The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
Craig Johnson vs. C.J. Box: Wyoming (Zone of) Death Match
1) there actually is a "Zone of Death" within Yellowstone National Park, where an enterprising criminal could commit the perfect crime . . . although it hasn't happened yet;
2) Yellowstone's heat resistant microbes are valuable resources being used (exploited? contracted?) by international companies, and there is a debate as to whether this is "bio-mining" or "bio-piracy" and as to who should get the profits;
3) bio-stimulation in coal seams might produce natural gas or liquified fuel . . .
anyway, as far as the Wyoming detective novel shoot-out goes, Joe Pickett and Walt Longmire are different animals . . . so if you're looking for something more evocative and slower-paced, with a lot of charm, then go for the Craig Johnson mystery, but if you want fast-paced action with politics, conspiracy, and wild plot-lines, then C.J. Box is for you . . . FreeFire even has a gun moll from Jersey and the book gets into this kind of stuff:
"There are so many factions . . . Zephyr versus the Park Service . . . environmentalists against resource users . . . hunters outside the park versus park policy . . . the three states fighting with the Feds . . . even in the park service, it's law enforcement versus interpretation, and seasonal rangers against full-timers . . . it's bureaucracy run amok."
Johnson vs. Box: Wyoming (Zone of) Death Match
1) apparently, there actually is a "Zone of Death" within Yellowstone National Park, where an enterprising criminal could commit the perfect crime . . . although it hasn't happened yet;
2) Yellowstone's heat resistant microbes are valuable resources being used (exploited? contracted?) by international companies, and there is a debate as to whether this is "bio-mining" or "bio-piracy" and as to who should get the profits;
3) bio-stimulation in coal seams might produce natural gas or liquified fuel . . .
anyway, as far as the Wyoming detective novel shoot-out goes, Joe Pickett and Walt Longmire are different animals . . . so if you're looking for something more evocative and slower-paced, with a lot of charm, then go for the Craig Johnson mystery, but if you want fast-paced action with politics, conspiracy, and wild plot-lines, then C.J. Box is for you . . . FreeFire even has a gun moll from Jersey and the book gets into this kind of stuff:
"There are so many factions . . . Zephyr versus the Park Service . . . environmentalists against resource users . . . hunters outside the park versus park policy . . . the three states fighting with the Feds . . . even in the park service, it's law enforcement versus interpretation, and seasonal rangers against full-timers . . . it's bureaucracy run amok."
Trump Causes More Shit
Last week, after visiting the dog park, I tried to walk home along the river. It was damn near impassable. The grass and the path were strewn with goose poop. Disgusting for me, and a health hazard for my dog. She loves to eat the stuff, and it's laden with bacteria and parasites. The last time she chowed down on it, she threw up all over my van. Yuck.
This was the last straw for me. The geese never shit on the river path. There are a few areas in Donaldson Park that are consistently covered in fecal matter (and they are easy enough to avoid) but this winter-- perhaps because we never got solid snow cover-- the entire park was littered with the stuff. Every sporting field, every paved path . . . from the grassy meadows to the muddy banks. Poop poop poop poop. The only spot in the park not covered with goose poop was the dog park. But I couldn't walk through the other sections of the park to get to the dog park. There was too much shit. So I had to take the street along the park and cut into the park on the trail just past the public works building and the diesel fuel tank. This route is not scenic at all. It's damn near tragic. I live next to Donaldson Park so I can walk around in Donaldson Park.
My New "Scenic Route" to the Dog Park
I generally managed to keep Lola from eating goose poop on my way back from the river, but it was not pleasant or relaxing. So I was pretty irate when I got home. I had been through a scatological minefield, and I was certainly suffering from PTSD: Post Traumatic Shit Disorder. I was fired up. But instead of my usual complaining into the void, I decided to do something: I would write an email to the powers that be. I cranked out a couple paragraphs of crackpot commentary to the county parks director. I was vivid. I was livid. I was graphic. I was gross. I mentioned bacteria and parasites. I recalled that there used to be a guy that would come in and scare the geese away. He would set off fireworks and place silhouettes of dogs in the fields. What happened to that guy? Donaldson Park needed that guy! My tone was polite but frustrated. What other tone is there when you're dealing with goose-shit?
Here's what I got back. I was very pleased with the prompt reply (and properly indignant about the causes of the excessive poop).
A Prompt Clarification on the Shit Storm
Mr. Pellicane,
Thank you for your message regarding Canada goose numbers at Donaldson Park. The County currently contracts with the Wildlife Services Division of the USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services for Canada goose management on all County properties. This include harassment and egg treatments. They cover over two dozen sites throughout the County. With our proximity to water, open space and mild winters, controlling geese is always a challenge.
The biggest problem we are having this year is with the somewhat milder winter. Many geese that pushed southward last year, simply did not this year. Additionally, with the federal government shutdown for 35 days in December and January, all contracts were suspended. Harassment during this time was minimal – only what our staff could get to.
We are certainly behind on behavior modification and it is apparent in many of our parks. Our USDA tech is back on the job (for now, anyway) however, we are playing catch up across the County. I have asked for increased visits to Donaldson Park over the next week and if there is not another shutdown, continued aggressive harassment for the next few. This should hopefully help alleviate some of the pressure on Donaldson Park from the geese.
Thank you,
Rick Lear
Director
Office of Parks and Recreation
Department of Infrastructure Management
Let's Assign Some Blame!
Trump! This was Trump poop. Caused by his government shutdown. And even better, Rick Lear alluded to Trump's arch-nemesis. He didn't call it by name (perhaps, like the EPA, he's forbidden). But when he refers to the "mild winter," we all know what he's talking about. Climate change! So I had stepped in Donald Trump's shit, caused by something he refuses to believe in, the Chinese hoax. I couldn't have been happier. English teachers love irony.
I was also happy because getting upset about Trump shit is fun. This is because Trump is temporary. His ideas are outdated. He's a throwback, a dinosaur, soon to be extinct. A last gasp. In fact, despite the bipartisan quagmire and the incorrigible stupidity and corruption of the Trump administration, I'm feeling pretty good about the world, goose poop and all. This is mainly because I'm nearly done with Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. It's also because my wife is doing a lot of Zumba and looking great (but that's besides the point).
Pinker uses an avalanche of charts and statistics to remind us that we are living in the best of times. And this is because of th enlightenment values mentioned in the title: science, reason, secular humanism, liberal democratic ideas. The world has never been less violent, more healthy, more prosperous, safer, and more liberal. Despite what the naysayers prophesy, more people have rights than ever before, less people are at war than ever before, knowledge is more accessible, and democracy is on the rise. While there are challenges, we keep coming up with solutions. And the two existential threats-- the things that worry Pinker the most-- the environment (including global warming) and nuclear war . . . both of these things are improving. Slowly, but they are definitely improving. As countries grow richer, they do a better job preserving the environment; they reforest and recycle and use less fossil fuels and look for alternate energy sources. And we are slowly whittling down the number of nuclear weapons on earth. That number may never reach zero, but it doesn't have to. As long as we accept and understand the challenges, there are solutions on the horizon.
The Robots Are NOT Coming
Pinker also dispels some of the ridiculous notions that cause folks unnecessary anxiety: artificial intelligence experts don't fear the singularity. AI is not going to rebel and replace us. It's too hard to make a semi-conductor. It's too hard to make anything. It takes teams and teams of people and many highly technical factories and lots of resources. And we humans control all that. We are the kings of meat-space. And most of this perceived conflict is online. This is also the reason we probably don't have to fear technological nightmare scenarios caused by lone wolf lunatics. It takes too many smart people to create technology that advanced. Your computer may get a virus (but nothing as serious as Y2K) but you need a team of specialists to make a nuclear bomb or a super-virus, and it's hard to assemble that many people down with destroying the human race.
This is why rational people don't fear Donald Trump. He's not the face of the 21st century, he's a wart that will soon dry up. And fall off. He's an old wart.
Pinker does acknowledge that Trump will have an effect-- especially if we let him-- on some of these precious enlightenment ideals that have served us so well. He's an impediment to "life and health" because of his anti-vaxxer rhetoric and his role in dismantling our healthcare system. He's a threat to worldwide wealth because of his idiotic zero-sum notions about trade. Countries that are tied together economically cooperate. They don't go to war. He's certainly not helping economic inequality, nor is he a boon to safety, on the job or otherwise. He hates regulations, which often spur progress and make business seek solutions to problems (such as car crashes, plane crashes, poisoning, tanker leaks, lead levels, mileage restrictions, etc). He's not particularly keen on democracy and seems to have a penchant for dictatorial strongmen. He's no fan of equal rights, and his speeches and Tweets often have an undercurrent of xenophobia and racism. And he's a liar liar pants on fire. So he's not an ambassador or advocate to the wonders of available and accurate knowledge.
The Glass Is Half Full? So Lame . . .
Optimism is not cool. Pinker is an utter nerd. It's more fun to obsess over Trump and predict the end of civility, the end of civilization. Trump is certainly a shitshow, and Michael Lewis does a nice job illustrating some of the consequences of his incomptetence. And he's an environmental disaster. But we are progressing despite him. You need proof? Listen to Adam Ruins Everything Episode 1, where Adam talks at length with the Los Angeles DOT Seleta Reynolds. Streetcars, bike lanes, public transport, walkable neighborhoods and plazas . . . in the car capital of the country. In LA? Sounds like a hippie's dream and a conservative's nightmare. But this progressive vision is happening, despite Trump, and with federal funding. There are difficulties, of course, but when you hear this dedicated and intelligent government employee explaining that the market won't solve these problems of morals and values, it's really heartening. She's also really funny.
Pinker is an atheistic utilitarian who may not have enough feelings about anything to move the stalwarts on the left or the right. He glosses over some pretty bad shit. But that's because he's looking at the numbers, not at the emotions. Not at identity politics or anything particularly political. He's in the same corner as President Obama, who wrote a miniature version of the Pinker book for Wired Magazine. It's an essay called "Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive." It's not nearly as fun as visions of rusted out towns full of drug-addled opiate addicts (not the whole story) and porous unwalled borders which allow terrorists, criminals and rapists to pour into our nation. Statistically supported optimism can't match Chinese bandits stealing our intellectual property, black people who don't know their proper place (let's make America Great Again! And Institutionally Racist!) and liberal socialists who want to empower the government so that it controls every aspect of our lives. The end of times. That's what gets the clicks.
But I'm siding with Rick Lear. He's going to be around long after Trump is gone, directing county parks and rec infrastructure, fighting the good fight against the geese. He'll suffer mild winters and government shutdowns, deal with cranky emails, and continue to make this country greater than it's ever been. I have faith that he's going to make my local park greater. He's going to get rid of those geese (and their shit).
I believe.
Pinker's incremental pragmaticism does have it's problems. Robert Gordon, in his comprehensive work The Rise and Fall of American Growth claims that we've captured all the technological "low hanging fruit" and that advances will be tiny and slow for a long time. And Charles C. Mann provides a much more balanced picture in his new book, The Wizard and Prophet. Pinker is a fan of Norman Borlaug, the agricultural engineer who founded the Green Revolution, but there are those scientists who don't believe technology will bail us out of every dilemma. We might need old-fashioned conservation to preserve our way of life. Mann uses ecologist William Vogt to represent this perspective. It's one worth noting.
Pinker is also not very romantic. There's no room for honor and zealotry and fanaticism and mysticism and martyrdom and certain types of selfless ascetic heroism in his philosophy. He's no Hamlet, who says to his buddy Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." But Hamlet has seen a spirit, his father's spirit. The time is out of joint. Something is rotten. That's not so in Pinker's secular, statistical view of progress. Society will be less varied, but I have to admit, I don't really care. I won't miss the zealous fanatical whirling mystical martyrs one bit.
I'd much rather have a river blindness vaccine. And people are working on it.
Please Do Not Tell My Wife About the "Send Audio Clip Over SMS" Feature (A Close Reading of an Irate Text)
My students have informed me that you can send an audio clip via SMS on an Android phone. Please do not inform my wife about this Android feature. I'm afraid she will use it.
I should preface this story with the fact that our dog Lola sheds a lot. And my wife drives a car with a black interior. And our dog is light brown.
More of a honey gold really. With some white spots. And she's a shedder. Drives my wife crazy.
This morning, I received three text messages in reference to an incident that happened yesterday afternoon. My wife discovered the evidence of the incident while driving our kids to school this morning. Apparently, she dictated the text to my son Alex as she drove. Then she asked him to read it back, to ensure that he captured her tone.
A couple things here.
First of all, I love that my wife used "fricking" instead of "the queen mother of dirty words." I think this is because she was dictating the message to our fourteen year old son. I asked Alex about this. He said that mom did use the word "fricking" and that he thought it was inappropriate to text his father the f-word anyway.
Second, despite the text format, my wife and Alex were fairly effective at yelling at me. I got the message loud and clear. They made liberal use of exclamation points and all caps, and there's even a sinister ultimatum. What the fuck might happen to me if I don't vacuum the car this weekend? I'm not going to chance it. If you seek me, I will be vacuuming the car.
This next line really resonated with the women in my office:
It's so unsatisfying yelling at you through a text.
My wife
And then she yells at me some more! She's "so mad" that her diction literally falls apart. Even though this is actually only poor typing on Alex's part, it's a happy accident. Form fitting function. Sound equals sense.
Finally, the existential "WHY?" Though it's not in my best interest, for the sake of accuracy, I will elaborate on this. Thursday afternoon, as I was coaxing the dog into the back seat of her car, I did indeed think to myself:
Why? Why am I doing this? I know our dog sheds. I know she's going to shed all over the black interior of my wife's car. I know I'm going to get in trouble for this . . . why? why don't I walk across the street to my car?
I had these thoughts, and I did it anyway. I loaded Lola into the back of my wife's car. It was so cold out. Frigid. And I was dying. I had a runny nose and a scratchy throat and my eyes were glassy. I was sick. And I was heroically taking the dog to the dog park so she could run around. And my van, my filthy smelly dented van, my van that was full of dog hair (which doesn't really show because the interior is light gray with lots of dirt stains) was across the street. And it was so cold. I didn't feel like walking the extra twenty yards. That's why I did it. Laziness. But laziness for good-- or at least reasonable-- reasons. It was cold, and I was dying. I may have saved my own life. I'm forty-eight years old. I can barely deal with a cold. How could I handle pneumonia?
Anyway, I read this text strand to my students and one of them immediately yelled: "She can yell at you through a text! She can send you an audio clip!"
I hope my wife doesn't start utilizing this Android SMS feature. Actual angry audio can be pretty intense. It would be a lot to handle at work. And then would I have to send a sincere audio apology? I'm not a voice actor! What if some sarcasm leaked into my message?
I think text is a better medium for yelling at someone than actual live full volume yelling. Real yelling is loud and scary, but with texting, you have a moment to respond properly . . . which I think I did. By the time we both got home from work, my wife was no longer angry. In fact, she agreed to let me use a "screenshot" of the text strand. My students had to teach me how to take a "screenshot" on my phone. They're very clever. They also taught me where to find it. In my "gallery." I had never used this Android feature before, but now that I know about it, I'm sure I'll use it again (unlike the send audio clip function, which I'm never going to use . . . I thought we invented texting to avoid talking).
I Am More Than My Big Firm Round Ones
God forbid I show them off in public.
Hello? My face is up here!
Just because I'm well endowed doesn't give you the license to gawk and ogle.
Or does it?
I'll admit I find the attention flattering, but it's also awkward and weird. I want to cry out:
I'm more than a pair of fabulous fleshy protrusions!
I'm an accomplished Scrabble player, an avid reader of non-fiction and a fan of the surrealist paintings of Max Ernst!
There's a brain in here!
I'm more than a pair of stunning calves.
And while it might not be exactly analogous to the comments a voluptuous woman endures when she walks past an urban construction site, it's in the same ballpark. So, ladies, I get it. I know what it feels like to be a hot, sexy nubile babe at a sausage hang. I can empathize.
I'll admit there are some situations where unsolicited calf-commentary makes a certain sense. At sporting functions, for instance. Last week at Wednesday night pick-up basketball, a dude remarked that I have the "calves of a powerlifter." Total non sequitur. We were not on the subject of calf-raises or calf-injuries or calf-tattoos. He just had to say it. While it was slightly off-topic, it was not completely out-of-the-blue. When you match-up on defense in pick-up basketball, you first engage in a frank discussion about the physical attributes of the opposing team. You then coordinate your team's height, weight, speed, and strength. You're allowed to be candid. So perhaps my calves were just part of the scouting report. My son Alex informs me that some of the soccer players I've coached are intimidated by my giant calves. I sort of get this. The muscle tone in my calves is epic, and I'm sure it's due to coaching and playing soccer. So it's kind of germane. And I can understand when my acupuncturist comments on them. She's working on them. Sticking needles into them to try to get the giant knots out.
But I also get calf compliments at work. This is partly my fault for parading around in shorts in a professional environment, but I like to exercise when I'm on the clock (it's like I'm being paid to work out . . . you're tax dollars at work). So I'm not claiming harassment here; I recognize that I'm flaunting my naked calves in the workplace and that there may be consequences. And I know I'm a lucky guy: Johnny Drama would be green with envy. There's no question that women young and old find my calves irresistible. So when they get a peek at them, they're compelled to say something. I get this. I feel the same way when I see a shapely woman, especially if she's showing some cleavage. It's a hard topic not to discuss. I refrain, of course, because it's 2019, but the impulse is there.
I would also like to assure everyone that I do not have calf implants. I would never be so shallow.
My calves are real. And they're spectacular.
You wouldn't believe how much I can bench. But you tell first . . .
Donald Trump Stars in "Risky Business" Sequel (Michael Lewis and The Fifth Risk)
First let's state the obvious. There's no question that Trump is morally repugnant, a racist who hates folks from "shithole countries", a laughingstock and a pussy grabber; Trump used campaign money to pay off a porn star and he has a twisted infatuation with Vladimir Putin, a leader that meddled in our election and is rumored to kill journalists and political opponents. His toxic tweets undermine the mission of our government, his lies foment discord, and he believes he's above the rule of law. He struggled to condemn white supremacists and Nazis, and he had trouble praising the recently departed John McCain. He separated families at the border. He's not loyal to anyone (including U.S. intelligence agencies). He mismanaged a crisis in Puerto Rico, and his version of Yule Tide cheer is to shut down the government. He's a gross human. You can go on and on with this kind of character assessment/assassination, but where does it get you?
Michael Lewis does something different in his new, rather short and slightly fragmented book. Lewis gives us a number of factual, quotidian, and concrete reasons to hate Trump. While it might not be as groundbreaking and perfectly written as his classic works (e.g. Moneyball, The Blind Side, Flash Boys, and The Big Short) it's probably more important. First of all, it's timely (the book sprang from articles he wrote for Vanity Fair). It takes a fairly apolitical look at what's happening right now in several departments in the United States Government (The Department of Energy, The Depart of Commerce, The USDA, and the NOAA).
Do Conservatives Think Michael Lewis Is Part of the Liberal Media Conspiracy? Maybe Not?
Donald Trump, mainly through incompetence and corruption, has managed to severely undermine these departments. And Michael Lewis doesn't even write about the EPA. This might be for political reasons-- the EPA seems to strike a really nasty chord with many conservatives (mainly because many conservatives-- especially in the energy sector-- don't believe externalities should be monitored, they want to do as much damage to the environment as possible, especially if it helps them to make more money . . . and then, they espouse, someday in the dystopically flooded and polluted future, the market will magically clean things up). It's impossible to be apolitical when you start talking about Trump, Scott Pruitt and the dismantling of the EPA. It's egregious. I think Lewis wanted this book to be politically palatable so he avoided this truly hot button stuff. Or he's writing another book.
Anyway, here's what Lewis does explain. When you take over the government, you are legally required to prepare for the transition. You need to appoint 700 people to very important government positions. Many of these positions aren't particularly political. They are positions involved with health, disease preventions, pandemic readiness, data collection, wildfires and nuclear waste, and R & D project management. Trump has done an utterly abysmal job with these appointments. He's appointed business people with conflicts of interest, unqualified friends, Trump loyalists, and-- disturbingly, in hundreds of positions-- no one at all.
You need to read the book to get the full ramifications of this very measurable, very factual incompetence. Lewis doesn't need to get into Trump's character all that much. He simply portrays his brash idiocy in contrast with the professional dedication of these often brilliant, mission-driven government employees; these people who make America great despite Donald Trump. The people who keep our technologically depend infrastructure working. If you think you're some kind of Ron Swanson-esque rugged individualist, then get real. Our government employs 9000 people to keep a glacier sized underground mass of nuclear waste from poisoning the Columbia River. Your gun, your tools, and your wood stove can't protect you from that.
Here's are some highs (and lows) from the book.
The Unlikely Hero: Chris Christie . . .
Trump was quite determined to not learn anything about running the government, and also determined to not hire anyone who could help him with this task.
The Chief Risk Officer's Take on the Risky Business
John MacWilliams, DOE chief risk officer during the Obama administration, outlines the top five risks that government agencies monitor and maintain.
- Theft, loss and/or detonation of a nuclear weapon
- North Korea
- Iran's nuclear program
- Failure of the electrical grid (through disaster, attack, espionage, etc.)
- ??????????
The fifth risk is the one we can't conceive. The unknown unknown. The problem with these risks from a cognitive perspective is that we can't accurately measure their probability. Trump's lack of appointments may increase the likelihood of a nuclear disaster from one in a million to one in 10,000. That's an exponentially huge increase, but most people will shrug their shoulders at it.
What's the difference? They're both big numbers.
Humans are awful at judging risk. We're more afraid of sharks than we are of french fries. And we have no heuristic method to add up all these small increases in risk and understanding the overall implications. But the truth of the matter, is that every day that goes by without some sort of major disaster in our infrastructure is a testament to our government.
MacWilliams explains the consequences of Trump's proposed budget cuts: ARPA-E loans, climate research, national labs, and the security our electrical grid will all suffer.
All the risks are science based. You can't gut the science. If you do, you are hurting the country. If you gut the core competency of the DOE, you gut the country.This is the part of Trumpism that's most disturbing and difficult to conceive: the dismissal of science. I know it's tied in to the hatred of elites and Hillary Clinton, that trusting scientific results is somehow akin to trusting the government and the liberal media conspiracy and the deep state, that trusting science will grant the pointy-headed social engineers the power to tell people what to do and how to live. It's true that science may occasionally do these things. Science now tells us that smoking and soda and having a gun in the house are really bad for us, that factory farming is an environmental disaster, and that cows and coal are contributing to global warming. Economists tell us that immigrants are good for the economy. These are inconvenient truths. It's fun to smoke and drink soda and eat burgers and shoot guns and hate immigrants. So Trump supporters don't want to hear it and they cover their ears.
I also understand that science is bringing the robots and factory automation. Destroying traditional industry. It's also measuring the externalities that businesses don't want to deal with. And it's increasing the distance between the haves and the have-nots. The nerds are winning. The Trump supporters struck back at this. So I get it.
Big Pharma is big science, and Big Pharma certainly contributed to the opioid epidemic. Many people in this country feel they have no control over their life, and they are probably right to think this. They might be addicted to opiates, or in an area that has been left behind. Most American don't have one thousand dollars socked away in case of crisis. These same people have access to the internet and see everyone surpassing them, and wonder: what has science done for me? What has the government done for me?
These are the people that need to read this book.
Weirdest Trump Appointee: Brian Klippenstein
Here's what Lewis has to say:
One of the USDA's many duties was to police conflicts between people and animals. It brought legal action against people who abused animals, and it maybe wasn't the ideal place to insert a man who was preternaturally unconcerned with their welfare.After Klippensteins's appointment, data disappeared. This has been the case in several departments. The USDA suddenly purged all the animal abuse records. There was public outcry and some of the data has been re-posted, but the most important and specific stuff seems to have gone missing. And to access this data, which was public and accessible, you now need to submit a Freedom of Information Act request.
National Geographic reports:
The restored records represent a minuscule portion of the 17-year database, and they exclude thousands of inspection reports on puppy mills, private research facilities, and zoos that constitute the public record of commercial animal abuse. Since February 3, those reports have been accessible only by submitting a Freedom of Information Act request, a byzantine process that can take months or even years.What the fuck?
Does Trump Understand Irony?
Here's an example:
But the more rural the American, the more dependent he is for his way of life on the U.S. government. And the more rural the American, the more likely he was to have voted for Donald Trump. So you might think that Trump, when he took office, would do everything he could to strengthen and grow the little box marked "Rural Development." That's not what happened.Do rural Trump supporters understand irony? I hope so. Because they fucked themselves.
Does Barry Myers Understand Irony?
Barry Myers is the CEO of AccuWeather. AccuWeather is the Myers family business. Lewis explains that since the 1990s, Barry Myers (with a "straight face") has argued that the National Weather Service should be "with one exception, entirely forbidden from delivering any weather-related knowledge to any American who might otherwise wind up a paying customer of AccuWeather. The exception was when human life and property were at stake."
And even when human life is at stake, Myers is hesitant to let people rely on the National Weather Service.
This should piss you off. What should piss you off even more, is that AccuWeather bases all its forecasts on data it receives from the National Weather Service. Data it receives free of charge.
Rick Santorum, a recipient of Myers's family campaign contributions, tried to codify this inanity into law in Pennsylvania. Lewis starts to lose his generally objective tone:
Pause a moment and consider the audacity of that maneuver. A private company whose weather predictions were totally dependent on the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. taxpayer to gather the data necessary for those predictions, and on decades of intellectual weather work sponsored by the U.S. taxpayer, and on international data-sharing treaties made on behalf of the U.S. taxpayer, and on the very forecasts that the National Weather Service generated, was, in effect, trying to force the U.S. taxpayer to pay all over again for what the National Weather Service might be able to tell him or her for free.
The lesson here is to get your weather from weather.gov. That's what I do. No ads. Same information. Straight from the source. If the law Myers lobbied for would have passed in Pennsylvania, then the website would have been blocked there.
Barry Myers is the ultimate symbol of Trump's bizarre business forward political corruption. Everything about what it is to be a Trumpian conservative is rolled up into this appointment, and this part of the book-- while not quite as exciting as the possibility of a nuclear disaster-- is really educational and really really ire-inducing. Don't read it before operating a motor vehicle.
The Takeaway
The end of the book focuses on the people who collect and utilize data for the government, how incredibly valuable this data is for everyone-- citizens, researchers, scientists, and private businesses, and how a new conflict greater than bipartisan tomfoolery is jeopardizing the system.The NOAA website used to have links to weather-forecast. Now those links have been buried. This is why:
The man Trump nominated to run NOAA thought that people who wanted a weather forecast should pay him for it. There was a rift in American life that was now coursing through American government. It wasn't between Democrats and Republicans. It was between the people who were in it for the mission, and the people who were in it for the money.I'm a public school teacher. I'm in it for the mission. I generate a lot of good ideas every day, and so do my colleagues. I can't tell you enough how smart, dedicated and professional most of them are. We share these ideas with each other. There's no reason not to. We don't get paid more for having better ideas, but it feels good to have them. It feels good to be a better teacher. It increases your status in the eyes of your friends, colleagues, and students. America has grown so cynical that a good number of people don't believe that people like this exist any longer. They view the government as a stupid bloated nefarious system that begets and pays itself. This book might remind them otherwise.
Analysis of The Ur Post (Dedicated to My Beloved Wife)
Recently, however, writing the sentence became onerous, another chore. And I felt limited and rushed. So I'm trying something new. I'm going to take it slow and write some longer posts. I'm going to revise, ruminate, and procrastinate. Move at my own pace. Stall. Use periods. Park the bus.
The first post I wrote over at Sentence of Dave was dedicated to my loving wife. Here it is, in its entirety:
I am shopping for a new digital camera because my wife has a habit of leaving things on the roof of our car.
For good luck, I am once again dedicating this first post at Park the Bus to my wife. She is a wonderful woman: beautiful, loyal, smart, funny, and adventurous. I am lucky to have her. Unfortunately, she is also reckless and irresponsible, something of a menace. I need this longer format to truly explain what I mean.
To all appearances, my wife seems to be a diligent and dedicated elementary school teacher and mother. She helps run the community garden. She's a great cook with a green thumb. She eats healthy, works out, dresses sharp, and donates her time to charitable causes. But she's also the kind of person who will leave you a car with an empty gas tank. Below the line. No fuel at all. Not because she doesn't care about you-- I think most people would agree that she's a caring person. She will leave you the car on empty because she drives it around on empty. She's too busy running important errands for our family and the gardening club and her students and the elderly to stop for gas. And if you switch cars with her, and nearly run out of gas on the way to work ( while you are sitting in traffic because of construction) and call her-- your tone a little perturbed-- and give her a piece of your mind, and later on, text her some information, some completely innocuous and objective information about the consequences of using an internal combustion engine with very little gas in the tank, information about burnt out fuel pumps and kicking up sediment, then, oddly, you're the one who's going to be in trouble.
I'm a high school English teacher and my students-- despite the fact that they don't always read the assigned texts-- are often wise beyond their years in the ways of relationships. They vehemently advised me against sending those texts about sediment and fuel pumps to my wife. They told me it wasn't worth it. I explained to them that our Honda CRV was the second most expensive item our family-owned (a distant second behind our house) and it was my responsibility to inform my wife about these sorts of things. Because she was reckless. Not that she was alone in this manner of recklessness . . . I did an informal poll and though my evidence is anecdotal, I'm fairly sure that the world is equally divided into two kinds of people: sane folks who gas up when their tank gets down to 1/4 full and lunatics who drive around on fumes until their anxiety finally gets the better of them . . . or they actually run out of gas.
I could go on and on. My wife fills her coffee up far beyond what is normal or necessary. She walks around the kitchen with a meniscus of steaming hot liquid sloshing above the rim of the mug. Drinking coffee is supposed to be relaxing, a morning treat. A warm and tasty pick-me-up. Not an invitation for second-degree burns.
She does something similar (but less dangerous) with the dog's water bowl: she fills it up until the water is hovering above the brim and then cavalierly carries it across the room. She fills up the recycling bin in our kitchen so far above the rim that it's impossible to pull out the garbage/recycling drawer. For many years, she put large knives in the sink amongst all the dirty dishes (because she likes a clean counter). I actually broke her of this habit (but it took some bloodshed). Why does she do these things? Because she's got an incorrigibly reckless soul.
A quick mathematical aside: the relationship between a person's sanity and the amount of coffee they pour into their cup is the same as the relationship between a person's insanity and the amount of gas they have in their tank. I know formulas can be off-putting, but I think these equations are fairly simple and common-sensical.
the percentage you are sane = amount of gas in tank/full tank of gas
the percentage you are insane = amount coffee in cup/full cup of coffee
Running on fumes? Mathematically, you are 1% sane. Coffee cup filled to the absolute maximum? You are 100% insane.
The camera on the roof of the car; the empty gas tank; the overly full coffee cup, the overly full dog bowl, and the overly full recycling bin: these should all be entered as background evidence. What I really want to discuss is something that happened a few days ago. I was about to start teaching class, when my phone buzzed. There was a text from my wife and an accompanying photo. The text explained that our dog Lola had chewed up a bunch of papers that she had in her school bag. Student papers. Graded student papers. Essentially, the teacher's dog had eaten the students' homework. Damn close to Alfred Harmsmith's dream headline: "man bites dog."
I informed my class of the bad news . . . which was especially bad for me because I am in charge of training our new dog and if she behaves badly then the responsibility is mine. This is not particularly fair-- I'm no dog whisperer-- but my wife does take on a lot of responsibility in the house, so I can't complain. If Lola screws up, I'm to bear the brunt of it. And my wife is still partial to our old dog, Sirius, who shuffled off this mortal coil last March. So there was no winning this one. Lola had screwed the pooch, and I was to take the heat for it.
The first text message my wife sent me about the paper-eating incident was light: she recognized and enjoyed the whole "our dog ate the students' homework!" aspect of the scene. But then she instructed me that if I left the house when everyone was still sleeping, as I did on Wednesday, then I should bring the dog back upstairs and close the gate so she couldn't roam the house and chew on things. She made it clear who was culpable for the chewing. Me.
The final reckless thing I'd like to discuss about my wonderful and loving wife is that she does not zip her bags. She does not zip her purse. She does not zip her school bag. She doesn't zip her laptop case. She doesn't believe in zipping. She likes the convenience of easy entry. (Insert filthy joke here).
I'm constantly zipping my wife's purse shut. Sometimes because it's hanging by a thread on a hook with seven other jackets. Or it's teetering over the center console in the car. She should have zipped her school bag shut. We have a young Rhodesian/lab rescue in the house, and she likes to chew things. When I noticed the unzipped bag in the photo, I asked my class if I should bring this to my wife's attention. This wasn't my fault! This could have been prevented! If she had taken precautions, if she had zipped her bag shut, if she had utilized Whitcomb L. Judson's marvelously pragmatic invention, then the dog wouldn't have chewed up her papers. I presented this argument. My students' answer was still a resounding "NO!" I should NOT text her about the unzipped bag.
I explained to them about the purse and the gas tank and the recycling bin and the coffee. They didn't care. It's not worth it, they informed me. Even my sophomores understood this. They were so adamant that I sort of followed their advice.
I am proud that I did not text my wife about the unzipped bag. I patiently waited to bring it up until later in the afternoon. It was Thanksgiving Eve, and once we had imbibed a bit, I pounced, the same way our dog Lola pounces on her rubber bone when you toss it across the room. It was a much better method than texting. My students were right. You can't text about something as delicate as this (I learned that during the whole gas tank incident). But I wasn't going to completely ignore the situation. I knew it wouldn't change anything, but my voice had to be heard. It's the same reason I sat down and wrote this long-winded post. It feels good to take notes, organize your thoughts, and get it all out. People need to know. My wife needed to know. And I will give her credit: she took it like a champ. She may have called me a few choice names, but then she was over it. We went out to the bar, saw our friends, and I had a story to tell.
I'd like to thank my wife Catherine for the inspiration and the material . . . your irrational behavior makes me love you all the more.
Hey Stacey, A Good Podcast is Better Than a Bad Book
Dave Tries (Awkwardly and Unsuccessfully) to Use an Interrobang‽
College, Expensive and Absurd (and great fodder for a novel)
Dear People Who Still Read Books
I'd like to give my highest recommendation for Julie Schumacher's novel Dear Committee Members (and while I know that's not saying much, as I realize that I spit out "must see" and "must read" endorsements like a demented Pez dispenser . . . has anyone watched Detectorists yet?) and I'm not espousing this novel simply because it's written from the point-of-view of an irate Creative Writing and English professor who might have a heart of gold (or maybe silver or brass . . . but a good heart nonetheless) who resides in a building that is decrepit in a department that is undermanned and underfunded (while the sciences and economics departments are showered with praise, money, and facilities) nor am I enamored-- as a Creative Writing teacher might be-- by Schumacher's use of the epistolary form: the novel is written entirely through Professor Jay Fitger's rambling, candid, sincere and sometimes confessional letters of recommendation-- and he is called on to write many many letters, for a variety of students, colleagues, graduates, etc. and he uses them to try to have some control over a future which dismays him more and more . . . anyway, the main reason I am recommending this book is it is very very funny . . . I've been doing a lot of heavy reading and listening lately, and this book was a breath of fresh air, a gem and a prize-- it took me two days to read . . . if you remember Richard Russo's Straight Man fondly, you will love this novel even more, and Schumacher has just published a sequel, which has good reviews, so I'm sure I'll read that as well-- anyway, I'll end this LOR with some random lines from Fitger's letters so you can peruse the tone and decide if you want to take a break from partisan politics, Supreme Court hearings, immigration snafus, and heinous weather events . . .
Bombastically Yours,
Dave
The reading and writing of fiction both requires and instills empathy—the insertion of oneself into the life of another.
Be reassured: the literature student has learned to inquire, to question, to interpret, to critique, to compare, to research, to argue, to sift, to analyze, to shape, to express. His intellect can be put to broad use. The computer major, by contrast, is a technician—a plumber clutching a single, albeit shining, box of tools.
Literature has served me faithfully (no pun intended) as an ersatz religion, and I would wager that the pursuit of the ineffable via aesthetics in various forms has saved
(Ms. Frame faithfully taking minutes) during which a senior colleague, out of his mind over the issue of punctuation in the department’s mission statement, threatened to “take a dump” (there was a pun on the word “colon” which I won’t belabor here)
My own writing interests me less than it used to; and while I know that to teach and to mentor is truly a calling, on a day-to-day basis I often find myself overwhelmed by the needs of my students—who seem to trust in an influence I no longer have, and in a knowledge of which, increasingly, I am uncertain—and by the university’s mindless adherence to bureaucratic demands.
you should choose from the smaller and more disadvantaged units—Indigenous Studies or Hindi/Urdu, or some similarly besieged program, one of whose members, like a teenage virgin leaping into the bubbling mouth of a volcano, will sacrifice him- or herself in exchange for a chance that the larger community be allowed to survive.
Ant-Man is no Einstein
We went and saw Ant-Man and the Wasp today and while it's certainly an entertaining movie-- Paul Rudd does his usual spot-on job at playing a charmingly ditzy do-gooder dad/minor-superhero-- there are some black hole magnitude plot holes though out (and teenage boys are quick to spot these . . . you can't just magnify a building on any piece of land, large buildings need foundations . . . and plumbing and electrical hook-ups; you also can't shrink a human body down smaller than its constituent molecules, that makes no sense) so if you want something a bit more technical and profound on the topic of the infinitesimal then I recommend Jim Holt's collection of mathematically inspired essays When Einstein Walked with Godel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought; he discusses incredibly tininess, the infinitely large, the expanding universe, the Copernican logic-- which asserts that we are very likely not special at all, in any way-- quantum physics in a nutshell (don't look: waves, look: particles) quantum entanglement and spooky action, lots of Alan Turing and Charles Babbage and Leibniz and the philosophical development of the idea of a computer (my wife and kids made fun of me when, struggling with my son's cellphone, I said, "I can't turn on this little computer!" but I contested that little computer is way more accurate than "phone" and I'm going to start calling cell-phones "little computers" as a regular practice in my classroom, to hammer home just what they've got distracting them) and there's also an essay on the weird and slightly scary behavior of moral saints and Holt coincidentally (from my perspective) mentions a book I was recently discussing with a British friend Ashely-- Nick Hornby's How to Be Good-- but much more interesting than that conversation was that Ashley revealed to us that when he was growing up in Zambia-- his dad worked in the copper industry and so he lived there until age 13, until it got too dangerous for white people to be in the country . . . several of his neighbors were executed-- but until this time he had a pet monkey, which would drink tea with sugar and had the run of the house . . . anyway, Holt mentions the speech at the end of The Incredible Shrinking Man (the book came out in 1956 and the movie in 1957) and it's quite a different tone than the fast-paced action of Ant-Man and the Wasp . . . while there are moments when the Marvel folks try to capture the madness at the heart of the universe (there is some mention of "quantum entanglement" to explain the connection between Scott Lang and Janet Van Dyne but it's not explained in nearly the detail or tediousness of Ghost's backstory) but there's nothing to compare to the pathos of Scott Carey's final speech before he shrinks away to a scale imperceptible to humans:
"So close - the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet - like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends is man's conception, not nature's. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!"
The Turkish Star Wars of Alternative Rock?
Thinking It vs. Communicating It
Same County/Parallel Universe
Imitation: The Sincerest Form of Something
Comedy = Women to the Rescue/ Tragedy = Just Men
Dave Kills It At Book Club
then-- in honor of my first book club ever-- I performed some prop comedy-- when we were about to start our discussion in earnest, I said I had to go out to my car because I had forgotten my notes and when I returned, I was holding a manila folder thick with notes and Post-its, a palimpsest of papers that looked like they were written by a crazy person (think Carrie in Homeland) and Stacey said, "You have a folder of notes?" and I said, "Of course" and I started arranging all the notes and charts and post-its on the floor, while mumbling things like "Holy cow, I have so much to say about this book . . . what should I start with?" and after a minute of paper shuffling and manspreading of my notes, someone surmised that this was my version of a book-club-joke and we all laughed (I laughed the most) and I told them that I had my students create all the crazy notes and charts and post-its . . . I put the names of the people in the book on the board, told them a few themes, suggested that they emulate my handwriting, and let them go to town . . . it was a lot of preparation for a two minute bit, but it was well worth it;
then we actually got into the meat of the discussion and it was a lot of fun but also a bit heated-- I determined that the novel was a well-crafted story about factions, groups, and their effect on the community but I thought the hockey stuff was heavy-handed and not particularly enlightening (Art of Fielding is a much better literary sports novel . . . the tone of Beartown reminds me of Any Given Sunday, which is a good movie, but not a good football movie) but then we got into a loud and vociferous debate about the resolution, which Backman left ambiguous on purpose-- which makes me think he is sort of douchey and annoying . . . and I wondered if this was a meta-book, designed to get people riled up at book club, which sent me to the place I did not want to go-- loud and didactic and refractory . . . and the ladies reacted accordingly:
but