Darwin at 200

Harry recommends a couple of new books on Darwin that were reviewed in the New York Times, including Darwin’s Sacred Cause by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear Darwin’s 200th birthday will be the occasion of some ideas about him that clearly deserve to be left in the dust of evolution. This may be one.

Adrian Desmond and James Moore’s argument in their new book, “Darwin’s Sacred Cause,” is bluntly stated in its subtitle: “How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution.” They set out to overturn the widespread view that Darwin was a “tough-minded scientist” who unflinchingly followed the trail of empirical research until it led to the stunning and unavoidable theory of evolution. This narrative, they claim, is precisely backward. “Darwin’s starting point,” they write, “was the abolitionist belief in blood kinship, a ‘common descent’ ” of all human beings.

I hate to disagree with scholars, but it seems to me that Darwin’s revulsion at slavery was at least as much colored by his place in society as by his moral objections.

We forget because slavery lasted another 30 years in America, but by the time the Beagle sailed in 1831, abolition was an accepted fact in Britain. Darwin, as an enlightened gentleman certainly subscribed to the idea. Slaves were emancipated by Act of the British Parliament in 1834. William Wilberforce’s Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the trade in the British Empire, and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished it per se.

Darwin may have hated slavery personally, or he may have been reflecting the spirit of his times, but he reflected in full measure his society’s prejudices against other races. I addressed that issue in my blog on Oct. 23:

Darwin was profoundly conservative and Anglo-centric in his social awareness. “To hoist the British flag," he wrote, "seems to draw with it as a certain consequence, wealth, prosperity and civilization.” Time and again he judges the natives harshly from the narrow viewpoint of an English gentleman. The Fuegans, the Maori, even the Tahitians are described by Darwin in almost subhuman terms born of racial prejudice and social arrogance. Of the Fuegans (natives of Tierra del Fuego) he wrote: "These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skin filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant and their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make one’s self believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world.”

Moral panic

Earlier this week, the NY Time had two stories of interest. One noted that crack babies grew up to be pretty much normal, despite a lot of worry that they wouldn’t. The other noted the teen sex epidemic that apparently exists more in adults’ minds than in reality. I though “I should blog on that.” But Judith Warner got there first with her analysis of America’s “moral panic”, and as usual, she had a lot more to say that I.

In her blog today, Warner reported that researcher Maria Kefalas of St. Joseph’s University told her:

“For a 14-year-old to be having sex it’s usually a symptom of a kid who’s really broken and really hurt. Those who are having sex without contraception are a distinct set: they’re poor, from single-parent households, doing poorly in school, have low self-esteem. Teen pregnancy is so high in America compared to other places not just because of access to contraception but because we have a lot of poverty. But Americans don’t want to see themselves as a poor society. They want to make a moral argument: if only teens had better values.”

Some of this is a cautionary tale: don’t believe everything you read or hear at a cocktail party. In fact, we tend to believe the things that support our underlying prejudices and beliefs and ignore those things that challenge them.

But it’s also to note that throughout history, every generation has decried the moral degeneration of the next. You can bet our grandparents thought our parents’ generation was going to hell in the back of the jalopy. My grandparents had a copious photo collection of their kids and relatives standing next to wrecked cars with booze bottles in hand, proof of how immoral the next generation had become.

Kefalas said she had to struggle mightily to get people to understand that teens are not in a downward spiral or out of control. “They just don’t believe you. You might as well be telling them the earth is flat.”

No one as Irish as Barack Obama

Great video. Enjoy. Share.

Theres no one as Irish as Barack OBama- Corrigan Brothers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkw8ip43Vk

Source: www.youtube.

Saint of the day

The Roman Catholic Church observes January 28 as the day of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), by universal consent the preeminent spokesman of the Catholic tradition of reason and of divine revelation.

Beliefnet.com says this of Aquinas:

His greatest contribution to the Catholic Church is his writings. The unity, harmony and continuity of faith and reason, of revealed and natural human knowledge, pervades his writings. One might expect Thomas, as a man of the gospel, to be an ardent defender of revealed truth. But he was broad enough, deep enough, to see the whole natural order as coming from God the Creator, and to see reason as a divine gift to be highly cherished.

I don’t usually extol the virtues of saints on this blog, but as we are approaching the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth on Feb. 12, I was thinking that perhaps Aquinas could have found a way to reconcile the evolutionists and the theists. I am perhaps being to free in paraphrasing Aquinas to say that he believed that if your faith could be thrown into doubt by scientific discovery then perhaps there was something seriously wrong with your religion.

The good old days

People seem to divide themselves into two types: 1. Optimists who see a brighter tomorrow in every technical innovation or social change and who tend to believe, at least subliminally, that Creation has a goal or purpose that lies over the next horizon, and 2. Pessimists who believe we are descended from a Golden Age and who yearn for a return to the traditional values of olden times. Neither, of course, is based on reality, and most of us recognize that in our more lucid moments. But in the interest of putting past and present in perspective, here is what John Muir wrote about his own time in Our National Parks, published in 1902. It doesn’t lend much support to the belief that the “good old days” were all that good.

“Few in these hot, dim, strenuous times are quite sane or free, choked with care like clocks full of dust, laboriously doing so much good and making so much money, or so little, they are no longer good for themselves.”

The quote is from A Passion for Nature, Donald Worster's new biography of John Muir. It's destined to be a seminal book in any search for the roots of American environmentalism. It provides a more rounded and understandable view of Muir than his own writings did, and after reading about his writing process, you can easily understand why.

Some things never change

“It is an infirmity in our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and effects they cannot produce.”

President Andrew Jackson (annual message to Congress, December 6, 1830)

I was thinking of this quote while watching Larry Summers on Meet the Press talking about the incentive package. Things wear the clothing of virtue when they happen to suit our interests; if we don't feel like we will directly benefit, we find a thousand faults.

By the way, I thought Summers was an arrogant ass; Obama may have changed some things, but some things never change.

Push n Pull

I write frequently and effusively about the environmental work that Bruce does to fight Big Coal from his position at the Sierra Club's National Coal Project, but I should also say something about future son-in-law Bryan, who is working on the other end of the power equation by selling the converters that make solar and wind energy practical.  So this one's for Bryan. These aren't his projects, but projects all over the world that have been done by Outback Power Systems. He writes: 

We have been participating in this rural electrification project in the Federated States of Micronesia for the past few years. Last night the following blog and pictures were passed along to me. I thought that these were some amazing photos.

It’s very cool to see where some of our equipment ends up.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Konings.FSM/KapingamarangiEUREP5PVInstallations#

http://picasaweb.google.com/Konings.FSM/NukuoroEUREP5PVInstallations#

http://picasaweb.google.com/josvandenakker/MicronesiaSolarPVInstallationProject#

http://eu-fsm-solar.blogspot.com/

Hear no evil

One of the pleasures of reading history is discovering that people in other times were just as mean, petty and vindictive as modern representatives of the race.  I found this passage in American Lion, Jon Meacham's new biography of Andrew Jackson. It came from a speech by Edward Livingston, a congressman from Louisiana in 1830, but it put me in mind of Rush Limbaugh and the other hate preachers on the radio and Internet today.

“The spirit of which I speak creates imaginary and magnifies real causes of complaints; arrogates to itself every virtue – denies every merit to its opponents; secretly entertains the worst designs . . . mounts the pulpit, and in the name of a God of mercy and peace, preaches discord and vengance; invokes the worst scourges of Heaven: war pestilence and famine, as preferable alternatives to party defeat; blind, vindictive, cruel, remorseless, unprincipled, and at last frantic, it communicates its madness to friends as well as foes; respects nothing, fears nothing.”

On Tuesday, Americans put that spirit away. But for how long? That is not up to the hate shouters to determine, but to the American people; if we don't listen, they won't continue to talk for long.

Obama's books

The NYT ran a story titled A Reading List That Shaped a President that listed some of President-elect Barack Obama’s favored reading matter.  Do you share any of his favorites?

The Bible 

Parting the Waters,” Taylor Branch

“Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gandhi’s autobiography

“Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin

“The Golden Notebook,” Doris Lessing

Lincoln’s collected writings

“Moby-Dick,” Herman Melville

“Song of Solomon,” Toni Morrison

Works of Reinhold Niebuhr

“Gilead,” Marilynne Robinson

Shakespeare’s tragedies

Government that works

There were a lot of reasons that a large proportion of the nation came together yesterday to celebrate President Obama's (I love that!) inauguration, not least that some 70+ percent think his predecessor ran the country into the ground. But Obama said an interesting thing in his speech, that what matters is not whether government is too big or too small, but whether it works.

Contrary to the "government is the problem" folks, I have always thought that democratic government is actually one of the most remarkable creations of humankind.  It runs counter to all the most powerful human impulses, both those that drive us to tell others what to do and those that lead us to resist whatever anyone else tells us to do.  The second sort tends to be more dominant for me, so I can't go along with the classic liberal (rules, regulations, mandates) solution to every problem even though I agree with the liberal goals. 

It is refreshing to have a president who believes his job is to make life better for all Americans by whatever means rather than to advance one particular ideology. That will get him in all kinds of trouble and it remains to be seen whether it is even possible to govern from that position, but thanks for giving it a try. It is change we can believe in, even if it turns out to be a change we can't quite live up to.

Obama still not prez

According to the right wing nuts -- all of them no doubt deep thinking constitutional scholars and intimately familiar with every detail of Obama's life from birth on. They are still bleating about his Indonesian/ British/ Kenyan citizenship. check it out. I was only looking because I wanted to know how long it would take them to claim that he isn't really president because he flubbed the oath of office. Maybe tomorrow after they've had their hate cocktails and get their marching orders from the worldwide wingnut conspiracy.

What we read - 2008

Here's what the Drinking & Reading Society read in 2008

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard Dec. 08
Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future by Jeff Goodell Oct. 08
The Voyage of The Beagle by Charles Darwin Sept. 08
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry July 08
What Are People For?: Essays by Wendell Berry June 08
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan May 08
Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade April 08
The Searunners, Ivan Doig March 08
Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wolves to Yellowstone, Smith & Furgeson Feb. 08
Tent Life in Siberia, George Kennan Jan. 08

A few more books of note (good not great)

I had to add a handful of books that didn’t really make my best-of list for many different reasons, but were worthy of note anyway.

On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, coming up on 150 years old this fall, was notable for what it was not; it was not what we would call today an argument from science and data. Rather it was an argument from logic, not surprising given Darwin’s ecclesiastical education, but also not different in form from the intelligent design tracts of his day, or our day.

The Art of Eating, the Collected Gastronomical Works of MFK Fisher. These essays go back to the days of the depression and WWII when getting, keeping and preserving food was an art. No running to the supermarket for just the right ingredients. If you didn’t have it, you didn’t eat it. And if you had it, you ate every part of it in every conceivable way. Today, scrimping means buying the store brand of a prepared meal; in Fisher’s day, it meant finding a creative recipe for chicken feet. And loving it.

A Life of Johnson, by James Boswell. If Boswell were alive today, he would be blogging. I had expected this book to be somehow weightier and more scholarly. It’s chatty, roughly linear, occasionally insightful, but except for a cursory summary of Johnson’s childhood, really only reports the parts of Johnson’s life that Boswell himself witnessed. It’s a diary, not a biography as we have come to understand that form.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, by Alison Weir. Wife of two kings, mother of three, and by far the richest woman in 12th Century Europe, Eleanor of Aquitaine presided over an empire stretching from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees. When she was born, Europe was a collection of ruling families who bought, sold, traded or conquered territories and people like today’s corporate raiders. By her death in 1216, the modern European nation state was struggling to be born.

It was the time of the troubadours and courtly love, the crusades and the beginning of modern music. It was also a time of unspeakable violence and brutality where no man, woman or child, peasant or queen, was safe from the worst horrors humans could inflict on one another. (The Inquisition took official form 17 years after her death.)

This book will disabuse you of any Disney-esque notions you might still have about Eleanor’s favorite son, Richard the Lionheart (known in his own time and in his native language, Langue d’oc, as Richard oc et non – Richard yes and no -- because he never went back on his word.) Eleanor, Richard, his brother John (of Magna Carta fame) and probably her husband King Henry II (he who struggled with Thomas a’ Beckett) all spoke Langue d’oc. But less than 30 years after her death, Langue d’oc was stamped out by a resurgent France that dismembered Eleanor and Henry’s empire and launched the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1244). That's why they speak French in France today.

Why wasn’t this on my best-books list? The book was good, not great. The story was great. Altogether, one of the most eventful 100 years in modern times, and in fact it was the beginning of the modern world as we know it. You already know many of Eleanor's contemporaries: Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Saladin. Mamonaides was re-introducing Europe to the works of Aristotle, which some date as the start of the Renaissance. In another part of the world, Genghis Khan was performing his predations. But that’s a different story.

Irrational exuberance in Gaza

The polls say 95% of Israelis support the war in Gaza, and if anyone could do a poll, probably an equal proportion of Palestinians support Hamas resistance. However, the war clearly isn’t advancing Israel’s long-term security goals and it’s taking a horrendous toll on Palestinian lives and property. So why is it so popular?

The answer is as clear as why rats push a button in a laboratory cage. Each side is getting politically and emotionally rewarded in the short term in ways that make the long-term logical losses irrelevant. Testosterone rush rules both sides, as it always does in these cases. The irrational is in command; only later will rational thought begin to timidly re-emerge to survey the devastation emotional has wrought.

Here’s a small insight from Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, writing in the NY Times:

Hamas’s desire to best Hezbollah’s achievements is natural, but more to the point, it is radicalizing. One of the reasons, among many, that Hamas felt compelled to break its cease-fire with Israel last month was to prove its potency to Muslims impressed with Hezbollah.

Read Why Israel Can’t Make Peace with Hamas.

Isabel Kershner hit the nail on the head from the Israeli point of view.

Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.

But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.

The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority.

Read War on Hamas Saps Palentinian Leaders.

Anthropolists, brand marketers and even economists are telling us that emotions rule human actions more than we know or want to admit. It’s time politicians and “statesmen” recognized that fundamental truth.

U.S. military report warns 'sudden collapse' of Mexico is possible

EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats. The command's Joint Operating Environment report, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico.

"The Mexican government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."

What’s the right US response to this threat?
A. Send more tourists
B. Send the army
C. Legalize drugs

If you guessed C, you’re thinking logically. The cost of the drug war isn’t just the millions of people in prison, the cost of police, or the congestion of the court system. The real cost of the drug war is that it transfers billions of dollars from middle class American consumers to the most vicious terrorist gangs in the world. Then we have to spend billions more in tax dollars to fight them. Read the story.

Best books Harry read in 2008

I solicited a best books list from the other members of the Drinking & Reading Society. So far only Harry has responded. His list, interestingly enough, included none of the book club books for 2008, although it does include our January selection, A Passion for Nature. I suppose the others are holed up somewhere reading books, not watching their email. Perhaps I will hear from them by spring. Could be a long time. Jan. 16 is statistically the coldest day of the year. Whatever. Here's Harry's list.

A Passion for Nature by Donald Worster. A book that redefines John Muir and is now the definitive biography of Muir.

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. A book about the cholera epidemic in the mid 1850s in England and the efforts by one individual to find the cause, erroneous believed at the time to be "bad air."

The Nine by Jeffery Toobin. A review of the current Supreme Court, how they go on the court, what they believe, and how they relate to one another.

Driftless by David Rhodes. A novel set in the driftless area of SW Wisconsin about a variety of disparate individuals whose live eventually interact in different, unpreditable ways. Rhodes is a very well regarded novelist who wrote several acclaimed novels in the early and mid 1970s. This is his first book since that time, written over a ten year period and after a motorcycle accident that left him a paraplegic. While it is set in SW Wisconsin, the focus is much more on the people than the area.

Best books I read in 2008 Part 5 Numbers 5-1

5. Rome 1960 by David Maraniss. Dave tackles the cold war, Jim Crow, the coming of TV to the sports world, plus some bigger than life characters like Mohammed Ali (in his Cassius Clay days) and Wilma Rudolf, in the context of the 1960 Olympics. If that sounds like an almost impossible task, it is, even for Maraniss. There are some great stories and portraits, but in the end, this is not as strong as his other sports books like Clemente or When Pride Still Mattered. Any one of the story lines would have made a compelling book; all of them together was too much.

4. Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, by Charles Darwin. Otherwise known as the Voyage of the Beagle. This wasn’t my first reading, but I found new things to fascinate me. Despite his ability to see the world of rocks, plants and animals in new and creative ways, Darwin was profoundly conservative and Anglo-centric in his social awareness. Time and again he judges the natives harshly from the narrow viewpoint of an English gentleman. The Fuegans, the Maori, even the Tahitians are described by Darwin in almost subhuman terms born of racial prejudice and social arrogance. Ironically, many of his harshest judgments are rendered from the certainty of his Christian faith

3. Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, by Jeff Goodell. Despite what Barack may have said during the campaign, there’s no such thing as clean coal. Goodell proves it. If you want to argue against coal at your next cocktail party or family gathering, read this book first.

2. Before the Dawn, by Nicholas Wade. The NY Times science writer traces the family tree of everyone whose ancestors come from anywhere in the world except Africa to 150 individuals who crossed the Red Sea and just kept spreading. The rest is history – or at least anthropology.

1. The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard. Forget the politics; this is Roosevelt at his most human and vulnerable. His last great (and nearly fatal) adventure. His loving and ultimately toxic relationship with his son. And, in Roosevelt’s shadow, Millard just lightly sketches in one of the greatest environmental and social heroes of Brazil or any country - Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, who ordered his soldiers not to fire at hostile Indians even when they were shooting poison arrows at them. Here’s what the Washington Post had to say:

Just try to imagine it: George W. Bush loses re-election by a landslide and, undeterred by the humiliation of it all, sets off on a journey of unspeakable danger and hardship into the darkest depths of the Amazon jungle.

Hard to imagine. But it’s hard to imagine as you read The River of Doubt, that Roosevelt did such a thing less than 100 years ago and even harder to imagine how the world has changed in those years since he did.

Best books I read in 2008 Part 4 Numbers 6-10

This post starts the top ten countdown with the second division:

10. The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen. Quammen is one of the best science writers we have, but how much new can you say about a life as thoroughly examined as Darwin’s?

9. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan. A longer version of his NY Times Magazine cover piece and a more detailed argument for a natural food system.

8. The Gathering, by Anne Enright. A novel of estrangement and acceptance in a large, dysfunctional Irish family. I would have found it compelling even if I hadn’t read it on an Aer Lingus flight.

7. What Are People For? by Wendell Berry. How had I neglected Berry for so long? More quotable than Mark Twain, but his nostalgia for times past weakens his plea for a new future of respect for the land, the people on the land and the food we eat.

6. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Weisman uses a perilous conceit – what would happen to the artifacts of civilization if humanity suddenly disappeared? Perilous because it could be so deadly and dull. He makes it urgent and frightening. If you read nothing else, his chapter on plastic will scare whatever bejesus you still have left clear out of you!

Bruce wins!

On Jan. 2, I blogged about the vote on Grist.org for the environmental hero of the year. I guess you all voted because as of Thursday, Bruce Nilles was whomping Barack Obama 661 votes to 399. It’s the only time I ever hope to see Obama lose an election. Other contenders included James Hansen, Thomas Friedman, and, of course, Oprah. Here’s the most recent post.

Posted by David Roberts at 11:44 AM on 08 Jan 2009
Vote or die!
Last chance to pick your top hero/villain of 2008
Just before the holidays, we put up a list of green heroes and green villains for 2008 and asked readers to vote for their favorite (or, um, unfavorite). Currently the top hero is Sierra Club's anti-coal activist Bruce Nilles, with 661 votes -- a healthy lead over the second place hero James Hansen at 437. (Guess it helps to have a very large club at your back.) Third is Barack Obama with 399 and fourth is Michael Pollan with 258.

Best books I read in 2008 Part 3

A few books turned out to be disappointments in 08. Usually I stop reading disappointing books long before the end and I won’t even list the ones that really didn’t make the grade. However 3 books came with many good recommendations and yet felt flat.

I was really hoping to like Human Goodness, by the University of Wisconsin geology professor emeritus Yi-Fu Tuan. His website is full of deep thoughts and cogent criticism. But the book went from commonplace to commonplace without the intellectual rigor or literary flash that I was anticipating. Too bad.

Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson’s magnum opus of the Vietnam war was ultimately just as hollow and meaningless as the war. Maybe that was his point. What it lacked in plot it also lacked in character. Just one appearance by Pig Bodine might have saved it from ennui, but alas!

Finally, many people, including some in the Drinking and Reading Society, spoke highly of Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry’s latest work of fiction. I found it just too much like one of his essays come to life. The characters and the setting were designed to be effective vehicle for his propaganda and never struck me as real.

Next: Top 10

Best books I read in 2008 Part 2

Most of my history reading in 2008 involved the history of science, but my attention was also drawn to the American revolutionary period and a couple of good, new books: Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought, by Michael Stephenson (2008) and Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, by Gordon S. Wood (2007). They’re the kind of books I’d recommend to my mother in law. Don’t laugh; that’s a compliment. She’s a critical reader and a real history hound. In fact, I think I did recommend them to my mother in law.

Revolutionary Characters did a little Psych 101 on the founding fathers, most of which was unmemorable. But the thing that made the whole book worthwhile was the concept of character. The ideal gentleman of the 18th Century was so disinterested (look it up) that he would drive himself broke to avoid even the faint appearance of feeding at the public trough. There’s a great story about Washington (colonial America’s biggest landholder, one of the biggest slave holders, an avid land speculator) who agonized about taking a gift of stock after he was no longer president because it might smirch his reputation. You quickly realize when reading this book what’s missing in our current leaders (and ourselves).

Patriot Battles is military history and really good military history. It debunks many a grade school myth about the War for Independence, making it clear that both armies were well matched in terms of arms and tactics. The biggest surprise was how tiny the armies were. No bigger than 20,000, more likely 5,000. 35 years later Napoleon invaded Russia with 100,000.

Final judgement: Patriot Battles was interesting, but ultimately it was just about then. Revolutionary Characters was uneven, but it did provide one big insight about now.

Best books I read in 2008 Part 1

I hate countdowns and top tens and such so my best books posts will be divided into little essays on comparable books, starting with some science and nature, doing a bit of history, fiction and other stuff, and then returning to some more science and nature at the end of the journey.

If you want a really comprehensive view of science and nature, you could start with either of these books I read in 2008: The Ancestor’s Tale, by Richard Dawkins, or A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. I have blogged about both elsewhere. Richard Dawkins is of course considered a heavy thinker, whereas Mr. Bryson is considered a clever writer and in these books they both show off their strengths and weaknesses. It's hard to argue with Dawkins, but it's hard to like him much either; he obviously knows a lot more than I do and is eager to tell me all about it. Bryson has been criticized for being "science lite" and for introducing errors by summarizing things too glibly. But if you had to take a book on a long cruise, Bryson would provide both more entertainment and more fodder for conversation around the pool.

Round One goes to Bryson in a split decision.

Next: Revolution!

Is it time to worry yet?

Are you starting to worry about Obama? Like his cabinet selections don't speak to an agenda for change? For example former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack for Ag secretary when, as Michael Pollan wrote, we really need a Food secretary. Now comes this from the NYT.

Flawed Science Advice for Obama?
By John Tierney
Does being spectacularly wrong about a major issue in your field of expertise hurt your chances of becoming the presidential science advisor? Apparently not, judging by reports from DotEarth and ScienceInsider that Barack Obama named John P. Holdren as his science advisor on Saturday. Read the blog here and tell me what you think.

Only in Wisconsin

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran an online poll today asking "What is your favorite family outdoor winter activity?" When I checked, 5,225 people had answered. The winner?

Sledding (25%)
Downhill skiing (14%)
Crosscountry skiing (9%)
Snowmobiling (11%)
Snowball fight (7%)
Shoveling the driveway (33%)

It's a good thing they didn't have an option for smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.

Not gone

Frank Rich had a lot of fun skewering GW Bush in today's TImes http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04rich.html?ref=opinion, but Bush is not a harmless, befuddled nitwit wandering aimlessly around the White House and wondering where everybody went. He's still hard at work doing his malicious work, as this story from the Washington Post revealed last week.

Bush administration issues last-minute environmental rules
Oshkosh Northwestern – Gannett
By Erin Kelly
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
WASHINGTON — During its final days in office, the Bush administration has issued more than a half-dozen regulations that environmentalists say would weaken protections for clean air, water and endangered species.
Democratic leaders hope to overturn the last-minute rules when the Obama administration and a new Congress take over in January.
In a victory for environmentalists, the Bush administration recently announced it would drop proposed regulations that would have eased air pollution controls on power plants near national parks and exempted some new or expanded power plants from having to install the latest clean-air equipment.
Among the most controversial rule changes that remain:
Clean water. The Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining published a final rule Dec. 12 in the Federal Register that would allow companies engaged in mountaintop mining to dump rocks, dirt and other waste into rivers and streams. The rule is to take effect Jan. 12.
In a separate action, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a final rule Nov. 20 that would exempt large livestock feeding operations from getting federal permits that would control how much animal waste can flow into waterways. That rule is scheduled to take effect Dec. 22.
Toxic waste. The White House Office of Management and Budget approved a final EPA rule Dec. 1 that would reclassify thousands of tons of hazardous waste as fuel, allowing it to be burned instead of carefully disposed of. The result, environmentalists say, would be toxic emissions worse than anything released into the air by the burning of oil, gas or coal.
National parks. The National Park Service announced a final rule Dec. 5 that would end the 25-year-ban on loaded guns in national parks.
Endangered species. The Interior and Commerce departments announced a final rule Dec. 11 that would allow federal agencies to approve roads, dams, and mining and logging activities without consulting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists about how to avoid harming endangered plants and animals.
Air pollution. The Office of Management and Budget approved a final EPA rule Dec. 11 that would exempt large livestock feeding operations from having to report air pollution emissions from animal waste.
Land use. The Bureau of Land Management published a final rule in
the Federal Register on Nov. 18 that would open up about 2 million acres of public land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to oil shale development. The rule is scheduled to take effect Jan. 17.

Don't know if I should be happy or concerned

I just checked out my name on campaignmoney.com and I'm not there! The OTHER Howard Cosgrove is there -- the utility chairman from Delaware who is uncommonly generous to Republicans. But now I have to wonder, what happened to all that money I gave?

What we're reading

Last year I did some environmental roots reading, revisiting both Charles Darwin's classics and some of John Muir's autobiographical books. Now the Drinking and Reading Society has taken up Donald Worster's new bio of Muir, A Passion for Nature, and it's once again becoming clear that what we think we know if often more spin than reality. To read Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra is to experience the wonder of the high country with him step by step, shuddering at his reckless risk-taking and standing in awe of the incredible vistas. But Worster makes it clear that those word pictures were drawn and redrawn 20 years after the fact to color in the character Muir wished to present to the world. Even his miraculous meeting with Prof. Butler seems more mundane when you have all the facts and circumstances in hand.

That doesn't make Muir any less genuine or admirable. It actually more of a cautionary tale. Beware of what you think you know.

You read it here first

You read it here first (August 14, 2008 post): Bruce Nilles is America’s favorite eco-hero. Now that’s been confirmed in a year-end poll by the environmental website Grist.org. Bruce got more votes than Barack, Oprah or Paris and more than a lot of well respected environmental activists as well.

Bruce Nilles 357 votes: One of the year's most exciting and undercovered green stories was the wild success of the growing grassroots anti-coal movement, a spontaneous social uprising driven by outrage, empowerment, and a fierce sense of justice. Nobody has done more to lend coordination and savvy to that movement than Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign, but as he would be the first to tell you, it's the ordinary citizens in communities across the country who are the movement's real heroes.

James Hansen 334 votes: Hansen's been ahead of his time ever since he first testified before Congress about climate change 20 years ago. This year he made a new clarion call: push atmospheric carbon dioxide back down below 350 parts per million or risk creating a climate like no human has ever seen. No one is more unsparingly honest about the task that lies ahead or more willing to champion radical solutions.

Barack Obama 279 votes
Van Jones 234 votes
Kathleen Sebelius 216 votes

Also on the list: Michael Pollan, Oprah and Thomas Friedman.
See the full list and vote totals here.

welcome back

The election is over. The holidays are past and now I turn once again to the blog. Welcome back blog. I was gone; now I'm back. No questions asked.