At what point do we start to notice that our new climate isn't improved?
Massive heat wave moving East: Washington Post
Self-regulation in the new climate: Tom Toles
From the master of climate 'tooning, a recent sketch:
The sketch reflects the recent news from Colorado (where fires have been burning for weeks now, and could go on all summer, not to mention Utah, and New Mexico) and California and the West Coast, where sea level rise is accelerating, and is expected to reach five feet this century.
Does the humor come from the exaggeration, or from the reality?.
The usefulness of depression: Scientific American
This is not a new story, but it's new to me, and its logic compells: Molecular research shows that the receptor that governs what we think of as depression has deep mammalian roots, which means it must have been selected for by evolution. So why would depression be useful?
Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerousstudieshave also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.
This analytical style of thought, of course, can be very productive. Each component is not as difficult, so the problem becomes more tractable. Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.
I can attest recently to feeling depressed in just this way, while trying to write a difficult story over a weekend. Just as authors of this study, Paul Andrews and J. Anderson Thompson Jr, said, this depressed mood led to intense concentration and disinterest in food, sex, or pleasure, or anything but the problem, in fact, and the non-stop thinking did lead to a solution. (Sez me.)
But is there any evidence that depression is useful in analyzing complex problems? For one thing, if depressive rumination were harmful, as most clinicians and researchers assume, then bouts of depression should be slower to resolve when people are given interventions that encourage rumination, such as having them write about their strongest thoughts and feelings. However, the opposite appears to be true. Severalstudieshave found that expressive writing promotes quicker resolution of depression, and they suggest that this is because depressed people gain insight into their problems.
Would we be less troubled by depression if we thought of it as a form of problem-solving? Guess it depends on whether or not the problem can be solved by rumination.
Mark Morris: “No more rape!”
In a dance review yesterday, Claudia La Rocco in the inevitable New York Times tells a shocking story that apparently is well-known in the dance world, but certainly is new to moi. To wit:
I was reminded of a destined-to-become-infamous incident from 1984, when the choreographer Mark Morris rose from the audience during a performance of Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs,” yelled “No more rape!” and exited the theater.
Mr. Morris’s response to the stylized violence (in “That’s Life,” a woman in evening wear is flung about and manhandled by her tux-wearing companion) sounded over the top when I first read about it. But since then I have watched far too many performances that have featured the brutal handling of women — always artfully cloaked, of course.
Unfortunately, this ugly phenomenon hasn’t subsided, and there it was again on Wednesday, during the American premiere of the Mimulus Dance Theater's “Por um Fio” (“By a Thread”). The four women in the nine-member ensemble are repeatedly in chokeholds, their muscular male partners handling them by their necks as they move through athletic combinations infused by social dance traditions.
The men almost always are leading throughout this hourlong dance, manipulating their willing partners like so many pieces of virtuosic clay. They grasp the women’s faces at times, with palms and fingers settling like masks. As the men sling and hoist their partners about, the women’s bodies go to extremes: either appearing rigid, or limp as rag dolls. At other times they respond by kicking and struggling, but never with real resistance.
Mark Morris, once a bad boy banned from American Dance Festival for his "no more rape" outburst, is now perhaps the world's leading choreographer (and, according to Wendy Lesser of Threepenny Review, the leading provocateur, too). But Nine Sinatra Songs, although cleverly composed and elegant in Tharp's slinky way, did often turn women into objects, sometimes to be desired, but seemingly more often to be used, tossed around, stepped over,. Dramatic but troubling, and, natch, Tharp's most popular ballet (according ot the Miami City Ballet).
Why must our culture must rely on the sensitivity of a gay man to protest the rape of women? Because if a woman was to protest, that would be a lack of objectivity?
A Sierran haiku
Sometimes in the mountains I like to amuse myself with haiku. Like this one. Indulge me:
They fall. They alight.
The friendly mosquitoes dance —
Happy to see us.
From near the lush, beautiful, buggy Evolution Valley:
Sylvia Plath is funny, too
Yes, is.
To readers, the greats can actually speak.
Of course it's true that Emerson wrote this down on a piece of paper:
Men cease to interest us as soon as we find their limitations. As soon as you come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? Has he enterprise? Has he knowledge? It boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.
And published it in one of his lesser-known essays, Circles, in 1841. But he wrote in the present, off the cuff, from his journals, and he remains prescient today, on this subject and countless others, on the web, in tweets, in books and libraries and talks and god only knows what other forms.
I bring this up to introduce a new talent from an old friend. Sylvia Plath, a remarkable novelist, a great poet, a continuing controversy; and well, she also turns out to be a first-rate pen and ink artist.
To wit, in just one of many examples from the most recent Paris Review:
It's not just men who we dismiss too readily for their perceived limitations.
Julie Christensen sings the hell out of Weeds Like Us
Here's a story in the Reporter I wrote on local fav Julie Christensen, who just brought out an excellent new record, despite not having the backing or the money. No small feat.
It's a triumph, sez me, and I knew I wanted to write about Julie and her new record when I heard her sing "Weeds Like us" last summer, with his unforgettable chorus: Every day is an act of will/Weeds like us are hard to kill.
Why do we (some of us) watch sports?
I've been wondering why I continue to watch basketball. I gave up playing in a thirty-five and older league years ago, when I could no longer jump. My NBA team, the Lakers, has long since been knocked out of the play-offs. Lefty friends deride the idea of enjoying competition and hierarchy, and there is both science (see this amazing speech from Michael Lewis) and humanity in their argument.
And yet, to watch the youthful Oklahoma City Thunder, and the proud superheros of Miami speaks to me still. Donald Hall, the poet, has an idea why, and quotes the great baseball writer Roger Angell on the subject in an essay in his book Fathers Playing Catch With Sons:
Our national preoccupation with the images and performances of great athletes is not a simple matter. The obsessive intensity with which we watch their beautiful movements, their careless energy, their noisy, narcissistic joy in their own accomplishments is remarkably close to the emotions we feel when we observe very young children at play. While their games last, we smile with pleasure — but not for long, not forever. Rising from the park bench at last, we look at our watch, and begin to gather up the scattered toys…
Everyone agrees that Kevin Durant is the least narcissistic and even least dramatic of superstars, but you can see Angell's point even so, in this pic.
Popular denier waves off hottest spring in U.S. history
The multitudes at this site have been wondering how long it will take before the most popular of climate change deniers waves off the hottest spring in American history. It's been months.
Well, the wait is over. Anthony Watts finally bothered to opine on the subject, cleverly mixing the minimization of the hottest spring and second hottest May with ad hominem attacks on James Hansen, as usual, and cherry-picked graphs, as also usual.
He begins with the press release from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, then pivots to a claim that the five degrees above normal spring is the result of what meteorologists call a "blocking high."
He writes:
One spot on the globe becomes the focal point and “proof” that AGW [global warming] is happening. This gets touted in the media..[b]ut this was found to be based on a synoptic pattern, basically weather noise. This spring in the USA is no different.
That makes sense, as long as you think of the spring in the Midwest in particular and the continental U.S. in general as "one spot."
Watts goes on to point out that it's still not nearly as warm as the l930's, so why worry?
This ignores what scientists call a "trend." Here's the NOAA chart for May over the last century:
The somewhat encouraging news is that the warm winter and the hottest spring in our recorded history does seem to have influenced public opinion, according to the most recent research (pdf):
The most recent survey results also indicate an increasing confidence among Americans that global warming is occurring. Just under two thirds of those who believe global warming is occurring stated that they were very confident of this position. This 63 percent confidence level is 14 percentage points higher than in the fall of 2011 and marks the highest level since the NSAPOCC began in 2008.
Respondents to the pollsters specifically indicated that the warm winters and spring have influenced their views. This is heartening, somewhat, because it indicates that most people still are open to observable data, unlike Watts and his zombies, um, followers.
The Southern California resurgence of backpacking
Too long ago our local master of the backcountry Bill Slaughter and his rock and roller partner Rain Perry led a group of mostly Ojains into the wilderness to a popular camp by the Sespe, Bear Creek, an easy but pleasant walk, well documented by Modern Hiker. We had a great time and, having sent scouts ahead on Thursday with mules to secure and supply the campsite, no trouble occupying this central spot. But people came through on the trail almost continually during the day and evening, and when we ventured deeper into the Sespe, near a good hot spring, the river became downright crowded. College kids, couples, small groups of adventurous guys, even familes — the backpackers kept coming, and filled up nearly every shady spot.
All this to verify a comment from Craig Carey, who just published a new book on backpacking in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. This is what he said to the editor of the Santa Barbara Independent, re: backpacking in this area:
Do you think there’s a resurgence in backpacking?
I do. It’s a combination of things.
It's hot country, too hot in summer, but the oases are fantastic in the spring:
Kit Stolz 