Auxiliary Memory

Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014

By James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Every fall, I look forward to the Best American series coming out, especially the Best American Science and Nature Writing. The 2014 annuals collects the best of what was published in 2013. If you’re not much of a magazine reader, these annual volumes of essays, short stories, travel writing, mystery stories, sports stories, comics, and even infographics, is a great way to read the best-of-the-best of periodical journalism. I usually get the volumes for short stories, essays and science and nature writing. There also a volume from another publisher, The Best American Science Writing that follows the same format of having a series editor with a yearly guest editor. Between the two, it’s an easy way to keep up with a broad range of scientific studies. They aren’t technical, but extremely well-written reporting of science related news, so even people who aren’t science geeks will enjoy them.

I’m listing the table of contents for the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 with links to those articles still available on the web, so you can sample the writing. The Kindle edition at $8.52 is a cheap way to have inspiring short reads on your mobile device – and the paper copy is only $14.95 at your favorite bookstore. Amazon offers a free sampler of the 2012 Best American series, the collects pieces from all the different subject anthologies. For science and nature this year, we have:

“Mixed Up” by Katherine Bagley
“The Great Forgetting” by Nicholas Carr
“The Social Life of Genes” by David Dobbs
“What Our Telescopes Couldn’t See” by Pippa Goldschmidt
“A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA” by Amy Harmon
“A Life-or-Death Situation” by Robin Marantz Henig
“23 and You” by Virginia Hughes
“Why the Brain Prefers Paper” by Ferris Jabr
“O-Rings” by Sarah Stewart Johnson
“When Animals Mourn” by Barbara J. King
“Where It Begins” by Barbara Kingsolver
“Danger! This Mission to Mars Could Bore You to Death!” by Maggie Koerth-Baker
“The Lost World” by Elizabeth Kolbert
“Awakening” by Joshua Lang
“Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future” by Maryn McKenna
“The Return of Measles” by Seth Mnookin
“Ants Go Marching” by Justin Nobel
“TV as Birth Control” by Fred Pearce
“The Madness of Planets” by Corey S. Powell
“Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” by Roy Scranton
“Under Water” by Kate Sheppard
“Twelve Ways of Viewing Alaska’s Wild, White Sheep” by Bill Sherwonit
“The Separating Sickness” by Rebecca Solnit
“Trapline” by David Treuer
“The Rebirth of Gorongosa” by E. O. Wilson
“Bringing Them Back to Life” by Carl Zimmer

These Best American volumes are perfect for ebook reading. Most people hate reading off their computer screens, and few people read magazines anymore, even when they subscribe. I know many people now that have discovered reading books on their smartphones, so these anthologies of shorter pieces are perfect for reading when you have an idle moment now and then.

Some of these stories are philosophical or political in nature, like “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” by Roy Scranton, who uses his experiences as a soldier in Iraq to contemplate the inevitable consequences of climate change. Or Pippa Goldschmidt’s “What Our Telescopes Couldn’t See” about her time as an astronomer looking at quasars, and then turning her gaze back to events on Earth. A profound philosophical statement is made by Nicholas Carr in “The Great Forgetting” questioning how much of human endeavors should we share with machines.

Many of the stories are like the terrific “Ants Go Marching” by Justin Nobel, who chronicles the fascinating history of fire ants in America, and his travels around the south visiting folks battling the invasion. Fire ant armies might sound scary, but what’s terrifying is “Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future” by Maryn McKenna. I watched a documentary on PBS Frontline about diseases resistant to antibiotics recently, and it’s far scarier than Ebola, and about equally horrifying as Climate Change.

And don’t let me leave you thinking that all science stories are scary. There’s some good news reports like, “TV as Birth Control” by Fred Pearce, which chronicles how television is helping reduce the population growth in India.

Stories about science, nature and technology really are stories about humans adapting to their environment. We’re constantly at war with Mother Nature, often killing ourselves in our own friendly fire. The history of science is one of humanity making tremendous mistakes, but the overall trends shows we’re learning more and more every year. Humans are the primary cause of climate change – we the primary cause of most changes on the Earth right now. We change everything we touch. We have a long track record of fucking things up, but we’re learning to do better. We’re in a great race – can we learn enough to save ourselves before we make ourselves extinct. We’re in an exciting dead heat at the moment. Most of these stories are reports from the front, about various battles to conquer ourselves.

JWH

The Future of My Trick or Treaters

By James Wallace Harris, Friday, October 31, 2014

Tonight while I sat near my front door waiting for the kids to come begging for candy I read The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. This is a very slight book, only 105 pages, that costs $6.31 for the Kindle edition. I read it so fast that I felt it should be priced like a Kindle Single, probably at $1.99. However, what it has to say should make you do at least $6.31 worth of thinking. If I reread it several times I’ll probably get a hundred bucks worth of thoughts out of it because it does present a tremendous amount information to think about. It condenses many heavy-duty ideas into powerful phrases and concepts.

Oreskes and Conway are known for their brilliant Merchants of Doubt which explains how conservative politics corrupts science to achieve its goals. Their new book is a kind of science fiction story, set in 2393 and told from a future Chinese historian about how the failure to heed science’s warnings led to The Great Collapse of 2093. It accuses science and scientists of being too timid in it’s statements about climate change.

As I frequently got up from six o’clock to nine, to give handfuls of candy to little kids in their Halloween costumes, I imagined their futures. Many will live to see 2093. If Oreskes and Conway are right, they will see more upheaval and misery than we saw in the 20th century. The Collapse of Western Civilization is the scariest horror book I’ve ever read on Halloween. It’s too bad I couldn’t have filled their sacks with science books, instead of sugary addictions.

Oreskes’ and Conway’s main points boldly states our political ideology and economic theories are outdated for dealing with climate change and the current mass extinction. We are doomed, we know how and why, and we choose to do nothing about it. Human life will not come to an end, but the effects of carbon pollution will be devastating.

Climate change deniers shout that science hasn’t offered enough proof is ridiculous. Oreskes and Conway claim science has the proof, and accuse scientists of being too timid to promote their results. The authors assert that scientists feel that unless they have 95 percent testable certainty they shouldn’t speak out. But if you were told you had a 10 percent change to contracting Ebola you’d panic. The collective results about climate change is often 95-100%, and yet we ignore it. If you were told going to a shopping mall or flying in an airplane involved a 1% chance of catching Ebola you wouldn’t go. Yet, science is confidently saying our children have a 95-100% chance of having a catastrophic future and we ignore it.

After reading The Collapse of Western Civilization I started The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014. Reading the introduction to the collected essays I knew if I took the time I could list 1,000 examples of how climate change is impacting us now. One of the first essays I read was how animals species all over the world are mixing with their cousins to produce hybrid species because of changing habitats caused by climate change. This is not new or unnatural, but the frequency is. One example they give is the mating of grizzly bears with polar bears. I could probably list 1,000 different hybrids to get to my 1,000 example count, or I could use it as just 1 of 1,000 and still find 999 articles about other specific examples of climate change happening now.

It is insane to deny climate change. To promote ones self-interest over the future of mankind is a crime against humanity. The Republican Party has a good chance of taking back the Senate in this week’s mid-term election. Their political religion is the exact wrong solution for saving the Earth. But Obama and the Democrats have done nothing significant to help either. The free hand of capitalism will always ignore the future. Choosing a smaller government and deregulation is sticking our heads in the sand and our asses up in the air. The trouble is every citizen of this country, of this world, must change the way they live. We need to go cold turkey on our wasteful way of living.

JWH

Blogging, Aging and Maintaining Mental Abilities

By James Wallace Harris, Friday, October 31, 2014

It’s amazing how some old sayings reflect unfathomably deep wisdom. Two of which that come to mind are “Use it or lose it” and “You don’t know what you’ll miss until it’s gone.” Some of these old sayings don’t become relevant until you’re old, which is a shame, because such knowledge would give the young a savvy advantage. It’s always difficult to predict what to keep using until you need it in the future.

Take handwriting. Until a few weeks ago when I discovered it was gone and I missed it, I never gave it two thoughts. When I had a pinched nerve in my neck and couldn’t type for a few weeks, I truly missed the ability to write in cursive. Now that I can type again, I’ll probably forget that I really needed to write without a machine. I’m sure one day I’ll again regret the loss of that skill, so I should practice it now. But I won’t, will I?

The trick now is to recognize the skills we do wish to keep, and keep practicing them. Blogging has taught me the value of practicing verbal skills. Both for writing and speaking. If I stop blogging for any length of time I feel my ability to use words begin to fade. It’s subtle, but it’s there. If I go without writing long enough, it’s not even subtle.

When I was younger, and watching my father’s generation of men die off, my uncles and other older guys I knew, seemed to withdraw into themselves as the years passed by, and talked less and less. I know I’m making crude generalizations here, but men, and maybe women, seem to lose their conversational abilities as wrinkles become more numerous. When I was young I assumed aging involved a withdrawal from life, either from boredom, lack of interest, or a diminishing urge for self-expression. Now I wonder if it’s a fading ability to communicate. Either put words together into concise thoughts, or lose the ability.

When I don’t blog my mental muscles to shape paragraphs gets flabby. Since most of my friends are women, I tend to spend most of my time listening. I’ve lost the ability to argue, and my verbal skills of discussing ideas are beginning to fade too. When I do talk to men, our old ability to battle with words has been lost to a détente of friendship. My old buddies are guys that I agree with, and I’ve given up on confrontational acquaintances. Maybe I should be more aggressive in my blog writing and find some wordy foes to spar with.

If the only thing you do is watch television, then the only skills you’ll have when you get old is sitting and watching. Maybe that’s why all the old men I knew stopped talking?

Every time I write an essay I can feel my brain working out. It’s like being at the gym and pumping iron – I can feel I’m lifting heavier concepts with systematic practice. I doubt blogging is for everyone, but I expect everyone needs some kind of verbal exercise that includes both conversation and writing. And it may even help to learning handwriting again.

JWH – Happy Halloween

What is the State of Feminism in the 21st Century?

By James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, October 29, 2014

I’ve been watching season two of Makers on PBS, a documentary series about the changing roles of women in America during the last century, with the focus of the massive social changes made since the 1960s. Each episode is both inspiring and moving. We’ve all come a long way in the last fifty years, an amazing long way. For example, in the episode, “Women in War” they showed a history of women being kept out of the military, yet they were interviewing women generals, pilots, field commanders, spies, and grunts of today. We have all come a long way, but how far do we still have to go? Each episode of Makers, which are available online to watch, show how far women have made it in various fields, including film, business, politics, military and even standup comedy.

What I want to know is how far our society has to evolve before women are truly equal to men? These documentaries show a great progress, but also stark failures. One reason the public didn’t want women in combat was the fear that their daughters would be raped by the enemy. It turns our the real problem is their daughters in uniform are being frequently raped by their male comrade-in-arms. In another episode they showed how women pilots were kept out of the Mercury space program because they weren’t combat test pilots, even though many of the women pilots tested did better on the astronaut medical exams than the original 7 astronauts, and they also weighed less, so they would have required less fuel.

Our real problems are still another case of Pogo’s:

I know I’ve had to constantly change to keep up with the demands of my women friends, and I’m sure I’ve got a lot to learn still. I think we all need to be feminists. Our culture does a number on everyone along the spectrum of gender issues. We still have never passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Most young people won’t remember the long battle for the ERA, but many of the vocal opponents were women, and there’s even an antifeminism movement by women. Hatred of women is often expressed in our society, both overtly and subtly. Most of it comes from males, but not always.

Back in the 1970s the word feminism was routinely heard in conversations, but I seldom hear it today. The entry at Wikipedia for feminism is very good, and talks about third wave feminism in the 21st century, and post-feminism. For many people, equal rights means equal opportunity for jobs, and many women feel they now have that opportunity, so they don’t feel the need to campaign for feminist causes, or worry about passing the ERA. But it’s much more complicated than that.

There is no way I could sum up the current state of feminism in a short blog essay, even if I knew it. What I can say is if you keep your eyes open, you’ll see the struggle for gender equality everywhere. For example, there’s been a number of stories about leading atheists being misogynists. Or the vile, repugnant views of some computer gamers in GamerGate. Just watch Anita Sarkeesian video series on how women are portrayed in video games. Then search out articles and videos attacking her. The hate she received represents a psychological deep resentment of women by a younger generation of men that grew up with a more enlightened generation of women. Why did they miss out their generation’s gains? GamerGate is the tip of the iceberg because we don’t know how most males really feel inside their heads. GamerGate allowed anonymous males to vent, and it was tremendously ugly.

Another documentary I watched recently was Brave Miss World, about Miss Israel Linor Abargil, who was raped competing for the Miss World contest, and now travels the globe promoting rape awareness. One clip in the documentary had a Yale fraternity chanting, “No means yes, yes means anal.” If the modern well-educated young men at Yale don’t know any better, then I’m not sure how far we’ve actually come.

After I saw one of the Anita Sarkeesian videos, which everyone should watch, I saw an ad on CBS for Two Broke Girls. Is it freedom of expression for women to play up to male stereotypes, or is it still oppression? I highly recommend watching the two seasons of Makers. You can watch online, and season one is on Netflix streaming, and some episodes are on the Roku PBS Channel. Season one is on Amazon Prime, and season two available to rent an many sites.

I hope PBS Frontline, and other major news magazine shows like CBS 60 Minutes cover the GamerGate, because it deserves all the air time that Ebola has been getting. I also think it deserves as much attention as the NFL scandal, but so far I’ve never seen anything about it on TV. In fact, I have to wonder if video games do lead to violence, especially against women. Studies claim to show no relationship between game violence and real violence, but the GamerGate attacks on women seem to indicate otherwise.

And I’m only talking about events in the United States. When you think as a global citizen, understanding equality for women becomes exceedingly complicated. Like I said, you don’t have to read books or be a feminist scholar, just pay attention to your television or computer. Watch how women are portrayed in fictional stories, and how they appear in documentaries and in news stories. Apply the Bechdel test to everything you watch.

[I wish I could link to “Cassandra Among the Creeps” by Rebecca Solnit in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine, October, 2014. On the cover, the essay is called “Silencing Women,” and that’s a more precise description of the essay. GamerGate, and so many other current attacks on women show a distinct desire to silence women. There is something deeply disturbing about individuals who protect themselves by shutting up others.]

JWH

Why the Fad to Declutter and Simplify?

By James Wallace Harris, Monday, October 27, 2014

One of the most emailed stories at The New York Times this week was “Kissing Your Socks Goodbye” about a woman in Japan, Marie Kondo, who is famous for extreme tidying up. With shows like Hoarders reaching season 6, it’s obvious that throwing things out is in, and it’s chic to live with less. But why is less more? What’s the virtue of turning all your rooms, closets and drawers into Zen gardens of simplicity? Is it just a fashion, or does it reflect a mental desire for personal change?

You’d think simplifying one’s life would be as natural as drinking water to quench a thirst. Just give up everything you don’t use regularly, and then keep everything else orderly and tidy. Man, I’ve been trying to do that for most of my life and have always failed. Clutter and kipple are relentless! Is that because my personality is disordered, and my outside reflects my inside? The trouble is, my head is far more cluttered than my closets and drawers. I just got too many things to think about, and I don’t want to throw any of those ideas away. If I wasn’t too lazy to photograph the rooms in my house, I could show you I’m reasonably clean and orderly, and far from being a hoarder, but being moderate is bland. If I could photograph the inside of my brain, it would look like this:

By the way, I hope you didn’t find this essay looking for how-to instructions on organizing your life. I’ve got no tips for you. This is a philosophical analysis of why we want to simplify our lives for people who can’t – people like me. Have you ever wondered why an uncluttered life is so prized? Even Henry David Thoreau only lived at Walden Pond for two years, two months and two days, and didn’t spend all his time there even when he implied he was. If we had a completely decluttered home it would be empty. The urge to be Buddha is deceptive, because asceticism is only hiding from the real issues.

We all want to have full lives, not empty ones. We are limited by space and time, but the goal isn’t empty rooms and blank calendars when we seek to simplify. And we don’t want sparse lives. We want maximum use of our time and space. Can you imagine living in the Zen living room above? It conveys serenity, but no action. I am anal enough to keep my books orderly. Here’s a fairly recent photo of my shelves. I can’t photograph my Kindle and Audible books though, but Amazon keeps them reasonably tidy.

My problem is not really clutter, but lack of focus. I want to do too many things, and I have the possessions for lifetimes of activities if I ever made use of all my stuff. But isn’t that what hoarders say about pieces of tinfoil – that they might find a use for it, so why throw it out? I have well over a thousand unread books, and I buy twice as many books each year than I read. I have more hobbies waiting to be started than I have likely years left in my life. My clutter is mental, rather than physical. It’s a time management conundrum, rather than a space management failure.

Last night I watched Print the Legend, a film about the 3D printer movement, especially about Makerbot founder Bre Pettis. Like Steve Jobs, Pettis is driven to build a tech empire. I have no desire to be like that, but I admire the hell out of the people who can focus on one goal and make something happen. I don’t want to clean out all my drawers and closets, I want to clean out my head. Marie Kondo’s advice is to throw away everything that doesn’t thrill you. My problem is I’m thrilled by a very long queue of ideas in my head. To be a person that makes things requires picking one idea and ignoring the rest. I use to think that was writing a novel, and I even still do, but I just can’t throw out all the other stuff piled up in my brain.

I probably could clean up my house so it looked very Zen, but it wouldn’t make me serene. Organizing the words in this essay does. Maybe what cleans up my mind is sweeping out all the thoughts about a particular subject into a nice tidy pile of words.

If I could be the person I dream of being, I’d need to pick one project and work on it till it’s accomplished. I can throw stuff away all day long from my house, I just can’t throw out the piles of junk in my head. But that’s what I need to do. I used to think if I threw out all my physical possessions I’d have a Zen mind. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I do wonder if I could achieve a Zen mind, would my house end up empty?

JWH