Night clerk at the infinite hotel.
"Petroleum resists the five-act form"
So I just wanted to note briefly that in Winston-Salem this week, the high-profile public activist response to a ballot measure enshrining anti-gay bigotry into law has been nonviolent civil disobedience in the registrar's office, and I wanted to note also that in Los Angeles four years ago what happened in the immediate wake of Prop 8's passage was that there was a big nighttime vigil/rally best remembered for the fact that black LGBTs and allies who showed up to join the crowd were yelled at and made to feel unwelcome and unsafe by angry white people (including at least one real live n-word deployment!) because Prop 8 was Those Homophobic Black People's Fault, don't you know.
Anyway, that's all, carry on with what you were saying about how we should boycott North Carolina and leave them to their filthy inbred ways
The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based 501(c)3 nonprofit for unrepentant pro-pollution assholes, has decided to get attention for its upcoming fake scientific conference by modeling its media strategy on creepy right-wing freeway billboards like that one near the Washington-Oregon border with the giant Uncle Sam that always says something about Governor Gregoire being a secret Muslim Communist or whatever the hell.
Seriously, this is an actual thing; they actually made a billboard buy to put up a big photo of the Unabomber with the red-on-white caption "I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?" and their website address. (Yes, the words Global Warming are Inappropriately Capitalized on the billboard.)
The style convention in every major news outlet, even when covering something like Heartland in opinion pieces with a reality-based bias, is apparently still to use the word "skeptics" to describe the pro-pollution, anti-knowledge assholes who fund fake science conferences, harass and libel working scientists in retaliation for doing their job of studying the planet earth (and, by studying the planet, making it possible for humanity to find out how to not destroy our lives and the lives of species around us), and repeat bullshit like "believe in global warming" until the phrase sounds like it means something.
Harold Camping had enough money to get a bunch of billboards too, but nobody thought that meant we had to take his side of the debate seriously.
Some things we can do about this particular crew:
We can work on trying to take more of their money away (public pressure has already gotten GE to sever their funding ties with Heartland).
We can support projects like the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund that stand up for climate scientists.
And, I don't know, we can kick out as many Republicans as possible in the next congressional election? but that was kind of a given anyway, and not super inspiring, I know.
Dear Newsweek:
Agatha - "Queer as in Fuck You" - Panic Attack (Rumbletowne Records, 2009)
Getting people together in the real world is hard – the coordination cost of any gathering runs into the inertia of modern life at every turn. (Robert Putnam* in one sentence.) For many of us, the first time Dean appeared on our radar was when 300 people showed up for a Howard Dean MeetUp in New York City in early 2003. This was unprecedented, and Dean himself took note of it, coming down from Vermont to speak to his supporters.
We were right to be excited about this MeetUp, but wrong about the reason, because MeetUp was founded to lower the coordination costs of real world gatherings.
The size of the MeetUp in NYC was as much a testament to MeetUp as to Dean — it's a wonderful tool for turning interest into attendance, but it created a false sense of broad enthusiasm. Prior to MeetUp, getting 300 people to turn out would have meant a huge and latent population of Dean supporters, but because MeetUp makes it easier to gather the faithful, it confused us into thinking that we were seeing an increase in Dean support, rather than a decrease in the hassle of organizing groups.
We've seen this sort of effect before, as when written correspondence on letterhead stopped being a sign of a solvent company, thanks to the desktop publishing revolution, or with the way email to politicians matters less than telegrams, because email is cheaper and easier to send. As we get the tools to make such gatherings easy, we need to concentrate on the outcome of those gatherings, rather than assuming strength simply by looking at the number of attendees.
Clay Shirky, "Exiting Deanspace" in the 2004 collection Extreme Democracy (link goes to PDF)
* You wouldn't have needed to explain this reference for an audience of wonks in 2004, but Robert Putnam is the Bowling Alone guy. -ed.
So, I read my last Savage Love column this week. (In case this post sends you off to read it, be aware that the first letter this week is quite a doozy in its own right – by “quite a doozy” I mean “rather triggering story from someone clearly in an abusive relationship trying to apply logic to her partner’s gaslighting” – but Dan didn’t completely blow that one, like, he wasn’t great with it but at least he put the word “abusive” in his response.)
I’m here for letter #2 from this week's column, in part because, as very nearly the last trans person who was still actually reading Savage Love on the regular, I feel like I ought to pick things up and put them away before I go.
Park Ave. in Emeryville; the worst-off of these plants seemed to be the ones outside that new apartment (condo?) building with the sign advertising how dog-friendly they are.
One of the more normal-looking bushes, for reference:
Update: Though twitter came up empty-handed, my father took it upon himself to ask the nearest landscape architect and received this answer:
This odd looking stuff is called "witches broom"(neat name, huh) in the vernacular. It is an air borne complex of simple organisms that modifies the soft new growth of the oak for it's own useful purposes. It occurs in, and thrives in, warm, moist conditions. While it is rarely fatal to its host it can weaken a tree heavily occupied by it, and in some cases weaken the host oak so much that and it becomes susceptible to other organisms not so relatively benign.
Oaks in watered or overly moist conditions are susceptible. Oaks heavily pruned with subsequently stimulated new growth will be susceptible in warm moist conditions. I've seen some oak specimens live with minor to major "witches broom" colonies for over forty years. Usually when a proper moisture regime or weather conditions dry out, the host oak throws the "broom" off. Some folks spray various nostrums or cut the colonies off. Such approaches satisfy the human need to "do something". Only proper and properly timed pruning, watering, planting, and placement are the real strategies to preventing or "curing" this condition of hosting.
Via the facebook wall of a friend of mine with a background in outdoor science-ing, a trio of links—two of them direct reflections on the Trayvon Martin case, one a 2011 post from the Outdoor Afro archives.
DNLee, blogging at Scientific American: Brown Faces in White Places doing science (and wearing hoodies)
And I imagine that is what is happening with so many of us who do science – in the field or industry – or work in academia. Somehow, no one was expecting to see this face – this brown face or young face or female face or male face or unkempt face or this hoodie-clad face, whatever it may be.
Oftentimes, persons of authority and persons of privilege (usually one in the same) have no problem descending upon us, questioning our presence in this place. Asking, nay, demanding that we justify our presence in a place. Behave in an acquiescent manner while we are being held up and distracted from our jobs or simply minding our law-abiding business, lest we be arrested or harmed.
[heads up: the comments section gets racist really fast!]
J. Drew Lanham, guest posting at Outdoor Afro: Birding While Black: Does it Really Matter?
Birding is among the “whitest” things a person can do. I just happen to be one of the few that adds a different hue to the mix. It’s critical that along with biodiversity we think about the human component as something just as important. Linking humans of all hues to nature–through birds or otherwise, means that more will be engaged in trying to save it. Air, water, birds, trees–we all need them. That word has to get out. ...
We all had anecdotes of racism on the birding trail—covert, overt and sometimes scary—to solidify why the discussion of diversity had to be enjoined by the almost lily white cadre of millions who call themselves birders. The hours of talking were a boon to my soul as I learned from this group of extraordinary people why the face of American birding has to change. That night, after much laughter, some empathetic anger and maybe even a timid tear or two, we all committed ourselves to the effort—to making something happen beyond the talk that too many conservation organizations simply throw out as well-meaning politically correct double talk when pressed about why the lack of color is so prevalent among them.
(The piece below got a nod from Outdoor Afro founder Rue Mapp on facebook, who linked it saying:
"I have started and stopped writing about the 'Treyvon Effect' on black children and the outdoors. But my drafts have exhausted and saddened me to no end. Thank goodness someone else could get the words out, and in this context")
The Drinking Bird: Trayvon Martin and the scarcity of black birders
Some of the most devastating words came from Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, who has written extensively and deeply on the Martin shooting, and who, in a recent column, shared his own mother’s words to him when he moved from posh suburbs to the city of Newark.
“Don’t run in public.” Lest someone think you’re suspicious.
“Don’t run while carrying anything in your hands.” Lest someone think you stole something.
“Don’t talk back to the police.” Lest you give them a reason to take you to jail or worse
I don’t know, but those words just about broke me. I, a middle-class white kid, would never have been accused of any of this. It would never have crossed the minds of my parents to need to say such things. And here I am, so casually unaware of the realities confronting those with which I share a conversation, a workplace, a community. ...
For a while I thought that the primary barrier to inclusion of more black and brown faces in birding had more to do with socioeconomic issues than racial ones. After all, it costs a little bit of money to outfit yourself for the field, to get a decent field guide, to pay for the gas to get to where the birds are. These are hurdles that people of limited means, which disproportionally consist of African-American and Hispanic folks, often can’t overcome. And that’s almost certainly part of it, but in the light of the Trayvon Martin shooting I’m not longer convinced that that’s the primary reason we don’t see more black birders. I don’t think it’s necessarily anything inherent with birding, or nature study more generally, that needs to be resolved to attract diversity. I’m starting to see that it’s bigger than that.
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Night clerk at the infinite hotel.
Night clerk at the infinite hotel.
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