A Change in the Wind
From an interview with his daughter in Newsweek late in his wondrous career:
Writing is not at all a competitive sport. I don't think of myself as being less that Saul Bellow or more than Herbert Gold. The essence of literature is always the singularity of the writer.
h/t: Al Filreis
The highly-regarded Public Policy Institute of California makes an important point in a new book:
Despite several decades of well-intentioned environmental regulations, more than 80 percent of the state’s 129 native fish species are extinct or imperiled—listed as endangered or threatened, or likely to qualify for listing in the future. Piecemeal efforts to stop the declines now threaten the reliability of water supplies and flood management projects. Yet the deterioration is expected to accelerate because of continuing influxes of invasive species, increasing diversions of water, and losses of cold water habitat.
They call water management in California a "failure," but see possibilities for great improvement, beginning with urban water conservation.
Funny how the rain falls most where the people don't want to live:
One of NPR's top stories this week is this one:
Virus Passed During Oral Sex Tops Tobacco as Throat Cancer Cause
Kudos to the news source for not dumbing down the story, a big temptation, which if taken will surely lead to misunderstanding, especially in a headline. (Oral sex leads to cancer!)
Not.
Here's their lede:
If you're keeping score, here's even more evidence that HPV causes oral, head and neck cancers and that vaccines may be able to prevent it.
Note what they didn't say — that oral sex leads to cancer. That's because it's not oral sex that's the problem, it's HPV (a virus that typically manifests as genital warts).
Note also what they hastened to add: That vaccines can block the virus.
And here's what they glossed over.
Today young women are warned about HPV, which can lead to cervical cancer, and offered a vaccine, typically Gardisal, to block a cancer risk. But as a sex educator and academic named Adina Nack told me on an STD cover story I reported a while back, the vaccine prevents HPV, not cancer, and that's important, because of the way the virus spreads.
Nack argued that if we were serious about the risks presented by HPV and the cancers it can encourage, cervical and otherwise, we would vaccine not just women but men too. But the manufacturer, fearing a backlash against the medicine if it is associated with STDs and not cancer, won't allow it.
Nack's conclusion: In this country, we are nervous about sex, and women are held responsible for sexual health and sexually-transmitted diseases. As long as we think that way, we will not be able to stop such diseases, and a lot of people — including a lot of men — will suffer needlessly.
This appears to be true!
In the NPR story, it's assumed that the costs of innoculating men against HPV is prohibitive, even if it means men are needlessly exposed to cancer risks. The cost of Gardisal, around $350, isn't even mentioned. Why would a man need protection against an STD? But a woman…
From the Yosemite Ranger's lovely Twitter feed. A picture:
And a poem…
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
–Robert Frost
That's what I love about Robert Frost — his ability to scare himself.
Fred Upton, the newly-named chairman of the House Commerce and Energy Committee, was once a moderate Republican on climate issues. He supported measures to reduce the risk of global warming.
But after receiving a $20,000 donation from the climate-change-denying-fossil-fuel-billionaire Koch brothers, Upton now wants to strip the EPA of its Supreme Court-mandated power to regulate CO2 emissions.
But all that's old news. What's interesting, as reported in the Kalamazoo Gazette, is that two separate polls of Michigan voters, one taken state-wide, and one a poll in Upton's district, found that fully two-thirds of Michigan voters supported the EPA's right to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.
But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by his thick-headedness. Last December Upton wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (with a Koch brothers lobbyist) in which he declared the EPA's right to regulate CO2 emissions "unconstitutional" — even after the Supreme Court in 2007 not only affirmed the EPA's right to regulate atmospheric pollutants, including CO2, but rebuked the agency for its inaction.
In other words, don't bring up the facts to Fred Upton — he's not interested.
“Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.”
A quote from John Wayne, allegedly. Which came up in a fascinating conversation about True Grit, the spectacular movie, the much-admired book, and a whole lot more, between the great Larry McMurtry and his writing partner Diana Ossana, in (of all places) the New York Review of Books.
Those concerned about climate change, from scientists to journalists to politicians, have a plethora of theories why the United States, almost alone among the nations of the developed world, seems resistant to acting to avoid the worst of the consequences.
Update: A handful of possibilities are discussed this week in The Economist, which doesn't provide links or other authentication, but nonetheless makes a lot of sense. Here's their favorite, seemingly:
Political: The fact that Democrats are always hammering on about climate change and Republicans aren't suggests that this is a political issue, not a scientific one. This creates a feedback loop: if climate change were real, why is it so polarising? Because it's so polarising, it must be slightly suspicious.
The magazine goes on to suggest clean energy as a ladder out of this morass, as if every virtually every Democrat under the sun hadn't already pitched this idea, repeatedly, with modest success.
Here's one idea overlooked by the magazine. The fact that the U.S. is the most television-dependent of nations, with 99% penetration into the market. Or so the late Neil Postman would say. Pointing out that the average American has seen one million television commercials by the age of forty, he adds:
A person who has seen one million television commercials might well believe that all political problems have fast solutions through easy answers — or ought to.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985
Just when a sensible person is ready to throw in the towel on The Los Angeles Times, figuring it no longer has the will or the resources to cover national news, on Sunday they put on the front page a first-rate story that reveals how the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, aka The Kochtopus, have come to control the House committee on regulation of fossil fuels, aka the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Wichita-based Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the panel, ahead of giants like Exxon Mobil, contributing $279,500 to 22 of the committee's 31 Republicans, and $32,000 to five Democrats.
Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group — Americans for Prosperity — to oppose the Obama administration's proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. Of the six GOP freshman lawmakers on the panel, five benefited from the group's separate advertising and grass-roots activity during the 2010 campaign.
Claiming an electoral mandate, Republicans on the committee have launched an agenda of the sort long backed by the Koch brothers. A top early goal: restricting the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Kochs' core energy businesses.
It's quite astounding. For just $20,000, they flipped Fred Upton, the committee chair.
Perhaps the Kochs' most surprising and important ally on the committee is its new chairman, Rep. Fred Upton. The Republican from Michigan, who was once criticized by conservatives for his middle-of-the-road approach to environmental issues, is now leading the effort to rein in the EPA.
Upton received $20,000 in donations from Koch employees in 2010, making them among his top 10 donors in that cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Upton has gone corporate, in the words of Climate Progress. Well, that's one way to put it.
It's interesting to compare the headlines chosen by the newspaper for the web edition [Koch brothers now at heart of GOP power] vs. the dulled print edition [Conservative duo reach seat of power].
How about something simpler, more truthful?
Koch Brothers Buy House Energy Committee, GOP members
Meanwhile, as Andrew Leonard points out for Salon, the Obama administration has shown no sign of backing down on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases, not with a green light from the Supreme Court.
Kit Stolz