Is America getting weirder?

Forget the inescapable Tea Party for a second. Just consider: GOP voters nominated a woman to run for a Senate seat in a populous Eastern state whose signal achievement in life, seemingly, is not having sex. 

Isn't that a little, um, peculiar? 

Not an exaggeration. Here's Christine O'Donnell opining on the subject of procreation on the radio a few years back, debating a regulation-issue safe sex advocate:

NIES: I tell them to be careful. You have to wear a condom. You have to
protect yourself when you're going to have sex, because [young people] are having
it anyway…There's nothing that you or me can do about it.


O'DONNELL: The sad reality is — yes, there is something you can do
about it. And the sad reality, to tell them slap on a condom is not —

NIES: You're going to stop the whole country from having sex?

O'DONNELL: Yeah. Yeah! 

NIES: You're living on a prayer if you think that's going to happen. 

O'DONNELL: That's not true. I'm a young woman in my thirties and I remain chaste. 

Which made her famous. Which made her viable as a candidate.

S-CHRISTINE-ODONNELL-large300

In America today, fame is its own reward. From whence it comes matters not.

The plot escapes me, but the wraith of memory remains

In the New York Times Book Review, novelist James Collins admits an embarrassing secret.

I have just realized something terrible about myself: I don’t remember the books I read…

Nor do I think I am the only one with this problem. Certainly, there are
those who can read a book once and retain everything that was in it,
but anecdotal evidence suggests that is not the case with most people.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that most people cannot recall the title or
author or even the existence of a book they read a month ago, much less
its contents.

So we in the forgetful majority must, I think, confront the following
question: Why read books if we can’t remember what’s in them?

But then Collins does something very interesting. He calls up an expert on the science of reading named Maryanne Wolf, and asks her what she thinks about this quandary:

“There is a difference,” she said [to Collins], “between immediate recall of facts
and an ability to recall a gestalt of knowledge. We can’t retrieve the
specifics, but to adapt a phrase of William James’s, there is a wraith
of memory."

Paul Raeburn, at the eminent Knight Science Journalism Tracker, responds with a complaint that Collins hasn't "done his reporting properly, even if this is a personal essay."

He has a point; the reader does want to know more about the building of "networks" in the brain Wolf refers to.  which, translated into the vernacular, sounds as if she's saying — by reading that book, you have changed your mind. 

But one can only admire Raeburn for finding a quote (from Tennyson, no less!) that describes the situation just as beautifully: I am part of all that I have met.

Yet and still, Wolf's reference to the "wraith of memory" corresponds quite exactly to what Collins recalls about the book in question — how he felt about it, and the experience of reading it. 

And here's a possible measure of what it means to change your mind: What you can remember and retrieve is as good as what you have discovered or written yourself. As fully earned.

In the words of the late great (and too little missed) poet Joseph Brodsky:

Living is like quoting, and once you've learned something by heart, it's yours as much as the authors.

(from In Memory of Stephen Spender)

NBA: Five weeks away

Mark Heisler has held down the NBA beat for The Los Angeles Times for the last quarter-century or so. SoCal is lucky to have him; he's as spiky and surprising as ever, with no sign of weariness.

Heisler's also ahead of his time, stylistically. He's been mixing commentary into his league updates, which Times reporters are clearly encouraged to do in their reporting these days, for decades now.

In the piece below, Heisler gives Miami's infamous General Manager Pat Riley, at helm of the Lakers during their Showtime glory days, credit for the "Frankenstein Revival" that is the new Miami Heat. 

But what if it's a case of the Super Friends — Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, and Chris Bosh — conspiring, agreeing to take less money to play together? What GM wouldn't agree to such a deal?

Some have speculated the three stars had been talking about a deal like this since they played together at the 2008 Olympics, where they easily triumphed.

If this team works — and it's difficult to see how it could not, especially with superb long-ranger shooter Mike Miller on board — will this be an argument for the mind games of Pat Riley, or simply for employees working together to get the job done?

The NBA: Five weeks away from Chris Bosh et al at Boston:

Chris_bosh--300x300

The most Orwellian twist in today’s most Orwellian novel

Gary Shteyngart is a fan of George Orwell, but his new Super Sad True Love Story, a dystopian novel inspired by l984, isn't all that Orwellian a book. 

Why? 

Because, for all Orwell's greatness, Shteyngart is a much more amusing writer. 

But the book does have a couple of surreal and ominously Orwellian moments. The most memorable comes out of the fact that the armed force overtaking American society, the "American Restoration Authority," won't allow anyone to recognize its takeover. It's officially invisible. When the ARA sets up a checkpoint, with the inevitable sandbags, barbed wire, and men armed with machine guns, a large sign is posted:

IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXISTENCE OF THIS CHECKPOINT ("THE OBJECT"). BY READING THIS SIGN YOU HAVE DENIED EXISTENCE OF THE OBJECT AND IMPLIED CONSENT.

Now that's creepy. 

Delta earthquake risk serious, but not catastrophic: USGS

A soon-to-be-released report from the US Geological Survey finds the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta would be hit even harder by an earthquake than previously believed, but with winter rains, the Delta would also recover more quickly than was estimated in a state study just three years ago.

This excellent story by Pat McBroom in The California Spigot highlights the earthquake risk, but given that previous scenarios predicted it could take as long as eighteen months for the Delta and State Water Project to recover from a 7.0 earthquake on the Hayward fault, a projected three-to-four month recovery, with winter rains, might even count as good news. 

“It’s not true that a
major earthquake would mean the end of the delta and we’d never be able
to use it again,” said Greg Gartrell, a hydrologist with the Contra
Costa County Water District, who is familiar with the new modeling. “Yes, you get a lot of salt water coming in, but as soon as it rains,
that water can get washed out.” 

Pumps that supply California’s urban
and agricultural water would have to stop for about three to four
months, under the conditions studied, said Gartrell, and then could
become operational again.  Most urban water districts have local water
supplies to cover such a period.

Politically, this means that the underlying justification for the so-called "isolated conveyance" — a euphemism for the politically untouchable peripheral canal, defeated in a l982 vote — is taken away.

Will the water bond that was taken off the ballot this fall ever come back?

Maybe not.

Here's the delta, and, by the way, here's another excellent (if less cheering) story about it from the Contra Costa Times, called Delta: A Lake in the Making.

DWR-Delta-subsidence-3-300x200

The politics of climate change denial, worldwide

From George Monbiot:

Australian politics provides yet more evidence that climate science
divides people along political lines. [Tony] Abbott is no longer an outright
denier, though he still insists, in the teeth of the facts, that the
world has cooled since 1997(5).
Some members of his party go further: Senator Nick Minchin, for
example, maintains that “the whole climate change issue is a left-wing
conspiracy to deindustrialise the western world”(6). (He has also
insisted that cigarettes are not addictive and the link between passive
smoking and illness cannot be demonstrated(7)).
A recent poll suggests that 38% of politicians in Abbott’s coalition
believe that man-made global warming is taking place, by comparison to
89% of Labor’s people(8).

It’s the same story everywhere. At a senatorial hustings in New
Hampshire last week, all six Republican candidates denied that man-made
climate change is taking place(9).
Judging by its recent antics in the Senate and by primary campaigns all
over the country, the Republican party appears to be heading towards a
unanimous rejection of the science. The ultra-neoliberal Czech president
Vaclav Klaus asserts that “global warming is a false myth and every
serious person and scientist says so.”(10) The hard-right UK Independence Party may soon be led by Lord Monckton(11),
the craziest man in British politics, who claims that action on climate
change is a conspiracy to create a communist world government(12).
The further to the right you travel, the more likely you are to insist
that man-made climate change isn’t happening. Denial has nothing to do
with science and everything to do with politics.

Or, as Spencer Weart — who literally wrote the book on global warming — says: Tell me what you think about government regulation, and I will tell you what you think about global warming.

Scary graph of the day: Arctic sea ice

Via ClimateProgress:

Changeinseaice2010

Commenting on the trend, Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center told the Vancouver Sun:

There
are claims coming from some communities that the Arctic sea ice is
recovering, is getting thicker again. That's simply not the case. It's continuing down in a death spiral.

Serreze may be thinking of the deniers who flock to the popular Watts Up With That site, and pour over every data release looking for some reason, any reason, to question the reality of Arctic sea ice decline. 

Today the founder Anthony Watts was crowing because, he claims, NOAA said the ice decline was the second-lowest extent on record at this time of year, whereas actually it's the third lowest extent for September.

Once upon a time people couldn't see the forest for the trees; now they can't see the trend in a dataset. 

“War and Peace” in one sentence

I looked up War and Peace and it's about this guy Pierre who fights in France, and all this terrible stuff happens to him, but in the end because of his charm he gets to be with this girl he really loves, and who really loves him even though she cheated on him. 

Gary Shtenygart — Super Sad True Love Story