Random Notes from a Crank

 

I got this meme from "Eat the Rich" on FB. It's appropriate. We only have so many natural resources and probably way too many unnatural ones.  

In my job I have to work with first-year students, who are usually 18-year-olds. Their inability to use the basic "attach file" function of email is astounding. Yes, I know how that statement makes me sound old as Hell. 

As reported in The New York Times, the enrollment of international students has steeply declined. President Adolf's hurdles have turned us into the United States of Xenophobia. Here's the article: "Trumps Tactics Mean Many International Students Won't Make It to Campus."

I dislike the statement, "It's been a minute." People try to make it sound funny, but it just sounds stupid. 

This political cartoon by Nick Anderson is relevant to how President Adolf is trying to sugar coat the reality of slavery as presented by the Smithsonian. 

Random Notes from a Crank

If you're someone like me who gives a damn about our planet, read Ben Ehrenreich's "We're Hurtling Toward Global Suicide" in The New Republic. It a solid, sober article about the climate crisis and how one underlying assumption is highly problematic.

Most climate models and climate change purveyors still assume unlimited growth in relation to finite resources works. It doesn't. 

I've been watching the European Championship 2021 so far this summer, and it's been fun. Ronaldo's Portugal won the last one.

Here are the teams I'm rooting for. I like England's squad because they have mainly Premier League players, but I also Denmark since I'm part Dane and Wales because I like Gareth Bale and Joe Rodon because of their affiliation with Tottenham Hotspur. Denmark, unfortunately, had a massive scare with what happened to Christian Eriksen. 

If I'm a betting man, I'd put my money on France. They are the front runner in the competition. 

Random Notes from a Crank

The Washington Post has a fine article about the efforts of Denmark to be a carbon-neutral country: "What It Takes To Be Carbon Neutral - For a Family, a City, a Country." The U.S. could so this if we had smart leadership. 

Speaking of some of our so-called leaders, a word I need to use more often is "dullard." 

A while back, I did a workshop for someone who used the word "amazing" way too often. Everything, to her, seemed to be "amazing." When everything appears to be amazing, then nothing is amazing. 

There's also a sensible editorial in The Washington Post by the newly elected governors of Kentucky and Louisiana: "How Democrats Can Win, Everywhere." 

Random Notes from a Crank

If you'd like to read a detailed, informative, and intelligent perspective on MoscowDon's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, read "Trump Flip-Flops on Afghanistan, Opts for Years-Long Quagmire." Cole relates six reasons why the Taliban is so powerful, reasons why providing more troops isn't going to do much at all. The last sentence is acerbic but spot on: "If Afghanistan's curses are corruption, fanatical identity politics and a hatred of globalization, its more problematic organizations resemble most of all ... Trump's base." 

In somewhat more positive new, Grist reports that "California Defies the Claim that Environmental Regulation Kills Economic Growth." The state's cap-and-trade law is reducing emissions and spurring innovation. As the report's main author relates, “The narrative that strict environmental policies that impact large parts of the economy are always bad is simply not the case. These policies have pushed innovation, and innovation is always good in a capitalist system.”

Unfortunately, that report doesn't take into account California's water problems. 

And don't get me started on Arizona. 

Random Notes from a Crank

Chile is investing in alternative energy, building a smarter grid, and using a carbon tax, all to be sustainable but also to have an economy that grows in a smart way. Check out "Solar Power Lights the Way to a Cleaner Economy in Chile" if you're intrigued. 

Over at The Atlantic, Sarah Boxer published a detailed and interesting article about Peanuts: "The Exemplary Narcissism of Snoopy." I'm not a hater of Snoopy like some critics, but for me Charlie Brown was the best character of that strip even though I started reading the comic during the heyday of Snoopy. I also always checked out Peanuts books from the library that had the older strips from the 50s and 60s. 

I'm surprised about Coach Spurrier's immediate retirement. I agree with Ryan Nanni's sentiment from the EDSBS thread that "if he's leaving, I'm gonna miss the gel out of Steve Spurrier. Were not getting another one, and I suspect he knows that." The search of South Carolina head coach job will be a high-profile one, and it'll be a search that will probably make some current coaches get pay raises. 

After watching a bunch of MLB games over the past couple of weeks, I'm really tired of all of these pecker-pill commercials. 

Stay Positive: Food Activism in France & Donating Food to Those Who Need It

Today I read about a new law in France in The Guardian. France recently passed a law that mandates supermarkets donate food that would have gone into dumpsters to people who need it. 

"Should It Be Illegal for Supermarkets to Waste Food?" in The Atlantic presents a more nuanced perspective though. 

The activist who started the movement in France wants it to spread to other countries, which is perhaps a noble goal. However, as the author of the article relates, the US has a good infrastructure in place to promote food donations (though I would venture to guess that it could improve), so it remains to be seen whether a law on the books would help. 

Regardless, supermarkets and organizations that donate food to people in need is a good deal. And it's more sustainable. 

Stay Positive: Oysters

When we were in Florida, we ate at one of our favorite seafood restaurants, Captain Curt's in Siesta Key. 

As I usually do, I ordered a half dozen raw oysters. The oyster is one of my favorite foodstuffs. I enjoy its silky texture and briny goodness. 

One of the times I was in Baltimore for a conference, I ate at a restaurant that offered a plate of a dozen oysters from three different places: somewhere in Canada, somewhere off the coast of New York, and the native Chesapeake Bay oyster. Of the three, the Chesapeake was my favorite. 

I liked all of them, and I've also had oysters from New Orleans and Florida too, but Chesapeake Bay oysters are my favorite with the meaty, monstrous ones from New Orleans coming in a close second. 

Fortunately, the Chesapeake Bay oyster operations are doing much better than they have. Madeleine Thomas's article in Grist, "Half-Shell Hero," sheds some light on oysters in that area of the U.S.

Third Wave

In the face of an infuriating and depressing recent news report from the Associated Press, this morning it was helpful  to read "The Joy of Living Green" by Barry Boyce in the November issue of Shambhala Sun.

I can't link Boyce's article since it's not free on the InterWeb, but you could probably find it by using a search via an academic database.

But to the point, Boyce relates some good news: There's a "third wave" environmentalism often dubbed "transformational ecology" that creates change by altering systems or through new initiatives such as "urban farms, green-collar job programs, edible schoolyards, recycling flashmobs, naked night-time bike rides, cityscapes with natural features and birdsong, and more" (42) instead of scaring and shaming people about environmental issues.

Two decades ago Killingsworth and Palmer predicted the ineffective rhetoric of second wave environmentalists in Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America, so I'm glad there seems to be a loosely organized third wave happening.

Boyce details important cognitive biases, sustainability education, a program called Growing Home in the Chicago area that assists and empowers the homeless while producing quality food, the rise of bicycling and bicycle commuting in Minneapolis, the Happy Planet Index, and the push for creating more livable and sustainable communities in general.

That article staved off the darkness for a while, but then I listened to Life, Death, Love, & Freedom -- a depressing album but one of Mellencamp's best.

Living Beyond Our Means

In an opinion column in the the NY Times a while back, Friedman's "The Earth is Full" provides a perspective that I've read before.

Repeatedly.

Two articles in the May issue of Scientific American connect to what Friedman is talking about and the Panglossian outlook from the "eco-optimist" Paul Gilding that Friedman quotes from extensively.

But I'm no eco-optimist.

As Daniel T. Willingham relates in "Trust Me, I'm a Scientist," "Because we want to see ourselves as rational beings, we find reasons to maintain that our beliefs are accurate. One or two contrarians are sufficient to convince us that the science is 'controversial' or 'unsettled.'"

It's difficult to move people mainly on logical appeals, which scientists have been trying to do for decades upon decades. Scientists who study global warming have been banging up against beliefs for a long time. I'm repeating myself a bit since last month I covered some of this ground in "This Has All Been Related Before." But what the hell.

In a more hopeful vein, the editors of Scientific American feature seven "Radical Energy Solutions" that are rated on their likelihood to happen and their potential impacts. The seven are these: "fusion-triggered fission," "solar gasoline," "quantam photovoltaics," "heat engines," "shock-wave auto engine," "magnetic air conditioners," and "clean(er) coal."

Solar Gasoline, aka "syngas" created by concentrated solar collectors, sounds pretty cool to me, an invention that might have a partial answer to the satirical lyrics of Merle Haggard's old song, "Rainbow Stew."

If you don't like eating rainbow stew, James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency is a book to read, especially if you have a darker sensibility or if you're no eco-optimist.

Farming and Agency

In the June issue of Ode Magazine, there's an article by Diane Daniel titled "Farmers as Change Agents." In the piece she details a different population of folks who have become interested in farming, and it's a type of agriculture that goes against the agribusiness-induced, monoculture farming of soybeans, corn, etc. If you've read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, you probably have a good inkling of what Daniel writes about.

Since Ode is an international publication based out of the Netherlands, some of the examples are from Europe, but the sustainable agriculture program at the University of Kentucky is featured briefly in the article. Of course, there are other alternative agriculture programs developing at other universities across the nation since some professors of agriculture see the current food system as ecologically and economically bankrupt.

It's nice to read an article that has a positive take on farming since I remember my uncle Raymond, a farmer who raised cattle and grew soybeans and corn in northeastern Missouri, telling me emphatically that "If you want a good job, being a farmer ain't it."

What my uncle was talking about then is what George Pyle discusses in his fine book Raise Less Corn, More Hell.

The article I've linked exemplifies the magazine's mantra of being "for intelligent optimists," but Pyle's book is required reading for intelligent pessimists.

Seafood, the Environment, and You

For those of you who might not know or for those of you who might need to be reminded, my title mimics the title of one of my fraternity brother's lectures during a "senior lecture series" where seniors had to give presentations related to their majors or whatever they wanted to talk about all while standing on a keg of beer.

This lecture series was done before I joined the fraternity. In fact, I think it was only done one year, so it never took hold as a tradition. Apparently though, it was a good time. But the lecture whose title I'm imitating was "Beer [or was it Booze?], Chemistry, and You."A fellow who went on to get his Ph.D. in Chemistry ("Goof") did it.

Anyway, an article in Audubon Magazine a while back relates science and decisions you make in a more serious manner than Goof's lecture at the Stove, so I thought I'd pass it along since probably many of you eat seafood.

Ted Williams in "Gone Fish" provides some helpful information for readers who are concerned about the fish they eat.

A few quotations stood out to me that relate to "the environment" on a large scale. You can ponder the connections on your own:

• "'Seafood guides educate people, but a minority. Personal conversation choices done mean much if public policy isn't changed.'" (related by John McMurray)
• "But for offshore species, commercial and recreational overkill is the result of a federal law predicated on the mistaken belief that 'stakeholders' will do what's best for the resource and the public good even when it means resisting their immediate appetites." 
• "Basically their argument comes down to this: 'Our current economic ill-health requires us to keep destroying the resources on which our economic health depends.'"

Early in the article, the author provides five fish guides "you should probably pay most attention to," and they are the following, some with hyperlinks:

• Blue Ocean Institute's Seafood Guide
• Seafood Recommendations from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium
• Seafood Selector by the Environmental Defense Fund
• Greenpeace's
• National Resources Defense Council's Sustainable Seafood Guide

Just because I was curious, I thought I'd see how past culinary decisions stack up. Using the guide from the Blue Ocean Institute, I punched in seafood choices that members of the Nasty family have eaten in the past. I'm going choice-by-choice.

Like many Americans, I first got introduced to seafood by eating fish sticks, and we have a package in the freezer. The sticks are made of Pollock, which is a good choice. American or Walleye Pollock both garner a green fish rating, and the Walleye variety earns the sustainable fishery rating by the Marine Stewardship Council.

Though I rarely get to eat them, I love Crawfish. Whenever I get back to the South, I gorge on those critters, which seems to be an excellent choice according to the Blue Ocean Institute.

Mrs. Nasty likes crabs, especially Dungeness Crab, a choice that earns a green fish rating. But Dungeness aren't always available, so she'll often select King Crab from time to time, which gets a not-bad rating with the lighter green fish. 

When we've been to Florida, I've gotten a Grouper from time to time, but it's not a selection I'm enamored with since it's kind of bland. That choice isn't so good with the Black species earning the lighter green fish, and the other two species--Gag and Red--earning yellow fish ratings. In addition, all three get red flags for this reason: "These fish contain levels of mercury or PCBs that may pose a health risk to adults and children." Yikes.

I also really like Oysters. And when I was in Baltimore for a conference this fall, I had a platter of  raw oysters from different areas--Canada, the Chesapeake, and another place I can't recall, maybe Rhode Island. I liked the Chesapeake ones the best, and I'm also fond of Gulf oysters. Green Fish for the Eastern Oyster, baby!

I've had Red Snapper before, but it's not something I order regularly when I have a chance. I won't be ordering it again since it gets an orange fish rating coupled with a red flag. 

Salmon, that choice is on all kinds of restaurants' menus. I don't really care for it much. Mrs. Nasty is more likely to order it than me. Whether you made a good choice on Salmon depends on what species you get and how it was raised, as you can see. Farmed-raised Atlantic Salmon are a bad choice. 

Another species that's all over the place--on menus and supermarkets--is Tilapia, a fish with little flavor. It looks like American raised ones are a better choice than ones from Asia, Central America, and South America. 

And finally, I'll end this post with a fish that is really fun to catch, Walleye. You're not going to get hand-caught Walleye in a restaurant, but even thought they're mass cultivated, the species gets the lighter green fish rating, so I'm happy about that. 

"390 - and rising" & Darryl Cunningham on Climate Change

Click HERE if you're interested in reading an article about global warming from The New York Times. The piece begins with some history and background information about the scientist who started recording levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the 50s. Yes, the 50s.

And that scientist, Charles David Keeling, was a registered Republican.

Below are some choice cuts from the article.

From page 1:

As the political debate drags on, the mute gray boxes atop Mauna Loa keep spitting out their numbers, providing a reality check: not only is the carbon dioxide level rising relentlessly, but the pace of that rise is accelerating over time.

“Nature doesn’t care how hard we tried,” Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Columbia University economist, said at a recent seminar. “Nature cares how high the parts per million mount. This is running away.”
From page 2:
By the late 1960s, a decade after Dr. Keeling began his measurements, the trend of rising carbon dioxide was undeniable, and scientists began to warn of the potential for a big increase in the temperature of the earth.
From page 3:
In an interview in La Jolla, Dr. Keeling’s widow, Louise, said that if her husband had lived to see the hardening of the political battle lines over climate change, he would have been dismayed.
“He was a registered Republican,” she said. “He just didn’t think of it as a political issue at all.”
The basic physics of the atmosphere, worked out more than a century ago, show that carbon dioxide plays a powerful role in maintaining the earth’s climate. Even though the amount in the air is tiny, the gas is so potent at trapping the sun’s heat that it effectively works as a one-way blanket, letting visible light in but stopping much of the resulting heat from escaping back to space.
From page 4:
The Internet has given rise to a vocal cadre of challengers who question every aspect of the science — even the physics, worked out in the 19th century, that shows that carbon dioxide traps heat. That is a point so elementary and well-established that demonstrations of it are routinely carried out by high school students.
However, the contrarians who have most influenced Congress are a handful of men trained in atmospheric physics. They generally accept the rising carbon dioxide numbers, they recognize that the increase is caused by human activity, and they acknowledge that the earth is warming in response.
But they doubt that it will warm nearly as much as mainstream scientists say, arguing that the increase is likely to be less than two degrees Fahrenheit, a change they characterize as manageable.
From page 5:
At midnight Mauna Loa time, the carbon dioxide level hit 390 — and rising.
From Darryl Cunningham Investigates:
For a comic presentation about climate change, click HERE to read a conversation between a guy and a penguin, a very smart penguin.

Deep Thoughts from the Road

The boy and I went up to Iowa to visit my parents, and we got back this evening. While I had to deal with some heavy rain on the way up and a severe thunderstorm today on the way back down, I had plenty of time to let my mind wander. Here a some notes from the road.

I spent a little time at the beach and some quality time at the public pool this summer, and I've come to this solid conclusion through the powers of induction: tatoos don't age well.

I saw a wind turbine blade getting hauled by a semi. Those things are huge.

Most talk radio programs truck in self-aggrandizing or ill-informed bluster along with truthiness-inspired rants.

If you listen to people who follow the Cubs or tap into the collective unconscious of Cubs fans, the Cardinals really have to mess up royally not to win the Central.

Driving with with the radio on scan (I'm too cheap to fix the CD player) is like musical Russian roulette. Sometimes you find some good stuff, such as The Who and Led Zeppelin and Metallica and newer tunes, or you hit upon the bad stuff of Phil Collins, Bananarama, and Toby Keith. After the deluge at Bloomington-Normal, I turned off the radio and passively listened to Cars as Quinn watched the movie in back.

Ka-chow!

I was slowed from time to time from road work on the interstate brought to us by the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Damn you Obama! How dare you provide money to the states to repair our country's crumbling roads. I need to shout at my elected officials about this. It's socialism, I tell you, socialism!

Think Globally, Drink Locally

Click HERE if you're interested in reading a blog post about the reasons why it's a good idea to drink locally brewed beer. I did just that when we were in South Carolina since I imbibed in some beers by the Palmetto Brewing Company.

The blogger, a guy from Indy, references two solid microbreweries: Schlafly and Market Street Brewery (Nashville).

But the one counter-argument I have with him is that many folks also like some of the mass-produced brews, such as how I have been known, on occasion, to enjoy a Schlitz, PBR, or Old Style. While I can be a bit of a beer snob and also think true beer drinkers should test their palates with local craft brews, some occasions warrant a corporate brew but hopefully not some behemoth's beer-flavored water.

And when you're hankering for some Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or a Sam Adams Boston Lager or an Abita Turbo Dog, I say drink it, man, drink it. Sure, it changed a bit during the trip to you, but it's still good stuff.

Up To Speed

The Sierra Club has an interesting compedium of environmentally and politically related stats and factoids from the last two months on its website. Click HERE if you're interested.

In other factoid/stats related matters, here are some interesting tidbits from the August "Harper's Index":
Number of Louisiana towns the porn star Stormy Daniels has visited on her "listening tour" for a possible Senate run: 5

Projected percentage change by 2050 in the amount of mercury in the Pacific Ocean: +33

Estimated number of cars that it takes to produce as much CO2 as a single large cargo ship: 10,000

Projected percentage change in worldwide electricity usage this year: -3.5

Percentage by which moderate Internet surfers are more productive in thier jobs than non-surfers: 9

Estimated percentage of all existing blogs that have not been updated in four months: 94

Don't fear, dear readers, I plan to keep on keeping on with this humble little blog. I am part of the six percent, and I plan to keep you all being productive.

Stay Positive Wednesday: Newton, Iowa

Once Whirlpool took over Maytag a few years ago, it didn't look good for Newton, Iowa, a town that had an economy almost entirely dependent on one company.

Once the factories were shuttered and some of the now Whirlpool jobs transferred to Michigan (and probably elsewhere), the town hit rock bottom but stayed positive in gripping unemployment and crappy prospects.

As you can read about by clicking HERE in Audubon magazine, Newton is attracting "green collar" jobs and now has three separate companies employing its skilled workforce. The three companies don't fully make up for all of the lost Maytag jobs, but there are really positive developments.

So here's to a one-company town remaking itself.

"Greening with Envy"

If you're interested, click HERE for a short article in The Atlantic that details how the company Positive Energy, led by professor Robert Cialdini, is harnessing the competitive spirit of people to help them make their homes more energy efficient.

I know if I got a utility bill that showed how my energy or water use stacks up against my neighbors, I would make it my goal to destroy them in regard to energy efficiency. I would try to kick their inefficient asses.

Stay Positive Wednesday: Bikes

I'm going to try out a new feature of this humble blog, which I'll call "Stay Positive Wednesday."

I tend to have a pessimistic bent, and a recent quiz I took on Facebook might validate that leaning. I took the "What Crazy Writer Are You" quiz, and my result was Cormac McCarthy, who is described in this way: "You love sunsets, the open range, and the freedom of the west... it would be a stretch to say that such things make you happy, though. All you see around you is darkness and greed; everywhere men go, they bring with the darker side of nature. All you can do is escape to your ranch and become one with the part of nature that mankind hasn't yet corrupted, keeping an eye on the evening redness in the west, looking for that glimmer of hope that pierces the darkness. What a fun guy..."

I actually prefer the Midwest or the South, but that's a small quibble. Regardless, to pull me out of the darkness, I'm going to be like The Hold Steady and "stay positive." So here it goes.

If you prefer a more environmentally-focused reason why bicycles are good things to use, you can click HERE and read onward. However, it's fun just to ride a bike because it gets you back to being a kid. For Father's Day, I got the bike that's shown above, a cruiser variety of a Schwinn. Like the famous Howlin' Wolf song, it's built for comfort and not for speed.

But it's a good time for my whole family to take a bike ride, enjoy the wind whipping by, and get a little exercise on a nice day.

Think

I saw a car yesterday that I thought I'd never see in the parking lot of Rural King in Coles County. There was a brand new Think car sitting in the lot. The car looks like the one above, and it's an electric vehicle that runs approximately 112 miles on a single charge.

And this Norwegian automaker plans to have a plant in the US, as you can read about by clicking HERE.

Green Collar Jobs

As reported by an AP reporter recently, click HERE for the article, two-year colleges are doing a good job of adjusting to job training made necessary by the growth of alternative energy and, well, a sucky economy.

While many two-year colleges are doing a good job of adapting/changing, I haven't seen as many four-year colleges making this area a priority. Universities are "greening" themselves and their images, sure, but the number of four-year colleges offering degrees related to alternative energy is pretty small.