A Change in the Wind
The political pundits haven’t noticed, probably because they habitually put the health of the planet at the bottom of their list of concerns, but this week on national television David Letterman pointed out that the Current Occupant of the White House is trying to present himself as an Environmental President.
It’s a struggle, as you can see.
This week I happened to stumble across a couple of dazzling looks at Bob Dylan, perhaps our favorite warrior of thought. Thought I put them up for your bemusement. With luck, sometime soon I’ll have a chance to review his latest, Modern Times, but for now, let me call on a poet John Hodgen: WhenContinue reading “A Master of War (poetry)”
The political pundits of this fall have not forgotten last year’s biggest news event, it appears, as they’re comparing the upcoming mid-term elections to a political Katrina: In the National Journal, Chuck Todd used athe metaphor to describe the Republican party: The GOP’s hurricane shutters are state of the art, but sometimes even "state ofContinue reading “Like a Hurricane — 2006”
It’s biological. According to Robert Sapolsky, a primatologist, MacArthur genius, and all-around wit at Stanford, from the years of eighteen to twenty-four, individuals in our species are curious, eager to try new things (such as music)…but by the time we are forty, more than ninety percent of us know what we like and are uninterestedContinue reading “Why We Form Our Musical and Political Preferences At the Same Time”
Just another evening at Kirk Creek in Big Sur. Sunset magazine calls this site, on a bluff off Highway 1, the prettiest campsite in California. For car camping, I’d have to agree. The irony is that the five of the best sites are reserved for hikers and bikers, but if these sort of brave soulsContinue reading “Sunday Morning on the Planet: Kirk Creek”
The drugs most commonly prescribed today for Alzheimer’s Disease have no effect on the underlying cause and are no more effective against agitation and aggression than placebos, according to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. By contrast, a drug that now shown to reverse the accumulation of Alzheimer’s-causing plaques, atContinue reading “innaresting fact”
That’s from Mahatma Ghandi, via Subhankar Banerjee‘s knock-out site. (You might recall that Banerjee’s photos of the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee became controversial–too beautiful, perhaps–when they were posted at the Smithsonian.) Here’s one to hold your attention, while I’m off up the coast for a couple of days.
I exaggerate, but not all that much. After many rounds of job cuts in the last ten years–and the elimination of numerous regional editions, such as the Ventura County edition, which is still missed–the corporation in Chicago fired the publisher in LA, Jeff Johnson, because he refused to cut an estimated 200 or more jobsContinue reading “New on the Endangered Species List: The LA Times”
This past week the paper for which I often write, the VC Reporter, launched blogs on their website…and in an editorial singled out this particular blog as an example of how to do it. I don’t get a chance to pat myself on the back often, so indulge me this once: Great blogs exist alreadyContinue reading “Environmentalism: Is There Any Other Word for this Movement?”
A nice graphic from JPL of the central Pacific from September 1997 and September of this year. It’s easy to see why Bill Patzert and his colleagues are predicting a mild event. Rain for the Southwest, they say we’ll likely see, but nothing like the disastrous year of l997-l998. But we had a mild ElContinue reading “El Nino, Then and Now”
Kit Stolz