"Stop the EPA from hijacking the economy!" So says the US Chamber of Commerce, and claims that the Obama administration's rules on power emissions will cost $50 billion. Jim Morin sees it differently. After all, the Sandy clean-up alone cost US taxpayers $100 billion, according to those wild-haired radicals at USA Today.
Author Archives: Kit Stolz
Men Explain It All: Hannah Gold returns the favor
The best book review of the year, hands down, by Hannah Gold in The Baffler, begins this way: "I have just sat down to dinner with my female friend and her two male friends she brought along, neither of whom I’ve met before. They are both programmers, and when my friend goes to the bathroomContinue reading “Men Explain It All: Hannah Gold returns the favor”
The slow pulse of nature, via Beethoven (and others)
Alex Ross of The New Yorker is by acclamation the most loved of classical music critics today. This spring he gently lauded a new pianist, Igor Levit, for his playing of Beethoven at his most natural. In his words I heard an echo of an idea from Carl Jung about the connection between introspection andContinue reading “The slow pulse of nature, via Beethoven (and others)”
New climate regs just like Obamacare (or not)
The Obama administration takes a stand on carbon pollution, and calls for a 30% cut in power plant emissions by 2030. For environmentalists, this is heartening news, but what does it mean politically? To Science, the "give states choices" method sounds a lot like Obamacare: That more complex approach makes the new rules somewhat similarContinue reading “New climate regs just like Obamacare (or not)”
For the Turnstiles: Ben Keith and Neil Young live
In honor of the release this week of a new Neil Young record, his 60th, here's a live version of his exquisite "For the Turnstiles," performed with his late great friend and co-conspirator Ben Keith: Visual quality just okay: sound quality excellent. How the hell does Young get so much reverb out of an acousticContinue reading “For the Turnstiles: Ben Keith and Neil Young live”
The virtues of walking vs becoming part of the mountains
Under the heading, To Age Well, Walk, a new study written up in the NYTimes tells us what we already knew (but sometimes choose to forget). While everyone knows that exercise is a good idea, whatever your age, the hard, scientific evidence about its benefits in the old and infirm has been surprisingly limited. “ForContinue reading “The virtues of walking vs becoming part of the mountains”
Happy birthday Rachel Carson! Says Google
One of the most heartening of Google's doodles ever (for me at least) comes today, in honor of Rachel Carson's 107th birthday. The inspiration she drew from nature — and the questions nature pushed her to ask of us — are with as today as much or more than ever. We still haven't become matureContinue reading “Happy birthday Rachel Carson! Says Google”
A Nostradamus for today: 1978 forecast of Antarctic melt
On a recent book tour, promoting his delightful new memoir Little Failure, the mordantly funny essayist/novelist Gary Schteyngart — who in his last book predicted an economic crash, urban chaos, and the rise of a movement that sounded very much like Occupy — joked that he was "the Nostradamus of two weeks from now." TheContinue reading “A Nostradamus for today: 1978 forecast of Antarctic melt”
Why the experts think the boy child will come this year
We should be properly skeptical of any image I suppose, especially in these days of Photoshop, and when an image purports to describe a before and after in colors demand to know even how the the satellite data was visualized, the colors chosen…but wow, this image knocks me off my feet, and at a gutContinue reading “Why the experts think the boy child will come this year”
On (almost) the same page: Virginia Woolf and Carl Jung
Great minds think alike, the nine zillionth example:
Virginia Woolf, from To the Lighthouse:
"She felt…how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."
Kit Stolz 