2. Vaclav Havel 1936 - 2011
3. Thoughts from Adrienne Rich and Wordsworth
4. Summer jobs with National Park Service
5. It's a New Year of growing local native plants at Mission Blue Nursery Jan 4
6. GG Audubon Winter Bird Count for Kids!
7. A murmuration of starlings
8. Neil deGrasse Tyson's list of 8 (free) books every person should read - and why
9. Two problems with metaphor "war on cancer"
10. California acts to protect woodpecker/The Timber Racket
11. The Fallen Elm by John Clare
12. Save the date: April 24 - Richard Louv, Nature Deficit Disorder
13. Internet resources for plant enthusiasts
14. Feedback
15. Philip Appleman's New Year's Resolution
16. Alerts to year 2012 by John Cleese
17. English spelling: You write potato, I write ghoughpteighbteau
18. Miscellany I - Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney
19. Miscellany II
20. Propaganda blurb from Firefox browser
1. For 2012
Put a song in your heart
and a spring in your step
-- And see how long before you're hauled in for questioning.
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2.
Vaclav Havel 1936-2011
Living in truth
The unassuming man who taught, through plays and politics, how tyranny may be defied and overcome
HAD communists not seized power in his homeland in 1948, Vaclav Havel would have been simply a distinguished Central European intellectual. That is how, triumphantly, he ended his career. In between came imprisonment, interrogations, house searches, isolation, heartbreak and betrayals—and adulation on the national and international stage. The Economist
________________________
Vaclav Havel:
"Either we have hope within us or we don't.
It is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.
It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.
It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.
Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands a chance to succeed.
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism.
It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out."
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3.
“...My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.”
Adrienne Rich
_________________________
Earth is sick
And Heaven is weary of the hollow words
Which states and Kingdoms utter when they talk
Of truth and justice
Wordsworth
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4. Job opportunity
The 2012 San Francisco Bay Area fire-effects seasonal positions are posted on usajobs.gov. We're planning to hire two positions, based out of Point Reyes National Seashore, starting sometime in mid-April. These jobs are lots of fun with travel and botanizing happening at various national parks around the state. Please share this message with people who might be interested.
To quickly find the announcement, type the announcement number in the keyword search on www.usajobs.com: NPS-FIRE-2012-054
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5. Its a New Year of growing local native plants for restoration and gardening for wildlife at the Mission Blue Nursery!
Come out this Wednesday January 4th and help us out around the nursery 10:00 AM to 12:30 PM
View Google map location of Mission Blue Native Plant Nursery
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6. Golden Gate Audubon Society
Winter Bird Count for Kids!
Families are invited to participate in this day of birding and citizen-science! Naturalists will lead a bird walk around Lake Merritt to discover and count winter bird species such as ducks, cormorants and herons! For kids of all ages and their families this FREE event is inspired by the century-old tradition of the Christmas Bird Count.
Saturday, January 28, 2012 from 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Lake Merritt - Meet in front of Rotary Nature Center 600 Bellevue Ave., Oakland, CA 94610
Dress warmly, bring binoculars and field guides if you have them.
Binoculars will be available to borrow!
Bring water and a lunch. We will share our count totals during lunch.
RSVP with Golden Gate Audubon ggaseducation@gmail.com or call 510-508-1388.
Some upcoming classes:
Birds of the Bay Area
Birding by ear
Check the GGAS website
http://www.goldengateaudubon.org
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7. A murmuration of starlings
http://www.good.is/post/intermission-witnessing-a-murmuration/
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee.
Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man" in Four Epistles
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8. Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/neil_degrasse_tyson_8_books_every_intelligent_person_should_read.html
1.) The Bible (eBook) - “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”
2.) The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.”
3.) On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.”
4.) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”
5.) The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.”
6.) The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”**
7.) The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.”
8.) The Prince by Machiavelli (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.”
Tyson concludes by saying: “If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.”
** (Surely you don't need to read Adam Smith to learn that?)
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9. Excerpt from NPR's Marketplace interview
Today happens to be the 40th anniversary of the National Cancer Act. That's the bill that brought government funding for cancer research, and a brand new metaphor: the so-called "war on cancer."
That phrase wasn't actually in the legislation, but it was used by President Nixon in speeches at the time -- and more recently, President Obama called anew for an aggressive war against cancer. As our health reporter Gregory Warner points out, though, some scientists don't like all this belligerent talk.
Gregory Warner: Scientists have two problems with the "war on cancer" metaphor. One is the word "war." The other is the word "cancer."
Derek Lowe: There is no disease called cancer. There’s actually thousands and thousands and thousands of diseases that we see as uncontrolled cell growth.
Derek Lowe is a medicinal chemist. He’s worked on cancer drugs. He says calling for war on cancer is like calling for war on fever. Or back pain. Cancer is the symptom, not the cause.
Lowe: If you just look at cancer and say 'ah -- uncontrolled cell growth!' There’s thousands of ways to get that. And there’s probably going to have to be thousands of ways to fix it.
As for the war part of the metaphor, oncologist Alfred Neugut at Columbia University says that word sets up an expectation.
Alfred Neugut: A war is by its nature a time-limited event, in which there’s a defined end point. Or there should be.
But in the case of the war on cancer:
Neugut: If we’re still fighting for 40 years, then that implies failure.
Warner: Does it?
Neugut: Of course it does. If I go to a bar mitzvah, you know, some old relative will say, 'so when are you going to cure cancer already?'
In four decades, finding the "cure" for cancer went from a political platform to a punchline. But maybe the bigger problem with declaring war on a disease is that it becomes a problem left for the generals. (The doctors, in this case.)
In 1971, when the war on cancer was declared, the entire budget for the National Cancer Institute was for medical treatment, which you’d expect, but since then the greatest strides against cancer haven’t been because of new treatments, but because of better prevention: getting people to stop smoking, get regular mammograms. It would take two more decades for the government to put aside money for that.
Neugut: In 1990, the Congress forced, forced, the NCI director to start giving money to prevention research.
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10. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE)
State acts to protect woodpecker – Daily Democrat
Over the objections of the U.S. Forest Service, wildlife officials in California are taking steps at the state level to protect a rare woodpecker partly because the federal agency won't stop logging the bird's ever-shrinking habitat in burned stands of national forests in the Sierra Nevada.
Guest Viewpoint: The timber racket – Eugene Register Guard
A culture of corruption and political payoffs harms the land and ourselves.
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11. Excerpted from George Monbiot piece in Guardian Weekly 30.12.11
"These conflicts of negative freedom were summarized in one of the great poems of the 19th century, which could be seen as the founding document of British environmentalism.
In The Fallen Elm, John Clare describes the felling, presumably by his landlord, of the tree he loved that grew beside his home."
Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom's ways
So thy old shadow must a tyrant be.
Thou'st heard the knave, abusing those in power,
Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free.
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12.
I don't care who you are--get those reindeer off my roof!
Join us for an exciting line-up of speakers in the 2012 Conversations at the Herbst Theatre series. Tickets are available for individual events or the entire series:
» April 24: Nature Deficit Disorder
Richard Louv (co-founder of Children & Nature Network) in conversation with Dawn Scott (Spirit Rock coordinator)
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13. Internet Resources for Plant Enthusiasts
I was recently introduced to two great resources while searching for the meaning of pardalinum (as in Lilium pardalinum.) The Dictionary of Botanical Epithets, one of these resources, is apparently the work of one alpine rock garden enthusiast. The other site is also the work of a dedicated amateur. California Plant Names: Latin and Greek Meanings and Derivations is compiled and maintained by Michael Charters, a name I became familiar with searching for plant photos on CalPhotos. Both sites are great help to those of us who have not mastered Greek and Latin.
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14. Feedback
Name Withheld:
hi Jake,
re Item 10 below on global warming
Today's Sunday New York Times 2012 New Year's Day edition editorial, "A Tempestuous Year"
concurs -- noting that politicians on both sides in Washington are overwhelmingly and willfully ignoring global warming.
the US has 3-4 weather disasters, costing $1 billion each, every year.
In 2009, we had 9 such disasters.
in 2010, we had 12 such disasters
we already know that US west wildfires are increasing in number, in length, and in intensity as a result of climate change.
Link to summary explanation of the study
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/environment/july-dec09/climatefire_09-02.html
Every significant city in the Bay Area signed on to the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, representing key Bay Area cities from San Francisco to Berkeley to San Mateo to little old Pacifica.
link to list of participating mayors:
http://www.usmayors.org/climateprotection/list.asp
Question for the local politicians, who clearly know better:
What will you say when your cities burn and flood, when food is so expensive people can't afford it? What will you tell your children and your neighbors when their cities are so broken financially, and no one can pay for the latest disaster?
Ooops?
Read the NYT editorial here
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/a-tempestuous-year.html
Every time I see politicians fingered as culprits (I often do myself) I can't help asking the question "Why are they behaving thus?"
We know the reason. Most of the time they reflect constituents' wishes. Yes, we know about campaign contributions, too; however, shouldn't we constituents be paying closer attention? We usually end up voting for them.
That is a lot to ask for in a complex and fast-moving world. But democracy is a very demanding form of govt, and shouldn't we be asking ourselves whether we measure up?
I can't measure up. I can't even begin to keep track of what the people I vote for are doing. True, I do note what they're doing on high-profile issues, but they make bazillions of decisions, and many of them would upset me if I knew. That is just the reality. You and I have the same representative, Jackie Speier. I vote for her; she is OK on big issues. If we looked closely at her entire record, however, how happy would we be?
This little homily is not aimed at you, but at us voters. We need reminding that we are part of the mess and it's healthy to remind ourselves of that.
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15.
New Year's Resolution
Well, I did it again, bringing in
that infant Purity across the land,
welcoming Innocence with gin
in New York, waiting up
to help Chicago,
Denver, L.A., Fairbanks, Hon-
olulu--and now
the high school bands are alienating Dallas,
and girls in gold and tangerine
have lost all touch with Pasadena,
and young men with muscles and missing teeth
are dreaming of personal fouls,
and it's all beginning again, just like
those other Januaries in
instant reply.
But I've had enough
of turning to look back, the old
post-morteming of defeat:
people I loved but didn't touch,
friends I haven't seen for years,
strangers who smiled but didn't speak--failures,
failures. No,
I refuse to leave it at that, because
somewhere, off camera,
January is coming like Venus
up from the murk of December, re-
virginized, as innocent
of loss as any dawn. Resolved: this year
I'm going to break my losing streak,
I'm going to stay alert, reach out,
speak when not spoken to,
read the minds of people in the streets.
I'm going to practice every day,
stay in training, and be moderate
in all things.
All things but love.
~ Philip Appleman ~
(New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996)
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16. ALERTS TO YEAR 2012 THREATS IN EUROPE: BY JOHN CLEESE
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.
The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.
Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels .
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.
Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.
-- John Cleese - British writer, actor and tall person
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17. English spelling
You write potato, I write ghoughpteighbteau
Ghoti and tchoghs may not immediately strike readers as staples of the British diet; and even those most enamoured of written English’s idiosyncrasies may wince at this tendentious rendering of “fish and chips”. Yet the spelling, easily derived from other words*, highlights the shortcomings of English orthography. This has long bamboozled foreigners and natives alike, and may underlie the national test results which revealed that almost a third of English 14-year-olds cannot read properly.
…Due partly to its mixed Germanic and Latin origins, English spelling is strikingly inconsistent. Three things have exacerbated this confusion. The Great Vowel Shift in the 15th and 16th centuries altered the pronunciation of many words but left their spelling unchanged; and…the 15th century advent of printing presses initially staffed by non-English speakers helped to magnify the muddle. Second, misguided attempts to align English spelling with (often imagined) Latin roots…led to the introduction of superfluous “silent” letters. Third, despite interest in spelling among figures as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, Prince Philip and the Mormons, English has never, unlike Spanish, Italian and French, had a central regulatory authority capable of overseeing standardisation.
Yet as various countries have found, identifying a problem and solving it are different matters: spelling arouses surprising passions. Residents in Cologne once called the police after a hairdresser put up a sign advertising Haarflege, rather than the correct Haarpflege (hair care). Measures to simplify German spelling were rejected by newspapers…and defeated in a referendum in Schleswig-Holstein…A similar fate befell the Dutch…French reforms in the 1990s didn’t get off the runway…and attempts this year to bring European and Brazilian Portuguese into line were denounced in Portugal as capitulation to its powerful ex-colony.
There are linguistic reasons too why spelling reform is tricky to undertake. Written language is more than a phonetic version of its spoken cousin: it contains etymological and morphological clues to meaning too. So although spelling English more phonetically might make it easier to read, it might also make it harder to understand.
Yet despite these concerns, some changes are worth considering; it takes more than twice as long to learn to read English as it does to read most other west European languages…Standardising rules on doubled consonants—now more or less bereft of logic—would be a start. Removing erroneous silent letters would also help. And as George Bernard Shaw observed, suppressing superfluous letters will in time reduce the waste of resources and trees. In an era of global warming, that is not to be sniffed at.
* Fish: gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in nation (courtesy of GB Shaw). Chips: tch as in match, o as in women, gh as in hiccough.
The Economist 16 August 2008
(Passions, yes. I feel them rising when I encounter spelling or careless or unclear usage. And I am now solicitous of the etymology of words--their origin and historical development of meaning. Fresh out of high school, when I was in the Navy in the 1940s I went through a phase of spelling phonetically--eg, tonite, lo-cost, enuf. Now, they make me cringe; merely writing them down is like fingernails on a blackboard. [Whoops, blackboard--that dates me, doesn't it?] I now write dialogue, catalogue, &c, to show their French derivations.)
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18. Miscellany I
Gary Younge in Guardian Weekly, 1-7 July 2005
"Since vice-president Dick Cheney claimed that the insurgency was "in its last throes" almost 80 American soldiers and about 600 Iraqi civilians have died. His tortured explanation last month: "if you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period".
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue," wrote George Orwell..."And then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
_______________
Excerpted from The Economist 2 July 2005
Mitt Romney, Republican governor of Massachusetts, is testing the waters for a run at the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2008. He has a chance. Republicans like governors, and Mr. Romney is also a self-made squillionaire with executive-style hair and no apparent vices.
In November 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that gays had a constitutional right to marry....Conservatives are outraged....they complain that allowing homosexuals to marry will degrade the most important institution of a civilised society. Some even claim that it could open the door to legalised unions with horses.
(Or dogs. Don't forget dogs; they're people too, you know.)
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19. Miscellany II
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
According to Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher's comment after Berlin Wall came down was "We've beaten the Germans twice. Now they're back."
"We all know what to do but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it." Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg
If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all. -Booker T. Jones, musician and songwriter (b. 1944)
If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers. -Steve Allen, television host, musician, actor, comedian, and writer (1921-2000)
(OK, Steve, I'll test your proposition: I am praying that Republicans become enlightened. How long should I wait?)
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20. I didn't know that Mozilla Firefox browser was a non-profit organization until recently. Here is its entertaining propaganda blurb:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/9.0.1/whatsnew/
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