The GOP's war on science gets worse, writes Elizabeth Kolbert, noting that the House GOP cut $300 million from NASA's budget for earth sciences (including climate) on the childish old theory that ignoring a problem will make it go away. That same week The New Yorker, for which Kolbert writes, came up with an evenContinue reading “GOP takes climate change denial to the next level”
Category Archives: art and humor
The new California criminal: a waster of resources
From Ted Rall's weekly 'toon in the LATimes: Reference is to new fines announced this week for water wasted, for as much as $10,000.
James Baldwin on climate science
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. James Baldwin wasn't thinking of climate when he wrote that, but if you think about it, isn't that the logic of climate policy efforts today? Isn't that the hope, the idea that drives our science – to win the publicContinue reading “James Baldwin on climate science”
How good you are in bed: a woman’s perspective
Jessica Hagy has a crazy/great gift for simplification that often looks to me like wisdom. Something tells me she's right. But how could such a theory be tested?
Man, Nature, and Tree, in one brilliant image
From Ajim Sulaj, an Albanian artist/cartoonist living in Italy. Via Cartoon Movement.
Understanding Tennessee: how he projected his “wound”
Writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Greg Barrios (who has written two plays about Tennessee Williams and Williams' two great loves, Frank Merlo and Pancho Rodriguez) interviews John Lahr, who just published last year an award-winning biography of Tennessee Williams called Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh. It's absolutely fascinating, "literary detection" as The Guardian says. What I likeContinue reading “Understanding Tennessee: how he projected his “wound””
The sound and sights of the California drought
As noted here a week or so ago, Ronald Reagan's close friend and confidant George Shultz published an op-ed declaring that if Ronald Reagan was president today, he would take action to restrain climate change. Along similiar lines, this week Reagan's biographer Lou Cannon published a tough warning about drought and California that began withContinue reading “The sound and sights of the California drought”
The emotional journey of climate change: Armitage
Twenty-odd years ago Bill McKibben called the climate crisis the biggest story in the world. Now, after years of scanty media coverage, by its own admission, The Guardian has launched a major effort to, in its own words, find a new narrative to tell a twenty year old story. They're going all out, with media (suchContinue reading “The emotional journey of climate change: Armitage”
Stupid F*!’&ing Bird: To wake Chekhov from the dead
The big winner this week in theater awards for 2014 in Los Angeles was a Russian playwright who's been dead for over a century. Well, not exactly, but writer Aaron Posner's brilliantly free adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull did win the L.A. Drama Critics Circle awards for best ensemble, direction, and writing. It's just spectacular,Continue reading “Stupid F*!’&ing Bird: To wake Chekhov from the dead”
The photographer as fearless story teller
The highest compliment paid in the land of journalism, sez me, is to say that such-and-such a writer, Mike Royko in Chicago, say, or Carl Hiaasen in Miami, or Joseph Mitchell in New York, is/was "fearless." Well, in the land of photography, no one in our time has been more fearless than Duane Michaels. (NotContinue reading “The photographer as fearless story teller”
Kit Stolz 