Literary Appreciation

Have a look at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM

Math lessons for locavores

Eating local isn't always the most energy efficient way to acquire food.

Read the New York Time OpEd here

My response is: Well, duh.... But I think the piece is directed towards people whose environmental ethics are based less in science than they are in religion/spirituality.

I also take issue with the organic food movement, for similar reasons.

Color Film from 1922

Plastic into Oil??

What the eff? Have you guys heard about this? I haven't seen any other news stories about this, but it seems revolutionary to me. What do you all think are the implications of this technology?

What Is It About 20-Somethings?

If you only read one article on this listserv, I'd say read this one. It's long, but important.

This article really resonated with me personally because it touched on a lot of the stress I have with my parents and the way I look at life. I feel like I fit very classically into what is increasingly being called "emerging adulthood." So it was helpful for me to read more about this and attach a name to what I feel like I've been going through.

The part that I think was most important to me - and it was really only glossed over in the article - is when they said that many people will go through this developmental stage regardless and that this may account for many of the midlife crises that we see. If you don't spend time developing who you are and what you want, if you are pushed into a way of life before psychologically developing in other words, then you are at risk of rebelling later in life when it would be more detrimental because of family or work-related commitments. Basically, your twenties is a perfect time to develop in this way because of your lack of commitments.

Anyway, I'd love to see what others had to say about this, even discuss it at Taco Dinner tomorrow. Feel free to comment with your thoughts.

Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain

I think pretty much all Taco Dinner Night people would enjoy this article. It's about a group of five neuroscience researchers who disconnect from technology on a kayaking trip and discuss the impact that technology has on the brain. It's well-written and interesting.

Excerpt:

The five scientists on the trip can be loosely divided into two groups: the believers and the skeptics.

The believers are Mr. Strayer and Paul Atchley, 40, a professor at the University of Kansas who studies teenagers’ compulsive use of cellphones. They argue that heavy technology use can inhibit deep thought and cause anxiety, and that getting out into nature can help. They take pains in their own lives to regularly log off.

The skeptics use their digital gadgets without reservation. They are not convinced that anything lasting will come of the trip — personally or scientifically.

This group includes the fast-talking Mr. Braver, 41, a brain imaging expert; Steven Yantis, 54, the tall and contemplative chairman of the psychological and brain sciences department at Johns Hopkins, who studies how people switch between tasks; and Art Kramer, 57, a white-bearded professor at the University of Illinois who has gained attention for his studies of the neurological benefits of exercise.

Also on the trip are a reporter and a photographer, and Richard Boyer, a quiet outdoorsman and accomplished landscape painter, who helps Mr. Strayer lead the journey.

Among the bright academic lights in the group, Mr. Kramer is the most prominent. At the time of the trip he was about to take over a $300,000-a-year position as director of the Beckman Institute, a leading research center at the University of Illinois with around 1,000 scientists and staff workers and tens of millions of dollars in grant financing.

Read more

Ethics and Disgust

I'd be curious to hear what you all thought about this article. Basic premise: that societal ethics have been shaped by our sense of disgust throughout human evolution.

Personally, I'm not so sure about this. How does the golden rule fit in? That's widely considered one of the strongest ethical rules throughout history, yet I don't feel disgusted when I don't treat others how I wish to be treated. It seems to me that a lot of theological and moral discussions are extensions of logic to human behavior, which is (allegedly) counter to purely physical reactions like disgust. This is why some men feel disgusted by thinking of the sex of homosexual men, yet can still bring themselves to approve of gay marriage.

I tend to believe that the strongest ethical reactions often times come from people who follow the golden rule the least, hypocrites in other words. They are disgusted and feel revulsion to what they protest, yet will often times be the first ones to fall under closer scrutiny. Conversely, the people I know who are the most accepting and ethical are the ones who are much more intellectual about the whole thing.

Thoughts?

Friendship (to facebook or not to facebook)

I think that a lot of us would find this article interesting. It's about the change over time in our friendships, what it used to mean and what potentially it could mean in the future. How has the internet been changing our conceptions of friendship? Are we in danger of moving towards becoming Solarians (see article), or is this fear-mongering from a technophobe? Discuss!

Excerpt:

But we live now in a climate in which friends appear dispensable. While most of us wouldn’t last long outside the intricate web of interdependence that supplies all our physical needs—imagine no electricity, money, or sewers—we’ve come to demand of ourselves truly radical levels of emotional self-sufficiency. In America today, half of adults are unmarried, and more than a quarter live alone. As Robert Putnam showed in his 2000 book Bowling Alone, civic involvement and private associations were on the wane at the end of the 20th century. Several years later, social scientists made headlines with a survey showing that Americans had a third fewer nonfamily confidants than two decades earlier. A quarter of us had no such confidants at all.

In a separate study, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, authors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (2009), surveyed more than 3,000 randomly chosen Americans and found they had an average of four “close social contacts” with whom they could discuss important matters or spend free time. But only half of these contacts were solely friends; the rest were a variety of others, including spouses and children.

Here, as on so many fronts, we often buy what we need. The affluent commonly hire confidants in the form of talk therapists, with whom they may maintain enduring (if remunerated) relationships conducted on a first-name basis. The number of household pets has exploded throughout the Western world, suggesting that not just dogs but cats, rats, and parakeets are often people’s best friends. John Cacioppo, a University of Chicago psychologist who studies loneliness, says he’s convinced that more Americans are lonely—not because we have fewer social contacts, but because the ones we have are more harried and less meaningful.

Read more.

Sex and Beer

Orgies or Beer? You Only Get One

The link above is a blog post which discusses a book Dan Savage has recently brought to attention: Sex at Dawn

The post discusses the connection between agriculture (including the production of fermented beverages) and monogamy. It's possible there might be a connection between these two things, but I also think any sort causal relationship is purely speculative. The author of the blog post puts a lot of emphasis on alcohol being a main driver behind the development of an agricultural lifestyle. Not sure I buy that argument, even though it's an interesting one.

Not an acticle but an event!

I really wish I could attend this event with some Taco Night folks if people were interested in attending, but a las I will be away for the entirety of the run! But it looks intriguing, at the very least it should be an entertaining walk at the Arboretum. Click here to go to the website, the following is just copy and pasted from the website itself. :)

Tyson Forbes as Emerson & Sam Elmore as Thoreau in 'Nature'

TigerLion Arts Presents 'Nature' Walking Play at the Arboretum

The Arboretum will provide the setting when TigerLion Arts theater troupe presents Nature, a mythic telling of Emerson and Thoreau's mutual love affair with the natural world, Thursdays through Sundays, Aug. 19-Sept. 5.

Performances are scheduled as follows:
Aug. 19, 20, 26, 27 at 6 p.m.
Aug. 21-22, 28-29 at 3 and 6 p.m.
Sept. 2-3 at 6 p.m.
Sept. 4-5 at 3 and 6 p.m.

Grounded in the story of Emerson and Thoreau's friendship and set in a playful theatrical style woven together with music and song, Nature offers a perspective of their lives that is strikingly relevant, richly complex, and yet utterly simple.

Nature will be performed outdoors as a 'walking play,' taking the audience on a journey through the Johanna Frerichs Garden for Wildlife at the Arboretum. This family-friendly story features poignant excerpts from the writings of Emerson and Thoreau.

As scenes unfold and grow into bold expressions of the pair's revolutionary philosophies, audience members will be inspired to reflect on their own relationship with nature.

Nature is a collaborative effort led by local actor Tyson Forbes (TigerLion Arts), a direct descendent of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who Forbes plays in the production. Forbes has performed in regional theaters nationwide and in numerous roles at the Guthrie, most notably Thomas Jefferson in 1776.

He has always felt a deep connection to Emerson and Thoreau, saying, "They were both radicals of their time, calling on their peers to think for themselves and be agents of change. I believe their words and ideas are as neces­sary now as they were then."

Playing the role of Thoreau is co-creator and actor Sam Elmore from Boulder, Colo. Director and co-creator Markell Kiefer (who is married to Forbes) has a passion and gift for staging outdoor walking theatre, and Music Director Dick Hensold has been called "a master piper with an exquisite touch." His Northumbrian bagpipes, flutes and recorders will join the glorious voice and violin of musician Elena Orsack.

TigerLion Arts, with its mission to celebrate human wisdom and the spirit of Nature through creative works that awaken, inform, and delight, presents Nature in collaboration with the Arboretum, Life Science Foundation, University of Minnesota's Center for Spirituality & Healing and Lily Springs Farm. The troupe performed an earlier work The Buddha Prince walking play at the Arboretum in the summer of 2009.

Nature is intended to tour to cities throughout the US, incorporating community members and local musicians into each production, and providing resources and curriculum aimed at reconnecting individuals to their natural environment.

Photos and more information on Nature available at www.tigerlion.org/nature.

But Will It Make You Happy?

An article about a rising trend in consumption: buying experiences instead of stuff.

Excerpt:

And it’s been a truism for eons that extra cash always makes life a little easier. Studies over the last few decades have shown that money, up to a certain point, makes people happier because it lets them meet basic needs. The latest round of research is, for lack of a better term, all about emotional efficiency: how to reap the most happiness for your dollar.

So just where does happiness reside for consumers? Scholars and researchers haven’t determined whether Armani will put a bigger smile on your face than Dolce & Gabbana. But they have found that our types of purchases, their size and frequency, and even the timing of the spending all affect long-term happiness.

One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.

“ ‘It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.” (The Journal of Consumer Psychology plans to publish it in a coming issue.)

Olde Timey Photos

http://www.shorpy.com/

The Detroit River circa 1910. "Sinking cast section of Michigan Central Railroad Company tunnel."

Q: How many books are there in the world?

A: 129,864,880 - According to this article by Google. The entry is a little dry though.

Mashable gives a brief synopsis of their methodology:

Google admits their definition is imperfect, but it’s workable and similar to what ISBNs are supposed to represent. ISBN, or International Standard Book Numbers, are designed to be unique identifiers for books. Because they’ve only been around for 30-40 years and are used in mostly Western countries, they can’t be used by themselves. That’s why Google took data from the Library of Congress, WorldCat and others to find as many books as possible — one billion raw records by the company’s count.

Here’s where Google’s engineering talent comes into play. The company used countless algorithms to determine and discard duplicates in an effort that required more than 150 pieces of metadata related to the world’s books to evaluate whether each book record was unique or a duplicate of another. Analyzing this data resulted in 210 million unique books.

Next, Google subtracted the millions of microforms, audio recordings, maps, t-shirts, turkey probles (yes, turkey probes) and videos with IBSNs, arriving at a much more reasonable number of 146 million. Finally, the company removed 16 million government document volumes from their estimate, getting to the 129.8 million count they announced today. Of course, publishers are issuing new books even as this post is being typed, so the company is constantly recalculating the book count.

How Broken is the Senate?

Badass Politics.


This video is from the House of Reps, but recently there was an article in the New Yorker about how messed up the Senate is and why behavior like this is so rare in that body of politics. Found here.

An excerpt:

The Senate is often referred to as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” Jeff Merkley, a freshman Democrat from Oregon, said, “That is a phrase that I wince each time I hear it, because the amount of real deliberation, in terms of exchange of ideas, is so limited.” Merkley could remember witnessing only one moment of floor debate between a Republican and a Democrat. “The memory I took with me was: ‘Wow, that’s unusual—there’s a conversation occurring in which they’re making point and counterpoint and challenging each other.’ And yet nobody else was in the chamber.”

Tom Udall, a freshman Democrat from New Mexico, could not recall seeing a senator change another senator’s mind. “You would really need a good hour or two of extensive exchange among folks that really know the issue,” he said. Instead, a senator typically gives “a prepared speech that’s already been vetted through the staff. Then another guy gets up and gives a speech on a completely different subject.” From time to time, senators of the same party carry on a colloquy—“I would be interested in the distinguished senator from Iowa’s view of the other side’s Medicare Advantage plan”—that has been scripted in advance by aides.

While senators are in Washington, their days are scheduled in fifteen-minute intervals: staff meetings, interviews, visits from lobbyists and home-state groups, caucus lunches, committee hearings, briefing books, floor votes, fund-raisers. Each senator sits on three or four committees and even more subcommittees, most of which meet during the same morning hours, which helps explain why committee tables are often nearly empty, and why senators drifting into a hearing can barely sustain a coherent line of questioning. All this activity is crammed into a three-day week, for it’s an unwritten rule of the modern Senate that votes are almost never scheduled for Mondays or Fridays, which allows senators to spend four days away from the capital. Senators now, unlike those of several decades ago, often keep their families in their home states, where they return most weekends, even if it’s to Alaska or Idaho—a concession to endless fund-raising, and to the populist anti-Washington mood of recent years. (When Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House, in 1995, he told new Republican members not to move their families to the capital.) Tom Daschle, the former Democratic leader, said, “When we scheduled votes, the only day where we could be absolutely certain we had all one hundred senators there was Wednesday afternoon.”

Nothing dominates the life of a senator more than raising money. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat, said, “Of any free time you have, I would say fifty per cent, maybe even more,” is spent on fund-raising. In addition to financing their own campaigns, senators participate at least once a week in the Power Hour, during which they make obligatory calls on behalf of the Party (in the Democrats’ case, from a three-story town house across Constitution Avenue from the Senate office buildings, since they’re barred from using their own offices to raise money). Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican, insisted that the donations are never sufficient to actually buy a vote, but he added, “It sucks up time that a senator ought to be spending getting to know other senators, working on issues.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all#ixzz0vlghfuye