Posts Tagged ‘Thor Heyerdahl’
“I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the everything change.”*…
The Trump administration released a report that predicted global temperatures will be four degrees higher by the end of this century, assuming current trends persist. World leaders have pledged to keep global temperatures from rising even two degrees (Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, with the understanding that warming beyond that could prove catastrophic. The last time the Earth was as warm as the White House expects it to be in 2100, its oceans were hundreds of feet higher. Which is to say: The Trump administration ostensibly, officially expects that, absent radical action to reduce carbon emissions, within the next 80 years, much of Manhattan and Miami will sink into the sea; many of world’s coral reefs will be irreversibly destroyed by acidifying oceans; vast regions of the Earth will lose their primary sources of water; and a variety of extreme weather events will dramatically increase in frequency.
And the White House believes that this fact is an argument for loosening restrictions on carbon emissions… the administration uses its four-degree warming estimate to argue that eliminating 8 billion tons worth of emissions won’t be enough to change the climate outlook, by itself, so the federal government shouldn’t bother…
This argument is deplorable in its nihilism. But its core assumption is also patently absurd. The administration’s analysis is premised on the notion that there is no relationship between what the United States does with regard to climate regulation, and what the rest of the world’s countries do. Which is totally bogus: Not only can the U.S. lead by example, it also has the power to coerce other countries into emulating the carbon standards we set for ourselves…
That said, if one assumes that the entire leadership of the Republican Party has concluded that human civilization will not survive Barron Trump, then their governing agenda starts to make a lot more sense. Exacerbating inequality and subordinating the commons to short-term profit maximization isn’t in the enlightened medium-term interests of the GOP donor class — but in the medium-term, we’ll all (apparently) be dead!
The whole sad story in full: “The Trump Administration Anticipates Catastrophic Global Warming by 2100.”
* Margaret Atwood
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As we we recall, with Marshall McLuhan, that there are no passengers on Spaceship Earth, only crew, we might take a celebratory trip in honor of Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian explorer and anthropologist who became famous for his Kon-Tiki Expedition in 1947 (though he went on many others as well); he was born on this date in 1914… He once responded to an interviewer, “Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of most people.”
Man up!…
It’s a tricky thing, in these post-gendered times, to project an unmitigatedly masculine image. Even if one successfully dresses in denim and leather, drives a muscle machine, and dominates the playground hoops, ones locution can undermine the butch effect for which one strives.
The Art of Manliness has ridden to the rescue. Their “The Art of Manliness Dictionary of Manly 19th Century Vernacular” is a well-worn saddle bag full of phrases one can use to stir testosterone into the any conversation. Consider, for example, these bony mots:
Earth Bath – A grave.
Gullyfluff – The waste—coagulated dust, crumbs, and hair—which accumulates imperceptibly in the pockets of schoolboys.
Half-mourning – To have a black eye from a blow. As distinguished from “whole-mourning,” two black eyes.
Hogmagundy – The process by which the population is increased.
Ladder – “Can’t see a hole in a Ladder,” said of any one who is intoxicated. It was once said that a man was never properly drunk until he could not lie down without holding, could not see a hole through a Ladder, or went to the pump to light his pipe.
Scandal-water – Tea; from old maids’ tea-parties being generally a focus for scandal.
More masculine ammunition at “The Art of Manliness Dictionary of Manly 19th Century Vernacular.”
As we twirl our moustaches, we might recall that it was on this date in 1947 that Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the balsa raft Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.
…It tolled for us…
From the folks at Lucent, a nostalgic music video celebrating the contributions of Bell Labs– a facility unique in America history. The nation’s premier research facility for several decades, it was the hatching ground of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, and the C programming language; work completed there earned six Nobel Prizes.
With the breakup of ATT in 1984, stewardship of the Lab passed to Lucent, and the role of Lab began to change. By August of 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced that it was puling out of basic research altogether, to focus exclusively on more immediately marketable applications; the Bell Labs celebrated in the video is gone.
But its gifts to knowledge and society survive. Indeed, it’s surely fair to observe that, without work done there, it wouldn’t be possible to for your correspondent to be pelting readers with daily missives via the internet.
As we listen to the background noise of the universe (for the discovery of which, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics), we might take a celebratory trip in honor of Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian explorer and anthropologist who became famous for his Kon-Tiki Expedition in 1947 (though he went on many others as well); he was born on this date in 1914… He once responded to an interviewer, “Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of most people.”
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