1. Aldo Leopold on the land
2. Science comedian Brian Malow in San Francisco, Sacramento, Sunnyvale
3. Diagnosis Mercury: Money, Politics, and Poison, 6:00-7:30pm, Thursday, 1/22/09
4. Martin Luther King Day of Service events in the Bay Area January 19
5. Two-thirds of California's native fish species may soon be extinct
6. Financial thoughts from JK Galbraith and Paul Krugman. Brrr
7. However, financial woes are not as bad as it gets
8. China is not a good place to be a bird
9. Feedback
10. Wise advice for all of us, from a dog
11. Miscellany on experts and committees
12. It was a lovely day in Pompeii - 23 August 79
13. Belated Christmas gift suggestions - oh well, next year
14. SF Rec-Park Commission elections
1.
The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little is known about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’
If the land mechanism is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not….Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” Aldo Leopold 1949
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2.
Science Comedian Brian Malow presents
Rational Comedy for an Irrational Planet
An evening of science humor
"It's as much about expanding the mind as it is tickling the funny bone." - The Washington Times
For all audiences! Music is not just for musicians. Art is not just for artists. And science is not just for scientists. Let Brian be your tour guide for this evening's humorous exploration of the expanding universe!
8pm, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Tickets $15
Punch Line Comedy Club
444 Battery Street
San Francisco,
(415) 397-PLSF
http://www.punchlinecomedyclub.com
Brian Malow is Earth's Premier Science Comedian (available for off-world appearances if transportation is provided). Based in San Francisco, Brian has performed for NASA, JPL, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the American Chemical Society, Applied Biosystems, and various outlets of the National Academy of Sciences, and has been featured in the Washington Post and Times, Nature, Chemical & Engineering News, and the San Jose Mercury News and on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" (CBS).
For more information visit Brian's website: www.ScienceComedian.com
Questions?... sciencecomedian@gmail.com
And for a taste of science comedy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn8uzB0eypk
Additional Shows in Sunnyvale: http://www.roostertfeathers.com
and Sacramento: http://www.punchlinecomedyclub.com
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3. Diagnosis Mercury: Money, Politics, and Poison, 6:00-7:30pm, Thursday, 1/22/2009
Author Dr. Jane Hightower’s new book, retraces her investigation into the modern mercury poisoning from fish, revealing how politics, dubious studies, and industry lobbyists endanger our health. The Richardson Bay Audubon Center, Blue Classroom, 376 Greenwood Beach Road, Tiburon, CA 94920 Please RSVP to Gretchen Grani at ggrani@audubon.org or 415.388.2524 ex 113
More Information
The author: Jane M. Hightower, M.D., is a board certified internal medicine physician in San Francisco, California. She published a landmark study that brought the issue of mercury in seafood to national attention. She continues to publish scientific papers and give lectures on the subject.
The book: Diagnosis: Mercury sheds light on a system in which, too often, money trumps good science and responsible government. Exposing a threat that few recognize but that touches many, Diagnosis: Mercury should be required reading for everyone who cares about their health. www.diagnosismercury.org
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4. 2009 Day of Service: Help Grow Your National Park!
Monday, January 19, 2009, Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Be a part of history—help launch a new era of positive change across America! President-elect Barack Obama is calling for a nationwide Day of Service on January 19, 2009, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Volunteer in the Golden Gate National Parks at our doorstep! It’s fun, it’s healthy, and it makes a difference—the perfect way to pitch in on a momentous day.
Celebrate your day off as a “day on” and help grow and restore these cherished national parklands. We will feature several projects at park sites in Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties, with activities including trails maintenance, planting, habitat restoration, beach cleanups, and more. Choose your favorite activity and site, and join us for a fun and rewarding day in the Golden Gate National Parks. All you need to bring is some good energy, your waiver form, and the proper clothing. Bring the whole family and friends! We’ll take care of the rest (tools, supplies, and project leadership).
Times vary by project. Individuals and groups are welcome. RSVP is requested and appreciated.
For more information: visit www.parksconservancy.org (go to Volunteer Special Events) or contact us at (415) 561-4755 or volunteer@parksconservancy.org
The Golden Gate National Parks Volunteer Program is a cooperative parkwide effort of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the National Park Service, and the Presidio Trust.
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Martin Luther King Day of Service at the Richmond Shoreline
Date: Mon., January 19, 2009
Time: 9-1 PM
Meeting Point: Arrive at Shimada Friendship Park and walk along the Bay Trail towards the beach.
Help dreams grow along the Richmond shoreline! Come out with your family, neighbors and friends and join the Watershed Project in making a difference in Richmond. Be a part of this festive and inspirational event!
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5. Two-thirds of California’s native fish species—salmon, steelhead and trout—may be extinct by the end of the century, if not sooner.
That’s the dire prediction contained in “SOS: California’s Native Fish Crisis,” a report released November 19 that is based on a two-year research study by a team of UC Davis scientists. They received support from the fish and watershed advocacy group California Trout.
If the report proves correct, it would mean that of the 32 native salmon and trout species, only 10 or 11 would still exist in 2100. Of those 32 species, 65 percent are found only in California. And of the state’s nine living native inland species, seven are in danger of extinction.
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=886872
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6. We’re all still looking for that free lunch
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, by Paul Krugman.
This is a brilliant book, but it scares me, for several reasons. One reason arises from Paul Krugman’s history of financial crashes. Something seems to be making them happen more frequently as time goes on. Also, they seem to be getting more destructive. In the great depression of the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes said: “We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.” These days the machine is much bigger and infinitely more delicate, and we’re still struggling to understand how it works.
One of the most striking things Krugman tells us is that you can have a recession even when an economy seems basically sound…(example omitted). And this is the second reason the book scares me. Economists usually try to solve problems by tinkering with things, and making them more complicated. That’s because it often works – until, suddenly, it doesn’t. Krugman, who specializes in recessions, takes us through the history of why they happen. It’s always because people devise an ingenious way to make what appears to be free money, and nobody understands the consequences until it’s too late. There is, it turns out, no such thing as a free lunch.
This is another scary thing. The entire edifice of capitalism is based on capital – which is really just another word for confidence. Wealth is created because people who have capital, or confidence, expose it to risk. If people believe your confidence to be authentic, the risk you take is likely to be small. But as soon as people think you are bluffing, they panic – and panic destroys wealth faster than confidence can ever increase it.
Krugman looks at various crashes, such as the “Tequila crash” in South America in the mid-90s, and the Asian crash that happened three or four years later. They all happen for the same basic reason – the banking system exposes itself to too much risk. Then people lose confidence. Then panic starts. Panic doesn’t even have to be based on anything real. Krugman compares panic to a feedback loop – noise from a speaker is magnified by a microphone, which relays this noise, now much louder, back through the speaker, and so on, until it’s an ear-splitting shriek.
And this is, more or less, the sound emanating from today’s global economy. In the past, every time a crash has happened, something big has stepped in to clean up the mess. And now what will save us? “The quintessential economic sentence is supposed to be ‘There is no free lunch.’ Depression economics, however, is the study of situations where there is a free lunch, if we could only figure out how to get our hands on it.”
Krugman, one of the sharpest economists in the world, still believes in free lunches. And that’s something that really scares me.
Review by William Leith in Guardian Weekly 09.01.09
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Words of warning
The financial crisis has revived interest in the writings of J.K. Galbraith
He believed that companies use advertising to induce consumers to want things they never dreamed they needed, that easy credit leads to financial catastrophe and that the best way to reinvigorate the economy was by making large investments in infrastructure. Not president-elect Barack Obama, but J.K. Galbraith, the tall, iconoclastic economist, diplomat and adviser to Democrat leaders from John F. Kennedy on. For years Galbraith’s most famous book was The Affluent Society, which came out in 1958. But the financial crisis has revived interest in an earlier work, The Great Crash, 1929, in which Galbraith showed just how markets become decoupled from reality in a speculative boom.
The other J.K.’s bestsellers
The Great Crash, 1929 (1955)
A Short History of Financial Euphoria (1990)
The Affluent Society (1958)
A History of Economics: The Past as the Present (1987)
The Essential Galbraith (2001)
The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our Time (2004)
The New Industrial State (1967)
Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975)
The Good Society: The Humane Agenda (1996)
The Age of Uncertainty (1977)
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7. Financial woes are not as bad as it gets. Max Hastings
Mankind almost always gets threat assessment wrong. Politicians and sages worry themselves into a decline about a given issue--the red peril, the yellow peril, nuclear holocaust, al-Quaida--only to find themselves facing troubles of a different nature. The most obvious consequence of the western financial crisis is that it makes President Bush's "war on terror" seem footling...By contrast, what generates such fear about the financial catastrophe is that nobody professes to know how bad matters can get. The US and British governments are scrabbling for palliatives rather than proposing anything that masquerades as a solution. Thoughtful people are justly frightened about their jobs, homes and savings. Complacency persists only among those too stupid to realise how serious the mess is, or too young to imagine a society in which instant gratification is no longer available.
My daughter once observed in a domestic context: "Daddy, life is what you are used to." This seemed to me an unconsciously profound remark. In war or peace people find it hard to come to terms with the notion of their own environment, physical, social or economic, becoming something quite different from what it is.
Churchill, during the second world war, explained this phenomenon to the head of the army...He called it the "three-inch pipe" theory of human response. Human beings, he said, can only absorb so much drama--up to the capacity of, say, a three-inch pipe. Thereafter, everything that happens around them rushes past, along an emotional overflow.
...A little knowledge of history makes it easier to achieve a perspective upon misfortunes that befall us. Bedtime reading of Samuel Pepys's diary provides a wonderful corrective to anyone silly enough to suppose our own times extravagantly dangerous...Pepys's career prospered, but he lacked the slightest sense of security.
(Omitted: Enumeration of some of the events of the 1660s, such as the great plague, followed the next year by the great fire that consumed London, the tottering of the nation's finances, and, just as things couldn't get worse, they did: The Dutch fleet sailed up a river and burned Chatham dockyard--and so forth.)
...We need not continue the history lecture. My point is simply that if we measure today's woes with those of former eras, we should be able to muster a little courage. Western capitalism is suffering a richly deserved shock to its hubris. But it almost certainly possesses sufficient resilience, energy and imagination to come out the other side. We face no threat to our health, diet or physical safety to match those that confronted the generations of Pepys, Churchill and many others over the past millennium. If the worst that can befall us is to lose some money, then it ill becomes us to make too much of it.
From Guardian Weekly, 03.10.08
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8.
The fields are few, but the sea is vast. So men have made fields from the sea. —Qing dynasty gazetteer
China is not a good place to be a bird.
Western environmentalists brought up on direct action and confrontation might view the China’s attempts to save the environment as wet and weak-kneed. Others search in vain in China’s environmental movement for a democratic vanguard, in evidence during the last days of the Soviet Union. Mass protests, such as successful demonstrations in 2007 by residents of Xiamen against a planned chemical plant on the coast, are localised.
Yet in protean China, one constant is that opposing the Communist state brings down a mailed fist. If protecting habitats and species is the aim, Mr Chen and his kind are better at the job than outsiders give them credit for. As Mr Chen points out, influencing government policy was unthinkable two decades ago. So even as they scan the woodlands, rocky islets or mudflats, China’s environmentalists, ever so slowly, are giving a boost not just to other species but also to citizens, for they are becoming a social force. Another reason, then, to hear it for the birdwatchers.
From The Economist (?)
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9. Feedback
Don French:
Also, the terms "organic produce" and "organically grown" have been in use since the late 60's, and there was no such thing as genetic engineering at that time. It always meant grown without pesticides.
Anna-Marie Bratton:
When I read the salt/blood/ocean item I immediately knew it was wrong
As did I--believe it or not. The statement was absurd on the face of it: "Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink". Why, then, did I post it? Going too fast, I guess. I was thinking of something else, and it only caused a little ripple in my awareness--but I never got around to checking it. Thanks for the correction.
Indeed, jenittalon is incorrect. In order for any crop to be labeled organic (by any ligitimate certification organization ( don't count on USDA certification) it must have NOT been treated with pesticides or inorganinc fertilizers. ...and, the soil in which the crops are qrown must not have been treated for a minimum of 3 years. The chemicals in the pesticides and fertilizers that wash off of the fields into streams and rivers then end up in the ocean harm life on earth; there is a very large dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from run off in the Missippi. The other harm by pesiticides and fertilizers comes from the fact that they are made with oil and contribute to the CO2 emmisions that play a role in global warming.
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Concerning the cement removal and bird friendly garden at 22nd and Shotwell: Great idea, however, there is an alternative to a garden;a community farm at that location would provide vegetables for the people in that neighborhood. Urban organic vegetable gardens not only provide food but decrease the amount of oil needed to get fresh food
into cities. I know that food gardening is happening in the City but not to the extent that it should be - in my opinion. I do believe, as you do, that restoring natives to the City is important but can be accomplished along with projects that help feed people in need.
I certainly agree with you about growing food in the city. That is something that I am certain we will be seeing more of. There are many such efforts around the city, the premier one being Alemany Farm, where they are concentrating on raising food, but recognize the value of natural insect control. To effect that, they devote considerable space to locally-native plants, which attract native insects, birds, and other indigenous organisms. They have found that they don't need to spray or bait or anything; nature takes care of controlling them.
(Another, larger scale, example is Hedgerow Farms, west of Davis. Although not primarily a food producer, Hedgerow has demonstrated clearly that diversifying plantings to diversify the wildlife makes life a lot simpler. Vast monocultures, which dominate our agricultural system, are invitations to control problems requiring herculean efforts.)
Anonymous wrote:
I am sure Barack Obama is going to be less than stellar in pushing for all the changes we need.
He'd better be, if he wants to get re-elected. Not to mention if he wants to bring Congress and the voters along with him--a necessity.
Thinking people are always impatient, see what needs to be done, and want to get there--now. Successful politicians know better. Abe Lincoln was a stellar example, but you can troll through the history books and find that the ones who made a difference were the patient ones who took the trouble to bring people, including powerful people, along with them.
(Additional thought: I am impatient with voters who want to force things their way, oblivious to public sentiment. A recent example was the effort to force Nancy Pelosi to end the Iraq war and, gasp, to impeach Bush. Needless to say, she ignored them. Now they want Obama to make up for all the insanity of recent decades. They'd better pay attention to what is politically possible. For starters, they should look at the election returns. Considering how disastrous the Bush admin was, the vote was amazingly close: 52-48%, and the red vs blue map looks distressingly similar to what it was before. I find that disturbing, and something we all need to mull over. The electorate is well right of center, and I suspect it was still hopeful that the economic news is just a temporary setback. If they knew how truly serious the situation is I don't think they could ever have voted for McCain, who doesn't have a clue. That is the only way the election results can make sense to me. If the McCain voters don't already know, they will know within a year how foolish they were to vote for him.)
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10. From High Country News, 12 November 2006
This dog believes
"Each week we'll hear from a banker or butcher, a painter or social worker as they discuss the principles that guide their daily lives. We realize what a daunting prospect this is--to summarize a life's philosophy in just 500 words and share it with a national audience. But that's exactly what we hope you will do."
Radio producer Jay Allison, in his introduction to the "This I believe" series on National Public Radio
Well, Jay, I know this is a long shot. You've got Colin Powell and Newt Gingrich in your series, after all. Why should you bother with the beliefs of an undergrown Australian shepherd mix who's still figuring out the difference between Sit and Down? But I've been trying to make my owner understand me, and she's just not getting it. I hope a national audience will help my cause.
You see, I believe in the present. When I'm hanging my head out of the car window, or lying on my back in a comfy bed of weeds, I'm not worrying about the 2008 presidential elections, or the fate of the Endangered Species Act. (Though I do sometimes wonder if chasing rabbits will ever be defined as take.) Instead, I'm soaking up my surroundings, thinking about wind, sky, sun and sleep. The here and now always seems worth my attention.
But at least once a day, my owner looks up from her computer, or the newspaper, with an all-too-familiar look of desperation. Then she says something like, "Pika, did you know that the Greenland ice sheet is melting even faster than anyone thought?"
I try, I really do. I fix her with my gentlest, most sympathetic dog look, and I say, "That's a big problem. A big, big problem. But don't you think you'd be better able to face it if you did just a little deep panting, and took a nice long look out the window?"
She sighs. "I know, Pika," she says. "The present moment is all we've got. According to you and Ram Dass and all those chicken-soup books, not to mention the Buddha and Thoreau. But I don't have time for any panting or looking around. Didn't you hear what I just said about the ice sheet?"
That's usually when she pours herself another cup of coffee, and starts eating chocolate chips straight from the bag.
She's not listening. In fact, she's in the next room right now, compulsively checking her e-mail, in a state about God knows what. But I hope the rest of you will give me a chance. I'm not saying you should give up on your good works, or even stop that fretting you humans seem so skilled at. We non-humans want you to clean up your planetary messes, so we need all the guilt and good works you can muster.
I'm only suggesting that you notice when spring slides into summer, when the backyard cactus blooms, and maybe even when the garbageman arrives. You could notice when your neighbor passes by, or, when you sit down to dinner with your family, you could notice how the food tastes. Then, after a brief visit to the present, you could get right back to the uncertain future, resuming your fretting about global warming or the upcoming town council elections. No one would miss you, I promise--and I suspect you'd feel a lot better for your journey.
Take it from someone who lives seven days for every one of yours: Our moments on this earth are numbered, and briefer than any of us can possibly imagine. I believe each one is worth noticing.
Pika lives in Paonia, Colorado, with her family, which includes High Country News contributing editor Michelle Nijhuis.
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11. Miscellany - decisions, experts, committees
William H. Whyte in his book The Organization Man advocates Retroactive Planning, where you act on what you viscerally know is right, then do the research to prove it.
Jane Jacobs: "When ordinary people pay attention, they are often capable of more profound insights than the experts."
You've heard all the jokes about committees:
“The world is proof that God is a committee.” Bob Stokes
A camel (or an elephant) is a horse designed by committee.
The human body was designed by committee. Who else would have sited a sewer outlet next to a recreation area?
However:
"Who wants to be average? To be average is to be commonplace and unexceptional. It conjures up the mediocre or banal. But, in the right circumstances the average is the best place to be. Take a competition based on guessing something, such as the number of jellybeans in a barrel or the weight of a cow....The average of a crowd's guesses is more likely to be accurate than those of its individual members....The masses can be smarter than the solitary expert. So much for mediocrity." Excerpt from Guardian Weekly book review of The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
And excerpts from article in The Economist 28 May 05:
"The old jokes about the uselessness of committees go unheeded in the world's central banks. Most of them rely on several heads to set interest rates. An experiment by three economists at the Bank of England--which eight years ago took over rate-setting powers from the once omnipotent chancellor of the exchequer, and has enjoyed conspicuous success since--suggests that collective wisdom is exactly that....
"...The average score in committee was far higher than the average in individual sessions...individuals did worse even in the final rounds than they had in committee. They were more aggressive in changing rates than the underlying model required 92% of the time, against the committee's 9%....One possible explanation for the superiority of committees is that majority voting cancels out the worst performers....But other studies suggest that groups which discuss the job at hand may be too swayed by the alpha arguer among them. That is an argument against the domination of a rate-setting committee by a single individual--and is one reason why the departure, due next January, of Alan Greenspan...might be less worrying than it seems."
(And perhaps you've noticed that Mr Greenspan is not only not missed, but has been given some swift kicks in the pants.)
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12. Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples at National Gallery of Art, Washington, reviewed in Washington Post.
August 23 AD79 was the last day of Pompeii. Who has not imagined what befell that chic resort? The towering volcano, then the wrath-of-God explosion, the columns crashing, the statues overturned and the panic of the dying as the tradesmen in their shops, and the dogs still in their kennels, and the nobles in their jewels are buried all at once…That lovely curving coast was a place of leisured pleasure, a sort of a Hamptons to busy Rome’s Manhattan. Seaside homes were built there by Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, and the richest of their countrymen. The villas they constructed, as one might imagine, were competitively grand…Then Vesuvius erupted.
…Painted on the wall toward the exhibition’s end is a quote from Goethe, who visited Pompeii in 1787: “There have been many disasters in this world,” wrote the German poet, “but few have given so much delight to posterity.” A motto for this show.
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13. Sorry to be late with this list of books for possible holiday gifts. But keep it and be prepared early for next Christmas:
The Inheritance of Hairy Ear Rims
A Pictorial Book of Tongue Coating
The History and Romance of Elastic Webbing
Since the Dawn of Time
A Toddler’s Guide to the Rubber Industry
Mucus and Related Topics
Highlights in the History of Concrete
Nasal Maintenance: Nursing Your Nose Through Troubled Times
Big and Very Big Hole Drilling
Alternatively, How To books are always popular:
Let’s Make Some Undies
Reusing Old Graves
Teach Yourself Alcoholism
Grow Your Own Hair
The Art of Faking Exhibition Poultry
Be Bold With Constipation
Constipation and Our Civilization
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14. San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission
The agenda for the January 15 meeting includes election of officers. My guess is that Jim Lazarus will be elected president. Will that make a difference? Perhaps, perhaps not. JS
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