Shark fin soup is a Chinese delicacy; walk into certain restaurants in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and you’re guaranteed to find it–but not for much longer. Last week, California governor Jerry Brown signed a law banning the sale of shark fins. It’s a move that is being celebrated by environmentalists, but some Chinese Americans are complaining that the law is an attack on their culture.

The process of shark finning is brutal, to say the least–fisherman catch sharks, slice off their tails and fins, and toss the sharks back into the water, where they quickly die. The practice has caused shark populations in some areas to drop by up to 90%. It’s especially prevalent in California, where 85% of U.S. shark fin consumption occurs. And when sharks die, it disrupts entire ocean ecosystems. Sharks are one of the top predators controlling fish populations, so when they’re gone, there is an out of whack relationship between fish and plankton.

“We applaud Governor Brown for signing AB 376,” writes Bill Wong, a member of the Asian Pacific American Ocean Harmony Alliance and creator of a petition on Change.org that helped lead the charge for the law. “It puts California at the forefront of the global effort to save sharks led by a broad coalition of Asian Pacific Americans, conservationists, animal rights activists, commercial fishermen, business leaders and artists. The passage of this bill may just be the tipping point that will preserve the shark species and the ocean ecosystem.” We contacted Wong for further comment, but have yet to hear back.

California’s new law may be one of the last chances to save sharks, but it’s provoking ire from Chinese American restaurant and shop owners, who claim that the ban will put a big dent in their business. Dried shark fin sells for over $2,000 a pound, and it’s considered both a status symbol and a way to celebrate big occasions. One Chinese restauranteur tells the L.A. Times that his main business is dishing out shark fin soup, and that everything else is secondary. He is closing his restaurant at the end of the year.

Link | Image credit Relgar

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the majority, said California’s prisons had "fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements" because of overcrowding. As many as 200 prisoners may live in gymnasium, he said, and as many as 54 prisoners share a single toilet.

Kennedy insisted that the state had no choice but to release more prisoners. The justices, however, agreed that California officials should be given more time to make the needed reductions.

In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia called the ruling "staggering" and "absurd."

He said the high court had repeatedly overruled the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for ordering the release of individual prisoners. Now, he said, the majority were ordering the release of "46,000 happy-go-lucky felons." He added that "terrible things are sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order." Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with him.

David Savage writes this story at the Los Angeles Times: Link (Photo: Gary Friedman/LA Times)

You’re looking at the Center of the World Pyramid, which is officially located at the center of the world. No, really. Center of the whole wide world:

According to the French government and California’s Imperial County, the official center of the world lies in the town of Felicia in California’s Sonora Desert. There is no scientific or political reason for the designation, but only the effort of Jacques-André Istel and his wife Felicia Lee (the town’s namesake), who founded the town in 1986.

Jacques-André made his name and fortune as a famous French-American parachutist and co-founded of Parachutes, Inc., which produced parachuting equipment and opened the first parachuting school in the United States. He is credited as a key figure in popularizing parachuting in America and has been referred to as the “father of American skydiving.” In 1985 he wrote the children’s book "Coe: The Good Dragon at the Center of the World" about a dragon that lived at the center of the world, which served as the inspiration behind the town’s creation.

After Istel was unanimously voted mayor, in a 2-0 vote, he erected a pyramid to mark the exact spot of the world’s “center.” Over the last 25-years, Istel added many sights to his town, including a beautiful traditional-style church overlooking a man-made hillside (modeled after a church in Brittany), a lone outdoor 25-foot staircase that was formerly part of the Eiffel Tower, a checkered field of flowers, and a 15-foot bronze sundial that incorporates Michelangelo’s Arm of God. The most ambitious of his additions is the World Commemorative Center®, which currently consists of 18 one-hundred foot triangle-shaped granite walls, meant to “engrave in granite highlights of the collective memory of humanity."

Atlas Obscura has more photos: Link

(YouTube Link)

Just a little late for Shark Week, but this amazing footage of a great white was taken by Chuck Patterson in Southern California. He was alone with his stand-up surfboard when one slapped him with its tail. This second one circled for twelve minutes before finding something else to do. Patterson says “it was an insane experience which i hope to enjoy again soon.”

Empirically speaking, geologists are not a particularly irascible group. But those who make their living studying rocks, minerals and gems in California — and increasingly those scientists beyond the state’s borders — are enraged over a bill in Sacramento that would knock serpentine, the official state rock, off its mantel.

The lawmaker and others who would like to see serpentine stripped of its title say the olive green rock found all over the state is a grim symbol of the deadly cancers associated with asbestos, which can be found in the rock. Geologists, who have taken to Twitter on behalf of the rock, assert that serpentine is harmless and is being demonized by advocates for people with asbestos-related diseases and possibly their trial lawyers, too.

State Senator Gloria Romero who authored the bill has this to say, "California is health conscious," she said. "This is not about being anti-rock. But why do we need a rock?"

Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times has the scoop: Link (Photo: Monica Almeida/NY Times)

California produces a large chunk of the nation’s crops despite a shortage of water. The demand for water for cities has created a problem for agriculture that will only get worse. Legal marijuana crops could benefit the state’s industry by bringing in more money, employing more people, and using fewer resources.

First, while growing outdoor pot is not especially ecologically benign, it’s far more benign than raising commodities like cattle, rice or alfalfa. Consider: Agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s developed water supply; alfalfa soaks up a full 20 percent of that. The alfalfa is used primarily to create forage for feedlot and dairy. That means that 1 gallon out of every 5 used in California goes to a crop that humans can’t eat.

People don’t make a meal of marijuana either, of course. But measured by water, marijuana barely registers on the California’s water scale. A pound of pot requires, at the outermost limit, 250 gallons to grow, which means that a large serving of it requires about a half pint of water. By contrast, an orange takes 13 gallons water, a glass of wine 32 gallons, and a hamburger 600 gallons.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Harperdog.

While it's chic to complain about the evil of taxes and government, there's an implicit assumption that higher taxes translate to more government services (the age old argument between liberals and conservatives generally revolve around how much government services, and therefore government size, is optimal.)

But do higher taxes actually bring about superior public goods? William Voegeli, in this op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, doesn't think so. He compared California (a high-benefit (supposedly)/high-tax state) to the low-tax state of Texas:

One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive "net internal migration," in the Census Bureau's language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

These folks pulling up stakes and driving U-Haul trucks across state lines understand a reality the defenders of the high-benefit/high-tax model must confront: All things being equal, everyone would rather pay low taxes than high ones. The high-benefit/high-tax model can work only if things are demonstrably not equal -- if the public goods purchased by the high taxes far surpass the quality, quantity and impact of those available to people who live in states with low taxes.

Today's public benefits fail that test, as urban scholar Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com and Chapman University told the Los Angeles Times in March: "Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California's government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class."

As a long-time resident of California (whose paycheck got even smaller as the State forcibly imposed a higher withholding), I don't mind paying higher taxes if I got something out of it - so it's intriguing to find out that the reality may just be the opposite: Link

“The current recession stands apart from prior downturns for both the depth and breadth of destruction in the job market,” the report says. “California has lost more jobs at a faster rate in the past two years than during any prior recession for which data are available, and employment has fallen in nearly every major sector of the economy.”

Because of the decline in the number of jobs coupled with growth in the labor force, the report finds that the percentage of working-age Californians who hold jobs has fallen to its lowest level in 32 years. Citing U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, the report says just 57.5 percent of California adults are working.

The last time the percentage was that low was in 1977, a time when many women voluntarily chose not to work outside their homes. The percentage of employed adults peaked in 1989 at 64.9 percent.

Timm Herdt of Ventura County Star has the grim news: Link | California Budget Project Press Release [PDF]

Here’s proof that people will sue just for about anything: a plaintiff named Janine Sugawara sued the makers of Cap’N Crunch Crunch Berries cereal because she found out that the "crunchberries" are not really berries!

In another proof that the judicial system works,  the judge dismissed her complaint:

On May 21, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California dismissed a complaint filed by a woman who said she had purchased “Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries” because she believed “crunchberries” were real fruit. The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said “berries” were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit. She sued, on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers who also apparently believed that there are fields somewhere in our land thronged by crunchberry bushes.

Cap’n According to the complaint, Sugawara and other consumers were misled not only by the use of the word “berries” in the name, but also by the front of the box, which features the product’s namesake, Cap’n Crunch, aggressively “thrusting a spoonful of ‘Crunchberries’ at the prospective buyer.” Plaintiff claimed that this message was reinforced by other marketing representing the product as a “combination of Crunch biscuits and colorful red, purple, teal and green berries.” Yet in actuality, the product contained “no berries of any kind.” Plaintiff brought claims for fraud, breach of warranty, and our notorious and ever-popular California Unfair Competition Law and Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

Link – via kevinunderhill

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by dradell.