantly harassed and when they feel that they are assessed fairly. If the best people don't feel that, they just leave. That is why the culture of managerialism and audit will in the end do harm to any university that embraces it.
There was a good example this week of the damage that the HR mentality can inflict on intellectual standards. As a research assistant, I was sent the HR division's staff development and training booklet. Some courses are quite reasonable. Others amount to little more than the promotion of quackery. Here are a couple: "Self-hypnosis" and "Communication and learning: recent theories and methodologies".
Self-hypnosis seems to be nothing more than a pretentious word for relaxation. The second course teaches the "core principles" of neurolinguistic programming, the Sedona Method ("Your key to lasting happiness, success, peace and wellbeing") and, wait for it, Brain Gym. This booklet arrived just after doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre's demolition of Brain Gym, headlined "Nonsense dressed up as neuroscience", who wrote: "This ridiculousness comes at very great cost, paid for by you, the taxpayer, in thousands of state schools. It is peddled directly to your children by their credulous and apparently moronic teachers." And now, it seems, peddled to your researchers by your credulous and moronic HR department, along with the equally discredited psychobabble of neurolinguistic programming.
In the UK, most good universities have stayed free of quackery. But it is creeping in.
A lot of the pressure for this sort of nonsense comes from a Government obsessed with measuring the unmeasurable. Again, real management people have already worked this out. Two new government initiatives provide beautiful examples of HR mentality in action. They are Skills for Health and the newly created Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (already dubbed Ofquack).
The purpose of the latter seems to be to implement a box-ticking exercise that will give a government stamp of approval to treatments that don't work. The advert for its CEO says that the main function of the new body will be to enhance public protection and confidence in the use of complementary therapists. (Shouldn't it be decreasing confidence in quacks, not increasing it?) But, disgracefully, it will pay no attention to whether the treatments work. And the ad refers you to the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health (president HRH the Prince of Wales) for more information.
Skills for Health, with the help of that unofficial branch of government, the Prince's Foundation, has been busy "writing competences" for distant healing, with a helpful list that divides this imaginary subject into healing in the presence of the client, distant healing in contact with the client and distant healing not in contact with the client.
And it has done the same for homoeopathy and its kindred delusions. The one thing they never consider is whether they are writing "competences" in talking gobbledegook. When I phoned Skills for Health to try to find out who was writing this stuff (they wouldn't say), I made a joke about writing competences in talking to trees. The answer came back, in all seriousness, "You'd have to talk to Lantra, the land-based organisation, for that. Lantra, which is the sector council for the land-based industries, uh, sector, not with us sorry ... areas such as horticulture etc." Anyone for competences in sense of humour studies?
The "unrepentant capitalist" Luke Johnson also said in the FT: "I have radically downsized HR in several companies I have run, and business has gone all the better for it."
Now there's a thought.


Bill to Allow Certain Felons to Vote While Still in Jail Before CA Governor
Posted by Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) 0sc on September 06, 2016
A bill that would allow convicted felons still serving time in county jails in California to vote is currently before California Governor Jerry Brown.
Inmates in California county jails would have the right to vote, under a bill passed by the state Legislature. Democratic Senator Holly Mitchell said the bill conforms with a 2014 court decision. . . . A superior court judge ruled felons in county supervision programs can vote, since they're not in prison or on parole. The bill also extends the right to inmates in county jail, who would vote in the district where they're incarcerated. Republican Senator Patricia Bates argued that could improperly influence elections.
"These individuals who are in that particular jail may have zero connection to any of the issues going on in that city, have no vested interest, or perhaps a negative one," says Bates.
The bill exploits California's definition of prison, as the California Constitution requires disenfranchisement of felons in prison:
In 1976, voters amended the Constitution to end the permanent disenfranchisement of felons. The California Constitution now reads: The Legislature “shall provide for the disqualification of electors while mentally incompetent or imprisoned or on parole for the conviction of a felony.”
With such clear language, you would think that a measure to allow felons to vote behind bars first would have to go before voters as a constitutional amendment. But voters get no say thanks to an unholy alliance of California politicians, California courts and the ACLU. In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Realignment Act, which mandated that low-level felons serve their sentences not in state prisons, but in county jails or under county supervision. It was Brown’s clever way of alleviating state prison overcrowding by moving felons to largely overcrowded jails.
. . . AB2466 would extend voting rights to felons in county jails because they are not called prisons. The legislation “defines ‘imprisoned’ to mean currently serving a state or federal prison sentence.” [Democratic Assemblywoman Shirley Weber] told the Assembly her bill would not change the penal code, but simply serve to “clarify” the law and its “ambiguous terms of imprisonment.”
[Republican Assemblymember Melissa] Melendez noted, “They’ve exploited the language in the code to suit their own needs.”
Restoring voting rights to felons still serving time, whether in prison (however it is defined) or under penal supervision, is bad policy. The bill passed the California Senate on a strict party line vote, demonstrating that it is a political tool for the Democrats. Further, super majorities of the public recognize the folly of this policy and oppose restoring voting rights to felons still incarcerated.
Worries About Garland's DOJ Underscored by the Records of Fellow DOJ Nominees
The nomination of D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland to be U.S. Attorney General has been hailed as a moderate pick for the incoming Biden Administration. However, as Hans von...


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Reclamation to Begin Field Work for Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project
Media Contact: Stan Powers, (970) 385-6555, spowers@usbr.gov
Barry Longwell, blongwell@usbr.gov
For Release: September 20, 2010
Reclamation's Four Corners Construction Office will begin field and exploration work for the western portion of the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project on September 20, 2010 in the area from Twin Lakes N.M. to Ya-ta-hey junction in N.M. The purpose of the work is to investigate the engineering and geologic properties along the project alignment to proceed with the design of the water supply pipeline.
The field work will include ground surveys, geological and geophysical surveys, archaeological surveys and subsurface exploration. Approximately 30 ten-foot deep, temporary test pits will be excavated along the project alignment to identify the material the pipeline will be placed in as well as the depth to rock. This information will help determine the cost for excavation and the type of bedding and trench appropriate for the pipeline. Once this is has been determined, the test pits will be backfilled.
The Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project was authorized for construction by Public Law 111-11 as a major component of the Navajo Nation San Juan River Basin Water Rights Settlement in New Mexico. Once completed, the NGWSP will provide a reliable municipal, industrial, and domestic water supply to Navajo Nation communities, the city of Gallup, NM, Window Rock and Fort Defiance in AZ, the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry, and a portion of the Jicarilla Apache Nation Reservation. These areas currently rely on a rapidly depleting groundwater supply that is of poor quality and inadequate to meet the current and future needs.
The NGWSP will divert a total of 37,764 acre-feet of water annually from the San Juan River and the existing Cutter Reservoir, treat the water at two water treatment plants, and deliver water to the cities and chapters via 260 miles of pipeline and 24 pumping plants. The project is designed to provide for the water needs of approximately 250,000 people in these Native American communities by the year 2040. The Navajo Nation water supply will come from water obtained through the Navajo Nation - New Mexico Water Rights Settlement, the Jicarilla Apache Nation water supply will come from water obtained through the Jicarilla Apache Nation - New Mexico Water Rights Settlement, and the City of Gallup will obtain its own water supply, which may come through a contract with the Jicarilla Apache Nation and/or the Navajo Nation.
The San Juan River diversion will occur downstream of Fruitland, just above the Public Service Company of New Mexico diversion structure. The water will be treated to drinking water standards at a treatment plant to be constructed near the diversion and piped along Highway N36 and south along U.S. Highway 491to provide water to the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, the adjacent Navajo Chapters, and the city of Gallup. Pipelines will also be constructed to provide water to Crownpoint and the adjacent Navajo Chapters and to Window Rock, Fort Defiance, and adjacent Navajo Chapters.
The Gallup Regional System will be constructed to distribute water throughout the city and to deliver water to Navajo Chapters surrounding Gallup. Prior to completion of the entire project, non-project water will temporarily be transported through the Gallup Regional System to satisfy water demands of the surrounding chapters of Manuelito, Chichiltah, Red Rock, Bread Springs, Iyanbito, Church Rock, Pinedale, and Mariano Lake. A system of wells near Twin Lakes will provide the temporary water supply until facilities are constructed to treat and deliver water from the San Juan River. Construction of Project facilities from Twin Lakes to Ya-ta-hey is scheduled to start in 2011, depending upon appropriations from Congress and execution of numerous agreements and contracts.
On the eastern side, water will be diverted from the Cutter Reservoir, treated at a water treatment plant located near the base of the dam, and piped south along U.S. Highway 550 to provide water to adjacent Navajo Chapters, the Jicarilla Apache Nation, and additional Navajo Chapters south of the highway.
The authorizing legislation requires completion of construction of all NGWSP features no later than December 31, 2024.
The Bureau of Reclamation is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior and is the nation's largest wholesale water supplier and second largest producer of hydroelectric power. Our facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation opportunities, and environmental benefits. Visit our website at https://www.usbr.gov and follow us on Twitter @USBR; Facebook @bureau.of.reclamation; LinkedIn @Bureau of Reclamation; Instagram @bureau_of_reclamation; and YouTube @reclamation.
More Information about the Bureau of Reclamation


The new Nano promise
Fuelled by five years of disappointment, Ratan Tata's little car wants to erase its 'cheap' past for a 'smart city' future.
Suveen Sinhaand Sunny Sen | Print Edition: Mar 30, 2014
Tata Motors' Ranjit Yadav and Ankush Arora
The call was unexpected. But when it came, Delna Avari had no doubt in her mind what her response would be. She moved from Bangkok to Mumbai, and from trucks and buses to little cars, "overnight".
That was October 2010. Avari had spent the previous eight years doing short stints in different countries for Tata Motors' commercial vehicles division. She was in Bangkok when Ravi Kant, who ran the company at the time, called. He wanted her to come back to India and join the Nano team. The vision for the Nano, said Kant, had not played out the way they thought it would. As understatements go, that was like calling a Ferrari a four-wheeled transport for two. The Nano was unveiled in January 2008, exactly 100 years after Model T hit the road and helped ordinary Americans drive every day. The Nano, as the world's cheapest car, was meant to migrate millions of Indians from two wheels to four and prove India's supremacy in frugal manufacturing just as Henry Ford's Tin Lizzie had established the moving assembly line.
However, the month Avari moved, the Nano sold a mere 3,065. It had crossed 5,000 only in four of the 16 months it had been in the market. Its installed capacity was 15,000 a month. There would have been periodic increases in it. According to reports at the time, Tata Motors had spent $400 million just on developing the little car, and then some on setting up a new factory in Sanand, Gujarat to produce it.
Tata Motors' Ranjit Yadav and Ankush Arora Photo: Rachit Goswami/www.indiatodayimages.com
"When we were planning facilities for the car and working out a business plan, the business plan shown to me was looking at a figure of 200,000. I said the figure is crazy. If we can do this, we should be looking at a million cars a year, and if we cannot do a million then we shouldn't be doing this kind of car at all," former Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Naval Tata said in an interview to the group website in January 2008, on the eve of unveiling the car and giving it a name.
Between two stools
Tata, or RNT, as his executives like to refer to him, remains a guiding light for the group despite retiring at the end of 2012. He was the one who conceived the idea of the Nano. His first doodle, of a car built around the humble scooter, was inspired by the sight of a family perched precariously on a scooter and trying to take shelter under a flyover in typically heavy Mumbai rain. The Nano, with its low price tag, would be the answer to their problems. Years before it came to be named, the concept of the car spread like wildfire as soon as Tata mentioned it in 2003. They called it the world's cheapest car, or the Rs 1 lakh car, or - in Hindi - the lakhtakia gaadi.
We left a lot of the positioning to somebody else. The company did not manage the perception: Delna Avari, Head, Marketing, Passenger Vehicles Business Unit, Tata Motors Photo: Rachit Goswami/www.indiatodayimages.com
Avari, brought back to head the Nano project, had to be part of the team tasked with reviving its fortunes. She came amid inauspicious portends. The next month, November 2010, the car plunged new depths by selling a mere 509. Didn't she come back to India kicking and screaming?
"I was honoured," says Avari with a chuckle, something that is never too far from her countenance. "Anything for the Tata group." That last bit has to do with her lineage. Her father, like her, worked in Tata Motors, and mother in the group's insurance arm; her sister is with Taj, the group's hotel chain. "We are a Tata family." She is also a Nano owner, driven by her chauffeur, and refers to the tiny egg-shaped car as "the little one".
One reward for her unquestioning loyalty was a briefing by RNT, during which he said all he wanted was to provide an affordable personal mobility option to every Indian. "That somehow got translated into gharib ki gaadi. We left a lot of the positioning to somebody else. The company did not manage the perception," says Avari.
That wasn't new; Tata had made the point in that interview to the group website. "It was never meant to be a Rs 1 lakh car; that happened by circumstance. I was interviewed by the [British newspaper] Financial Times at the Geneva Motor Show and I talked about this future product as an affordable car. I was asked how much it would cost and I said about Rs 1 lakh. The next day the Financial Times had a headline to the effect that the Tatas are to produce a Rs 100,000 car."
It was never meant to be a Rs 1 lakh car; that happened by circumstance: Ratan Tata, Former Chairman, Tata Sons Photo: Yasbant Negi/www.indiatodayimages.com
That price was interpreted as 'cheap'. The current thinking, within the company and outside, sees that as the root cause of all that did not go according to plan with the Nano. "Nobody wants to tell his friends and neighbours he has bought a cheap car. The brand is damaged," says Jack Trout, global guru in marketing strategy. "It is a category that they maybe should not have got into."
Cheap would have been a mistake even a lot earlier. Model T had to be discontinued in 1927 - it had already sold 15 million by then - because Americans wanted more than just a sturdy, affordable car; they wanted style, speed, and luxury, too. It may have been too much to expect Indians to lap up a no-frills car in the 2010s. It is no surprise that the Nano has sold only a quarter of a million in nearly five years.
It did not help that the Nano, when it came, redefined no-frills downwards: forget stereo, air-conditioning, and power windows, it did not even have a glove compartment. With that, customers became less tolerant of its little quirks such as the different sizes of the front and rear wheels.
"Smart (a small car from Mercedes), too, has wider tyres at the rear. Since the weight was heavy on the rear, we had to go for broader rear wheels," says Girish Wagh, another secondgeneration Tata employee, who headed the project to create the rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive Nano. The architecture was found the most suited for providing the most interior space - it is indeed surprisingly big inside - and manoeuvrability.
But the quirks stretched a consumer who had already had to wait about a year and a half after Tata unveiled the car to be able to buy one. It hit the road only in the middle of 2009. The first advertisement, reflecting the wait, was all about Nano aa gayi (the Nano is here). There were reported to be 200,000 bookings before launch, the deliveries were a fraction of that.
Soon after the cars hit the road came reports of some of them catching fire. Now the low price tag backfired worse than it had for Model T. For the Nano, it was seen as an indicator of low quality, lack of reliability, and absence of safety.
Vanessa Able wrote on London's Guardian newspaper's website last month she was so inspired by the idea of the Nano she bought one and took it on a 10,000 km trek across India in 2010. Along the way, people used to ask her if she was not concerned about the prospect of a Nano fireball.
"There were stray cases of foreign objects found in the exhaust system of the car. When the car ran for some time and reached a certain temperature, those objects caught fire. The second reason had something to do with the starting system," says Wagh. In some cases the owners - in a sign that they wanted more from the car - had installed after-market equipment like a music system, directly tapping the power and leading to a short circuit.
"Quite a few cars catch fire," says an executive of Maruti Suzuki. "Often it is because of something wrong with the electricals." But the Nano fire, figuratively speaking, proved difficult to douse because it was a "cheap" car. Had it been more expensive, the fires may have been dismissed as a one-off. After all, there were only three or four episodes. But it stuck because people said, "What else would you expect from a cheap car?"
Maruti had briefly toyed with the idea of bringing out a product to rival the Nano but quickly discarded it because first, it was a daunting task to make a car profitably at that price, and secondly, it witnessed a change in consumer behaviour. Says the executive mentioned above: "The bulk of the sales of our cars, 50 to 60 per cent, used to be for the middle model; the base model would get 30 to 40 per cent, and the top model no more than 10 per cent. But a shift happened around that time. The top end started to get significant share and not many buyers wanted the base variant."
It was clear that the consumer now wanted more value for his money even if it meant spending a little more. Cheap was going out. "I do a good bargain" was no longer a good boast to make. The launch of the new Swift by Maruti in 2011 was a case in point. When it came, there was a wait list for the old one. All those in the queue readily agreed to switch to the new Swift, which had more bells and whistles, but cost Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000 more than the old one.
As the car buyer wanted better cars, and not a supposed replacement for the two-wheeler, the twowheeler buyer preferred to wait till he could buy a car that was perceived to offer more value - a real car (see Rama Bijapurkar's column on page 70). The Nano may have fallen between the two stools. It is now trying to get a foothold on the one that is costlier, swankier, and more desirable to the consumer.
It was a different India in 2007, the year before the Nano was unveiled. The Nokia 1200, priced at less than Rs 3,000, was among the most popular mobile phones. Flat panel LCD televisions were sparse, the ones with bloated backsides were everywhere. Facebook had just come in. Flipkart had just been set up. Laptop computers vied with desktops for supremacy; tablets were what you had when the doctor told you to.
Today, Samsung Galaxy S3, a smart phone priced at more than Rs 25,000 is all the rage. LCD televisions adorn most walls in the cities. Facebook has 100 million users. Flipkart is valued at more than $1 billion. You can see tablets in the hands of every other passenger on Rajdhani Express. And yes, there is a Nano variant priced at Rs 2,58,000. How did that happen to the lakhtakia? It started with that briefing Avari had with RNT.
"If you drive the Nano, the first thing that will strike you is, 'why do I hear these [bad] things about the car?' RNT wanted more and more people to experience the product, instead of talking about it without experiencing it," says Avari. Secondly, he wanted the car supported from all quarters. "The Nano innovation happened within Tata Motors: product, manufacturing, and sales; not outside."
Avari, and the save Nano team, set about managing the "outside". There was always help available from Wagh, as Avari began to frequent the company's mother factory in Pune as well as the Nano factory in Sanand. Ankush Arora, head of sales and marketing, was a core part of the team. Ranjit Yadav, having made a name for himself as the head of Samsung India's mobile phone division, joined Tata Motors in October 2012. He joined a few days after Karl Slym, the managing director who fell to his death from Bangkok's Shangri-La hotel in January this year.
When Yadav joined, Tata Motors was the country's third-largest carmaker but ranked 12th out of 12 in JD Power's sales satisfaction survey. In service, too, it was not in the top six. "Clearly, your consumer had to love you because you made it hard for them to buy from you. Clearly, we had to improve our sales and service experience," says Yadav.
Tata Motors had several of its employees working at the dealerships, at times 16 touching each dealer. "If you went into a dealership in those days, you would probably have shaken the hands of a Tata employee and not a dealer's," says Yadav. The dealers told him it was too complex to deal with Tata. They did not know who to listen to. Today each dealer has one person to talk to on sales and one on service. "I would say we are five times easier to do business with than we were 15 or 16 months back," says Yadav. The JD Power ranking on sales experience last year jumped five places to seven. "It's still not good, but at least some of the things we are doing are starting to trend upwards."
New sales outlets were opened old ones were refurbished. The documentation for getting a loan was made easier. The acquisition cost of the Nano was low, but the car's life cycle cost had to be brought down. So Tata announced a four-year warranty. "We did it also because there were these funny things being stated about its reliability. It was already the most fuel-efficient petrol car," says Avari.
The network taken care of, the team turned to the customer. Avari, who was promoted to head marketing for all of Tata's passenger vehicles in August last year, says they started thinking of those who would want the Nano as their first car upon turning 18. "How can they want it from age 14 and bug their parents till they get it? How do you speak their language?"
That's how the repositioning of the Nano started in August-September 2011. After long-winded conversations with RNT and Ravi Kant, they prepared a plan for the next five years.
Twist in the Nano Tale
As a manifestation of the plan, cheap is out, awesomeness is in. Jagdish Khattar, who ran Maruti in the years that the idea of the Nano excited and enthralled everyone, says that should have been the case from the beginning. "I would have given this car to people who owned Mercedes and told them, 'Sir, this is your third car, take it when you go out to walk your dog in the park. Everyone will buy a car if they think it is the one that the well-heeled drive."
Avari swears the affluent always drove the Nano. "When we launched, and through the booking phase, the car was picked up by the well-heeled; 80 per cent of the buyers wanted it as their third or fourth car." She sees evidence of this every day around her house in Mumbai's upscale Cuffe Parade area, which she says is full of Nanos. "All of them are driven by their owners.
Mine has a driver because I get stressed driving." That is rich coming from someone who learned to drive on a Sumo and saw people jump out of the way on seeing a girl driving the burly utility vehicle. The effort now is to hold on to the affluent buyer, and also move down in age to catch the urban youth, who have always liked the Nano, but whom Tata Motors, busy trying to appeal to the humble first-time buyer, never consciously wooed.
It is ready to make amends now. "From the time of the Nano's launch to 2010, 20 per cent of the buyers were in the age group 25 to 34. Today, 45 per cent are. Obviously my consumer set has changed. Our task is to bring in more of those buyers for the simple reason that 55 per cent of our population is within the age of 25. Those are the buyers who are going to come into the market. If we don't get those buyers, we will probably miss the bus," says Arora, the sales and marketing head.
Nano's advertising today, in contradistinction to the first Nano aa gayi campaign, is an explosion of colour and music, with young people apparently having fun while doing things few do in real life, and Masaba Gupta taking the covers off an electric blue Nano. Gupta is the young sensation on the fashion designing circuit, who was earlier a symbol of women's liberation as a child born out of wedlock to West Indian cricketer Vivian Richards and Indian actress Neena Gupta. "We wanted to connect with [the urban youth] on the phenomenon of celebrating achievement, or celebrating what you stand for," says Arora.
Coming days after Cyrus Mistry, who replaced Ratan Tata as the group's Chairman, said the Nano would be repositioned as a "smart city car", the commercial raced to five million views on YouTube in 30 days, more than any other car commercial had garnered, according to The Economic Times.
But if advertising alone could do the job, Martin Sorrell would be the king of the world. The Nano's new aspiration had to be constructed in drafting rooms and workshops. It went through several changes as newer versions emerged in 2012 and 2013. The latest, called the Nano Twist, is as different from the one first seen in 2008 as Mamata Banerjee, the West Bengal politician who drove out Tata Motors, is from Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister who sent an SMS to Ratan Tata inviting him to set up shop in Sanand as soon as he heard of Tata's decision to move out of Singur.
From an engineering perspective, it is more refined and has a better steering wheel - a power steering, no less. Wagh tweaked its suspension for better ride quality and added an anti-roll bar in front. The result is reduced body roll and better stability at corners. The power train was improved to increase peak power and torque, and the exhaust system for a more refined feel.
As it began to come in new vibrant colours like "damsel purple" ("I have a shirt in that colour," says a gleeful Yadav), the Nano sprouted a glove compartment, a modern music system with Bluetooth connectivity, and keyless entry. And yes, an additional layer has been added to the entire electrical system to prevent fire.
Nobody wants to tell his friends and neighbours he has bought a cheap car... It is a category that they (Tata Motors) maybe should not have got into: Jack Trout, Marketing guru
February's Auto Expo in Greater Noida gave a glimpse of the big things in store for the little one. The Tata Motors pavilion displayed a Nano with automatic manual transmission, which appears to be the new tune many carmakers are singing to lure buyers. The technology makes city driving easier by doing away with the clutch. Maruti Celerio is already off the block, reportedly getting half its orders for the clutchless variant.
Of course, the prices, too, have risen. Nano Twist's price takes it into the territory of Maruti's Alto, which has remained the largest selling car in the country, or thereabouts, for many years. Ratan Tata, when he unveiled the first Nano at Rs 1 lakh, had famously said, "A promise is a promise." Is it a different promise now? A promise with a Twist? "That product had a particular value proposition and it was very disruptive.
The value proposition has changed completely, but even today it is significantly disruptive," says Wagh. He would be hoping it would not only be disruptive but also attractive. The economy is growing at nearly half the rate at which it was growing when the Nano made its first appearance on Indian roads. That means less money in the hands of potential buyers.
Secondly, talking to CNBC's Managing Asia programme in Singapore last November, RNT had said: "Maybe it (the Nano) gets launched in another country like Indonesia, where it doesn't have the stigma and the new image comes back to India. Or maybe as a changed product that gets marketed in Europe. There's a lot of interest in Nano outside India."
Rama Bijapurkar
The walk, not the talk, may be the problem
An illiterate housewife will tell you that a cheap cooking oil, though with ultra modern packaging, is more expensive in the long run because it is more chikna and clings to the sides of the pan, requiring more oil to make bhindi ki subzi. A low-income mother will tell you that two pay channels for movies is good value because then her mother-in-law will stay at home all evening with the kids and she can go to work and command the higher night-time premium wages from richer working women. Customers - rich or poor, illiterate or PhD - always choose the option that the computer in their head calculates as the option with the highest value.
A simplistic model of how this calculation is done is that consumers see each option (including the "don't buy now") as comprising a set of benefits (rational and emotional - even for B2B customers!) and a set of costs (cost, as they see it, is not just price) - that's where many marketers go wrong in their simulations. A car's 'cost' could be processed as EMI, running cost, and, if they think it's a fragile vehicle, the likely cost of repair when driving on potholed roads with other large cars and brutish drivers.
Using the value processing algorithm in their heads, each customer arrives at a net value for each option - net value being the value added from benefits less the value taken away by costs. They then pick the one with the best net value. Do different groups of consumers have different value processing algorithms? Of course they do. But if you believe unsophisticated or less educated consumers do not know how to do this, think again. How much value a person attaches to something is dependent on his life context and mental makeup.
A young, well educated and well employed first-time intending car owner for whom a twowheeler is not an option will process the value delivered by a Nano's benefits and costs very differently from a 40-year-old, middle-class, selfemployed small services provider who wants to upgrade to a car from his high-end motorcycle.
The other options that each considers are also different. The question is in which situations (and for how many people) was the Nano seen to be the best value option, meriting purchase? Clearly, it wasn't seen to be the best value option for large enough numbers - or it would have sold more.
One explanation for this being put out is that the Nano-related communication distorted its perceived value to consumers. That "low price" made consumers interpret it as "low status" and inferior in benefits - because Indian consumers are programmed to think that low price means poor quality. However, that isn't true at all. Consumer perceptions are shaped by suppliers' conduct, and in the past 15 years Indian consumers have experienced low-priced but stylish dual-language keyboard and camera feature phones (thank or blame Nokia for that), have seen IndiGo do cheaper and better flights, and have seen prices of durables drop and quality go up. The pavement fashion streets have got a lot better merchandise and styles and the same goes for everything imported that we find on the street.
So it isn't the Indian consumer's psyche that's to blame; perhaps it's the lack of communication of the Nano's benefits. But perhaps it's not the talk, but the walk that is the problem. Perhaps consumers' computers are processing what's available and telling them that the value lost from the additional EMI is more than offset by the value gained by better features if they buy a more expensive car. Forking out `3 lakh at one go is impossible for them. But paying it as EMIs may merely mean two less family outings each month to the multiplex.
If at current interest rates, the "Benefit minus Cost" of the next level of cars is poor value, we know of consumers who say that one or two years later I will earn more and the EMI will come down, and then it will be good value. So why not defer the purchase till then rather than settle for an option that gives lower value today and tomorrow?
"Stretch for more" and "wait if you must, rather than settle for less" are the mantras of the new Indian customer. That's what an aspirational, upwardly mobile society is about. And 'more' and 'less' is not about price; it's about value, which is the aggregation of benefits and costs, rational and emotional, price and other costs too.
Rama Bijapurkar is a market strategy consultant and author of Customer in the Boardroom - Crafting Customer-Based Business Strategy
Follow the authors on Twitter: @suveensinha, @SunnySen
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Tags: Tata Nano | Ratan Tata | New Tata nano | Small car
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Stacey Abrams (right) rose to prominence last year during her campaign for governor of Georgia, which she lost by 1.4 percentage points. | Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
Stacey Abrams: '2020 is definitely on the table'
By JAMES ARKIN
Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams said today that she had long seen 2028 as the "earliest" she could see herself running for president but later tweeted "2020 is definitely on the table" as she weighs her next political move.
Abrams, in an interview at SXSW in Austin, Texas, referred to a quote from her book where she said she keeps a spreadsheet to document her goals.
"In the spreadsheet with all the jobs I wanted to do, 2028 would be the earliest I would be ready to stand for president because I would have done the work I thought necessary to be effective in that job," Abrams said.
After the interview, Abrams insisted in a tweet that the comment did not mean she has ruled out running for president next year.
"In #LeadFromTheOutside, I explore how to be intentional about plans, but flexible enough to adapt. 20 years ago, I never thought I’d be ready to run for POTUS before 2028. But life comes at you fast," Abrams tweeted. "2020 is definitely on the table..."
Abrams' former campaign manager, Lauren Groh-Wargo, also tweeted after the interview that the quote referring to the old spreadsheet did not mean Abrams was ruling out running for president next year.
Abrams remarks "were in reference to her years-old spreadsheet, not her current considerations. She is taking a look at all options on the table in 2020 and beyond," Groh-Wargo tweeted.
Abrams rose to prominence last year during her campaign for governor of Georgia, which she lost by 1.4 percentage points. National Democrats have urged her to run against Republican Sen. David Perdue next year, but she has also been considering a potential presidential campaign in 2020 or running for governor again in 2022.
Abrams has given a timeline of late March or early April for a decision on her next moves, and she did not update that timeline in the interview Monday.
"My task is to make certain that a Democrat is elected not only to the White House but that we have a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Democratic majority in Congress," Abrams said.
Abrams also answered "yes" when asked during the interview if she thinks President Donald Trump is a racist.
"I think he's racist, I think he's xenophobic, I think he's homophobic. I think he has disdain for anything that he considers different than the norm," Abrams said. She also called Trump a "bully" but said she doesn't thing Democrats would defeat him next year by adopting similar tactics.
"I think beating Donald Trump is the wrong mission. When you're focused on your enemy then you are ignoring your allies," Abrams said.