Category Archives: art and humor

SEN. BIDEN PRODUCING DANGEROUSLY HIGH LEVELS OF CARBON DIOXIDE Talkative Lawmaker Creating Environmental Threat, Scientists Fear Here’s the full post, from the amazingly-funny-on-a-daily-basis Andy Borowitz.

"It is a mistake to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of theContinue reading “What the Public Wants”

In a Christmas day post I lauded an artist named Barbara Medaille and her landscape called For the Firefighters.

Because so many friends and readers responded to the painting, I followed up with a few questions, to which she graciously responded on the phone and in email. (The result is blended together in the continuation below the virtual fold below; as I told Barbara, if I got something wrong, she can just go to the comments and set me straight!)

"For the Firefighters" was a painting I’ve been waiting a good deal of my life to see. I encounter so many California landscapes that are pretty and representational, both of the beauty of our state and of its factual appearance, but fail to catch the underlying drama of our landscape. As Barbara says, California is far less stable and unchanging than it sometimes appears.

You can see this drama, I think, even in her landscapes which aren’t obviously threatening, such as this one, called West County:

From the New Yorker, we respectfully beg permission to use the following drawing. (This site is about enlightenment on the topic of environmental change, makes no money for anyone, and gives credit under Fair Use doctrine guidelines.) And surely the artist Diffee would want people interested in environmental topics to see the sheer beauty ofContinue reading “Department of T’was Ever Thus”

Public Outraged As Price Of Fast-Depleting, Non-Renewable Resource Skyrockets December 28, 2005 | Issue 41•52 ATLANTA (Oct. 12)—Americans are expressing their outrage at the soaring price of the non-renewable resource gasoline from the passenger seats of their vehicles across the country. "America means having a right to cheap gas without having to say please," saidContinue reading “The Onion vs. Stupidity”

Not Syriana. In Grist, David Roberts eloquently nominates the film , extolling its rough edges, stressing what it is not (not adolescent, not a paranoid conspiracy theory, not stupid). He admits: When I first heard about the "oil movie," I figured it would be about oil the same way so much is about oil theseContinue reading “Enviro Movie of the Year”

Another end of the year wrap-up…my best books, in SF Station.

"For the Fire Fighters," from Barbara Medaille. Seen at the Turtle Bay Museum near the Glass Bridge in Redding:

One moment on Hwy 1…forever.

This blog hopes to try and bridge the vast gap that exists between the fact-based world of science and the sensation-based world of popular entertainment, but–frighteningly–these worlds are beginning to converge. Yesterday from Nature came news that the Gulf Stream has weakened thirty percent in the last fifty years, suggesting the possibility of an iceContinue reading ““Sensational Information””