From a new book about the perils of apocalyptic thinking called The Last Myth. To understand why fewer people believe in climate change even as evidence mounts, we must look beyond the industry-funded movement to deny the reality and effects of climate change. Perhaps equally important — if not quite equally culpable — has beenContinue reading “The Last Myth: the problem with apocalyptic warnings”
Monthly Archives: May 2012
Could one consultant mislead two SoCal water districts?
At its best, journalism is surely a joint enterprise. It's not a reporter that makes democracy workable, it's the press. Quotes from Thomas Jefferson come to mind. So it's very exciting to yours truly to see another reporter pick up and run with a crucial detail from a long story I wrote a few weeksContinue reading “Could one consultant mislead two SoCal water districts?”
Tweets: bird poems, by the season, from Marie Harris
These days when we hear the word "tweets" we may not think of birds. But Marie Harris, former poet laureate for New Hampshire, reminds us of the real thing with a quartet of lovely but tough poems about birds and their lives. I'll cite just the first, and encourage readers to search out the rest:Continue reading “Tweets: bird poems, by the season, from Marie Harris”
John D. MacDonald: Nature’s tricks of interdependence
The Florida-based mystery writer John D. MacDonald, who like his funny counterpart Carl Hiassen unabashedly displays a wide streak of caring for the land and the sea on which he lives, tells a story about the way of buzzards in The Lonely Silver Rain. This is the 21st and last of his great series of TravisContinue reading “John D. MacDonald: Nature’s tricks of interdependence”
For Mother’s Day, a spiked New Yorker cover
From a fun new site called Blown Covers, a New Yorker cover that could have been:
Mitt Romney: Worse than George W. Bush?
One of this country's lesser-known great writers, Edmund White, writes for The New Yorker about the Cranbrook School, where Romney and a gang of followers ritually humiliated a gay classmate in l965. White attended the school, just as Mitt Romney did, but a few years earlier, and as a gay person. He speculates about Romney's motivationsContinue reading “Mitt Romney: Worse than George W. Bush?”
Andrew Revkin: on climate change in a post-media world
Covered a talk by the dean of climate reporters, Andrew Revkin, last week at UCSB, for the Santa Barbara Independent. In part because he got so sick of "the yelling" around climate, a couple of years ago Revkin gave up traditional reporting to teach at Pace University, and to run the great Dot Earth blogContinue reading “Andrew Revkin: on climate change in a post-media world”
Eulogy for a watershed: Tam Valley in Marin County
My good friend David Healy sends along a touching/troubling essay about the development of his Marin County town, Tam Valley, in the days of his and my youth, approximately fifty years ago. When I was a kid in the valley, we didn't need "facilities." We had the hills to hike in and the fields to playContinue reading “Eulogy for a watershed: Tam Valley in Marin County”
The Sierras: A lot younger than they look
The Sierra Nevada mountains are nowhere near as old as they look; geologically, they're shockingly young. That's the news from David Perlman, a science writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. The mountains of the Sierra Nevada are still rising, and they're a lot younger than most scientists previously thought. That's the conclusion of Earth scientists inContinue reading “The Sierras: A lot younger than they look”
How to salve the pain of long-term unemployed: Retire
Could early retirement be even better for the long-term unemployed than marriage? A new study by a team of German economists tests a theory that suggests so. The thery posits that we all have a "identity utility," and thus the unhappiness we feel due to unemployment — which in countries like Germany and even theContinue reading “How to salve the pain of long-term unemployed: Retire”
Kit Stolz 