Kit Stolz

China attacks U.S. in climate negotiations

From Tiajin, an inside look at climate talks being hosted by Chinese. Reporting is from Angel Hsu, of Yale University, in the Atlantic: [Chinese negotiator] Su's comments in the corridors of the Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center reflect his obvious frustration with what he feels is hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. in the climateContinue reading “China attacks U.S. in climate negotiations”

Did Jerry Brown endorse a peripheral canal yesterday?

Or did the AP botch the story? A University of the Pacific professor who blogs at Valley Economy wants to know. It's a great question. Here's the sentence from the Brown website that the AP read as an endorsement of the "alternative conveyance," also known in the past as the peripheral canal. Support conveyance andContinue reading “Did Jerry Brown endorse a peripheral canal yesterday?”

the people a hundred years from now

OPTIMISM I write poemsthey don't get publishedbut they will I'm waiting for a letter with good newsmaybe it will arrive the day I diebut it will come for sure. the world's not ruled by governments or moneybut by the peoplea hundred years from nowmaybebut it will be for sure. Nazim Hikmet2 September l957Leipzig

Tennessee Williams: the playwright at age two

Turns out Tennessee Williams' mother Edwina Williams published her memoirs, called Remember Me to Tom, back in l963. It's a very good thing she did, for she tells a slew of great stories. Reading her "as told to" book, it's easy to hear her speak, and easy to guess where Williams got the model forContinue reading “Tennessee Williams: the playwright at age two”

The future won’t be futuristic, says Douglas Coupland

Or it won't feel futuristic, according to Douglas Coupland, one of our most visionary novelists (inventor of the great phrase McJob, which today seems more apt than ever). Of the future, he says: It's simply going to feel weird and out-of-control-ish, the way it does now, because too many things are changing too quickly. TheContinue reading “The future won’t be futuristic, says Douglas Coupland”

As sun warms slightly, earth cools slightly — wha?

The always helpful MIT/Knight Science Journalism Tracker points to a slew of stories about a counterintuitive, to say the least, study in Nature that finds that during a three-year period from 2004-2007, when solar radiation rose a little, global temperatures slightly declined. In the measured words of The Independent: The sun's role in climate changeContinue reading “As sun warms slightly, earth cools slightly — wha?”

If this is damnation, I don’t want to be saved

Damnation Creek Trail, Redwood NP, originally uploaded by lindsay_kaun. A ridiculously good tree picture, via the mind-blowing Treeporn site.

Happy 70th Birthday, John Lennon

Thirty-three years ago, long before John Lennon was shot and killed, the late great David Levine imagined what he would look at when he was sixty-four, or, today, when he would have been seventy. Something tells me that Lennon, quite a line artist himself, would have been a little tickled to see himself in theContinue reading “Happy 70th Birthday, John Lennon”

The biggest and fastest thing nature has ever done

Reporting on the behavior of ice sheets is difficult, even for science journalists, because the terrain is so difficult, and so much is still unknown about Antarctica. But a couple of weeks ago in Rolling Stone, Ben Wallace-Wells published the single best story about this subject I have ever seen. It's long, but great. Here'sContinue reading “The biggest and fastest thing nature has ever done”