Some people just lack the ability to laugh at themselves. That’s where I come in.
What if the Mayan Calendar ends in 5105, and we’ve just been holding it upside down?
From Funny Times, December 2012
1. Arc Ecology urgently needs your help/this year 10 million girls married before 18
2. A new way of looking - at mosses, or anything else
3. Next screening of Lost Landscapes of San Francisco Jan 8
4. Lands End/Eagle Point overlook relocation - site visit Jan 12
5. Fiscal cliff ruminations
6. Some interesting stats on a well-known body of >500 employees
7. A single rose can contain all the suns and worlds of the universe
8. Light source a million trillion times brighter than the Sun/wimps created the universe
9. The Gift - Mary Oliver
10. Feedback - colonoscopy
11. Confusing headlines
1. Two appeals, one urgent:
Arc Ecology, an environmental justice nonprofit based in Bayview/Hunters Point [ http://www.arcecology.org/ ] is having major financial difficulties, not of its own making.
So when you're making end-of-year donations to other worthy organizations, don't forget Arc. It's easy -- just go to its website and click on Donate. Or send a check to Arc Ecology, 1331 Evans, San Francisco CA 94124.
___________________
Population Institute:
In 2012, 10 million girls were married before they were 18 years of age.
That breaks down to about 25,000 child brides per day, some of them as young as 8 years of age.
In 2013 let's stand together to end this violation of basic human rights.
Show your support for ending child marriage by sharing this resolution on Facebook and Twitter.
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2.
From Jim Shevock's review of Gathering Moss, A Natural and Cultural History of the Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2003, Oregon State University Press, Corvallis OR.
The closing passage of the Preface sets the stage for all of the essays that follow. "...In indigenous ways of knowing, we say that a thing can not be understood until it is known by all four aspects of our being; mind, body, emotion, and spirit. The scientific way of knowing relies only on the empirical information from the world, gathered by the body and interpreted by the mind. In order to tell the mosses' story I need both approaches, objective and subjective. These essays intentionally give voice to both ways of knowing, letting matter and spirit walk companionably side by side. And sometimes even dance."
Here are a few passages to give you the flavor of Kimmerer's prose and how she brings us into the world of mosses.
"...Learning to see mosses is more like listening than looking. A cursory glance will not do it. Straining to hear a far-away voice or catch a nuance in the quiet subtext of a conversation requires attentiveness, a filtering of all the noise, to catch the music. Mosses are not elevator music; they are the intertwined threads of a Beethoven quartet. You can look at the mosses the way you listen deeply to running water over rocks. The soothing sound of a stream has many voices, the soothing green of mosses likewise."
"...At the scale of a moss, walking through the woods as a six-foot human is a lot like flying over the continent at 32,000 feet. So far above the ground, and on our way to somewhere else, we run the risk of missing an entire realm which lies at our feet. Every day we pass over them without seeing. Mosses and other small beings issue an invitation to dwell for a time right at the limits of ordinary perception. All it requires of us is attentiveness. Look in a certain way and a whole new world can be revealed."
"Something I took for granted suddenly has come alive, because I have been given its story. After reading this book, I took a magnifying glass outside and pored over tree trunks. I have seen Robin Kimmerer's miniature landscape for myself. Yet, this is so much more than a book about mosses. This is a Native American woman speaking. This is a mother's story. This is science revealed through the human psyche. Robin Kimmerer is a scientist who combines empiricism with all other forms of knowing. Hers is a spectacularly different view of the world, and her true voice needs to be heard."
Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home
Some moss pictures:
https://www.google.com/search
q=mosses&hl=en&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=IsDUUObXFubQ2QWW84HQBA&sqi=2&ved=0CI0BEIke&biw=1195&bih=886
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3. The next screening of Lost Landscapes of San Francisco (Year 7)
Tuesday, January 8 at Internet Archive in San Francisco.
300 Funston Avenue (corner Clement), San Francisco.
Doors open 6:30. Show 7:30.
http://archive.org/about/contact.php#directions
$5 or 5 books for Internet Archive's book scanning project.
IMPORTANT: Please RSVP to rsvp@archive.org to reserve seats.
First shown at the Castro Theatre on December 11, this year's show consists of 75% new material plus a few sequences repeated by popular demand. You'll see an eclectic montage of rediscovered and rarely-seen film clips showing life, landscapes, labor and leisure in a vanished San Francisco as captured by amateurs, newsreel cameramen and studio filmmakers.
New sequences in this high-definition program include the Japanese-American community in the Western Addition before redevelopment; shipwrecks off the Northern shoreline; 1930s demonstrations against the shipment of scrap metal to Japan; family films from the Richmond, Sunset and Excelsior Districts; rediscovered films of San Francisco transit; and newly discovered, never-shown documentary footage of Market Street, the waterfront and Rincon Hill. Much of the show has been scanned from Kodachrome and original 35mm material.
As usual, this year's Internet Archive screening is an interactive experience: audience members will BE the soundtrack, identifying places and events, asking questions, loudly discussing San Francisco's part and future as the film unreels.
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4. Lands End/Eagle Point overlook
The Parks Conservancy and NPS are currently preparing designs for the removal of the existing overlook at Eagles Point and its replacement with a new more subtle viewpoint further down the trail. NPS and the Parks Conservancy are also looking at stabilizing the trail, improving its surface, and removing unsafe or diseased trees. The work won’t begin until fall 2013, but we’d like to share with you the designs and to answer any questions.
We are hosting a site visit with the Parks Conservancy’s lead landscape architect and NPS staff so that they can answer questions from the public. The site visit is scheduled for Saturday, January 12, at 10am at the Eagles Point trailhead.
http://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectID=42613
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5.
The EconomistJS: I find the problems of Congressional Republicans intensely interesting. It is apparent to everyone else that those who stand in the way of an accord to this fiscal dilemma are in an untenable and perilous position. It is lose-lose. I have a small degree of sympathy for some of them, because if they do vote for a tax increase they will almost certainly be challenged in the 2014 primary--and likely lose. Yet some of them know that their party’s--not to mention the nation’s and the world’s--interest demands that they come to an accommodation.
I would like to sit back and enjoy their anguish, but this is much too serious a matter, and I have no idea what the fallout will be. Be careful what you wish for; this is dangerous for everyone.
May you live in an interesting time.
"The shift is about to hit the fan." Tom Shadyac, film director
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6. (2008 - in need of updating)
Can you imagine working at the following Company? It has a little over 500 employees with the following statistics:
* 29 have been accused of spousal abuse,
* 7 have been arrested for fraud,
* 19 have been accused of writing bad checks,
* 117 have bankrupted at least two businesses,
* 3 have been arrested for assault,
* 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit,
* 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges,
* 8 have been arrested for shoplifting,
* 21 are current defendants in lawsuits,
* In 1998 alone, 84 were stopped for drunk driving,
Can you guess which organization this is? Give up?
It is the 535 members of your United States Congress. The same group that perpetually cranks out hundreds upon hundreds of new laws designed
to keep the rest of us in line.
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7.
“The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.” J.B.S. Haldane, evolutionary biologist
A single rose can contain all the suns and worlds of the universe...” Anonymous
Margo Bors photo
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8.
Bright idea
“Enigmatic Eruptions: Gamma-ray bursts lack supernova fireworks” states that gamma-ray bursts are “a million trillion times as bright as the sun.” The sun is so bright that humans can’t look directly at it from 93 million miles away. How can we possibly wrap our minds around something a million trillion times brighter? Astronomy is great.
Donald Kaufmann
Philadelphia, PA
(LTE, Science News, 11/11/06)
LTE, Guardian Weekly, 13.12.12
Wimps created the universe
So the things making up the dark matter of the universe are wimps. This acronym – weakly interactive massive particle – is clearly contrived to draw a connection with the everyday meaning of wimp – "a weak, ineffectual, timid person". As your correspondent Robin McKie says of dark matter: "These are wimps: they are with us all the time though they are very hard to detect."
One of my best friends is a wimp, and on his behalf I found this a bit offensive. At least I did until the end of the article, where expert Chamkaur Ghag said: "So galaxies would not have formed, nor stars, nor planets – nor life, had it not been for dark matter. We are here because wimps held our galaxy together.”
David Hamer
Ashfield, NSW, Australia
(This LTE inspired me to retrieve from my archives a several-year-old item I wrote):
Astronomers and physicists indulge in acronyms even more than others, it seems. For example, at their WHIM (Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium), they found the sky is full of DEERS (deeply embedded energetic radio sources), PIGS (partially ionized globules), and FOXES (fluctuating optical and X-ray-emitting sources). Not to mention WIMPS and MACHOS. That would be weakly-interacting massive particles, and massive compact halo objects, respectively. Wimps and machos have not been discovered; they are theoretical particles which theorists dream up to account for the missing matter (dark matter) of the universe. The jury is still out, but WIMPs very early on issued a knock-out punch to MACHOS, which are no longer in contention. JS
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9.
The Gift
After the wind-bruised sea
furrowed itself back
into the folds of blue, I found
in the black wrack
a shell called the Neptune -
tawny and white,
spherical,
with a tail
and a tower
and a dark door,
and all of it
no larger
than my fist.
It looked, you might say,
very expensive.
I thought of its travels
in the Atlantic's
wind-pounded bowl
and wondered
that it was still intact.
Ah yes, there was
that door
that held only the eventual, inevitable
emptiness.
There's that - there's always that.
Still, what a house
to leave behind!
I held it
like the wisest of books
and imagined
its travels toward my hand.
And now, your hand.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(The Truro Bear and Other Adventures)
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Shelley
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10. Feedback
On Dec 20, 2012, at 9:36 PM, NN wrote:
Hi Jake,
I resisted having a colonoscopy until I was 70, way past the recc age. What convinced me was that my Primary Care physician whom I adore, said the last way she wants to go is with colon cancer. She said that dying from cc is extremely painful.
When I had my first one they recc another in fives years even though they didn’t find any polyps. I had that earlier this year and now am clear for 10 years.
Just do it.
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11. Confusing headlines
TRAFFIC DEAD RISE SLOWLY
WILLIAM KELLY, 87, WAS FED SECRETARY
ALL-STARS TURN ON SPARSE CROWD
NATION'S HUNGRY ATTACK MEESE
U.S, FOOD SERVICE
FEEDS THOUSANDS,
GROSSES MILLIONS
COLLEGIANS ARE TURNING TO VEGETABLES
MILK DRINKERS ARE TURNING TO POWDER
HALF-MILLION ITALIAN WOMEN SEEN ON PILL
SAFETY EXPERTS SAY SCHOOL BUS PASSENGERS SHOULD BE BELTED
SCIENTISTS TO HAVE FORD'S EAR
S. FLORIDA ILLEGAL ALIENS CUT IN HALF BY NEW LAW
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