A Change in the Wind

The problem with global warming

It's the wrong phrase, as "gentleman cartoonist" Keith Knight so wittily demonstrates: 

 

Or, as Barry Goldwater might say, extremism in defense of weather is no vice. 

The hamburger of the future?

A prize-winning image from a Science magazine visualization competition:

 

An explanation from Science:  "...marine scientist Jennifer Jacquet of the University of British Columbia in Canada and digital artist Dave Beck's illustration uses this absurd, grotesque image to make their point: Overfishing and climate change have significant consequences for marine ecosystems. As the numbers of larger fish dwindle and ocean temperatures rise, the sea becomes more and more ideal for the floating creatures, Jacquet says."

Scary thing is, although the jellyfish burger might be grotesque and not be that tasty, the idea is not so absurd: the proliferation of huge jellyfish and squid has already been observed along the coasts of Japan and California. 

h/t: Bioephemera

Paging Dr. Mamet...Paging Dr. Mamet...

The most dominating dramatist of the last twenty or so years in this country is surely David Mamet, whose most seen work is probably The Untouchables, but whose outpourings fill shelves and theaters around the country and the English-speaking world. 

This domination may or may not be good news who care more about character than plot, because Mamet's characters, although powerfully driven and mysteriously real, tend to blur in the memory. 

They do not have the touch of the divine that some writers -- such as Shakespeare and Williams -- can mysteriously achieve. 

But, maybe that's unfair. Maybe it's me. Maybe I just don't like many of Mamet's characters, in plays such as Glengarry Glen Ross or American Buffalo, and perhaps that's my flaw, not his. When I do like his characters, as in my personal fave, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, I like Mamet very much. 

Since it came out thirty years ago, I think it's fair to reveal the irony of the title. The perversity is that young people, young couples, can fall in love, and not want to admit it to each other. 

Bring that to life and you will have a hit, and yes, this is the play that made Mamet a star. 

In that light, I wish he would put his mind to work dramatizing this great anonymous postcard from Postsecret: 

 

When PostSecret is good, it is very very good, and this Valentine's Day it was good. 

Even Sarah Palin's best friends don't believe her

From Timothy Egan in his Grifters Tale in The New York Times:

If Palin truly believed in the Tea Partiers and their discontent, she would not be charging $100,000 to stoke their fears [at an upcoming convention]. She can do that for free, on Fox. And what policy solutions does she offer the troubled middle class? Tax cuts, like the ones that caused this massive deficit to begin with? Preventing new regulation of the banks that got us into this horrid economic collapse, under the guise of “less government”?

She has nothing to offer but honeyed words, the syrup for suckers.

Say what you will about Tea Partiers, but many of them can see through this scheme in Nashville. “Smells scammy,” wrote Red State Blogger Erick Erickson, no friend of the media elite. Others are boycotting it, citing the $549 price for the convention, or the single night tab of $349 to hear Palin.

You could even see a bit of suspicion creep into Glenn Beck, Palin’s enabler on Fox, during the strangest of interviews a few weeks ago.

Beck to Palin: “Who’s your favorite founder?”

Palin: “You know, well, all of them.”

Beck was skeptical.

Yes, women can be grifters too.

Guess Beck's not a complete nut, even if he is mad as a hatter.

Brodner brilliantly illustrates this idea, along with the heavy promotion of gold that Beck and other right-wingers encourage, in the Gold Standard, and throws in Sarah as well. It's astonishingly good, I think.

How bad for the environment could one plastic bottle be?

WASHINGTON—Wishing to dispose of the empty plastic container, and failing to spot a recycling bin nearby, an estimated 30 million Americans asked themselves Monday how bad throwing away a single bottle of water could really be.

"It's fine, it's fine," thought Maine native Sheila Hodge, echoing the exact sentiments of Chicago-area resident Phillip Ragowski, recent Florida transplant Margaret Lowery, and Kansas City business owner Brian McMillan, as they tossed the polyethylene terephthalate object into an awaiting trash can. "It's just one bottle. And I'm usually pretty good about this sort of thing."

"Not a big deal," continued roughly one-tenth of the nation's population.

From The Onion, of course. For the rest of the all-too-hilarious story, click here.

Football gladiators (regardless of sex)

From the inimitable Jessica Hagy, of Indexed, an appropriate post for a football-heavy day:

Actually, professional football seems about the right sport for the USA today. War-like, rule-obsessed, tending towards blow-out wins, perfect for TV -- what better sport for a nation glued together by electronic media?

Funny-but-wise poem about Paris and dogs

You don't come across too many funny-but-wise poems in the world today, for whatever reason.

Sharp, cutting, intense, brilliant, shocking poems, sure, but funny?

Not so much.

So here -- let's celebrate one such surprise winner, from Poetry Daily:

Disgust

There's a preponderance of dog shit in Paris
but no one says so, attracted to its other, finer qualities.
If people were stepping in that much crap in Detroit
you'd never hear the end of it. Motown my ass, they'd say,
without so much as a backward glance at the Miracles, the Temptations.
They might remember Ike & Tina since he beat the shit out of her,
but they'd be wrong. They were from Tennessee.
What you get for the price of Paris is a certain forgiveness,
a willingness to overlook the less scenic. I don't know why.
I told a French guy once that I loved how clean and green the Seine looked;
he laughed till he almost puked. Because I was wrong, of course,
but also because cleanliness wasn't his idea of a compliment.
So let's be Paris. I'll be blind to your porn habit
and you'll elide the edges of my idiot rage.
We'll be full of shit but marvelous anyway,
and the young will flock to us
as an eternal symbol of romance.

Elizabeth Scanlon

Ploughshares
Winter 2009-10

And here of course is that eternal symbol...in real life, living up to its reputation.

Having fun with fundamentalism

On an Economist site, the blogger known as DIA bemoans what happens to an Alabama politician who dares question the possibility that every single word in the Bible might not be true. DIA wrote:

"EVERY politician says something he has to walk back once in a while. In the case of Bradley Byrne, a Republican candidate for governor of Alabama, it was

I think there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.

Mr Byrne was battered by so much criticism that he quickly trudged to a Piggly Wiggly grocery store to hold a press conference and recant. Claiming he had been misquoted, he said

I believe the Bible is true. Every word of it.

Mr Byrne's momentary hesitation about the literal truth of every word of the Bible makes him the religious hippie in the Republican field."

A good line, but even better, everyone agrees is the Twain-ian commentator Heimdall:

I also believe that every word of the Bible is true, taken individually. It's the way in which they're put together that has me scratching my head..

h/t: Andrew Sullivan

What if journalism today included the real news?

Noticing the incredible lack of hard news in today's journalism, the great artist Steve Brodner proposes a solution. In his words:

The problem with main stream media is that sometimes the news is hard to find.  What if "journalism" were sponsored by journalism? We could then expect some kind of product placement in the show! 

And he puts up a slew of examples. Here's my favorite.

First, the headline:

MRS. TIGER VOWS TO FOCUS ON THE KIDS

Then, the news as it could be reported:

I don't believe in global warming

A London street artist named Bansky puts an icy flood to good use:

via Jessica Palmer at Biophemera